Author: NowReadThis

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Age of Ultron


By Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Waid, Bryan Hitch, Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco & others (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-542-0

Blockbuster crossovers are an intrinsic part of the comics business these days and before us doddery older fans can even catch our collective breath here’s the next big change (actually the second phase of the MarvelNOW! root and branch reboot), with attention focused on the Avengers as the launch of the next movie looms before us.

From March to June 2013 a massive, time-bending Armageddon extravaganza revealed the ultimate triumph of Ultron – the insidious and genocidal artificial intelligence originally invented by troubled tinkerer Henry Pym (AKA Ant-Man, Giant Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, Dr. Pym, The Wasp, et al), and the stupefying saga was augmented by more than a dozen sidebar stories occurring in Fantastic Four, Superior Spider-Man, Ultron #1AU, Wolverine and the X-Men, Avengers Assemble Uncanny Avengers and Fearless Defenders…

This impressively bombastic, streamlined and rocket-paced epic collects the core 10-part miniseries Age of Ultron and also includes as thematic epilogue Age of Ultron #10AI, with the drama beginning on a recently devastated Earth with human scum bartering lives and dignity amidst the ruins.

Hawkeye is on a solo mission to rescue a fellow superhero captured by barbaric, debased survivors of some apocalyptic attack which overnight blasted civilisation back to the Stone Age.

After freeing the barely-living Spider-Man from the dregs, the archer learns that the wall-crawler had been intended for trade with the new rulers of the world – legions of soulless, silently hovering, ever-vigilant Ultron Sentinels…

Scripted by Brian Michael Bendis, chapters #1-5 are illustrated by Bryan Hitch and Pauls Neary and Mounts and detail how the last Avengers and other metahumans – Captain America, Iron Man, Emma Frost, She-Hulk, Luke Cage, Storm, Invisible Woman & Wolverine amongst others – link up with similar pockets of superhuman resistance, such as Moon Knight and the Black Widow in San Francisco and Black Panther, Taskmaster and Red Hulk in Chicago, to discover just how Ultron achieved his shocking ultimate victory…

By sacrificing two comrades the assemblage determine that the attack came from the future via a contemporary proxy and, thanks to the intercession of a long-forgotten ally, the bulk of the team head off into tomorrow via Dr. Doom‘s time machine to crush the malign machine-monster forever.

Wolverine however has another idea, and despite being overruled by the majority and followed by Invisible Woman, travels into the recent past to assassinate Pym before he built the Artificial Oedipal Atrocity…

Issues #6-9 (with art from Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco & Roger Martinez) reveals the horrific implications of Wolverine’s time-busting red-handed revisionism when he and Sue Richards return to find a world in even more horrifying condition.

With Pym gone the Skrull-Kree war engulfed Earth and in the savage aftermath 6th century sorceress Morgana Le Fey and Dr. Doom united to decimate the survivors…

After seeing what the time-shift had done to old friends such as Tony Stark, Charles Xavier, Cyclops, The Thing, Doctor Strange, Star-Lord, The Hulk and even himself, Wolverine knows he has to back and undo Pym’s fate…

And in a furious future the Avengers Task force is losing the battle against Ultron’s perfect, mechanised human-free society…

It all comes together in the shock and surprise-stuffed tenth chapter (illustrated by Alex Maleev, Hitch, Butch Guice, Peterson, Pacheco, Roger Bonet, Tom Palmer, David Marquez & Joe Quesada) as the much-travelled mutant meets a most unexpected obstacle and Pym himself devises the solution to save humanity and the much-abused time-line.

It’s almost enough: however the chronal catastrophes have had a disastrous “Butterfly Effect” on the fabric of reality and beings from beyond the multiverse (and indeed originally from another publishing company) are drawn into events yet to unfold in the months to come…

The collection concludes with a charming and clever epilogue issue reviewing and revising the origin of Hank Pym – Man of Many Names and Sizes – in ‘It Was Not a Wonderful Life’ (written by Mark Waid, illustrated by Andre Lima Araújo & Frank D’Armata), adroitly setting the scene for forthcoming series Avengers A.I.

With covers by Hitch, Neary & Mounts, Peterson, Sara Pichelli & Marte Gracia plus 30 variants by J. Scott Campbell, Mike Deodato Jr., Rock-He Kim, Marko Djurdjevic, Ed McGuiness, Skottie Young, Jung-Geun Yoan, In-Hyuk Lee, Adi Granov, Pacheco, Francis Leinil Francis Yu, Peterson, Jorge Molina, Joe Quesada, Mark Brooks, Salvador Larroca & Paola Rivera, this a spectacularly visual treat for fans of the time-buster genre which also reinforces Marvel’s game plan to make the stories more accessible to casual readers and non-comicbook fans.

Naturally the book also includes the now-standard added extras provided by many AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which are your gateway to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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The Adventures of Blake and Mortimer: The Secret of the Swordfish Part 1 – Ruthless Pursuit


By Edgar P. Jacobs, coloured by Philippe Biermé & Luce Daniels translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-148-8

Belgian Edgard Félix Pierre Jacobs (1904-1987) is rightly considered one of the founding fathers of the Continental comics industry. Although his output is relatively meagre when compared to some of his contemporaries, the iconic series he worked on formed the basis and backbone of the art-form in Europe, and his splendidly adroit, roguish and impeccably British adventurers Blake and Mortimer, created for the first issue of Le Journal de Tintin in 1946, swiftly became a staple of post-war European kids’ life the way Dan Dare would in Britain in the 1950s.

Edgar P. Jacobs was born in Brussels, a precocious child who began feverishly drawing from an early age but was even more obsessed with music and the performing arts – especially opera. He attended a commercial school but, determined never to work in an office, pursued art and drama following graduation in 1919.

A succession of odd jobs at opera-houses – scene-painting, set decoration, working as an acting and singing extra – supplanted his private performance studies, and in 1929 Jacobs won an award from the Government for classical singing. His proposed career as an opera singer was thwarted by the Great Depression, however, as the arts took a nosedive following the global stock market crash.

Picking up whatever stage work was going, including singing and performing, Jacobs switched to commercial illustration in 1940. Regular employment came from the magazine Bravo; as well as illustrating short stories and novels, he famously took over the syndicated Flash Gordon strip, after the occupying German authorities banned Alex Raymond’s quintessentially All-American Hero and left the publishers desperately seeking someone to satisfactorily complete the saga.

Jacob’s ‘Stormer Gordon’ lasted less than a month before being similarly sanctioned by the Nazis, after which Jacobs created his own epic science-fantasy feature in the legendary Le Rayon U, a milestone in both Belgian comics and science fiction adventure.

The U Ray was a huge hit in 1943 and scored big all over again a generation later when Jacobs reformatted the original “text-block and picture” material to incorporate speech balloons and re-ran the series in Tintin with subsequent releases as a trio of graphic albums in 1974.

I’ve read differing accounts of how Jacobs and Tintin creator Hergé got together – and why they parted ways professionally, if not socially – but as to the whys and wherefores of the split I frankly don’t care. What is known is this: whilst creating the weekly U Ray, one of Jacob’s other jobs was scene-painting, and during the staging of a theatrical version of Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh Hergé and Jacobs met and became friends. If the comics maestro was unaware of Jacob’s comics output before then he was certainly made aware of it soon after.

Jacobs began working on Tintin, colouring the original black and white strips of The Shooting Star from newspaper Le Soir for a forthcoming album collection. By 1944 he was performing a similar role on Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, King Ottokar’s Sceptre and The Blue Lotus. By now he was also contributing to the illustration as well, on the extended epic The Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun.

Jacob’s love of opera made it into the feature as Hergé (who loathed the stuff) teasingly created the bombastic Bianca Castafiore as a comedy foil and based a number of bit players (such as Jacobini in The Calculus Affair) on his long-suffering assistant.

After the war and liberation, publisher Raymond Leblanc convinced Hergé, Jacobs and a number of other creatives to work for his new venture. Launching publishing house Le Lombard, he also started Le Journal de Tintin, an anthology comic with editions in Belgium, France and Holland edited by Hergé, starring the intrepid boy reporter and a host of newer heroes.

Beside Hergé, Jacobs and writer Jacques van Melkebeke, the comic featured Paul Cuvelier’s ‘Corentin’ and Jacques Laudy’s ‘The Legend of the Four Aymon Brothers’. Laudy had been a friend of Jacobs’ since they worked together on Bravo, and the first instalment of the epic thriller serial ‘Le secret de l’Espadon’ starred a bluff, gruff British scientist and an English Military Intelligence officer (closely modelled on Laudy): Professor Philip Mortimer and Captain Francis Blake…

The initial storyline ran from issue #1 (26th September 1946 to 8th September 1949) and cemented Jacobs’ status as a star in his own right. In 1950, with the first 18 pages slightly redrawn, Le secret de l’espladon V1 (The Secret of the Swordfish) became Le Lombard’s first album release; with the concluding part published three years later. These volumes were reprinted nine more times between 1955 and 1982, with an additional single complete deluxe edition released in 1964.

In 1984 the story was reformatted and repackaged in English translation as three volumes with additional material (mostly covers from the weekly Tintin added to the story as splash pages) as part of a European push to win some of the lucrative Tintin and Asterix market here, but failed to find an audience and ended after seven volumes. Now happily Cinebook has released the tale – albeit after publishing the later adventures first…

Hergé and Jacobs purportedly suffered a split in 1947 when the former refused to grant the latter a by-line on new Tintin material, but since the two remained friends for life and Jacob’s continued to produce Blake and Mortimer for the Belgian weekly, I think it’s fair to say that if such was the case it was a pretty minor spat.

I rather suspect that The Secret of the Swordfish was simply taking up more and more of the brilliant, diligent artist’s time and attention…

The U Ray also provided early visual inspiration for Blake, Mortimer and implacable nemesis Colonel Olrik, who bear a more than passing resemblance to the heroic Lord Calder, Norlandian boffin Marduk and viperous villain Dagon from that still lauded masterwork – one also well overdue for translation…

One minor word of warning: by having the overarching enemies of mankind be a secret Asiatic “Yellow Peril” empire of evil, there’s some potential for offence – unless one actually reads the text and finds that the assumed racism is countered throughout by an equal amount of “good” ethnic people and “evil” white folk…

The incredible journey begins with ‘The Incredible Chase’ as a secret army in the Himalayas prepares to launch a global Blitzkrieg on a world only slowly recovering from its second planetary war. The wicked Basam Damdu, Emperor of Tibet, has assembled an arsenal of technological super-weapons and the world’s worst rogues such as the insidious Colonel Olrik in a bid to seize control of the entire Earth.

However a bold British-Asian spy has infiltrated the hidden fortress and surrenders his life to get off a warning message…

In England, physicist and engineer Philip Mortimer and MI5 Captain Francis Blake discuss the worsening situation at an industrial installation where the boffin’s radical new aircraft engine is being constructed. When the warning comes that the war begins that night, the old friends swing into immediate action…

As the super-bombers rain destruction down on all the world’s cities, Mortimer’s dedicated team prepares his own prototype, the Golden Rocket, for immediate launch, taking off just as Olrik’s bombers appear over the desolate complex. Despite heavy fire, the Rocket easily outdistances the rapacious Imperial forces, leaving ruined homes in its wake as the fleeing Britons fly into a hostile world now brutally controlled by Basam Damdu…

Whilst seeking to join British Middle East resistance forces who have another prototype super-plane, teething troubles and combat damage create tense moments in the fugitives’ flight. When the Rocket is attacked by a flight of jets the test ship’s superior firepower enables it to fight free but only at the cost of more structural deterioration. Failing now, the Rocket goes down in the rocky wilds between Iran and Afghanistan. Parachuting free of the doomed Rocket, Blake, Mortimer and the crew are machine-gunned by pursuing Empire jets and only three men make it to the ground safely…

After days of struggle Blake, Mortimer and the indomitable Jim are cornered by Iranian troops who have joined Olrik’s forces. Sensing disaster, the Britons hide the plans to Mortimer’s super plane but one of the Iranians sees the furtive act. When no one is looking – even his superiors – Lieutenant Ismail hurriedly scoops up the documents but misses one…

Under lock and key and awaiting Olrik’s arrival, the prisoners are accosted by Ismail, who sees an opportunity for personal advancement which the Englishmen turn to their own advantage. Denouncing him to his superiors, Blake instigates a savage fight between Ismail and his Captain. During the brief struggle Jim sacrifices himself, allowing Blake and Mortimer to escape with the recovered plans. Stealing a lorry, the desperate duo drive out into the dark desert night…

Followed by tanks into the mountain passes, the ingenious pair trap their pursuers in a ravine just as hill partisans attack. The Imperial collaborators are wiped out and, after exchanging information with the freedom fighters, the Englishmen take one of the captured vehicles and head to a distant rendezvous with the second Rocket, but lack of fuel forces them to stop at a supply dump where they are quickly discovered.

By setting the dump ablaze the heroes escape again, but in the desert Olrik has arrived and found the sheet of notes left behind by Ismail. The cunning villain is instantly aware of what it means…

Fighting off aerial assaults from Empire jets and streaking for the mountains, Blake and Mortimer abandon their tank and are forced to travel on foot until they reach the meeting point where a British-trained native Sergeant Ahmed Nasir is waiting for them. The loyal Indian served with Blake during the last war and is delighted to see him again, but as the trio make their way to the target site they become aware that Olrik has already found it and captured their last hope…

Only temporarily disheartened, the trio use commando tactics to infiltrate Olrik’s camp, stealing not the heavily guarded prototype but the villainous Colonel’s own Red-Wing super-jet. Back on course to the British resistance forces, the seemingly-cursed trio are promptly shot down by friendly fire: rebels perceiving the stolen plane as just another enemy target…

Surviving this crash too, the trio are ferried in relative safety by the apologetic tribesmen to the enemy-occupied town of Turbat, but whilst there a spy of the Empire-appointed Wazir recognises Blake and Mortimer. When Nasir realises they are in trouble he dashes to the rescue but is too late to prevent Mortimer from being drugged.

Sending the loyal Sergeant on ahead Blake tries frantically to revive his comrade, even as Imperial troopers rapidly mount the stairs to their exposed upper room…

To Be Continued…

Gripping and fantastic in the best tradition of pulp sci-fi and Boy’s Own Adventures, Blake and Mortimer are the very epitome of True Brit grit and determination, always delivering grand old-fashioned Blood and Thunder thrills and spills in timeless fashion and with staggering visual verve and dash. Despite the high body count and dated milieu, any kid able to suspend modern mores and cultural disbelief (call it alternate earth history if you want) will experience the adventure of their lives… and so will their children.

This Cinebook edition also includes a tantalising preview of the next volume as well as stand alone adventure The Yellow “M”, plus a biography feature which offers a chronological publication chart and publishing order of the Cinebook release dates.

Original editions © Editions Blake & Mortimer/Studio Jacobs (Dargaud – Lombard S.A.) 1984 by E.P. Jacobs. All rights reserved. English translation © 2012 Cinebook Ltd.

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Willard Mullin’s Golden Age of Baseball – Drawings 1934-1972


By Willard Mullin, Hal Bock & Michael Powers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-639-3

Britain never really enjoyed the long and lovingly cherished tradition of sports cartoons enjoyed by America throughout the 20th century – more’s the pity – but in the Land of the Free illustrated match précis’, captivating portraits, charismatic caricatures and plain old fashioned gags in drawn form were a crucial element of every national and local newspaper for generations.

Sporting profiles, sketches, technical tips, skits and lampooning broadsides were even a staple of Golden Age comicbooks – and far too often the best drawn items in those fantasy-fuelled periodicals.

Voted “Greatest Sports Cartoonist of the 20th Century” by his extremely talented and partisan peers, Willard Mullin (September 14, 1902-December 20, 1978) best captured the magic of America’s favourite game for almost half a hundred years, encapsulating the power, glory, glum disappointment, heartbreak and just plain unflagging passion of players, managers, owners and fans in spectacular portrait biographies, potent editorial cartoons, gently ferocious caricatures and hilarious, knowing slapstick panels.

Fantagraphics Books have again struck gold by reviving and celebrating a lost hero and a nigh-forgotten sector of graphic narrative arts in this superb commemoration of a mighty talent: featuring a history of the man, his times and the sport which sustained a nation in war and peace; recalled in candid photos and an unbelievable treasure-trove of stupendous drawings and cartoons that charmed and delighted uncounted millions of Americans…

Following a passionate appreciation of the man and his influence from cartoonist, illustrator and author Bob Staake in ‘Mulling over Willard’, Shirley Mullin Rhodes shares intimate and heart-warming times past in ‘Willard Mullin Through the Eyes of His Daughter’.

After another nationally-celebrated cartoonist shares his memories in ‘Gallo on Mullin’ by Bill Gallo, legendary sports columnist Hal Bock then describes the essential impact of ‘The Baseball World of Willard Mullin’ before the man and his work is celebrated through a history of the decades and examples of his own astonishing daily output from the numerous papers and magazines he worked on…

‘The 1930s’ follows an early career that encompassed other sports and social/editorial issues, but always best-favoured Baseball… especially as played by the New York teams Mullins favoured: Yankees, (Brooklyn) Dodgers and his special guys, the Giants (and latterly the Mets, of course)…

Lavishly illustrated throughout, this massive hardback (200 pages and 228x315mm) is packed with vignettes, panels and portraits, and this Golden Age chapter is filled with teams, themes and mythic stars such as Stan Musial, Babe Ruth, Dizzy Dean, Lou Gehrig, Lefty Gomez, the immortal “Brooklyn Bum”, and many more.

‘The 1940s’ were an era of epic change and not solely due to the war. The astounding imagery from those hallowed seasons include the rise of Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, early images of Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige (the first African American players to break the colour-bar and play Major League Baseball), and also marked the passing of “the Babe”, as well as Gehrig’s tragic death from ALS. Mullins as always cracked wise about winners, losers and the long-suffering fans, and displayed his sheer virtuosity in the annual Christmas card to the public…

In ‘The 1950s’ the sport truly became a business and, amongst the ever-better drawings and more trenchant comments, Willard became as much a part of the game as bats and socks. Brooklyn Bum toys and premiums here run alongside pennant-winning celebrations, visual discussions of rocketing salaries and teams – like the New York Giants – who followed the money to richer towns, abandoning fans for fame in places like San Francisco or Los Angeles. He also anticipated the death of smaller local Leagues as television brought the big games into households across the nation…

‘The 1960s and The 1970s’ showcase Mullin’s final years – he retired in 1970 – with more magnificent cartoons and commentary, interspersed with excerpts from running features such as ‘So you think you know Baseball!’ and stunning celebrations of the passing of an era and legends like Casey Stengel. In fact with the advances of photo technology and shrinking of page sizes, the entire vast field of sports cartooning was rapidly following him into the pages of nostalgic history…

This engrossing, charming chronicle also includes rare ‘Color Work’ including the cover to The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (which inspired the musical Damn Yankees), training roster posters, guides, schedules and programme covers, sporting Year Books and sports books as well as commercial and advertising work, and concludes with a brief history by Bock of the medium and genre of ‘Sports Cartooning: Telling a Story in Pen and Ink’

Whether you’re a fan of sports in general or Baseball in particular, if you’re reading this you love narrative art, and Willard Mullin was the Will Eisner of his field: clever, funny, bold, dramatic and capable of astounding emotional connection with his readers. This is book no lovers of our art form should miss.

This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books. Willard Mullin and the Brooklyn Bum are ™ and ® the Estate of Willard Mullin. Other material © its respective holders or owners as noted within.

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Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Avengers


By Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven & Sara Pichelli with Michael Avon Oeming, Ming Doyle, Michael Del Mundo & John Dell (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-542-0

Although heralded since its launch in the early 1960s with making superheroes more realistic, Marvel Comics has also maintained its close connection with outlandish and outrageous cosmic calamity (as embodied in their pre-superhero “monster-mag” days), and this latest iteration of space crusaders maintains that delightful “Anything Goes” attitude in an impressive new launch – part of the MarvelNow! group reboot – that lays the groundwork for the upcoming big budget movie next year.

The Guardians of the Galaxy were created by Arnold Drake in 1968 for try-out title Marvel Super-Heroes (#18, January 1969), a group of futuristic freedom fighters dedicated to liberating star-scattered Mankind from domination by the sinister, reptilian Brotherhood of Badoon.

Initially unsuccessful, they floated in limbo until 1974 when Steve Gerber incorporated them into Marvel Two-In-One #4-5 and Giant Size Defenders #5 and the monthly Defenders #26-29 (July through November 1975), wherein assorted 20th century champions travelled a millennium into the future to ensure humanity’s liberation and survival.

This in turn led to the Guardians’ own short-lived series in Marvel Presents #3-12 (February 1976-August 1977) before cancellation left them roaming the Marvel Universe as perennial guest-stars in such cosmically-tinged titles as Thor, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One and The Avengers.

Eventually in June 1990 they secured a relatively successful series (#62 issues, annuals and spin-off miniseries until July 1995) before cancellation again claimed them.

This isn’t them; this is another bunch…

In 2006 a massive crossover involved most of Marvel’s 21st century space specialists in a spectacular “Annihilation” Event, leading writing team Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning to reconfigure the Guardians concept for modern times and tastes.

Among the stalwarts in play were Silver Surfer, Galactus, Firelord (and other previous heralds of the world-eater), Moondragon, Quasar, Star-Lord, Thanos, Super-Skrull, Tana Nile, Gamora, Ronan the Accuser, Nova, Drax the Destroyer, a Watcher and a host of alien civilisations such as the Kree, Skrulls, Xandarians, Shi’ar et al., all falling before a invasion of rapacious negative zone bugs and beasties unleashed by insectoid horror Annihilus.

The event spawned a number of specials, miniseries and new titles (subsequently collected in three volumes plus a Classics compilation that reprinted key appearances of a number of the saga’s major players), and inevitably led to a follow-up event…

In Annihilation: Conquest, the cast expanded to include Adam Warlock, the Inhumans, talking dog Cosmo, Kang the Conqueror, Vance Astro/Major Victory, Maelstrom, Jack Flag, Blastaar, the Magus, Galactic Warrior Bug (from the 1970’s phenomenon Micronauts), current Captain Universe (ditto), Shi’ar berserker Deathcry, failed Celestial Madonna Mantis, anamorphic adventurer Rocket Raccoon and gloriously whacky “Kirby Kritter” Groot, a walking killer tree and one-time “Monarch of Planet X”, amongst others…

I’ve covered part of that cataclysmic clash and will get to the rest one day: suffice to say that by the conclusion of the assorted Annihilations a new, pan-species Guardian group had appointed itself to defend civilisations and prevent any such wars from ever happening again.

This isn’t them either… exactly…

A few years later and many more cosmic crises – such as a devastating “War of Kings” – averted, the remnants of those many Sentinels of the Spaceways are getting the band back together, still determined to make the universe a safe place.

Thus this impressive and readily accessible volume (collecting Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1, Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers #1 & Guardians of the Galaxy #1-3 from February-June 2013) provides a handy jumping-on point, recapitulating the bare essentials before launching into a blistering and immensely absorbing interstellar romp which ties inextricably into mainstream Marvel continuity.

Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven, John Dell & Justin Ponsor set the ball rolling with the secret origin of Star-Lord, revealing how thirty years ago warrior Prince J’Son of the interstellar empire of Spartax was shot down over Colorado and had a brief fling with solitary Earther Meredith Quill. Despite his desire to remain in idyllic isolation, duty called J’Son back to the battle and he left, leaving behind an unsuspected son and a unique weapon…

A decade later, the troubled boy saw his mother assassinated by alien lizard men determined on eradicating the legacy of Spartax. Peter vengefully slew the Badoon with Meredith’s shotgun, before his home was explosively destroyed by a flying saucer.

The orphan awoke in hospital, his only possession a “toy” ray-gun his mother had hidden from him his entire life…

Years later his destiny found him, and the half-breed scion of Spartax became Star-Lord. Rejecting both Earth and his father – now king of his corner of creation – Peter Quill chose freedom, the pursuit of justice and the comradeship of disreputable aliens…

The origin story concludes with Peter welcoming avid listener and neophyte spacer Tony Stark into his loose-knit fellowship of Guardians…

More delving into formative events occured in the anthological Tomorrow’s Avengers #1 (by Bendis and individually illustrated by Michael Avon Oeming, Ming Doyle & Michael Del Mundo), revealing how Quill tracked down old friends and prospective members for his new team, detailing recent exploits of at-large and unfocused stalwarts Drax the Destroyer, the decidedly odd couple Rocket Racoon and Groot and, of course, Gamora, “Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy”…

The former bane of Thanos Drax is idling away the days in pointless fighting when Star-Lord comes calling, whilst Groot at least is still defending the weak from the wicked in a classy farmers-vs.-bandits fable.

The unique, blaster-toting Peril-loving Procyonidae (look it up) was mouthing off in a bar, drinking and fighting as usual when he found tantalising evidence that there was at least one other Rocket Raccoon at large in the universe, whilst gorgeous Gamora just never stopped. She was still slaughtering her adopted dad’s minions when Star-Lord made his offer…

The series proper – by Bendis, McNiven, Dell & Ponsor – opens with Peter Quill diplomatically ambushed in a seedy dive by his long-lost dad. J’Son rules Spartax but the rift between him and the Star-Lord is wide and deep and impassable.

Dear old Dad also has a message: he has entered into a compact with the other major powers and principalities of the universe to declare Earth off limits and quarantined from all extraterrestrial contact. He and they will act immediately to stop any alien individual or species from contaminating it.

Of course that especially means his own wayward son…

A little later, Iron Man is playing with his new space armour when a Badoon starship attacks Earth. Overmatched, Stark is unexpectedly reinforced by Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket Raccoon and Groot who devastate the monolithic vessel – but not before fighter ships break atmosphere and bombard London.

With the Home Counties under attack despite The Council of Galactic Empires’ edicts – and apparently by one of the signatory civilisations – the Guardians go to work ending the Badoon, with Peter distracted in trying to divine his duplicitous father’s actual intent.

In the Negative Zone, J’Son is conferring virtually with his opposite numbers from the Kree, Shi’ar, Brood, Badoon and Asgard, with a new Annihilus presiding over the fractious meeting, and indeed dirty work and dirty tricks are afoot…

In blistering battles the Badoon are beaten, but no sooner do the Guardians pause for breath than a starfleet supposedly blockading Earth arrests them for breaking the embargo.

Imprisoned on Spartax, Quill and Co eventually bust out and publicly declare war on J’Son, sowing the seeds of a future rebellion – but even they are unaware that the devious and double-dealing king is also being played for a sucker…

Bright, breezy, bombastic and immensely enjoyable, the action-packed Cosmic Avengers also includes a beautiful gallery of 23 covers and variants – including a lovely movie-art landscape/wraparound – by McNiven, Dell & Ponsor, Doyle, Ed McGuiness, Joe Quesada, Adi Granov, Mark Brooks, Milo Manara, Terry Dodson, Mike Deodato Jr., Phil Jimenez, Mike Perkins, Paola Rivera and Joe Madureira, and of course the book comes with the standard added extras provided by many AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Flesk Prime


Illustrated by Craig Elliott, Gary Gianni, Petar Meseldžija, Mark Schultz & William Stout, edited by John Fleskes (Flesk)
ISBN: 978-1-933865-38-6

After everything is said and done the most immediate response to narrative art is through the eyes. The right picture is worth far more than a thousand words and this stunning hardback coffee-table sampler is stuffed with finished works and the far-more-interesting roughs, sketches, pencil stages, works-in-progress and details of a quintet of extremely talented stars who are all masters of communicating through unforgettable imagery.

Selected by art addict and specialist publisher John Fleskes, this superb tome collects a tantalising array of material to captivate all fans of fantasy, horror, comicbook action and even dinosauria, but is in fact a delicious physical ad and endorsement for the company’s even more tempting range of dedicated art-books by the contributors and other such talents as Al Williamson, Bruce Timm, James Bama, Steve Rude, Jim Silke, Harvey Dunn, Joseph Clement Coll and many more…

Each entry begins with a brief biography, starting with the incredible career of fine artist, commercial and comicbook painter, animation visual developer (Hercules, Mulan, Monsters vs. Aliens, The Lorax and more) and landscape architect Craig Elliott.

His gallery of 11 stunning fantasy paintings – plus a page detailing his work process – leads into an equally staggering array of works by commercial artist, illustrator and comics aristocrat Gary Gianni, accompanied by sketches, paintings and comic pages from Conan, Solomon Kane, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Indiana Jones, The MonsterMen, Batman, Prince Valiant and much more.

Award-winning Serbian fantasy illustrator Petar Meseldžija is represented in an incredible gallery of 20 fantasy paintings, drawing and sketches, many starring the fantastic mythological monsters of his homeland, whilst comics superstar Mark Schultz contributes a dozen pages of working drawings, roughs and sketches from past glories such as Conan and Xenozoic Tales as well as a myriad of high adventure and fantasy scenarios.

This catalogue of wonders concludes with a selection by legendary artist, natural historian and illustrator William Stout, ranging from monster, zombie and dinosaur paintings to luscious animal pictures to comics covers to film posters and previously unseen record covers.

These pictures, ranging from intoxicating barbarian women, valiant sword-wielding warriors, wondrous dinosaurs, Cowboys and Indians, rockets and robots, bold heroes, period drama scenes, cosmic adventurers, beasts and monsters, aliens, action sequences, beguiling nudes and glamour studies, are the bedrock of fantasy illustration and these beautifully intimate glimpses of masters at work, with high quality colour reproduction capturing every nuance of brushstroke, pen line and pencil mark, make this a book a vital primer for anybody dreaming of drawing for a living. Most importantly the astounding breadth and scope of work presented here make me itch to pick up my pencil and draw, draw, draw some more myself.

Enticing, revealing, rewarding and incredibly inspirational, no lover of wonder or art lover can fail to be galvanised by this superb portfolio of excellence.
© 2011 Flesk Publications LLC. All Rights Reserved. All artworks and features © 2011 the individual creators, owners or copyright holders.

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Wolverine: Hunting Season


By Paul Cornell, Alan Davis, Mirco Pierfederici, Mark Farmer, Zach Fischer, Karl Kesel & Tom Palmer (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-541-3

Following all the desperate and life-altering debacles of recent years, the emergent race dubbed Homo Sapiens Superior has, after the epochal events of Avengers versus X-Men, won something of a fresh start and clean slate for most mutants, especially the perennially punching-above-his-weight feral fury Wolverine.

The company initiative MarvelNOW!, having reinvigorated the entire continuity, the various flavours of X-champion are generally starting life anew and this collection, gathering issues #1-6 of Wolverine volume 5 (cover-dated May-September 2013), proffers a compellingly attractive and decidedly different side of the Canadian Crusader which – like companion series Savage Wolverine – explores the man beyond the blood-blind berserker of yesteryear…

Scripted by Paul Cornell and illustrated initially by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer and then Mirco Pierfederici, Zach Fischer, Karl Kesel & Tom Palmer, the all-out action and sinister subversion begins with the eponymous 4-part ‘Hunting Season’ right in the middle of the mayhem as our horrified hero desperately tries to talk down a spree-killer in the midst of a body-strewn hostage situation in a Mall. Partially disintegrated, Wolverine can only attempt to reason with the man until his arms and legs grow back…

Mild-mannered Robert Gregson is acting really weird and has an impossibly powerful supergun. He’s calm, rational and displays diffident concern to his young son Alex as he systematically vaporises all the shoppers in the arcade. By the time he turns the raygun on the boy, Wolverine is just healed enough to stop the complacent killer. Amidst charred bones and human ashes the cops burst in and Logan sees old friend and NYPD Detective Chieko Tomomatsu in the lead.

In the blistered aftermath nobody realises that the odd odour which permeated Gregson now emanates from Alex, until the kid attacks them all and flees with the gun. As he utilises the hand cannon to ravage the city, Wolverine is in close pursuit. Refusing to eviscerate a 10-year old, he tries to Alex keeps talking but the boy sounds like a dispassionate boffin absentmindedly taking notes…

Across town a trio of cops intercepts a gang of drug-dealers and they too suddenly acquire a strange smell and completely detached attitude. In unison, they turn on and dispatch the guy who turned up late…

Repeatedly dodging instant incineration, the Clawful Canuck corners Alex high up on a construction site and confirms that something has possessed the lad. Desperately trying to establish contact with the controlling force – which refers to itself in the plural – Wolverine is horrified as the kid jumps to his doom and the gun finds another triggerman before the slaughter continues…

When the new Nick Fury (long story short: the son of the original and looks like the African American S.H.I.E.L.D. Director from the assorted movies – see Battle Scars for further details) arrives and downs the shooter, the gun flies off before anyone can stop it…

As Wolverine brings the superspy up to speed, he has a bizarre vision and the cosmic observer known as The Watcher appears – only to the mutant’s enhanced senses – thus indicating that whatever is going on it’s a danger to the entire universe…

Oddly enough, the first stop in sorting the problem is a bar. Guernica on West Fourth is a superhero hostelry and a very unique think-tank meets there. As well as a comicbook writer, there’s an odds-maker on superhero battles, a professional powers cataloguer and the current CEO of repair conglomerate Damage Control, but what the fast-healing hero needs is the services of talented and unflappable surgeon Victoria Frankenstein (she pronounces it “Fronken-schteen”), possibly the only sawbones capable of removing the smart-bullet Alex embedded in the mutant’s shoulder.

The last in line of such a fateful dynasty is necessary since Logan’s flesh knits back together faster than most scalpels can cleave it. The brainstorming/field surgery session also leads to one inescapable conclusion: whoever or whatever is possessing people acts like an airborne virus…

The gun meanwhile has found those co-opted cops and robbers. Fury and Wolverine are right behind them and subsequently uncover a plot to explode a bomb full of those pesky microbe invaders over Yankee Stadium during the biggest game of the season…

Logan of course spectacularly foils the plot but since he can still see The Watcher, the confused champion knows things aren’t quite over yet…

‘Drowning Logan’, illustrated by Mirco Pierfederici, Mark Farmer, Zach Fischer, Karl Kesel & Tom Palmer, takes up the story as the insidious organisms, now evolved to deceive Wolverine’s sense of smell, possess an entire S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier crew – Fury Jr. included – and then capture the one being able to resist their mind-bending infection.

Trapped with a trio of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents also (temporarily) immune to the takeover terrors and a fading phone-link to the Guernica group, the Feral Fury must defeat an army of friends and colleagues housing an unstoppable invasion force before it’s judgement day for our universe. Thankfully a clue to the microbial possessors’ incredible origins lead to a fantastic counter-attack and their eventual repulsion – but not without shocking personal cost to the formerly fast-healing hero…

To Be Continued…

Hunting Season also includes a beautiful gallery of 16 covers and variants by Davis & Farmer, Jason Keith, Olivier Coipel, Salvador Larroca, Skottie Young, Humberto Ramos, Mike Deodato Jr., Ed McGuiness & Pascal Campion, and comes with the now-standard added extras provided by of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the code – for free – from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Video Classics volume 1: The Adventures of Mighty Mouse / Video Classics volume 1: More Adventures of Mighty Mouse

By various (Malibu Graphics)
ISBNs: 0-944735-22-3 & 0-944735-06-1

The animated cartoon legend who became Mighty Mouse started out as a Superman parody from the Paul Terry animation studio (known as Terrytoons) in 1942. “The Mouse of Tomorrow”, launched his crusade against cat-on-mouse crime after fleeing from marauding moggies and taking refuge in a Supermarket. Whilst there, exposure to Super Soap and consumption of Super Soup, Super Celery and Super Cheese transformed him into a peewee powerhouse clad in a dangerously litigation-attracting blue-&-red, caped outfit.

Super Mouse was a huge hit for Terrytoons and spawned a welter of cartoon shorts. However after the seventh in 1943 the name changed to Mighty Mouse (with the earlier animations re-dubbed by 1944 to eradicate any trace of the original. The studio produced more than ninety features between 1942 and 1961…

The Rodent Avenger also survived a closet-full of costume changes before settling on the vibrant red and yellow outfit of his television years and (in anticipation of today’s constant revamping of heroic motives) almost as many origins, but the one that eventually stuck in the comicbooks was that he was a mysterious foundling baby in a basket and raised by an elderly couple in the deep, dark woods…

Such a screen smash naturally spawned a successful comicbook career. His first outing came in Timely’s (Marvel Comics as was) Terrytoons #38, November 1945, with creative contributions from Stan Lee, Jim Mooney, Mike Sekowsky and Al Jaffee. The Magnificent Mus Musculus then sprang into his own solo title for four issues until Timely lost the lucrative license to St. John/Pines Publications in 1947.

Generating a host of issues, giants and specials (including one of the industry’s earliest 3D comics) throughout the 1950s, eventually Western Publishing’s Gold Key imprint secured the rights at the end of the decade, carrying on the cute crusade until 1968.

The reason for the comic’s longevity – other than the fact that it offered simple, fun and thrilling action for younger readers – was simple.

In 1955 the fledgling CBS television network bought out Paul Terry, transferring his entire pantheon to the flickering silver screens of a nation about to go home entertainment crazy. Mighty Mouse and the animator’s other movie theatre stars (especially anarchic smart-mouthed double-act Heckle and Jeckle, the Talking Magpies) were soon early TV sensations, with kids subsequently pushing their comicbooks sales through the roof…

As you are probably aware, Mighty Mouse has come and gone from our TV screens a multitude of times since then…

This brace of cheap-&-cheerful monochrome samplers from 1989 gathers the tantalising contents of a few of those mid-1950s yarns, regrettably with nothing definite in the way of creative credits, but fascinating to cartoon as well as comics aficionados, because of the intriguing fact that many of Terry’s key animation studio artists moonlighted on illustrating the strips.

Thus with art (possibly) by Connie Rasinski, Art Bartsch, Carlo Vinci and the legendary Jim Tyler plus scripts (potentially) by Tom Morrison – storyman at Terrytoons and the on-screen speaking voice of Mighty Mouse – these slim tomes offer a stunning example of just how kids comics aren’t done anymore… but should be.

What you need to know: the extremely sensible and hardworking mice live harmoniously in prosperous Mousetown (or sometimes Terrytown), their happy lives only occasionally blighted by attacks from mean and nasty cats…

Video Classics Volume One opens with a handy, informative historical introduction feature ‘The World’s Mightiest Mouse’ by Jim Korkis, before the wondrous whimsy commences with ‘Tunnels of Terror’ (from Mighty Mouse Comics #36, December 1952) wherein worst of all feline felons The Claw has had his inventive associate Professor Ohm construct a deadly burrowing device dubbed the Land Submarine to raid the overly complacent rodent population.

Claw isn’t worried about Mighty Mouse either, as he’s laid a trap for the Mouse of Tomorrow, using the beautiful Mitzi Mouse as bait…

Unfortunately for the conniving cats, even undermining a mountain and dropping it on the big-eared champion isn’t enough to ensure victory…

From Mighty Mouse Comics #73, May 1957, ‘False Alarm’ reveals how a rare day off is spoiled when meowing miscreants broadcast fake distress calls to distract the fast-flying hero whilst they steal everything in Mousetown, after which The Claw returns in ‘Mail Robbery’ (Mighty Mouse Comics #31, March 1952), stealing the post, a host of jewels and poor old Mitzi – until you know who blazes in to Save the Day…

Of course not all cats are evil. When a wicked witch kidnaps a black kitten to use in her magic spells the Meteoric Muridae is more than willing to risk the sinister perils of ‘Goblin Grove’ (Mighty Mouse Comics #73, again) to rescue little Junior…

This initial vintage collection concludes in spectacular fashion with a tale from The Adventures of Mighty Mouse #13 (July 1957) as the Claw uses a shrinking ray to diminish our hero to bug size. Of course even as a ‘Pint-Sized Protector’ the Mouse of Tomorrow is utterly unbeatable…

Volume Two also opens with a cracking Korkis introduction as ‘What a Mouse!’ reveals more lost pop culture lore before an epic 5-chapter saga sees a hundred foot tall cat menace the mice in ‘A Visitor from Outer Space’ (Mighty Mouse Comics #36, December 1952). When the Rocketing Rodent intervenes he ends up marooned on the creature’s home planet Pluto but still manages to overcome impossible odds and return in time to Save the Day…

No, I’m not being redundant here: in the cartoons the characters always broke into song and Mighty Mouse always warbled his personal signature tune “Here I Come to Save the Day” whilst pummelling perfidious poltroons and menacing monsters…

‘Fake Cake’, also from Adventures of Mighty Mouse Comics #13 offers a one page example of why chaotic crows Heckle and Jeckle were so well regarded, after which ‘A Visit from Aunt Prudy’ (MMC #73, again) exposed feline felon Ripper‘s most cunning con, when Mighty Mouse’s long-lost and very prim relative turned up and enjoined him to remember that nice mice never indulged in fisticuffs…

Adventures of Mighty Mouse Comics #13 then proves the merit of those magpies of mayhem with a vacuum cleaner caper dubbed ‘In the Bag’ before a kitty coterie of kidnappers operate a foolproof ploy to capture innocent mice in ‘Magnet Dragnet’ from the same issue. Foolproof yes – but not Mighty Mouse proof…

The all-ages action then ends with the Mouse of Tomorrow lending the Elves of Terrytown a helping paw before being ‘Caught in a Web’ (Mighty Mouse Comics #31, March 1952) by the merciless misanthrope Sam Spider. Never fret though: nothing is mightier than furry justice…

Once upon a time, comics for young kids were a huge and important component of the publishing business. Even if that isn’t the case anymore, surely there are enough old gits like me – and parents prepared to offer their offspring something a little bit different from the brain-blitzing modern fare of computers and TV cartoons – to warrant a revival and new comprehensive compilation of such wonderful, charm-filled nostalgic delights?

Any takers?
© 1989 Malibu Graphics, Inc.

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Batman & the Monster Men / Batman & the Mad Monk

Batman & the Monster Men
By Matt Wagner, with Dave Stewart (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1091-5

Grendel and Mage creator Matt Wagner has had an eclectic but never disappointing relationship with the Dark Knight, and in 2006 undertook an ambitious year-long project to update two of the earliest adventures (from Detective Comics #31-32 and Batman #1 no less), implanting them within the fresh new milieu devised by Frank Miller in Batman: Year 1.

Originally released as a 12-issue limited series, Batman: Dark Moon Rising was divided into matching trade paperback collections with the first, Batman & the Monster Men, expanding on the Golden Age original by Bill Finger, Bob Kane & Jerry Robinson, introducing a welter of psychological and political tensions to boost the already deranged, doom-drenched atmosphere…

Law student Julie is daughter to one of the city’s most forthright and prestigious businessmen, but even Norman Madison is unable to maintain his pristine reputation and stay out of the greedy clutches of criminals like Sal Maroni and over-boss “The Roman” who truly owns Gotham.

The mob’s tendrils run deep into City Hall and the Police Department, and even maverick scientists like Professor Hugo Strange go to Sal when they need cash in a hurry with no questions asked: legitimate inquiries like “where are you getting your illegal medical supplies and chemicals?” and “why are you paying hush-money to attendants at Arkham Asylum?”…

But now a crazy vigilante dressed like a bat is hitting the gangsters hard and fast and often, stirring the entire dark metropolis into a cauldron of deadly nervous tension…

Julie doesn’t care: she’s far more interested in uncovering the intimate secrets of her new and so enigmatic boyfriend Bruce Wayne…

The brilliant Strange has abandoned his chosen field of psychology to improve mankind through genetic manipulation, but his experiments are so costly. Luckily for him, he has never been burdened by ethics or scruples, and Gotham’s streets and asylums are filled with derelicts nobody will ever miss…

He also regularly avails himself of Maroni’s high-end loan-sharking operation, but that is always a process fraught with peril and humiliation…

When a snooty debutante at a High Society shindig mocks the bald, short and myopic Strange – fruitlessly peddling his theories of genetic perfection to the idle rich in hopes of finding more enlightened sponsors than The Mob – she and her escort vanish later that night…

Police Captain Jim Gordon – rumoured to have a secret working relationship with the Bat vigilante – is assigned the case when her arm washes out of a sewer. It’s gnawed and clawed and covered in brutish animal hairs which prove to be human… sort of…

Strange’s frustrations mount when Maroni’s men pay a little social call to remind him his next repayment is due. He uses his latest setbacks, a trio of hulking hyper-thyroidal genetic failures with a taste for human flesh and hides immune to bullets, to avenge his honour and as a means of procuring the funds he’s lacking.

Following the thugs to a high stakes poker game, he and devoted lab assistant Sanjay simply let their manufactured brutes run amok and scoop up all the blood-soaked cash afterwards.

Maroni’s business is booming. Although deeply suspicious of the money Strange paid him back with, the loan-shark has no such problems with high and mighty Norman Madison, whose sudden business reversals have put him in the mobster’s pocket to the tune of 3 million untraceable, dirty dollars…

Elsewhere, Julie is becoming increasingly frustrated by Bruce Wayne’s inability to keep an appointment or even turn up for a date, and Jim Gordon wonders what to do with a car filled with bizarre, exotic bat-motif weaponry left behind after the Bat-Man’s latest explosive clash with criminals in the streets of Gotham…

The Dark Knight doesn’t care: he’s obsessed with this cannibal case which somehow links rich women with slaughtered underworld gamblers and the near-completion of a stupendous, purpose-built automobile that will be the acme of his arsenal against crime…

After Batman pays Maroni a midnight visit the loan-shark bolts for the countryside and The Roman’s private hideaway. Left in charge, his brutish lieutenant puts the screws to Norman Madison and triggers the start of a nervous breakdown in the ashamed, guilt-ridden business leader, even as Batman traces the monster-men to a hidden lab and is ambushed by Strange.

Drugged and thrown to the gargantuan monstrosities, the neophyte avenger faces his first battle with foes more and far less than human…

Battling with Herculean passion and demonic cunning, the Gotham Gangbuster barely escapes with his life and awakens in his own bed with Julie tending him. She clearly does not believe his hastily concocted explanations…

Hard on the heels of his ignominious defeat by the masked madman, Strange is visited by Maroni’s flunkies who wreck the lab but inspire an intriguing thought. The Batman was clearly a perfect genetic specimen, far better than the human detritus he has been working with. Moreover, in his escape the vigilante left plenty of blood and other genetic material for the experimenter to play with…

Gordon is under pressure too. New Police Commissioner Edward Grogan knows of his connection to the vigilante and is leaning on the only incorruptible cop on the force, but the Captain is not prepared to hand over the Batman – yet…

Things come to a head when Sal’s boys put the squeeze on Madison by threatening his daughter Julie whilst Strange, having modified a fourth macabre monster man with Batman’s DNA, sends them after Maroni, still sequestered at the Roman’s fortress-like estate…

By the time the vigilante arrives in his breathtaking new “Bat-mobile” the slaughter is in full swing with Maroni’s army of thugs smashed, scattered or eaten, and the terrified Norman moments from grisly death. However the bat-garbed creature of the night is even more formidable, trouncing the human thugs and bestial colossi with an astounding array of gadgets and devastating martial arts attacks.

With Maroni beaten and the hulking horrors put down, the Batman tells the shell-shocked businessman to go home, where all Madison can recall is that the grim, terrifying agent of justice knew his name…
© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Batman & the Mad Monk
By Matt Wagner with Dave Stewart (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1281-0

The concluding volume of Matt Wagner’s reinterpretation of two of Batman’s earliest and most iconic triumphs features a classic duel with the Dark Knight’s most obvious antithesis.

A flamboyant, supernatural vampire to combat the grim, steely rationalism of this hero was an obvious conceit when Gardner Fox conceived it in 1939 (Detective Comics #31 and #32 – frequently reprinted as in Batman Chronicles Volume 1) and here Wagner proves that it still has great merit and impressive cachet.

Following on from Batman and the Monster Men with the sub-plot of Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend Julie Madison and her tragically flawed and rapidly destabilising father, this subtle blending of archetypal gothic fantasy and modern Goth sensibility saw a mysterious cult leader moving into the upper and lower echelons of Gotham society, recruiting thugs, seducing the glitterati and killing at a whim.

After losing a tussle with a slinky cat-garbed jewel thief, Batman, still bleeding, thrashes a quartet of cops intent on crippling honest Police Captain Jim Gordon. Elsewhere, former business leader Norman Madison is becoming a paranoid recluse, obsessed with bats and expunging his sins…

The bat vigilante has stumbled upon another bizarre case to distract him from his meticulous campaign to dismantle the criminal empire of Carmine Falcone – “The Roman” who has ruled Gotham for decades.

A serial killer is at work, draining men and women of all their blood…

Unknown to the broken financier, in the aftermath of the monster men attack Batman ordered Sal Maroni to stay away from the Madisons: a fact he neglected to share with the victims. Now when the shattered, repentant businessman tries to pay off the loan-shark, he is forcibly ejected. Dirty money and unexpiated guilt shredding his soul, Madison is driven to even greater acts of desperation…

Batman meanwhile is covertly working with Gotham DA Harvey Dent to bring down Falcone, but soon distracted by another bloodless corpse. His subsequent savage investigations uncover a new phenomenon: a cult called The Brotherhood of the Eternal Night which numbers Gotham’s richest citizens, worst criminals and even street level gang-bangers amongst its scarlet-robed ranks…

Soon Julie too has fallen under its sway. Seeking help for her clearly crazed father, she had consulted the organisation’s founder Niccolai Tepes, who swore he could grant her father peace. By the time she sees boyfriend Bruce again Julie is oddly distant and has two neat puncture marks in her neck…

Maroni is also in deep trouble. When he refused to take Madison’s money, Norman tried to give it directly to Falcone. Three million dollars is nothing to The Roman, but he hates anything that makes ripples or causes undue attention in his town…

Still in the first year of a mission to end evil in his beleaguered city, the keen-but-inexperienced Batman is at last forced to ignore his instincts and prejudices and simply accept the impossible facts. Gotham is threatened by a horror out of fairytales and the Batman must adapt his methodology to purge the insidious fiends sucking Gotham dry in both figurative and a most literal manner…

This is a spectacular, moody yarn; a magnificently illustrated clash between darkness and even greater supernal blackness, blending Batman’s signature iconography with the venerated gothic mythology of vampires, paying proper respect to the triumphs of the past whilst reverently refreshing them for the modern reader: a classic Batman that everybody can enjoy and should.

Solid, stylish story-telling make this and its companion chronicle an irresistible treat for old-timers and new fans alike.
© 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Heroes For Hire: Control


By Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Brad Walker, Robert Atkins, Andrew Hennessy, Rebecca Buchman, Sandu Florea & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5581-2

After a TV reality show starring actual superheroes went hideously wrong and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of children in Stamford, Connecticut, popular opinion turned massively against masked crusaders. The US government mandated a scheme to licence, train and regulate all metahumans but the plan split the superhero community, and an indignant, terrified general populace quivered as a significant faction of their former defenders refused to surrender to the bureaucratic vicissitudes of The Super-Human Registration Act.

The Avengers and Fantastic Four fragmented and, as the conflict escalated, it became clear to all involved that the increasingly bitter fighting was for souls as much as lives. Both sides battled for love of Country and Constitution and both sides knew they were right.

At the heart of the savage clash of ideologies, bionic detective Mercedes “Misty” Knight and her ninja partner Colleen Wing expanded their private detective agency, assembling a squad of costumed warriors to do some real good during the worst of times…

Knight and Wing – the Daughters of the Dragon – were former associates of Power Man & Iron Fist, and borrowed their old friends’ concept of Heroes for Hire to make a living apprehending metas who refused to comply with the SHRA.

However the new squad – ex-thief Black Cat, Kung Fu Master Shang-Chi, insect avatar Humbug, sadistic martial arts polymath Tarantula and super-mercenary Paladin – soon found themselves at odds with each other and the tricky path they were following as their promised role (only apprehending villains) began to suffer increasing “mission creep”…

Moreover as they tracked their sanctioned targets, they lost a comrade – Atlantean powerhouse Orka -, credibility and the trust of all sides in the Civil War…

Dissent, betrayal and death dogged the ill-fated team and during the alien invasion dubbed World War Hulk, the horrific fates of Tarantula and Humbug acrimoniously split life-long friends Misty and Colleen, seemingly forever…

This collection, scripted by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, gathers issues #1-5 of a new Heroes for Hire iteration from 2011 and also includes background material from X-Men: Curse of the Mutants Spotlight, taking the concept into intriguing new territory…

It all begins with ‘Are You For Hire?’ illustrated by Brad Walker & Andrew Hennessy, as, in the aftermath of the devastating crime-war Shadowland, Misty launches a mutual assistance bureau where individual champions can bank and trade favours, earn intelligence and yes, even sometimes get paid, by teaming up to deal with specific problems of a less than universe shaking nature…

Notionally available is every hero Misty knows and, by staying back and “maximising the potential of her address book”, she can do the most good as “Control”, directing whoever is best suited and ready for action on a case-by-case basis from her ultra-secret hidden location…

The first mission is to stop a truck full of Atlantean super-narcotics from reaching the city and track down the sadistically heartless entrepreneur behind the drug: a job demanding finesse and blockbusting firepower to equal degree.

Luckily Misty can call on The Falcon, Black Widow, Moon Knight and Elektra to see justice is done…

With the situation resolved, the temporary agents return to their lives utterly unaware – as is Misty herself – that Control is a helpless mind-slave of the insidious Puppet Master… The next objective is far less straightforward: Silver Sable, Paladin, Satana and the infernal Ghost Rider are deployed to take a shipment of unstoppable demonic guns and ammo off the streets, but never expected to clash with malignant mystic Baron Brimstone or be enthralled themselves by the infernal ‘Damnunition’…

However, amidst all the supernatural Shock and Awe, the ultra efficient, heartless mercenary Paladin begins to suspect something is not quite right with Misty…

Those doubts are compounded in ‘Trace Elements’ as Moon Knight is dispatched to liberate a shipment of trafficked girls with no history and stumbles onto a vice-lord abducting humans – and even dinosaurs – from the UN Antarctic preserve the Savage Land…

Paladin’s off-the-books investigations have meanwhile brought him into painful contact with Misty’s old boyfriend Iron Fist, and after the traditional Marvel male-bonding mayhem they call a truce and set out to find Control and learn what’s really going on…

Robert Adkins, Rebecca Buchman & Sandu Florea assume the artistic reins for ‘No Strings’ as a quick glimpse at Misty’s early life leads to the revelation that even the mesmerising Puppet Master has a secret boss. Control’s controllers, meanwhile, are increasingly battling her indomitable will to be free and resort to breaking her growing resistance by inflicting on Misty a terrifying hallucination of combat against all her masked friends and comrades.

The tactic backfires however and arouses the somnolent detective from her compliant, semi-comatose state. Instantly aware, she attacks the diminutive manipulator only to discover that Puppet Master’s other mind-slave is the terrifying Frank Castle…

The rocket-paced action-fest concludes with ‘Slay Misty for Me’ as the villain’s master-plan is revealed and a scheme to commandeer the consciousnesses of the entire metahuman community is exposed. With the enslaved Punisher murderously stalking Misty, Paladin and Iron Fist race to her rescue, but unfortunately standing in their way is every brain-locked hero she has ever employed since becoming Control…

With covers by Doug Braithwaite, Sonia Oback & Rob Schwager plus 7 variants by Walker, Harvey Talibao, Morry Hollowell & Greg Horn, this slim, seductive and extremely engaging suspense thriller also includes such extras as historical background in ‘Heroes For Hire Saga’ and ‘Reading Chronology’ and ends with a fact-file section reviewing 17 potential and prospective operatives in ‘Who Are the new Heroes For Hire?’

Superbly gritty, witty, funny, and impossibly appetising, Control is a comicbook confection will surely delight all older fans of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction.

© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Uninvited Guests


By Andi Watson, Dan Brereton, Hector Gomez & Sandu Florea (Dark Horse/Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-140-3

Having conquered television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer began a similar campaign with her monthly comicbook, launched in 1998 and offering smart, sassy tales which perfectly complimented the funny, action-packed and Tres Hip onscreen entertainment.

Following an original graphic novel (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Dust Waltz) the character quickly became a major draw for publisher Dark Horse – whose line of licensed comicbook successes included Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Aliens and Predator – and her solo exploits were substantially supplemented by many short stories in the company’s showcase anthology Dark Horse Presents and other venues.

This particular UK Titan Books edition – with depiction and delineation from Hector Gomez & Sandu Florea – features more stories set during TV Season 2 and collects issues #4-7 of the Dark Horse comicbook, scripted by Andi Watson who also provides an endearing illustrated Introduction before opening with a minor seasonal sensation…

‘White Christmas’ finds the Slayer strapped for cash and forced to work at the local Mall to make money for gifts and a new party dress.

However, as Sunnydale is situated on The Hellmouth and Buffy is a certified weirdness magnet, her shifts at The Popsicle Parlor inevitably lead to demon-denting overtime when she discovers her boss Mr. Richter spending all his idle moments in the Big Freezer summoning infuriating ice imps and giant killer Frost Elementals…

Having survived that cataclysmic Yule duel relatively unscathed, the Scooby Gang – Willow, Cordelia, Oz, Xander and Buffy – look forward to a ‘Happy New Year’ party, until dusty, crusty Lore Librarian (and Buffy’s supernature tutor) Giles discovers a gigantic hell-hound raiding his book stacks and the crazy kids are set hot on its heels.

The trail leads to doomed, damned lovers, a guiltily romantic triangle and an ancient curse from witch-haunted Salem before the savage crescendo almost ends Willow’s life…

Xander found himself obsessed with pretty transfer student Cynthia in ‘New Kid on the Block Part 1’ (co-written with Dan Brereton), with his pathetic, fawning, drooling attentions cruelly mocked by his best friends – and rightly so….

His infantile ardour is hardly halted when the girls decide to have a slumber party even though he’s not invited. Determined not to miss out (and certainly not creepy at all), the hapless idiot decides to sneak into the night of nail varnish, romcoms and pink pyjamas but is horrified to discover that he’s not the only intruder…

Buffy, exhausted from staking a new band of bloodsuckers plaguing the town, is almost too late to save the day in ‘New Kid on the Block Part 2’, but after driving off the monster party-crashers, confers with noble vampire boyfriend Angel and realises that even though able to move around in daylight, Cyn might not be all she seems…

With covers by Gomez, Randy Green, Rick Ketchum, Arthur Adams and Joyce Chin, this is a stunning, enchanting mix of post-ironic Archie Comics hijinks and madcap magical martial arts mysteries, this batch of early Buffy yarns are pure, light-hearted rollercoaster thrills, spills and chills no comics fan could resist

Uninvited Guests is an easily accessible romp even if you’re not familiar with the vast backstory: a creepy chronicle of short stirring sagas as easily enjoyed by the most callow neophyte as by any dedicated devotee.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ™ & © 1999 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.