Category: Ant-Man

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Marvels (25th Anniversary Edition)


By Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross, with Steve Darnall, Mark Braun, Richard Starkings, John Roshell & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4286-7 (TPB) 978-0-7851-1388-1(HC/Digital edition)

Every so often in mainstream comics something comes along that irrevocably alters the landscape of our art-form, if not the business itself. After each such event the medium is never quite the same again. One such work was 4-issue Prestige Format Limited Series Marvels by jobbing scripter Kurt Busiek and just-breaking illustrator Alex Ross. This year that landmark game-changing graphic collection turns 30…

I’m usually quite reticent in suggesting people read stuff I know damn well they’ve almost certainly already seen, but apparently every day is somebody’s first, and as years pile up and more stuff gets made, even certified bona fide “unmissables” get shuffled into touch and forgotten…

This tale is all about history and human perspective, following the working life of photo-journalist Phil Sheldon, whose career paralleled the double dawning of the heroic era; when science, magic, courage and overwhelming super-nature give birth to an Age of Marvels…

The saga opens with Alex Ross’ brief, preliminary retelling of the origin of the Golden Age Human Torch as first seen in Marvels #0 (co-written by Steve Darnall and produced in classicist pic-&-text block format) before the story proper opens in ‘A Time of Marvels’. In 1939 a gaggle of ambitious young newspapermen discuss the “War in Europe”. Brash up-and-comer J. Jonah Jameson is trying to dissuade his shutterbug pal Phil from heading overseas, claiming there’s plenty of news to snap in New York…

Unconvinced, Sheldon heads to his next assignment: a press conference with scientific crackpot Professor Phineas T. Horton. The photographer’s head is filled with thoughts of journalistic fame and glory on distant battlefields and he almost misses the moment Horton unveils his artificial man: a creature that bursts into flame like a Human Torch…

From that moment on Sheldon’s life is transformed forever. His love-hate fascination with the fantastic miracles which rapidly, unceasingly follow in the inflammatory inhumanoid’s fiery wake is used to trace the rise of superhumanity and monstrous menace which comprises the entire canon of what we know as the Marvel Universe….

Soon the android is accepted as a true hero, frequently battling aquatic invader Sub-Mariner like elemental gods in the skies above the city whilst seemingly-human vigilante supermen like The Angel constantly ignore the law and daily diminish Phil’s confidence and self-worth. It’s as if by their well-meaning actions these creatures are showing that mere men are obsolete and insignificant…

Feelings of ineffectuality and inadequacy having crushed the camera jockey’s spirit, Phil turns down a War Correspondent assignment and descends into a funk. He even splits up with fiancée Doris Jaquet. After all, what kind of man brings children into a world with such inhuman horrors in it? Nevertheless, Sheldon cannot stop following the exploits of the singular human phenomena he’s collectively dubbed “Marvels”…

Everything changes with the arrival of patriotic icon Captain America. With the Land of Liberty in World War II at long last, many once-terrifying titans have become the nation’s allies and secret weapons, turning their awesome power against the Axis foe and winning the fickle approval of a grateful public. However, some were always less dutiful than others. When tempestuous Sub-Mariner again battles the Torch, Prince Namor of Atlantis petulantly unleashes a tidal wave against Manhattan. Phil is critically injured snapping the event…

Even after losing an eye, Phil’s newfound belief in Marvels never wavers and he rededicates himself to his job and Doris; going to Europe where his pictures of America’s superhuman Invaders crushing the Nazi threat become part of the fabric of history…

The second chapter jumps to the 1960s where Sheldon, wife Doris and daughters Jenny and Beth are – like most New Yorkers – at the epicentre of another outbreak of metahumanity… a second Age of Marvels…

Two new bands of costumed champions operate openly: A Fantastic Four-some comprising famous scientist Reed Richards and test pilot Ben Grimm plus Sue and Johnny Storm. Another anonymous team who hide their identities call themselves The Avengers. There are also numerous independent mystery men streaking across the skies and hogging headlines, which Jonah Jameson – now owner/publisher of the newspaper he once wrote for – is none too happy about. After all, he has never trusted masks and is violently opposed to this new crop of masked mystery-men. Phil is still an in-demand freelancer, but has a novel idea, signing a deal for a book of his photos just as the first flush of popular fancy wanes and increasing anxiety about humanoid mutants begins to choke and terrify the man in the street…

When the mysterious X-Men are spotted, Sheldon is caught up in a spontaneous anti-mutant race riot: appalled to find himself throwing bricks with the rest of a deranged mob. He’s even close enough to hear their leader dismissively claim “They’re not worth it”…

Shocked and dazed, Sheldon goes home to his nice, normal family, but the incident won’t leave him, even as he throws himself into work and his book. He worries that his daughters seem to idolise Marvels. “Normal” people seem bizarrely conflicted, dazzled and besotted by the celebrity status of the likes of Reed Richards and Sue Storm as they prepare for their upcoming wedding, yet prowl the streets in vigilante packs lest some ghastly “Homo Superior” abomination show its disgusting face…

Events come to a head when Phil finds his own children harbouring a mutant in the cellar. During WWII, Phil photographed the liberation of Auschwitz, and looking into the huge deformed orbs of “Maggie” he sees what he saw in the faces of those pitiful survivors. His innate humanity wins out and Phil lets her stay, but can’t help dreading what friends and neighbours might do if they find such a creature mere yards from their own precious families…

Hysteria keeps growing and the showbiz glitz of the Richards/Storm wedding is almost immediately overshadowed by the catastrophic launch of anthropologist Bolivar Trask’s Sentinels. At first the mutant-hunting robots behave like humanity’s boon but when they override their programming and attempt to take over Earth, it is despised and dreaded mutants who save mankind.

Naturally, the man in the street knows nothing of this and all Phil sees is more panicked mobs rioting and destroying their own homes. In fear for his family, he rushes back to Doris and the girls, only to find Maggie has vanished: the unlovely little child had realised how much her presence had endangered her benefactors. They never see her again…

The third chapter focuses on the global trauma of ‘Judgement Day’ as the shine truly starts coming off the apple. Even though crises come thick and fast and are as quickly dealt with, vapid, venal humanity becomes jaded with the ever-expanding metahuman community and once-revered heroes are plagued by scandal after scandal. Exhausted, disappointed and dejected, Phil shelves his book project, but fate takes a hand when the skies catch fire and an incredible shiny alien on a skyborne surfboard announces the end of life on Earth…

Planet-devouring Galactus seems unstoppable and the valiant, rapidly-responding Fantastic Four are humiliatingly defeated. Phil, along with the rest of Earth, embraces the end and wearily walks home to be with his loved ones, repeatedly encountering humanity at its best and nauseating, petty, defeated worst. However, with the last-minute assistance of the Silver Surfer – who betrays his puissant master and suffers an horrific fate – Richards saves the world, but within days is accused of faking the entire episode. Disgusted with his fellow men, Sheldon explodes in moral revulsion…

Phil’s photobook is finally released in concluding instalment ‘The Day She Died’. Now an avowed and passionate proponent of masked heroes, humanity’s hair-trigger ambivalence and institutionalised rushes to judgement constantly aggravate Phil even as he meets the public and signs countless copies of “Marvels”.

The average American’s ungrateful, ungracious attitudes rankle particularly since the mighty Avengers are currently lost in another galaxy defending Earth from collateral destruction in a war between rival galactic empires – the Kree and the Skrulls – but the most constant bugbear is old associate Jameson’s obsessive pillorying of Spider-Man. Phil particularly despises a grovelling, ethically-deprived young freelance photographer named Peter Parker who constantly curries favour with the Daily Bugle’s boss by selling pictures deliberately making the wallcrawler look bad…

Phil’s book brings a measure of success, and when the aging photographer hires young Marcia Hardesty as a PA/assistant whilst he works on a follow-up, he finds a passionate kindred spirit. Still, everywhere Sheldon looks costumed champions are being harried, harassed and hunted by hypocritical citizens and corrupt demagogues, although even he has to admit some of the newer heroes are hard to like…

Ex-Russian spy Black Widow is being tried for murder, protesting students are wounded by a Stark Industries super-armoured thug and in Times Square a guy with a shady past is touting himself as a Hero for Hire. When respected Police Captain George Stacy is killed during a battle between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus, Jameson is frantic to pin the death on the webspinner, but hero-worshipping Phil digs deeper. Interviewing many witnesses – including the murderously malign, multi-limed loon himself – Phil consequently strikes up a friendship with Stacy’s daughter Gwen, a truly sublime young lady who is inexplicably dating that unscrupulous weasel Parker…

One evening, hoping for another innocuous chat with the vivacious lass, Phil sees her abduction by the Green Goblin and, desperately giving chase, watches as his vaunted hero Spider-Man utterly fails to save her from death. Her murder doesn’t even rate a headline; that’s saved for industrialist Norman Osborn who is found mysteriously slain that same night…

Gutted, worn out and somehow betrayed, Sheldon chucks it all in, but seeing Marcia still has the fire in her belly and wonder in her eyes, leaves her his camera and his mission…

Although this titanic tale traces the arc of Marvel continuity, the sensitive and evocative journey of Phil Sheldon is crafted in such a way that no knowledge of the mythology is necessary to follow the plot; and would indeed be a hindrance to sharing the feelings of an ordinary man in extraordinary times.

One of Marvel’s – and indeed the genre’s – greatest tales (but you probably already know that and if you don’t what are you waiting for?), I count at least four separate versions available currently and suggest if you have any money left you opt for the 25th Anniversary edition that comes heavily annotated with numerous articles and extras. These include aforementioned prequel ‘Marvels Book Zero’, and the ‘Marvels Epilogue’ short story. The bonus section comprises a 39-page, panel-by-panel comparison of original 1960s Marvel material with the reinterpretations of #0-4 compiled by Jess Harrold: followed by ‘Marvels: The Proposals’ as Ross & Busiek pitched their big idea: four shots to get it just right, aided by an abundance of glorious ‘character studies’ incorporating a vast cast, and supplemented by text articles on the finished product from November 1993’s Marvel Age #130.

Busiek’s full scripts for #1-4 and a wealth of ‘layouts, pencils & Original Art’ (11 pages) follow, before diving deeper in with a 6-page peek ‘Inside Alex Ross’ Marvels Epilogue Sketchbook’. More commentary follows with recovered Introductions, Busiek’s in-story prose pieces ‘Marvels: The Articles’; 8 pages of Ross’ contribution via ‘Marvels: The Artistic Process’, and Harrold’s popular press features courtesy of ‘The Story of Marvels’, ‘Modern-Day Marvels’, ‘Understanding Marvels by Scott McCloud’, ‘McLaurin’s Mark on Marvels’.

Next comes a ‘Mahvels Parody’ by Darnall, Busiek, Ross & artist Mark Braun, accompanied by ‘Posters, Art & Homage Covers’, Ross’ ‘Marvels Collected-Edition Cover Gallery’, and material seen in previous collections, including an ‘Annotated Cover Gallery’; a selection of ‘Marvels 25th Anniversary Variants’, ‘Marvels 25th Anniversary Tributes Variants’ and ‘Marvels Epilogue Variants’: with 5- full page contributions from Paolo Rivera, Michael Cho, Gabriele Dell’Otto, Stephanie Hans, Daniel Acuña, Mark Brooks, David Mack, Julian Totino Tedesco, Mico Suayan & Brian Reber, Inhyuk Lee, Carlos Pacheco, Leinil Francis Yu & Sunny Cho, Adi Granov, Alan Davis, Mark farmer & Matt Hollingsworth, Nick Bradshaw, Gerlad Parel, Greg Smallwood, Marcos Martin, Tomm Coker, Yasmine Putri, Clayton Crain, Phil Noto, Simone Bianchi, Dave Johnson, Ron Lim & Dean White, Remsy Atassi, Dave Cockrum & Edgar Delgado, Fred Hembeck & Felipe Sobreiro, Skottie Young and more.

The epic history lesson ends with a list of ‘Marvels Sources’, citing where each re-envisioned scene first appeared in comics continuity before closing with Stan Lee’s Marvels TPB (1994) Introduction, full Acknowledgements and a final Afterword from Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross.

A truly groundbreaking achievement, Marvels – in whatever form you see it – is a comics tale you must not miss.
© 2020 MARVEL.

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Avengers versus X-Men Compendium


By Jason Aaron, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman, John Romita Jr., Olivier Coipel, Adam Kubert, Frank Cho & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-518-5 (B/Digital edition)

Despite all of us being sick as dogs, can we let this anniversary year end without revisiting Marvel’s one big idea in perfect execution? Enjoy this prime example of what made Marvel great – heroes pummelling other heroes…

The mainstream comics industry is now irretrievably wedded to blockbuster continuity-sharing mega-crossover events: rashly doling them out like epi-pens to Snickers addicts with peanut allergies, but at least these days, however, if we have to endure a constant cosmic Sturm and extra-dimensional Drang, the publishers take great pains to ensure that the resulting comics chaos is suitably engrossing and always superbly illustrated…

Marvel’s big thing was always extended clashes between mega-franchises such as The Avengers and X-Men, and this one began in Avengers: X Sanction when time-lost mutant Cable attempted to pre-emptively murder a select roster of the World’s Greatest Heroes to prevent an even greater cosmic tragedy.

Hope Spalding-Summers was the first mutant born on Earth after the temporarily insane Avenger Scarlet Witch used her reality-warping powers to eradicate almost all mutants in existence. Considered a mutant messiah, Hope was raised in the future before inevitably finding her way back to the present where she was adopted by X-Men supremo Scott Summers AKA Cyclops. Innumerable signs and portents had indicated that Hope was a reincarnated receptacle for the devastating cosmic entity dubbed The Phoenix…

This mammoth collection gathers the core 12-issue fortnightly miniseries (April – October 2012) which saw humanity and Homo Superior go to war to possess this celestial chosen one, and also includes prequel Avengers vs. X-Men #0 which laid the plot groundwork for the whole blockbusting Brouhaha.

Necessarily preceded by a double-page scorecard of the 78(!) major players, the story begins with a pair of Prologues (by Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Aaron & Frank Cho) as now-sane and desperately repentant Scarlet Witch Wanda Maximoff tries to make amends and restore her links with the Avengers she betrayed and attacked. However, even after defeating an attack by manic mutate MODOK, and a personal invitation from Ms. Marvel to come back, the penitent mutant is sent packing by her ex-husband The Vision and other male heroes she manipulated.

Meanwhile in Utopia – the West Coast island fortress housing the last 200 mutants on Earth – an increasingly driven Cyclops is administering brutally tough love to adopted daughter Hope. She is determined to defy her apparently inescapable destiny as eventual host for the omnipotent Phoenix force on some far future day by regularly moonlighting as a superhero. Sadly, she’s well out of her depth when she tackles the sinister Serpent Society and daddy humiliatingly comes to her rescue.

… And in the depths of space a ghastly firebird of life and death comes ever closer to Earth…

In the first chapter (by Bendis, John Romita Jr. & Scott Hanna) the catastrophically powerful force of destruction and rebirth nears our world and the perfect mortal host it hungers for and needs to guide it, frantically preceded by desperate harbinger of doom Nova, who almost dies delivering a warning of its proximity and intent. Soon, The Avengers and the US government are laying plans, whilst in Utopia Scott Summers pushes Hope harder than ever. If The Phoenix cannot be avoided, perhaps he can make his daughter strong enough to resist being overwhelmed by its promise of infinite power…

At The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, ex X-Man and current Avenger Wolverine is approached by Captain America and regretfully leaves his position as teacher to once again battle a force that cannot be imagined…

With even his fellow mutants questioning his tactics and brutal pushing of Hope, Cyclops meets Captain America for a parley. On behalf of the world, the Sentinel of Liberty wants to take Hope into protective custody but the mutants’ leader – distrustful of human bigotry and past duplicity – reacts violently to the far-from-diplomatic overtures…

Jason Aaron scripts the second instalment as frayed tempers lead to all-out battle on the shores of Utopia, with past personal grudges fuelling a brutal conflict. As the metahuman war rages, Wolverine and Spider-Man surreptitiously go after hidden Hope, but – even far off in deep space – The Phoenix force has infected her and she blasts them…

Meanwhile in the extra-solar void Thor, Vision, War Machine and a select team of Secret Avengers confront the mindlessly onrushing energy construct…

Scripted by Ed Brubaker, Chapter 3 begins with the recovering Wolverine and Wallcrawler considering how to catch missing hyper-powerful Hope with both Avengers and recently departed X-Men chasing her. When the feral mutant clashes over tactics with Captain America, the resulting fight further divides Avenger forces. In episode 4 (authored by Jonathan Hickman) as the easily defeated space defenders limp back to Earth, Hope and Wolverine meet at the bottom of the world and devise their own plans for her future…

All over Earth heroes are hunting the reluctant chosen one, and clashes between mutants and superhumans are steadily intensifying in ferocity, but the fugitive pair evade all pursuit by stealing a rocket and heading to the ancient “Blue Area of the Moon” where revered mutant Jean Grey first died to save the universe from The Phoenix.

When the former Marvel Girl was originally possessed by the fiery force she became a hero of infinite puissance and a cataclysmic champion of Life, before the power corrupted her and she devolved into Dark Phoenix: a rapacious wanton god of planet-killing appetites…

In a valiant act of contrition, Jean permitted the X-Men to kill her before her rapacious need completely consumed her in the oxygen-rich ancient city on the lunar surface (of course that’s just the tip of an outrageously long and overly-complicated iceberg not germane or necessary to us here: just search-engine the tale afterwards, OK?… or just buy one of many collections of The Dark Pheonix Saga).

When Hope finally reaches the spot of her predecessor’s sacrifice she finds that she’s been betrayed and that the Avengers are waiting – and so are mutants Cyclops, Emma Frost, Colossus, Magik and Namor the Sub-Mariner. With battle set to begin again, the battered body of Thor crashes into the lunar dust and the sky is lit by the blazing arrival of the Phoenix avatar…

Matt Fraction scripts the 5th chapter as the appalling firebird attempts to possess Hope, who realises she has completely overestimated her ability to handle the ultimate force, even as Avengers and X-Men again come to blistering blows.

Some distance away super-scientists Tony Stark and Henry Pym deploy a last-ditch anti-Phoenix invention but it doesn’t work as planned, and when the furious light finally dies down, infernal energy has possessed not Hope but the five elder mutants who turn their blazing eyes towards Earth and begin to plan how best to remake it…

Olivier Coipel & Mark Morales begin a stint as illustrators with the 6th – Hickman scripted – instalment as, 10 days after, old comrades Magneto and Charles Xavier meet to discuss the paradise Earth has become – especially for mutants. Violence, disease, hunger and want are gone but Cyclops, Emma, Sub-Mariner, Magic and Colossus are distant, aloof saviours at best and the power they share incessantly demands to be used more and more and more…

Myriad dimensions away in the mystical city of K’un Lun, kung fu overlord Lei Kung is warned an ancient disaster is repeating itself on Earth and dispatches the city’s greatest hero Iron Fist to avert overwhelming disaster, even as fearful humanity is advised their old bad ways will no longer be allowed to despoil the world. Naturally the decree of a draconian “Pax Utopia” does not sit well with humanity, and soon the Avengers are again at war with the last few hundreds of mutantkind. This time, however, the advantage is overwhelmingly with the underdogs and their five godlike leaders…

A desperate raid to snatch Hope from Utopia goes catastrophically wrong until the long-reviled Scarlet Witch intervenes and rescues the Avengers and Hope. Astounded to realise Wanda’s probability-altering gifts can harm them, the “Phoenix Five” declare all-out, total war on the human heroes…

In the 7th, Fraction-scripted, chapter Avengers are hunted all over the planet and the individual personalities of the possessed X-Men start clashing with each other. As Iron Fist, Lei Kung and Stark seek a marriage of spiritual and technological disciplines, Sub-Mariner defies the Phoenix consensus to attack the African nation of Wakanda…

Adam Kubert & John Dell handle the art from issue #8 with Bendis’ script revealing how an army of Avengers and the power of Wanda and Xavier turn the tide of battle… but not before a nation dies. Moreover, with Namor beaten, his portion of Phoenix-power passes on to the remaining four, inspiring greedy notions of sole control amongst the possessed…

In #9 (by Aaron, Kubert & Dell) as the hunt for heroes continues on Earth, in K’un Lun Hope is being trained in martial arts discipline by the city’s immortal master, and schooled in sheer guts and humanity by Spider-Man. When Thor is captured, the Avengers stage an all-out assault and by a miracle defeat both Magik and Colossus. Tragically, that only makes Scott Summers stronger still and he comes looking for his wayward daughter…

Brubaker writes the 10th chapter as Cyclops invades K’un Lun with horrific consequences whilst on Earth Emma Frost succumbs to the worst aspects of her nature: enslaving friends and foes with her half of the infinite Phoenix force. Simultaneously, Captain America and Xavier lay plans for one last “Hail Mary” assault…

And in the mystic city, Hope finally comes into her power – blasting Cyclops out of that other reality and back to the moon where the tragedy began…

Bendis, Coipel & Morales craft the penultimate instalment as Phoenix’s rapacious destructive hunger causes Cyclops to battle Frost, even as the unifying figure of Xavier unites X-Men and Avengers against the true threat, as with issue #12 (Aaron, Kubert & Dell) Cyclops finally descends into the same hell as his beloved, long-lost Jean by becoming a seemingly unstoppable, insatiable Dark Phoenix with only the assembled heroes and the poor, resigned Hope prepared to stop him from consuming the Earth…

The series generated a host of variant covers (I lost count at 87) by Cho, Jason Keith, Jim Cheung, Laura Martin, Stephanie Hans, Romita Jr., Ryan Stegman, Carlo Barberi, Olivier Coipel, Morales, Skott Young, Arthur Adams, Nick Bradshaw, Carlo Pagulayan, Sara Pichelli, J. Scott Campbell, Jerome Opeña, Mark Bagley, Dale Keown, Esad Ribic, Adam Kubert, Alan Davis, Humberto Ramos, Leinil Francis Yu, Adi Granov and Billy Tan which will undoubtedly delight and astound the artistically adroit amongst you…

Fast, furious and utterly absorbing – if short on plot – this ideal summer blockbuster (don’t you wish movie lawyers moved as fast as comics folk and this was screen ready by now?) remains an extreme Fights ‘n’ Tights funnybook extravaganza that delivers a mighty punch without any real necessity to study beforehand: a comics-continuity both veterans and film-fed fanboys alike can relish.
© 2012 Marvel.

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Fantastic Four Omnibus volume 1


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby with Chrisopher Rule, Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnot, George Roussos, Chic Stone, Sam Rosen, Art Simek & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-8566-6 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Reliving How it All Began… 10/10

I’ve gone on record as saying that you actually can have too much of a good thing, by which I mean this collection of utter marvels is really, really heavy (and pricey) if you get the paper version. However, if you opt for electric formats, only the second quibble counts and the stories contained herein truly need to be in every home and library, so…

I’m partial to a bit of controversy so I’m going start off by saying that Fantastic Four #1 is the third most important Silver Age comic book ever, behind Showcase #4 – which introduced The Flash – and The Brave and the Bold #28, which brought superhero teams back via the creation of The Justice League of America. Feel free to disagree…

After a troubled period at DC Comics (National Periodicals as it then was) and a creatively productive but disheartening time on the poisoned chalice of the Sky Masters newspaper strip (see Complete Sky Masters of the Space Force), Jack Kirby settled into his job at the small outfit that used to be the publishing powerhouse Timely/Atlas. He churned out mystery, monster, romance and western material in a market he suspected to be ultimately doomed, but as always he did the best job possible and that genre fare is now considered some of the best of its kind ever seen.

But his fertile imagination couldn’t be suppressed for long and when the JLA caught readers’ attention it gave him and writer/editor Stan Lee an opportunity to change the industry forever.

According to popular myth, a golfing afternoon led to publisher Martin Goodman ordering nephew Stan to do a series about a group of super-characters like the JLA. The resulting team quickly took the fans by storm. It wasn’t the powers: they’d all been seen since the beginning of the medium. It wasn’t the costumes: they didn’t have any until the third issue.

It was Kirby’s compelling art and the fact that these characters weren’t anodyne cardboard cut-outs. In a real and recognizable location – New York City – imperfect, raw-nerved, touchy people banded together out of tragedy, disaster and necessity to face the incredible. In many ways, The Challengers of the Unknown (Kirby’s prototype partners in peril for National /DC) laid all the groundwork for the wonders to come, but staid, nigh-hidebound editorial strictures there would never have allowed the undiluted energy of the concept to run all-but-unregulated.

This full-colour compendium collects Fantastic Four #1-30 plus the first giant-sized Annual issues of progressive landmarks (spanning cover-dates November 1961 to September 1964) and tellingly reveals how Stan & Jack cannily built on that early energy to consolidate the FF as the leading title and most innovative series of the era.

Following a typically effusive “found footage” Foreword from Stan – with two more to follow as the many pages turn – we start with Fantastic Four #1 (tentatively bi-monthly by Lee, Kirby, George Klein & Christopher Rule) which is crude, rough, passionate and uncontrolled excitement. Thrill-hungry kids pounced on it.

‘The Fantastic Four’ saw maverick scientist Reed Richards summon his fiancée Sue Storm, their close friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother before heading off on their first mission. They are all survivors of a private space-shot that went horribly wrong when Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding and mutated them all.

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible, Johnny Storm could turn into living flame and tragic Ben turned into a shambling, rocky freak. In ‘The Fantastic Four meet the Mole Man’ they quickly foil a plan by another outcast who controls monsters and slave humanoids from far beneath the Earth. This summation of the admittedly mediocre plot cannot do justice to the engrossing wonder of that breakthrough issue – we really have no awareness today of how different in tone, how shocking it all was.

“Different” doesn’t mean “better” even here, but the FF was like no other comic on the market at the time and buyers responded to it hungrily. The brash experiment continued with another old plot in #2. ‘The Skrulls from Outer Space’ were shape-changing aliens who framed the FF in the eyes of shocked humanity before the genius of Mister Fantastic bluffed them into abandoning their plans for conquering Earth. The issue concluded with a monstrous pin-up of the Thing, proudly touted as “the first of a series…”

Sure enough, there was a pin-up of the Human Torch in #3, which headlined ‘the Menace of the Miracle Man’ (inked by Sol Brodsky), whose omnipotent powers had a simple secret, but is more notable for the first appearance of their uniforms, and a shocking line-up change, leading directly into the next issue (continued stories were an innovation in themselves) which revived a golden-age great.

‘The Coming of the Sub-Mariner’ reintroduced an all-powerful amphibian Prince of Atlantis and star of Timely’s Golden Age but one who had been lost for years. A victim of amnesia, the relic recovered his memory thanks to some rather brusque treatment by the delinquent Human Torch. Namor then returned to his sub-sea home only to find it destroyed by atomic testing. A monarch without subjects, he swore vengeance on humanity and attacked New York City with a gigantic monster. This saga is when the series truly kicked into high-gear with Mister Fantastic as the pin-up star.

Until now the creative team – who had both been in the business since it began – had been hedging their bets. Despite the innovations of a contemporary superhero experiment, their antagonists had relied heavily on the trappings of popular trends in other media – and as reflected in their other titles. Aliens and especially monsters played a major part in earlier tales but Fantastic Four #5 took a full-bite out of the Fights ‘n’ Tights apple by introducing the first full-blown super-villain to the budding Marvel Universe.

No, I haven’t forgotten Mole Man: but that tragic little gargoyle, for all his plans of world conquest, wouldn’t truly acquire the persona of a costumed foe until his more refined second appearance in #22.

‘Prisoners of Doctor Doom’ (July 1962, and inked by subtly sleek Joe Sinnott) has it all. An attack by a mysterious enemy from Reed’s past; magic and super-science, lost treasure, time-travel, even pirates. Ha-Haar, me ’earties!

Sheer magic! And the creators knew they were on to a winner since the deadly Doctor was back in the very next issue, teamed with a reluctant Sub-Mariner to attack our heroes as ‘The Deadly Duo!’ – and inked by new regular embellisher Dick Ayers.

Alien kidnappers were behind another FF frame-up resulting in the team briefly being ‘Prisoners of Kurrgo, Master of Planet X’: a dark and grandiose off-world thriller in #7 (the first monthly issue), whilst a new returning villain and the introduction of a love-interest for monstrous Ben Grimm were the breakthrough high-points in #8’s ‘Prisoners of the Puppet Master!’ The saga was topped off with a Fantastic Four Feature Page explaining how the Torch’s powers work. The next issue offered another detailing with endearing mock-science ‘How the Human Torch Flies!’

That issue, #9, trumpeted ‘The End of the Fantastic Four’ as Sub-Mariner returned to exploit another brilliant innovation in comic storytelling. When had a supergenius superhero ever messed up so much that the team had to declare bankruptcy? When had costumed crime busters ever had money troubles at all? The eerily prescient solution was to “sell out” and make a blockbuster movie – giving Kirby a rare chance to demonstrate his talent for caricature… and prescience…

1963 was a pivotal year in Marvel’s development. Lee & Kirby had proved their new high concept – human heroes with flaws and tempers – had a willing audience. Now they would extend that ideation to a new pantheon of heroes. Here is where the second innovation would come to the fore.

Previously, superheroes were sufficient unto themselves and shared adventures were rare. Now and here, however, was a universe where characters often and literally stumbled over each other, sometimes even fighting other heroes’ enemies! The creators themselves might turn even up in a Marvel Comic! Fantastic Four #10 featured ‘The Return of Doctor Doom!’ wherein the arch villain used Stan and Jack to lure the Richards into a trap where his mind is switched with the bad Doctor’s. The tale is supplemented by a pin-up of ‘Sue Storm, the Glamorous Invisible Girl’ and another Lee Foreword…

Innovations continued in #11, with two short stories instead of the usual book-length yarn, opening with behind-the-scenes travelogue/origin tale ‘A Visit with the Fantastic Four’ with a stunning pin-up of Sub-Mariner segueing into baddie-free, compellingly comedic vignette. ‘The Impossible Man’ was like superhero strip ever seen before.

Cover-dated March 1963, FF #12 featured an early landmark: arguably the first Marvel crossover as the team are asked to help the US army capture ‘The Incredible Hulk’: a tale of intrigue, action and bitter irony. The argument comes as Amazing Spider-Man #1 (not included here) – wherein the arachnid tries to join the team – has the same release date…  Fantastic Four #13’s ‘Versus the Red Ghost and his Incredible Super Apes!’ is a Cold War thriller pitting the quartet against a Soviet scientist in the race to reach the Moon: and notable both for its moody Steve Ditko inking (replacing Ayers for one glorious month) and the introduction of cosmic voyeurs The Watchers.

‘The Sub-Mariner and the Merciless Puppet Master!’ unwillingly co-star in #14, with one vengeful fiend the unwitting mind-slave of the other, followed by ‘The Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android!’, embarking upon a chilling war of intellects between driven super-scientists but with plenty of room for all-out action. After a notable absence, pin-ups resume with a candid group-shot of the team.

Fantastic Four #16 reveals ‘The Micro-World of Doctor Doom!’ in a spectacular romp guest-starring new hero Ant-Man plus a Fantastic Four Feature Page outlining the powers and capabilities of elastic Mister Fantastic. Despite a resounding defeat, the steel-shod villain returns with more infallible, deadly traps a month later in ‘Defeated by Doctor Doom!’, before FF #18 heralds a shape-changing alien who battles the heroes with their own powers when ‘A Skrull Walks Among Us!’: a prelude to greater, cosmos-spanning sagas to come…

The wonderment intensifies with the first Fantastic Four Annual: a spectacular 37-page epic by Lee, Kirby & Ayers as – finally reunited with their wandering prince – warriors of Atlantis invade New York City (and the world) in ‘The Sub-Mariner versus the Human Race!’.

A monumental tale by the standards of the time, it saw the FF repel the undersea invasion through valiant struggle and brilliant strategy whilst providing a secret history of the secretive race Homo Mermanus. Nothing was really settled except a return to a former status quo, but the thrills were intense and unforgettable…

Also included are rousing pin-ups and fact file features. The Mole Man, Skrulls, Miracle Man, Sub-Mariner, Doctor Doom, Kurrgo, Puppet Master, Impossible Man, The Hulk, Red Ghost and his Super-Apes, and Mad Thinker comprise ‘A Gallery of the Fantastic Four’s Most Famous Foes!’, whilst ‘Questions and Answers about the Fantastic Four’, and a diagrammatic trip ‘Inside the Baxter Building’ evoke awe wonder and understanding. Short story ‘The Fabulous Fantastic Four Meet Spider-Man!’ then reexamines in an extended re-interpretation that first meeting from the premiere issue of the wallcrawler’s own comic. Pencilled this time by Kirby, the dramatic duel benefitted from Ditko’s inking which created a truly novel look.

Cover-dated October 1963, Fantastic Four #19 premiered another of the company’s major villains as the quarrelsome quartet travelled back to ancient Egypt and ‘Prisoners of the Pharaoh!’ This time travel tale has been revisited by so many writers that it is considered one of the key stories in Marvel history introducing a future-Earth tyrant who would evolve into overarching menace Kang the Conqueror.

Another universe-threatening foe was introduced and defeated by brains not brawn in FF#20 when ‘The Mysterious Molecule Man!’ menaced New York before being soundly outsmarted, after which one last Lee Foreword precedes another cross-pollination: this time guest-starring Nick Fury, lead character in Marvel’s only war comic.

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos was another solid hit, but eventually its brusque and brutish star metamorphosed into Marvel’s answer to James Bond. Here, however, he’s a cunning CIA agent seeking the team’s aid against a sinister demagogue called ‘The Hate-Monger’: a cracking yarn with a strong message, inked by comics veteran George Roussos, under the protective nom-de-plume George Bell.

By this juncture the FF were firmly established and Lee & Kirby well on the way to toppling DC/National Comics from a decades-held top spot through an engaging blend of brash, folksy and consciously contemporaneous sagas: mixing high concept, low comedy, trenchant melodrama and breathtaking action.

Unseen since the premiere issue, #22 saw ‘The Return of the Mole Man!’ in another full-on monster-mashing fight-fest, chiefly notable for debuting Sue Storm’s new powers of projecting force fields of “invisible energy.” This advance would eventually make her one of the mightiest characters in Marvel’s pantheon.

Fantastic Four #23 enacted ‘The Master Plan of Doctor Doom!’, by introducing mediocre minions “the Terrible Trio” – Bull Brogin, Handsome Harry and Yogi Dakor – and the uncanny menace of “the Solar Wave” (which was enough to raise the hackles on my 5-year-old neck. Do I need to qualify that with: all of me was five, but only my neck had properly developed hackles back then?)…

In #24’s ‘The Infant Terrible!’ is a sterling yarn of inadvertent extragalactic menace and misplaced innocence, followed by a 2-part tale truly emphasising the inherent difference between Lee & Kirby’s work and everybody else’s at that time.

Fantastic Four #25-26 featured a cataclysmic clash that had young heads spinning in 1964 and led directly to the Emerald Behemoth finally regaining a strip of his own. In ‘The Hulk vs The Thing’ and ‘The Avengers Take Over!’, a relentless, lightning-paced, all-out Battle Royale results when the disgruntled man-monster returns to New York in search of side-kick Rick Jones, with only an injury-wracked FF in the way of his destructive rampage.

A definitive moment in The Thing’s character development, action ramps up to the max when a rather stiff-necked and officious Avengers team horn in, claiming jurisdictional rights on “Bob” Banner (this tale is plagued with pesky continuity errors which would haunt Stan Lee for decades) and his Jaded alter ego. Notwithstanding bloopers, this is one of Marvel’s key moments and still a visceral, vital read.

Stan & Jack had hit on a winning formula by including other stars in guest-shots – especially since readers could never anticipate if they would fight with or beside the home team. FF #27’s ‘The Search for Sub-Mariner!’ again saw the undersea antihero in amorous mood, and when he abducts Sue the boys call in Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts to locate them. Issue #28 was another terrific team-up, but most notable (for me and many other fans) for the man who replaced George Roussos…

‘We Have to Fight the X-Men!’ sees the disparate super-squads in conflict due to the Mad Thinker and Puppet Master’s malign machinations, but the inclusion of Chic Stone – Kirby’s most simpatico and expressive inker – elevates the illustration to indescribable levels of beauty.

‘It Started on Yancy Street!’ (FF #29) starts low-key and a little bit silly in the slum where Ben Grimm grew up, but with the reappearance of the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes, it all goes Cosmic, resulting in a blockbusting battle on the Moon, with the following issue – and last saga here – introducing evil alchemist ‘The Dreaded Diablo!’ – who briefly breaks up the team while casually conquering the world from his spooky Transylvanian castle….

To Be Continued…

Bolstered by all Kirby’s covers, every ‘Fantastic 4 Fan Page’ (with letters from adoring fans many here will recognise), Lee’s concluding essay ‘Reflections on the Fantastic Four’ and appreciations from Paul Gambaccini, Tom DeFalco and Roy Thomas, the joy concludes with added attractions including Lee’s original synopsis for FF #1, a selection of house ads, unused pages and cover art for #3, #20 and Annual #1.

This is a truly magnificent book highlighting pioneering tales that built a comics empire. The verve, imagination and sheer enthusiasm shines through and the wonder is there for you to share. If you’ve never thrilled to these spectacular sagas then this book of marvels is your best and most economical key to another world and time.
© 2022 MARVEL.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks: Namor, the Sub-Mariner volume 1: The Quest Begins


By Stan Lee, Gene Colan, Wallace Wood & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4885-6 (TPB/Digital edition)

If you’re currently sitting on or near a beach that isn’t actually storm-wracked or on fire, you might be feeling in the mood for a little salty sea-borne fun about now. The stories re-presented here are timeless and have been gathered many times before but today we’re enjoying another example of The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller – like a paperback novel. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for digital editions, that’s no issue at all.

Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner is the offspring of a water-breathing Atlantean princess and an American polar explorer: a hybrid being of immense strength; highly resistant to physical harm; able to fly and exist above and below the waves. Created by young, talented Bill Everett, Namor technically predates Marvel/Atlas/Timely Comics.

He first caught the public’s attention as part of the fire vs. water headlining team in Marvel Comics #1 (October 1939 and soon to become Marvel Mystery Comics). He shared honours and top billing with The Human Torch, but had originally been seen (albeit in a truncated monochrome version) in Motion Picture Funnies: a promotional giveaway handed out to moviegoers earlier in the year.

Quickly becoming one of the company’s biggest draws, Namor gained his own title at the end of 1940 (cover-dated Spring 1941) and was one of their last super-characters to go at the end of the first heroic age.

In 1954, when Atlas (as the company then was) briefly revived its costumed character “Big Three” (the Torch and Captain America being the other two), Everett returned for a run of superb fantasy tales, but even so the time wasn’t right and the title sunk again.

When Stan Lee & Jack Kirby started reinventing comic-books in 1961 with the Fantastic Four, they revived the all-but-forgotten awesome amphibian as a troubled, semi-amnesiac, and decidedly more regal, if not grandiose, antihero. The returnee despised humanity; embittered at the loss of his sub-sea kingdom (seemingly destroyed by American atomic testing) whilst simultaneously besotted with the FF’s Sue Storm.

Namor knocked around the budding Marvel universe for a few years, squabbling with other assorted heroes such as the Hulk, Avengers and X-Men, before securing his own series as one half of Tales to Astonish. Marvel’s “split-books” had been devised as a way to promote their burgeoning stable of stars whilst labouring under a highly restrictive distribution deal limiting the number of titles they could release per month. In 1968 the company ended this commitment and expanded exponentially.

This first celebratory volume collects one of those 1960’s guest shots – Daredevil #7 – and the first Subby’s solo stories from Tales to Astonish #70-80, spanning April 1965 to June 1966, and opening without preamble with a fateful encounter with his least powerful antagonist. Previously, Fantastic Four #4 had reintroduced the all-powerful amphibian Prince of Atlantis as an amnesiac relic who recovered his memory thanks to some rather brusque treatment by teen delinquent and AWOL Human Torch Johnny Storm. Rapidly returning to his sub-sea homeland he found it lain waste by atomic testing. A monarch without subjects, he swore vengeance on humanity and attacked New York City with a gigantic monster. In short order thereafter he met and battled Doctor Doom, The Hulk, Puppet Master, The Avengers, Magneto, the X-Men, and Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts…

As previously stated, prior to Tales to Astonish, Namor appeared in numerous titles as guest villain du jour. One last guest shot with Namor acting as a misunderstood bad-guy was Daredevil #7 (April 1965): a tale qualifying as a perfect comic book and a true landmark – to my mind one of the Top Ten Marvel Tales of all time.

Here, Lee and creative legend Wally Wood concocted a timeless masterpiece with ‘In Mortal Combat with… Sub-Mariner!’ as Namor of Atlantis – recently reunited with the survivors of his decimated race – returns to the surface world to sue mankind for their crimes against his people. To expedite his claim, the Prince engages the services of Matt Murdock‘s law firm; little suspecting the blind lawyer is also the acrobatic Man without Fear.

Whilst impatiently awaiting a hearing at the UN, Namor is informed by his lover Lady Dorma that his warlord Krang has usurped the throne in his absence. The tempestuous monarch cannot languish in a cell when the kingdom is threatened, so he fights his way to freedom through the streets of New York, smashing National Guard battalions and the dauntless Daredevil with supreme ease.

The hopelessly one-sided battle with one of the strongest beings on the planet shows the dauntless courage of DD and the innate nobility of a “villain” far more complex than most of the industry’s usual fare at the time.

Augmented by a rejected Wood cover repurposed as ‘A Marvel Masterwork pin-up: Namor and D.D.’, this yarn is merely a cunning prelude…

A few months later Tales to Astonish #70 heralded ‘The Start of the Quest!’ as Lee, Gene Colan (in the pseudonymous guise of Adam Austin) & Vince Colletta set the Sub-Mariner to storming an Atlantis under martial law. The effort is for naught and the returning hero is rejected by his own people. Callously imprisoned, the troubled Prince is freed by the oft-neglected and ignored Lady Dorma…

As the pompous hero begins a mystical quest to find the lost Trident of King Neptune – which only the rightful ruler of Atlantis can hold – he is unaware that treacherous Krang allowed him to escape, the better to destroy him with no witnesses. The serialised search carries Namor through a procession of fantastic adventures and pits him against spectacular sub-sea horrors: a giant octopus in ‘Escape… to Nowhere’: a colossal seaweed man in ‘A Prince There Was’ and a demented wizard and energy-sapping diamonds in ‘By Force of Arms!’

As the end approaches in ‘When Fails the Quest!’, revolution grips Atlantis, and Namor seemingly sacrifices his kingdom to save Dorma from troglodytic demons the Faceless Ones.

Issue #75’s ‘The End of the Quest’ finds the Prince battling his way back into Atlantis with a gravely-injured Dorma, before the saga calamitously concludes in ‘Uneasy Hangs the Head…!’ as the status quo is restored and Namor finally regains his stolen throne.

Back in charge, the Prince once more turns his thoughts to peace with the surface world and resolves ‘To Walk Amongst Men!’, but his mission is derailed on encountering a deep-sea drilling platform and finds himself fighting the US military and retired Avengers Henry Pym and Janet Van Dyne. The fracas is abruptly curtailed in #78’s ‘The Prince and the Puppet’ as an old adversary once again seizes control of the amphibian’s fragile mind…

Inked by the brilliant Bill Everett, ‘When Rises the Behemoth’ sees Namor struggling against Puppet Master’s psychic control and confronting the US Army in the streets of New York, before returning to clash with a cataclysmic doomsday monster in Atlantis. Dick Ayers stepped in to ink tense conclusion ‘To the Death!’, wherein Warlord Krang returns, blackmailing Dorma into betraying her beloved Prince and fleeing away with him…

To Be Continued…

Supplemented with House ads, a full cover gallery and pages of Colan original art this assemblage of tales featuring Marvel’s first antihero are timeless treasures to delight comics lovers of every age and vintage.
© 2022 MARVEL.

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Marvel Two-In-One Masterworks volume 6


By Mark Gruenwald, Ralph Macchio, Jerry Bingham, Ron Wilson, George Pérez, Michael Netzer, Frank Springer, Gene Day, Pablo Marcos, Chic Stone & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3293-0 (HB/Digital edition)

Above all else, Marvel has always been about team-ups. The concept of team-up books – an established star pairing, or battling (often both) with less well-selling company characters – was not new when Marvel awarded their most popular hero the same deal DC had with Batman in The Brave and the Bold. Although confident in their new title, they wisely left options open by allocating an occasional substitute lead in The Human Torch.

In those distant days, editors were acutely conscious of potential over-exposure – and since superheroes were actually in a decline, they may well have been right.

Nevertheless, after the runaway success of Spider-Man’s guest vehicle Marvel Team-Up, the House of Ideas carried on the trend with a series starring bashful, blue-eyed Ben Grimm – the Fantastic Four’s most popular star. They began with a brace of test runs in Marvel Feature #11-12 before awarding him his own team-up title, with this sixth stirring selection gathering the contents of Marvel Two-In-One #61-74, covering March 1980-April 1981.

Preceded by a comprehensive and informative reverie in Ralph Macchio’s Introduction, the action resumes with the title continuing to rectify its greatest flaw. The innate problem with team-up tales was always a lack of continuity – something Marvel always prided itself upon. Writer/editor Marv Wolfman had sought to address this during his tenure through the simple expedient of having stories link-up through evolving, overarching plots which took Ben from place to place and from guest to guest. The trick was perfected in the vast-scaled, supremely convoluted saga known as The Project Pegasus Saga – as featured in the previous volume.

A stellar epic began in #61 with ‘The Coming of Her!’ (by Mark Gruenwald, Jerry Bingham & Gene Day) as time-travelling space god/31st century Guardian of the Galaxy Starhawk became embroiled in the birth of a female counterpart to artificial superman Adam Warlock.

The distaff genetic paragon awoke fully empowered and instantly began searching for her predecessor, dragging Ben Grimm’s girlfriend Alicia Masters and mind goddess Moondragon across the solar system, arriving where issue #62 observed ‘The Taking of Counter-Earth!’

Hot on their heels, The Thing and Starhawk catch Her just as the women encounter a severely wounded High Evolutionary, and discover the world so carefully built and casually discarded by that self-created science god has been stolen…

United in mystery, the strange grouping follow the planet’s trail out of the galaxy and uncover the incredible perpetrators but Her’s desperate quest to secure her predestined, purpose-grown mate ends in tragedy when she learns ‘Suffer Not a Warlock to Live!’

Clearly on a roll and dedicated to exploiting Marvel Two-in-One’s unofficial role as a clean-up vehicle for settling unresolved plotlines from cancelled series, Gruenwald & Macchio then dived into ‘The Serpent Crown Affair” in #64.

‘From the Depths’ (illustrated by Pérez & Day) sees sub-sea superhero Stingray approach FF boffin Reed Richards in search of a cure for humans who had been mutated into water-breathers by Sub-Mariner foe Doctor Hydro: a plotline begun in 1973 and left unresolved since the demise of the Atlantean prince’s own title.

Richards’ enquiries soon found the transformation had been caused by The Inhumans’ Terrigen Mist, but when he had Ben ferry the mermen’s leader Dr. Croft and Stingray to a meeting, the trip was cut short by a crisis on an off-shore oil rig, thanks to an ambush by a coalition of snake-themed villains.

The ‘Serpents from the Sea’ (art by Bingham & Day) were attempting to salvage dread mystic artefact the Serpent Crown, and would brook no interference, but luckily the Inhumans had sent out their seagoing stalwart Triton to meet the Thing…

Meanwhile, alternate-Earth “Femizon” Thundra had been seeking the men responsible for tricking her into attacking Project Pegasus but had fallen under the spell of sinister superman Hyperion – a pawn of corrupt oil conglomerate Roxxon. At that time, their CEO Hugh Jones possessed – or had been possessed by – the heinous helm…

With the situation escalating, Ben had no choice but to call in an expert and before long The Scarlet Witch joins the battle: her previous experience with the relic enabling the heroes to thwart the multi-dimensional threat of ‘A Congress of Crowns!’ (Pérez & Day) and a devastating incursion by diabolical primordial serpent god Set…

With Armageddon averted, Ben diverted to Pegasus to drop off the now-neutered crown in #67 and found old ally Bill Foster had been diagnosed with terminal radiation sickness due to his battle with atomic foundling Nuklo. Thundra, seduced by promises of being returned to her own reality, wises up in time to abscond from Roxxon in ‘Passport to Oblivion!’ (Gruenwald, Macchio, Ron Wilson, Day & friends), but hasn’t calculated on being hunted by Hyperion. Although outmatched, her frantic struggle does attract the chivalrous attentions of Ben and superhero-neophyte Quasar…

Marvel T-I-O #68 shifted gears with The Thing meeting former X-Man The Angel as they stumble into – and smash out of – a mechanise murder-world in ‘Discos and Dungeons!’ (art by Wilson & Day), after which ‘Homecoming!’ finds Ben contending with the time-lost Guardians of the Galaxy whilst striving to prevent the end of everything. The proximate cause is millennial man Vance Astro who risks all of reality to stop his younger self ever going into space…

Issue #70 offered a mystery guest team-up for ‘A Moving Experience’ (Gruenwald, Macchio, Mike Nasser/Netzer & Day) as Ben is again mercilessly pranked by old frenemies The Yancy Street Gang, and ambushed by genuine old foes when he helps Alicia move into new digs. Then, the so-long frustrated Hydromen finally get ‘The Cure!’ (Wilson & Day) after Ben and Reed travel to the Inhuman city of Attilan.

Sadly, a cure for the effects of Terrigen is also a perfect anti-Inhuman weapon, and when the process is stolen by a trio of freaks, the trail leads to a brutal clash with a deadly Inhuman renegade wielding ‘The Might of Maelstrom’ (Gruenwald, Macchio, Wilson & Chic Stone). The pariah is intent on eradicating every other member of his hidden race and just won’t stop until he’s done…

In Marvel Two-In-One #73, Macchio, Wilson & Stone tie up loose ends from the Pegasus epic as Ben and Quasar pursue Roxxon across dimensions to another Earth where the rapacious plunderers have enslaved a primitive population and begun sending their pillaged oil back here via a ‘Pipeline Through Infinity’ (#74), whilst Gruenwald, Frank Springer & Stone celebrate the festive season with ‘A Christmas Peril!’ as Ben and the Puppet Master are drawn into the Yuletide celebrations of brain-damaged, childlike, immensely powerful Modred the Mystic…

Fiercely tied to the minutia of Marvel continuity, these stories from Marvel’s Middle Period are certainly of variable quality, but whereas some might feel rushed and ill-considered they are balanced by some superb adventure romps still as captivating today as they ever were.

Bolstered by house ads and original art and covers by Bingham, Day & Pérez; with biographies for the legion of creators contained herein. Most fans of Costumed Dramas will find little to complain about and there’s lots of fun to be found for young and old readers.
© 2021 MARVEL.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks The Avengers volume 3: Among Us Walks a Goliath


By Stan Lee & Don Heck with Frank Giacoia, Wallace Wood, Dick Ayers, John Romita & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4895-5 (PB/Digital edition)

Probably Marvel’s biggest global franchise success, The Avengers celebrate their 60th anniversary in 2023, so let’s again acknowledge that landmark and offer more of the same…

These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before but here we’re enjoying an example of The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller – like a paperback novel. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for digital editions, that’s no issue at all.

After a period of meteoric expansion, in 1963 the burgeoning Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that had cemented the legitimacy of the Silver Age of American comics. The notion of putting a bunch of all-star eggs in one basket had made the Justice League of America a winner and subsequently inspired the moribund Atlas outfit – primarily Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko – into conceiving “super-characters” of their own. The result – in 1961 – was The Fantastic Four…

After 18 months, the fledgling House of Ideas had generated a small successful stable of costumed leading men (but still only 2 sidekick women!), allowing Lee & Kirby to at last assemble a select handful of them into an all-star squad, moulded into a force for justice and soaring sales…

Cover dated September 1963, and on sale from early July, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion package which also included Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Men. This edition collects The Avengers #21-30 (cover-dates October 1965 to July 1966): groundbreaking tales no lover of superhero stories can do without…

Here the team consists of Captain America, Hawkeye and mutant twins Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch who had replaced big guns Thor, Iron Man, Giant-Man and The Wasp and were already proving a firm fan-favourite. Spectacle had been nudged aside in favour of melodrama sub-plots, leavening the action through compelling soap-opera elements which kept readers riveted.

After debuting insidious infiltrator Swordsman in the previous volume, scripter Stan Lee and illustrators Don Heck & Wally Wood launched another soon-to-be big-name villain in the form of Power Man. ‘The Bitter Taste of Defeat!’ (#21) depicted his origins and a diabolical plan hatched with evil Asgardian archfoe The Enchantress to discredit and replace the quarrelsome quartet. The scheme was only narrowly foiled in a cavalcade of cunning countermoves in concluding episode ‘The Road Back’…

An epic 2-part tale follows when the turbulent team is shanghaied into the far-future to battle against – and eventually beside – Kang the Conqueror. ‘Once an Avenger…’ (Avengers #23 with, incidentally, my vote for the best cover Jack Kirby ever drew) is inked by slick John Romita (senior), and pits the heroes against an army of fearsome future men. The yarn explosively and tragically ends in ‘From the Ashes of Defeat!’ with inker Dick Ayers backing up Lee & Heck.

The still-learning but ever-improving squad then face their greatest test yet after being lured to Latveria and captured by the deadliest man alive in #25’s ‘Enter… Dr. Doom!’ and forced to fight their way out of the tyrant’s utterly cowed, hyper-militarised kingdom…

As change is ever the watchword for this series, the next two issues combine a threat from subsea barbarian Attuma to drown the world with the epic return of some old comrades. ‘The Voice of the Wasp!’ and ‘Four Against the Floodtide!’ (pseudonymously inked by Frank Giacoia as Frank Ray) form a superlative action-romp but are merely prelude to the main event – issue #28’s revival of founding Avenger Giant-Man in a new guise. ‘Among us Walks… a Goliath!’ was an instant classic that reinvented the Master of Many Sizes whilst also introducing the villainous – and ultimately immortally alien – hobbyist dubbed The Collector whilst extending the company’s pet motif of heroic alienation. After rushing to save Wasp from the cosmic kleptomaniac and his stooge The Beetle, the team are unable to prevent Hank Pym becoming tragically trapped at a freakish ten-foot height, seemingly forever…

As Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch briefly bow out – returning to Europe to reinvigorate their fading powers – Avengers #29 features ‘This Power Unleashed!’: bringing back Hawkeye’s lost love Black Widow as a brainwashed Soviet agent tasked with destroying the team.

Despite recruiting seasoned foes Power Man and Swordsman as cannon-fodder, her plan fails due to her incompletely submerged feelings for Hawkeye…

This titanic tome terminates on a cliffhanger as ‘Frenzy in a Far-Off Land!’ sees dispirited, despondent colossus Dr. Pym heading south to consult with his old college mentor Professor Anton. He never expected to find a hidden South American civilisation or become embroiled in a high-tech civil war that threatened to destroy the entire planet…

To Be Continued…

Supplementing the narrative joys is a single behind-the-scenes treasure: a Tee-shirt design by Jack Kirby & Wally Wood…

These immortal tales defined the early Marvel experience and are still an unbounded joy no fan should deny themselves or their kids.
© 2023 MARVEL.

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The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Ultimate Collection


By Joe Casey, Scott Kolins, Will Rosado, Tom Palmer & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5937-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Time for another 60th Anniversary shout out…

One of the most momentous events in Marvel Comics history occurred in 1963 when a disparate array of individual heroes banded together to stop apparently marauding monster The Incredible Hulk.

The Avengers combined most of the company’s fledgling superhero line in one bright, shiny and highly commercial package. Over decades the roster has continually changed until now almost every character in their universe has at some time numbered amongst the team’s colourful ranks…

For Marvel’s transformational rebirth in the early 1960’s, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby took their lead from a small but growing band of costumed characters debuting or reimagined and revived at the Distinguished Competition. Julie Schwartz’ retooling of DC’s Golden Age stars had paid big dividends for the industry leader, and as the decade turned Managing Editor Lee’s boss (uncle/publisher Martin Goodman) insisted his company should go where the money was.

Although National/DC achieved incredible success with revised and updated versions of the company’s old stable, the natural gambit of trying the same revivification process on characters who had dominated Timely/Atlas in those halcyon days didn’t go quite so well.

The Justice League of America-inspired Fantastic Four indeed featured a new Human Torch, but his subsequent solo series began to founder almost as soon as Kirby stopped drawing it. Sub-Mariner was soon returned too, but as a deadly vengeful villain, as yet incapable of carrying his own title…

So a procession of new costumed heroes was created, with Lee, Kirby and Steve Ditko focussing on all-original inventive and inspired “super-characters”…

Not all caught on: The Hulk folded after six issues and even Spider-Man would have failed if writer/editor Lee hadn’t really, really pushed Uncle Martin…

After nearly 18 months, during which the fledgling House of Ideas churned out a small stable of leading men (but only two sidekick women), Lee & Kirby finally had enough players to stock an all-star ensemble – the precise format which had made the JLA a commercial winner – and thus swiftly assembled a handful of them into a force for justice and higher sales…

Cover-dated September 1963, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion package which also included Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Men, and, despite a few rocky patches, the series grew into one of the company’s perennial best sellers.

The early Avengers yarns became a cornerstone of the company’s crucially interlinked continuity. As decades passed they were frequently revisited and re-examined, and in 2005 Joe Casey and artist Scott Kolins (with colourists Morry Hollowell & Will Quintana) took the occasional exercises in creativity a little further: offering an 8-issue modernising miniseries adding devious – some would say cynically calculating – back-writing to the original stories. The epic was packed with post-modern in-filling for a more mature readership, exposing secrets and revealing how the team actually came to hold its prominent and predominant position in the Marvel Universe…

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #1-8 ran fortnightly from January to April 2005 and was successful enough to warrant a second season. Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes II #1-8 repeated the gambit from January to May 2007, and with both epics gathered in this splendid, no-nonsense compilation.

Chronologically set between Avengers #1 and 2, the drama begins as industrialist Tony Stark reviews media coverage of the coalition of mystery men currently residing in his family’s townhouse. He ponders how best to keep such diverse and headstrong personalities as Ant Man, The Wasp, Thor and the Hulk together. Across town in a seedy bar, young troublemaker and pool-hustler Clint Barton can’t understand why folks are so nervous about the “masked freaks”…

Two weeks later, the team has fallen apart and the Avengers are actually hunting their gamma-fuelled former colleague. In the course of calamitous events they unexpectedly recover a legendary form from a coffin of ice floating in sea…

The gradually assimilation of partially amnesiac WWII legend Captain America into a terrifying and seemingly mad new era is not without problems, and the iconic, grimly experienced warrior is soon keenly aware of seething tensions besetting the team he has joined.

Iron Man still fervently pursues an exalted Federal status for the Avengers, but the Army are baulking: clearly set on putting the wilfully independent powerhouses under military jurisdiction. After a ferocious clash with Lava Men from Earth’s deep interior, word finally comes. The powers that be have created an all-encompassing “Avengers Priority Security Status” – but only for as long as the fickle public’s new darling and National Treasure Captain America stays with them…

Self-made scientific genius Hank Pym created the roles of Ant Man and the Wasp (AKA debutante girlfriend Janet Van Dyne) but his inherent and growing mental instability has caused him to push further and harder ever since he joined the ranks of a group that includes a patriotic living legend, an infallible metal juggernaut and an apparent god.

Now operating as Giant Man he is letting feelings of inadequacy drive a wedge between him and his lover, even as the Army ups the pressure to take over the team. Meanwhile, modern-day Rip Van Winkle Steve Rogers increasingly sinks into survivor’s guilt over the comrades he failed to save in the war. That internalised torment kicks into overdrive when Nazi war criminal and archfoe Baron Zemo comes out of hiding to attack the Avenger through his Masters of Evil…

When an invader out of time strikes, the Avengers finally and very publicly prove their worth to the nation and its government, and with Kang the Conqueror sent packing, the team at last secures favoured-but-fully-independent security clearance.

…And in the streets, a wanted vigilante dubbed Hawkeye saves Avengers butler Edwin Jarvis from muggers and they strike up a most irregular friendship…

Missions come thick and fast but the internal tensions never seem to dissipate. In far distant Balkan Transia fugitive mutants Wanda and Pietro desperately search for a place where they can feel safe, whilst in America Cap is increasingly fixated on tracking down Zemo.

After a battle with crime syndicate leader Count Nefaria leaves the Wasp near death, Giant Man also edges closer to a complete breakdown. With a surgeon battling to save her, Pym swears he’s going to quit and take her away from all the madness. Before that can happen, Zemo returns, abducting the Sentinel of Liberty’s teenaged friend Rick Jones…

In response, the team acrimoniously divides, with Cap trailing the monomaniac to Bolivia whilst the majority of Avengers remain for a final battle against the Masters of Evil. Meanwhile below stairs, Jarvis and Clint are concocting a sneaky scheme of their own…

As the death-duel in Bolivia concludes, in Germany two restless young mutants orchestrate their return to America and – with some collusion from Jarvis – Hawkeye “auditions” for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes…

As Cap and Rick wearily and so slowly make their way back to civilisation, Iron Man deals with Government fallout after learning that their Red, White and Blue poster boy is missing. Soon news leaks out that the rest of the team are quitting and that Stark has lined up a wanted vigilante and two outlaw mutants to replace them…

The initial secret history lesson concludes with astounded Captain America’s re-emergence and reluctant accession to leadership: riding herd on a team of obnoxious, arrogant young felons he is expected to mould into true champions…

The rest is history…

The second bite of the cherry (by Casey, Will Rosado, Tom Palmer & Quintana) focuses on a later time when the Avengers are in resurgent form. The Founders have all returned at a time when Pym (now calling himself Goliath), The Wasp and Hawkeye are joined by enigmatic African monarch The Black Panther. The action commences immediately following the expanded team’s being attacked by an android called The Vision – whom they promptly signed up (in Avengers #58, if you’re keeping count). Apparently the density-shifting “synthezoid” was created by robotic nemesis Ultron – a murderous AI created by Pym whilst suffering one of his frequent psychotic breaks – before switching allegiances…

We open as the highly-suspect new Avenger is impounded by S.H.I.E.L.D. for investigation and clearance. Their ostensible reason is that another autonomous murder mechanism – Super-Adaptoid – has escaped from custody and humanity can’t be too careful…

In the Philippines, the real cause of all the anti-technology tension and overweening suspicion are busy. Science terrorists Advanced Idea Mechanics have secretly stolen the Adaptoid and are seeing how they can improve an already ultimate killing machine…

At a clandestine S.H.I.E.L.D. base, interrogator Jasper Sitwell has met his match in The Vision, but perseveres in trying to dig out dirt on the android and its “master” Ultron. The Panther meanwhile has foregone his status as a VIP dignitary to teach at an inner city school under the alias Luke Charles. What he finds there is a true education…

Hawkeye too is under pressure as his lover The Black Widow reveals she’s going back into the spy-game. With Pym close to apoplexy at the government’s quasi-legal rendition of the Vision, nobody is in a particularly good mood when S.H.I.E.L.D.  supremo Nick Fury (the white one who fought in WWII) demands the team head to the Philippines to investigate A.I.M.’s latest enterprise.

With Fury’s carrot-&-stick pep talk ringing in their ears the heroes – rejoined by the just released Vision – jet away, unaware that in Manhattan an assassination plot against King T’Challa/Mr. Charles has brought one of Panther’s greatest enemies to America…

The heroes are challenged over the Pacific skies by a mass-produced army of Super-Adaptoids and are soon engaged in the fight of their lives…

Overwhelmed, they are in danger of being swamped before Goliath valiantly turns himself into as colossal human rampart to stem the tide and save the endangered island population whilst his comrades rush to destroy A.I.M.’s superbase…

Left all alone, Pym fights in maddened frenzy and becomes increasingly obsessed with how human the things he is incessantly slaughtering seem to be. By the time the triumphant team get Goliath home, he is a deeply traumatised shell of a man…

Luke Charles returns to school in time to be deeply embroiled in a bullying case that will inevitably end in gunplay and tragedy. And then the apparently recuperating Hank Pym goes missing…

Soon after, a new, excessively brutal hero named Yellowjacket is making news even as Agent Sitwell again targets the Vision for further debriefing: specifically, Pym’s “massacre” of mechanical lifeforms on A.I.M. Island. This time he’s brought in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s top psychologist Agent Carver to try and get under the subject’s artificial skin…

The spies are in heated argument with Hawkeye when Yellowjacket breaks in, claiming to have murdered the Man of Many Sizes and demanding to take Goliath’s place on the team…

Nobody is fooled. Everyone recognises the abrasive stranger as Pym gone far off the deep end, but Carver prevents them from saying anything. She advises that he is clearly inches from being utterly incurable and devises a treatment to cure him which basically comprises “play along and don’t do anything to upset the crazy man”…

That even includes allowing Yellowjacket to kidnap the Wasp and agreeing to let him marry his hostage…

The wedding is held at Avengers Mansion and includes a Who’s Who of heroes along for the ride (The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Spider-Man, The Black Knight and Doctor Strange) but the scheme spirals out of control when The Circus of Crime – not privy to the details of the service – use the gathering as an opportunity to kill all America’s costumed champions in one go…

With Hawkeye and the blushing bride hostages and the first to be despatched, the deadly dilemma shocks Pym back to his rightest senses, but in the aftermath many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are butchered as Wakandan assassin Death Tiger gets ever closer to fulfilling his own mission of murder…

To cap off all the chaos, the still-at-large Super-Adaptoid also attacks, determined to expunge “race-traitor” The Vision who has perpetrated the ultimate betrayal by siding with inferior humanity and denying the innate superiority and inevitable ascension of mechanical and artificial lifeforms…

Politically savvy, wryly trenchant and compellingly action-packed, this extremely impressive Fights ‘n’ Tights chronicle is a superb addition/codicil to the annals of The Avengers and would serve as perfect comics vehicle for movie fans in search of a print-fix for their costumed crusader cravings…
© 2021 MARVEL.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks The Avengers volume 2: The Old Order Changeth


By Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Larry Ivie, Don Heck, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, Chic Stone, Mike Esposito, Wallace Wood & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4613-5 (PB/Digital edition)

Probably Marvel’s biggest global franchise success, The Avengers celebrate their 60th anniversary in 2023, so let’s again acknowledge that landmark event and offer a promise of more of the same…

These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before but here we’re enjoying an example of The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller – like a paperback novel. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for the digital editions, that’s no issue at all.

After a period of meteoric expansion, in 1963 the burgeoning Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that had cemented the legitimacy of the Silver Age of American comics. The notion of putting a bunch of all-star eggs in one basket had made the Justice League of America a winner and subsequently inspired the moribund Atlas outfit – primarily Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko – into conceiving “super-characters” of their own. The result – way back in 1961 – was the Fantastic Four…

After 18 months, the fledgling House of Ideas had generated a small successful stable of costumed leading men (but still only 2 sidekick women!), allowing Lee & Kirby to at last assemble a select handful of them into an all-star squad, moulded into a force for justice and soaring sales…

Cover dated September 1963, and on sale from Early July, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion package which also included Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Men. This sequel edition collects The Avengers #11-20 (cover-dates December 1964 to September 1965): a stellar sequence of groundbreaking tales no lover of superhero stories can do without…

The tense action resumes with the team supreme of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Ant-Man & the Wasp still together after numerous attempts to destroy them or shatter their unity. An eagerly anticipated meeting delighted fans when #11 declared ‘The Mighty Avengers Meet Spider-Man!’: a clever and classy cross-fertilising tale from Lee and Don Heck, inked by Chic Stone. It features the return of the time-bending tyrant Kang the Conqueror, who attempts to destroy the team by insinuating a robotic duplicate of the outcast arachnid within their serried ranks. It’s accompanied by Heck’s Marvel Master Work Pin-up of ‘Kang!’ and preceded a cracking end-of-the-world thriller with guest-villains Mole Man and the Red Ghost, doing their very best to avoid another clash with the Fantastic Four.

This was another potent Marvel innovation, as – according to established funnybook rules – bad guys stuck to their own nemeses and didn’t clash outside their own backyards…

Inked by Dick Ayers, ‘This Hostage Earth!’ is a welcome return to grand adventure with lesser lights Giant-Man and the Wasp taking rare lead roles, but is trumped by a rousing gangster thriller of a sort seldom seen outside the pages of Spider-Man or Daredevil. The saga premiered Marvel universe Mafia analogue The Maggia and another major menace in #13’s ‘The Castle of Count Nefaria!’

After crushingly failing in his scheme to frame the Avengers, Nefaria’s caper ends on a tragic cliffhanger as Janet Van Dyne is left gunshot and dying, leading to a peak in melodramatic tension in #14 – scripted by Larry Ivie (as Paul Laiken) & Larry Lieber over Stan’s plot – as the traumatised team scour the globe for the only surgeon who can save her.

‘Even Avengers Can Die!’ – although of course she doesn’t – resolves into an epic alien invasion tale with overtones of This Island Earth, with Kirby stepping in to lay out the saga for Heck & Stone to illustrate. This only whets the appetite for the classic climactic confrontation that follows one month later as the costumed champions finally deal with the Masters of Evil and Captain America at last avenges the death of his dead partner Bucky.

‘Now, by My Hand, Shall Die a Villain!’ in #15 (laid-out by Kirby, pencilled by Heck and inked by Mike Esposito) features the final, fatal confrontation between Cap and Baron Zemo in the heart of the Amazon, whilst the other Avengers and the war-criminal’s cohort of masked menaces (Enchantress, Executioner, Black Knight and The Melter) battle once more on the streets of New York City…

It all ends as ‘The Old Order Changeth!’ (broken down by Kirby before being finished by Ayers) presages a dramatic change in concept for the series; presumably because, as Lee increasingly wrote to the company’s unique strengths – tight continuity and strongly individualistic characterisation – he found juggling individual stars in their own titles as well as a combined team episode every month was just incompatible if not impossible…

As Cap and substitute sidekick Rick Jones fight their way back to civilisation, the Avengers institute changes. The big-name stars retire and are replaced by three erstwhile villains: Hawkeye, Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch.

Eventually, led by perennial old soldier Captain America, this relatively powerless group with no outside titles to divide the attention (the Sentinel of Liberty did have a regular feature in Tales of Suspense but at that time it featured adventures set during WWII) evolved into another squabbling family of flawed, self-examining neurotics, enduring extended sub-plots and constant action as valiant underdogs; a formula readers of the time could not get enough of and which still works today…

Acting on advice from the departing Iron Man, the neophytes seek to recruit The Hulk to add raw power to the team, only to be ambushed by Mole Man in #17’s ‘Four Against the Minotaur!’ (Lee, Heck & Ayers), after which they fall foul of a dastardly “commie” plot ‘When the Commissar Commands!’ – necessitating a quick trip to thinly-disguised Viet Nam analogue Sin-Cong to unwittingly battle a bombastic android…

These relatively low-key tales are followed by an ever-improving run of mini-masterpieces, the first of which wraps up this compilation with a 2-part gem providing Hawkeye’s origin and introducing a roguish hero/villain.

‘The Coming of the Swordsman!’ introduces a dissolute, disreputable swashbuckler – with just a hint of deeply-buried flawed nobility – who attempts to force his way onto the highly respectable team to avoid outstanding international arrest warrants. His immediate and total rejection leads to him becoming an unwilling pawn of a far greater menace after being kidnapped by A-list would-be world despot The Mandarin.

The conclusion comes in the superb ‘Vengeance is Ours!’ – sublimely inked by the one-&-only Wally Wood – wherein the constantly-bickering Avengers finally pull together as a supernaturally efficient, all-conquering team…

These are immortal tales that defined the early Marvel experience and are still a joy no fan should deny themselves or their kids. How can you survive without them?
© 2022 MARVEL.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks The Avengers volume 1: The Coming of The Avengers


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, Paul Reinman, George Roussos, Chic Stone, Sam Rosen, Art Simek & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1302929787 (TPB/Digital edition)

Probably Marvel’s biggest global franchise success, The Avengers celebrate their 60th anniversary in September 2023, so let’s start the New Year with acknowledgement of that landmark event and a promise of more of the same over the next 12 months…

These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before but here we’re looking at The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller – about the dimensions of a paperback book. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for the digital editions, that’s no issue at all.

After a period of meteoric expansion, in 1963 the burgeoning Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that had cemented the legitimacy of the Silver Age of American comics. The notion of putting a bunch of all-star eggs in one basket had made the Justice League of America a winner and subsequently inspired the moribund Atlas outfit – primarily Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko – into conceiving “super-characters” of their own. The result – way back in 1961 – was the Fantastic Four…

Nearly 18 months later, the fledgling House of Ideas had generated a small and (mostly) successful stable of costumed leading men (but still only 2 sidekick women!), allowing Lee & Kirby to at last assemble a select handful of them into an all-star squad, moulded into a force for justice and soaring sales…

Seldom has it been done with such style and sheer exuberance. Cover dated September 1963, and on sale from Early July, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion package which also included Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Men…

This premier volume gathers The Avengers #1-10 (running to cover-date September 1965): a stellar sequence of groundbreaking tales no lover of superhero stories can do without…

The tense action kicks off with ‘The Coming of the Avengers!’ where – rather than starting at a neutral beginning – Stan & Jack (plus inker Dick Ayers) assumed buyers had a passing familiarity with Marvel’s other heroes and wasted very little time or space on introductions.

In Asgard, immortal trickster Loki is imprisoned on a dank isle, hungry for vengeance on his noble half-brother Thor. Whilst malevolently observing Earth, the god of evil espies the monstrous, misunderstood Hulk and mystically engineers a situation wherein the man-brute seemingly goes on a rampage, simply to trick the Thunder God into battling the monster.

When the Hulk’s teen sidekick Rick Jones radios the FF for assistance, Loki scrambles and diverts the transmission, smugly awaiting the blossoming of his mischief. Sadly for the schemer, Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp also pick up the redirected SOS…

Only after the alerted heroes all converge on the American Southwest to search for the Jade Giant, do they realise that something is oddly amiss…

This terse, epic, compelling and wide-ranging yarn (New York, New Mexico, Detroit and Asgard in 22 pages) is Lee & Kirby at their bombastic best, and remains one of the greatest stories of the Silver Age (it’s certainly high in my own top ten Marvel Tales) and is followed by ‘The Space Phantom’ (Lee, Kirby & Paul Reinman), wherein an alien shape-stealer infiltrates and almost destroys the team from within.

With latent animosities exposed by the malignant masquerader, the epic ends with the volatile Hulk quitting the team in disgust, only to return in #3 as an outright villain in partnership with ‘Sub-Mariner!’ This globe-trotting romp delivers high-energy thrills and one of the blistering best battle scenes in comics history as the assorted titans clash in abandoned World War II tunnels beneath the Rock of Gibraltar. The tale was preceded hereby the galvanic house ad announcing the clash as seen in Avengers #2…

Inked by George Roussos, Avengers #4 was an indisputable, game-changing landmark as Marvel’s greatest Golden Age sensation returns for another increasingly war-torn era. ‘Captain America joins the Avengers!’ has everything that made the company’s early output so fresh and vital. The majesty of a legendary warrior returned in our time of greatest need; stark tragedy in the loss of his boon companion Bucky; aliens, gangsters, tragedy-drenched antagonist The Sub-Mariner and even subtle social commentary, all naturally wrapped up in vast amounts of staggering Kirby Action. It even begins with a cunning infomercial as Iron Man unsuccessfully requests the assistance of the company’s other fresh young stars, giving readers a taste of the other mighty Marvels on offer to them…

Reinman returned to ink ‘The Invasion of the Lava Men!’: another staggering adventure romp wherein the team – with the unwilling assistance of the ever-incredible Hulk – battle incendiary subterraneans and a world-threatening mutating mountain…

However, even all that pales before the supreme shift in artistic quality that is Avengers #6.

Chic Stone – arguably Kirby’s most effective inker of the period – joined the creative team just as a classic arch-foe was born. ‘The Masters of Evil!’ reveals how Nazi super-scientist Baron Zemo (who debuted that same month as a Nazi scientist in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #8) returns from self-exile in South America.

The petty tyrant is forced by his own arrogance and paranoia to emerge from the anonymity of the jungle he’s been skulking in since the Third Reich fell, after learning his despised nemesis Captain America has returned from the dead…

To this end, the war-criminal recruits a gang comprising previously established supervillains to attack New York City and destroy the Avengers. The unforgettable clash between valiant heroes and vile murdering mercenaries Radioactive Man, Black Knight (Nathan Garrett) and The Melter is to this day an unsurpassed example of prime Marvel magic.

Issue #7 followed up with two more malevolent recruits for the Masters of Evil, as Asgardian outcasts Enchantress and The Executioner are exiled to Midgard by Odin and waste no time allying with Zemo. This coincides with Iron Man being suspended from the team, due to “misconduct” occurring in his own series at that time. This was the start of the era of close-continuity where events in one series were regularly referenced and built upon in others. The practise quickly became a rod for the creators’ own backs and led to a radical rethink…

It might have been ‘Their Darkest Hour!’, but follow-up Avengers #8 delivered the team’s greatest triumph and tragedy as Kirby (inked with fitting circularity by Ayers) relinquished his full drawing role with a superbly entrancing invasion-from-time thriller. Riffing on The Day the Earth Stood Still, the B-movie-toned classic introduced ‘Kang the Conqueror!’: depicting an impossible powerful foe defeated by the cunning of ordinary teenagers and the indomitable spirit of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes…

Whenever Kirby left a title he’d co-created, it took a little while to settle into a new rhythm, and none more so than with these collectivised costumed crusaders. Although Lee and the fabulously utilitarian Don Heck were perfectly capable of producing cracking comics entertainments, they never had The King’s uncanny sense of panoramic scope and scale which constantly sought bigger, bolder blasts of excitement.

The Avengers evolved into an entirely different series when the subtle approachability of Heck’s human-scaled vision replaced Kirby’s larger-than-life bombastic bravura. The series had advanced to monthly circulation and even King Kirby could not draw the massive number of pages his expanding workload demanded.

Heck was a gifted and trusted artist with a formidable record for meeting deadlines and, progressing under his pencil, sub-plots and character interplay finally got as much space as action and spectacle. After Kirby, stories increasingly focused on scene-stealing newcomer Captain America: concentrating on frail human beings in costumes, rather than wild modern gods and technological titans bestriding and shaking the Earth…

Inked by Ayers, Heck’s first outing was memorable tragedy ‘The Coming of the Wonder Man!’ wherein the Masters of Evil plant superhuman Trojan Horse Simon Williams within the heroes’ ranks, only to have the conflicted infiltrator find deathbed redemption by saving them from the deadly deathtrap he creates…

Another Marvel mainstay debuted with the introduction of (seemingly) malignant master of time Immortus, who briefly combines with Zemo’s devilish cohort to engineer a fatal division in the ranks by removing Cap from the field in ‘The Avengers Break Up!’ A sign of the Star-Spangled Sentinel’s increasing popularity, the issue is augmented by a Marvel Masterwork Pin-Up of ‘The One and Only Cap’, courtesy of Kirby & Ayers, and is followed by a 1963 house ad for Avengers #1 to close this pocket-sized bombshell of wonders.

These are immortal tales that defined the early Marvel experience and are still a joy no fan should deny themselves or their kids. How can you survive without them?
© 2021 MARVEL.

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks Spider-Man volume 2: The Sinister Six


By Stan Lee & Steve Ditko, with Sam Rosen & Art Simek (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3195-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

As any fule kno, The Amazing Spider-Man celebrated his 60th anniversary in 2022. However, I’m one of those radicals who feel that 1963 was when he was really born, so let’s start the New Year with acknowledgement of that opinion and warning of many more of the same over the next 12 months…

These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before but this time we’re looking at The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These new books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller, about the dimensions of a paperback book. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for the digital editions, that’s no issue at all.

Marvel is often termed “the House that Jack Built” and King Kirby’s contributions are undeniable and inescapable in the creation of a new kind of comic book storytelling. However, there was another unique visionary toiling at Atlas-Comics-as-was, one whose creativity and philosophy seemed diametrically opposed to the bludgeoning power, vast imaginative scope and clean, gleaming futurism that resulted from Kirby’s ever-expanding search for the external and infinite.

Steve Ditko was quiet and unassuming, diffident to the point of invisibility, but his work was both subtle and striking: innovative and meticulously polished. Always questing for affirming detail, he ever explored the man within. He saw heroism and humour and ultimate evil all contained within the frail but noble confines of humanity. His drawing could be oddly disquieting… and, when he wanted, decidedly creepy.

Crafting extremely well-received monster and mystery tales for and with Stan Lee, Ditko had been rewarded with his own title. Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy featured a subtler brand of yarn than Rampaging Aliens and Furry Underpants Monsters: an ilk which, though individually entertaining, had been slowly losing traction in the world of comics ever since National/DC had successfully reintroduced costumed heroes.

Lee & Kirby had responded with The Fantastic Four and so-ahead-of-its-time Incredible Hulk, but there was no indication of the renaissance ahead when officially just-cancelled Amazing Fantasy featured a brand new and rather eerie adventure character…

This compelling compilation re-presents the rise of the wallcrawler as first seen in Amazing Spider-Man #11-19 and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (spanning cover-dates April – December 1964) and is lettered throughout by unsung superstars Sam Rosen & Art Simek, allowing newcomers and veteran readers to comprehensively relive some of the greatest moments in sequential narrative.

The parable of Peter Parker began when a smart but alienated high schooler was bitten by a radioactive spider on a science trip. Discovering he’d developed arachnid abilities – which he augmented with his own ingenuity and engineering genius – Peter did what any lonely, geeky nerd would when given such a gift… he tried to cash in for girls, fame and money.

Creating a costume to hide his identity in case he made a fool of himself, Parker became a minor celebrity – and a vain, self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief fled past him, he didn’t lift a finger to stop the thug, and days later returns discovered that his Uncle Ben has been murdered by the same criminal…

Crazy for vengeance, Parker stalked and captured the assailant who made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known. Since his social irresponsibility led to the death of the man who raised him, the boy swore to always use his powers to help others…

It wasn’t a new story, but the setting was familiar to every kid reading it and the artwork was downright spooky. no gleaming high-tech world of moon-rockets, mammoth monsters and flying cars here… this stuff could happen to anyone…

Amazing Fantasy #15 came out the same month as Tales to Astonish #35 – the first to feature the Astonishing Ant-Man in costume, but it was the last issue of Ditko’s Amazing playground. However, the tragic last-ditch tale struck a chord with the public and by year’s end a new comic book superstar launched in his own title, with Ditko eager to show what he could do with his first returning character since the demise of Charlton’s Captain Atom…

Holding on to the “Amazing” prefix to jog reader’ memories, the Amazing Spider-Man #1 hit newsstands in December sporting a March 1963 cover-date and two complete stories.

Sans frills and extras, the ongoing saga resumes here with Amazing Spider-Man #11. Ditko’s preference for tales of gangersterism drove the stories and his plot for ‘Turning Point’ involves the reappearance of a major supervillain and a growing dependence on soap opera drama, but his solitary, driven hero was always a loner, never far from the streets and small-scale-crime…

In the aftermath of the webspinner crushing a prison riot single handed and defeating the Big Man and The Enforcers, longer plot-strands were introduced as Peter’s potential girlfriend Betty Brant mysteriously vanishes.

Resolved to find her, Parker discovers she’s somehow involved with the multi-armed menace and the Philadelphia mob and goes after her, clashing again with the lethally deranged scientist whilst seeking to expose a long-hidden secret which had haunted Brant for years. It all ended in a spectacularly climactic fight scene on a ship that has still never been beaten for action-choreography…

The wonderment actually intensifies with ‘Unmasked by Dr. Octopus!’, detailing a dark, tragedy-filled tale of extortion and excoriating tension that stretches from Philadelphia to the Bronx Zoo: cannily tempering trenchant melodrama with spectacular clashes in unusual and exotic locations, before culminating in a truly staggering super-powered duel as only the masterful Ditko could orchestrate it.

A new super-foe premiered in Amazing Spider-Man #13 with ‘The Menace of Mysterio!’ as a seemingly eldritch bounty-hunter hired by Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson to capture Spider-Man eventually lets slip his own dark criminal agenda, whilst ASM #14 delivers an absolute milestone in Marvel History when a hidden criminal mastermind manipulates a Hollywood studio into making a movie about the wall-crawler.

Even with guest-star opponents The Enforcers and The Incredible Hulk (his last true guest shot before moving into his new residency in Tales to Astonish), ‘The Grotesque Adventure of the Green Goblin’ is most notable for introducing Spider-Man’s most perfidious and flamboyant enemy.

Jungle superman and thrill-junkie ‘Kraven the Hunter!’ makes Spider-Man his intended prey at the behest of embittered Spidey-foe The Chameleon in #15, and – after ignominiously failing to trap his target in the wilds of Central Park – promptly reappears in the first Amazing Spider-Man Annual…

A timeless landmark and still magnificently thrilling Fights ‘n’ Tights tussle, the ‘Sinister Six!’ begins after a team of villains comprising Electro, Kraven, Mysterio, The Sandman, Vulture and Doctor Octopus abduct Aunt May and Betty. Briefly deprived of his powers – lost to a guilt-fuelled panic attack – Peter is forced to confront them without nothing but courage & determination.

A staggeringly enthralling combat clash, with Spider-Man systematically taking down each enemy in a death-defying duels, this influential tale featured cameos (or, more honestly, product placement segments) by every other extant hero of the budding Marvel universe: everyone from The Avengers to The X-Men…

Also included from that colossal comic book are special feature pages on ‘The Secrets of Spider-Man!’; comedic short ‘How Stan Lee and Steve Ditko Create Spider-Man’ and a gallery of pin-up pages starring ‘Spider-Man’s Most Famous Foes!’ (namely the Burglar, Chameleon, Vulture, Terrible Tinkerer, Dr. Octopus, Sandman, Doctor Doom, The Lizard, Living Brain, Electro, The Enforcers, Mysterio, Green Goblin and Kraven the Hunter).

There are also pin-ups of Betty and Jonah, Peer Parker’s House and classmates plus a heroic guest stars page…

Amazing Spider-Man #16 extended that circle of friends and foes as the webslinger battles the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime: consequently meeting – and inevitably battling – a fellow loner hero in a dazzling and delightful ‘Duel with Daredevil’.

We conclude this outing with an ambitious 3-part saga that began in Amazing Spider-Man #17, wherein the rapidly-maturing hero touches emotional bottom before rising to triumphal victory over all manner of enemies. It begins with ‘The Return of the Green Goblin!’ as the wallcrawler endures renewed print assaults from the Daily Bugle and its obsessed publisher J. Jonah Jameson, just as the enigmatic Green Goblin commences a war of nerves and attrition, using the Enforcers, Sandman and an army of bargain basement thugs to publicly humiliate the Amazing Arachnid and make him look like a fool in front of rival frenemy Johnny Storm – The Human Torch.

To exacerbate matters, Peter’s beloved Aunt May’s health takes a drastic downward turn…

In ‘The End of Spider-Man!’ pressure continues to mount and the troubled champion quits, concentrating exclusively on finding money to pay for his aunt’s treatment and leaving the Torch to handle the Goblin’s crime rampage…

It all explosively concludes in ‘Spidey Strikes Back!’ – featuring a turbulent team-up with the Torch – as a powerful pep talk from May galvanises the disgruntled teen terror and sets him back on his fated path: to the everlasting regret of the Goblin, his gangsters, the Enforcers and Sandman… and Jameson…

This extended tale proved fans were ready for every kind of narrative experiment (single issue or even two stories per issue were still the norm in 1964) and Stan & Steve were more than happy to try anything…

I claimed no extras here, but I lied. Closing the book are some lovely art treats: an unedited view of Ditko’s original cover for ASM #11, the original splash page art for #12 plus page 12and the closing page of #18; every one reason enough to buy this book…

These immortal epics are something no serous fan can be without, and will make an ideal gift for any curious newcomer or nostalgic aficionado.

Happy Unbirthday Spidey and many, many more please…
© 2021 MARVEL.