Category: Avengers

By Jim McCann, David López & Alvaro López (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3855-6

The Marvel publishing event Secret Invasion revoked a number of hasty decisions made by writers and editors in the day-to-day, hand-to-mouth hurly-burly of periodical publication, among them a couple of “deaths”. The Skrulls, shape-shifting aliens, had been infiltrating all corners of the Marvel Universe for years, even abducting and replacing certain heroes. Thus when Bobbi Morse-Barton, Mockingbird, ex-super-spy, West Coast Avenger and wife of Hawkeye was killed, it wasn’t her…

Freed and returned to Earth Mockingbird is having trouble readjusting. The world is a far darker place, and terrorists have overtaken super-villains as the greatest threat, Hawkeye is now the enigmatic warrior Ronin – and wants to pick up where they left off. When Bobbi “died” the couple were going through a divorce, but he has since convinced himself that that was the Skrull impostor playing mind-games…

This is a rare thing for a Marvel graphic novel; a love story/Romcom with genuine sentiment and quite a few laughs riding shotgun on the traditional moody adventure the company generally specialises in. Collecting pertinent portions of Dark Reign: New Nation and the miniseries New Avengers: The Reunion #1-4, the saga opens with ‘Supicion’ as Clint Barton violently forces himself back into Mockingbird’s life and realises that his one-and-only is still carrying a secret trauma from her time as a Skrull prisoner. She wants nothing to do with him and has her own cure for what’s ailing her…

‘The Lady Vanishes’ finds the persistent Ace Archer making a pest of himself until she lets him join her new endeavour. Not prepared to rejoin the Avengers Mockingbird has returned to her old profession and working with a group of other returned Skrull captives has created her own spy network. The World has gone to hell in a hand-basket and if the superheroes can’t fix it her World Counterterrorism Agency will – by whatever means necessary.

Against her better judgement Bobbi allows her once-hubby to come along on a mission and ‘Double Indemnity’ finds them matching wits with the terrifying Monica Rappaccini, new leader of evil think-tank Advanced Idea Mechanics and the world’s most ruthlessly ambitious poisons specialist…

How the odd couple reconnect, save the world and come to terms with the horrors Bobbi experienced on Skrullworld makes for a rollicking, complications-free action-romp that is bright, breezy and just the tonic for romantic fans of modern lovers.

Saving civilisation, punching each other out and gradually redefining the term “True Love” this snappy little package is everything Mr. & Mrs. Smith should have been and writer Jim McCann and artists David López & Alvaro López have my fervent support for a sequel any time they’re in the mood…

© 2009, 2010 Marvel Publishing, Inc, a subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Brian Michael Bendis, Michael Gaydos, David Mack, Jim Cheung, Billy Tan & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2947-9

The Skrulls are shape-shifting aliens who’ve bedevilled Earth since Fantastic Four #2, and they have long been a pernicious cornerstone of the Marvel Universe. After decades of use and misuse the insidious invaders were made the stars of a colossal braided mega-crossover event beginning in April 2008 and running through all the company’s titles until Christmas.

The premise of Secret Invasion is simple: the would-be alien conquerors have only just survived a devastating catastrophe which destroyed much of their empire; subsequently leading to a mass religious conversion. They are now utterly resolved and dedicated to make Earth their new homeworld. To this end they have gradually replaced a number of key Earth denizens – most notably superheroes and other metahumans. When the plot is discovered no defender of the Earth truly knows who is on their side…

Moreover the Skrulls have also unravelled the secrets of Earth magic and genetic superpowers, creating amped-up counterparts to Earth’s mightiest. They are now primed and able to destroy the world’s heroic champions in head to head confrontations.

Rather than give to much away let me just say that if you like this sort of thing you’ll love it, and a detailed familiarity is not completely vital to your understanding. However, for a complete experience, you will need to see the other 22 “Secret Invasion” volumes that accompany this on, although you could get by with only the key collection Secret Invasion – which contains all eight issues of the core miniseries, a one-shot spin-off “Who Do You Trust?” plus an illustrated textbook “Skrulls” which claims to provide a listing and biography for every shape-shifter yet encountered in the Marvel Universe (but if they left any who could tell?).

Collecting issues #38-42 of New Avengers, the saga contained in the book under review here is only the first part of the team’s response to the Invasion, focussing on individual character pieces to propel the narrative rather than vast battles. There is a second Avengers volume, so naturally this one ends on another thrice-accursed cliffhanger…

Scripted throughout by Brian Michael Bendis, the first chapter is illustrated by Michael Gaydos and deals with the aftermath of the superhero Civil War, as Luke Cage and his wife Jessica find themselves on different sides as she leaves a team of outlaw Avengers for the stability of the State-sanctioned alternative, whilst the second chapter (art by David Mack) sees that illegal team – Wolverine, Ronin, Iron Fist, Spider-Man and martial artist Maya – encounter the alien first strike when they narrowly escape death from a multi-powered doppelganger of Daredevil.

The scene then switches to the recent past and the devastated Skrull homeworld, detailing the rise of the new religious faction and the opening days of the Invasion (stunningly pictured by Jim Cheung & John Dell) before segueing to the Savage Land (illustrated by Billy Tan) and a confrontation between Earth’s costumed defenders and a Skrull ship full of what appears to be old friends – some of whom have been or dead for years. Are they escaped humans – or another batch of the new undetectable super-Skrulls?

That particular confrontation resolves itself in the aforementioned Secret Invasion – that’s why I said it was key – but this chronicle closes with another informative reminiscence drawn by Cheung & Dell as the new Skrull Queen recalls how she took lead strategic role in the campaign by replacing Spider-Woman in the Government-Approved Avengers.

As the book closes she readies her team for action, preparing to betray and destroy them all…

You will also definitely benefit by checking out the collections Secret Invasion: the Infiltration, Secret War (2004), Avengers Disassembled, and Annihilation volumes 1-3, as well as the rather pivotal New Avengers: Illuminati graphic novel.

Despite that copious homework list I’ve provided this book is still is solid action-adventure read, with plenty of human drama to balance the paranoia and power-plays. Reading it might be confusing and will be expensive, but for dedicated Marvelites and keen followers of Fights ‘n’ Tights action it is pure guilty pleasure.

© 2010 Marvel Publishing, Inc, a subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Mark Millar, Carlos Pacheco & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-442-3

The Marvel Ultimates project began in 2000 with a thoroughly modernizing refit of key characters and concepts to bring them into line with contemporary “ki-dults” – perceived to be a potentially separate buying public to we baby-boomers and our declining descendents, who seemed content to stick with the various efforts that devolved from the fantastic originating talents of Kirby, Ditko and Lee. Eventually this streamlined new universe became as crowded and continuity-constricted as its predecessor and in 2008 the cleansing publishing event “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which apparently (this is comics, after all) killed three dozen odd heroes and villains and millions of lesser mortals.

Although a good seller (in contemporary terms, at least) the saga was largely trashed by the fans who bought it, and the ongoing new “Ultimatum Comics” line is quietly back-pedalling on its declared intentions…

The key and era-ending event was a colossal tsunami that drowned the superhero-heavy island of Manhattan and this post-tidal wave collection (assembling issues #1-6 of Ultimate Comics Avengers: The Next Generation) picks up the story of the survivors as well as the new world readjusting to their altered state. In this dangerous new world global order has yet to be fully re-established and, just like after World War II, Princes and Powers are constantly jostling for position.

Before the Deluge Nick Fury ran an American Black Ops team of super-humans called the Avengers, but he was eventually toppled from his position for sundry rule-bending liberties – and being caught doing them. Now, in the aftermath of the disaster he’s back:  attempting to put another team together – and get his old job back.

Captain America was one of America’s first super-soldiers – a key factor in the Allies beating Hitler and one of the deadliest men alive. Just as in the Marvel Universe Proper, he survived into our era. Whilst fighting terrorists in the sky over Chicago he is soundly thrashed by a man with no face: an incredible assassin with a red skull, who easily overwhelms him and throws him to what would have been certain death, if not for the intervention of master marksman Hawkeye.

All through his second career secrets have been kept from Captain America by his superiors. He had no idea that when he was “lost in action” his girlfriend was already pregnant with his son and that whilst he was dormant the American government confiscated the child to train as another human weapon. On awakening in a new era Cap could not be told how warped and malevolent that boy became or how, on reaching maturity, the lad had murdered everyone who had trained him, embarking on a decades-wide path of horrendous nihilistic slaughter in all the world’s most troubled hotspots: Vietnam, Cambodia, Uganda, Chechnya, Dallas…

Now Cap knows the truth and goes rogue just as the Red Skull allies with the intellectual terrorist sect Advanced Idea Mechanics to build a Cosmic Cube, capable of restructuring reality itself. Only Fury and his new team of Avengers have any chance to stop them, but his motley crew of heroes all have their own plans…

As well as Hawkeye, this next generation includes James Rhodes: an angry soldier wearing devastating War Machine battle armour; Gregory Stark, Iron Man’s smarter, utterly immoral older brother, Nerd Hulk, a cloned gamma-monster with all the original’s power but implanted with Banner’s brain and milksop character; ruthless super-spy Black Widow and paroled assassin Red Wasp, who has history of her own with the Skull…

As the catastrophe-clock ticks down, Fury inexplicably sets his dogs to capture Captain America rather than tackle the Skull, but in this deep, dark, and superbly compelling thriller there are games within games and everybody is working to their own agendas…

Once removed from the market hype and frantic, relentless immediacy of the sales arena there’s a far better chance to honestly assess these tales on merit alone, and given such an opportunity you’d be foolish not to take a good hard look at this spectacular, beautifully cynical and engrossing thriller from Mark Millar and Carlos Pacheco, ably assisted by inkers Dexter Vimes, Danny Miki, Thomas Palmer, Allen Martiniez, Victor Olazaba & Crime Lab Studios.

This is a breathtaking, sinisterly effective yarn that could only be told outside the Marvel Universe, but it’s also one that should solidly resonate with older fans and especially casual readers who love the darker side of superheroes.

™ and © 2010 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. A British edition released by Panini UK Ltd.

By Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel, Michael Lark & others (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-452-2

The things that superhero comic-books do best are Spectacle and Cosmic Retribution: the cathartic comeuppance of someone who truly deserves it. So this collection, reprinting the Siege: Cabal one-shot and the four-issue Siege miniseries it led to (selected portions of the vast 2010 publishing event that partially re-set and restored the traditional “Stan & Jack” Marvel Universe) is an effective and welcome hint of a new dawn in the recently bleak and unfriendly world of Captain America and his costumed cohorts…

Norman Osborn, one-time Green Goblin, has through various machinations become America’s Security Czar: the “top-cop” in sole charge of the beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom. Under his meteoric rise the Superhuman Registration Act led to the Civil War, Captain America was arrested, murdered and resurrected (see Captain America Reborn), and numerous horrific assaults on mankind occurred: including the Secret Invasion and the “Dark Reign” which led up to the graphic novel under review here

As well as commanding all the covert and military resources of the USA, Osborn now has his own suit of Iron Man armour and as Iron Patriot leads a hand-picked team of ersatz Avengers. The country should by rights be beyond any possibility of threat or harm. However as the events of Siege: The Cabal (Bendis, Lark & Stefano Gaudiano) graphically depict, Osborn is playing a deadly double game. The Cabal is a Star Chamber of super-villains comprising Osborn, Asgardian God Loki, gang-boss The Hood, mutant telepath Emma Frost, Taskmaster, Sub-Mariner and Doctor Doom.

But cracks are beginning to show, both in the criminal conspiracy and Osborn himself. When Iron Patriot promises to conquer Asgard for Loki, Doom secedes from the group, prompting a disastrous battle between the Masters of Evil…

Asgard is currently displaced and floating scant metres above the soil of Oklahoma. Using his position as Chief of Homeland Security Osborn manufactures an “Asgardian incident” and launches an all-out invasion on the Gleaming City, overruling the new American President to do so.

And so begins Siege (by Bendis, Coipel & Mark Morales) a knock-down, drag-out fight pitting all the long-cultivated metahuman resources of Osborn – paramilitary strike force H.A.M.ME.R., the Dark Avengers and the villainous penal battalion of The Initiative – against the sorely pressed and time-lost Asgardians…

However Osborn has gone too far and the President fires him.

So What?

Well, now the scattered and fugitive “real” superheroes such as Captain America, Nick Fury, the original Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Vision and all the other underground and Secret Avengers are safe to act, but they had better hurry because Thor’s hard pressed people cannot stand against Osborn’s god-killing ultimate weapon…

Despite feeling a little rushed in places, this is a grand, old-fashioned Fights ‘n’ Tights cataclysmic clash of good guys and bad guys, magnificently illustrated and astonishingly compelling. After years of dark and dangerous anti-heroics it’s a splendid palate-cleanser for what Marvel promises to be a new Heroic Age…
© 2010 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. A British edition released by Panini UK Ltd.

By Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Len Wein, Sal Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1547-2

Last of the big star conglomerate super-groups, the Defenders would eventually count amongst its membership almost every hero – and a few villains – in the Marvel Universe. No surprise there then as initially they were composed of the company’s bad-boys: misunderstood, outcast and often actually dangerous to know.

For Marvel, the outsider super-group must have seemed a conceptual inevitability – once they’d finally published it. Apart from Spider-Man and Daredevil all their heroes regularly teamed up in various mob-handed assemblages, and in the wake of the Defenders’ success even more super-teams comprised of pre-existing characters were mustered – such as the Champions, Invaders, New Warriors and so on but never with so many Very Big Guns…

The genesis of the team in fact derived from their status as publicly distrusted “villains”, but before all that later inventive approbation this cheap and cheerful black and white volume (collecting Dr. Strange #183, Sub-Mariner #22, 33-35, Incredible Hulk #126, Marvel Feature #1-3, Avengers #115-118 and Defenders #1-14) re-presents three linked tales that would impact on later issues of the title. Confused yet? You will be…

For kids – of any and all ages – there is a simply primal fascination with brute strength and feeling dangerous, which surely goes some way towards explaining the perennial interest in angry tough guys who break stuff as best exemplified by Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner and the Incredible Hulk. When you add the mystery and magic of Doctor Strange the recipe for thrills, spills and chills becomes simply irresistible…

The first tale in this volume comes from Dr. Strange #183 (November 1969). In ‘They Walk by Night!’ Roy Thomas, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer introduced a deadly threat in the Undying Ones, an elder race of demons hungry to reconquer the Earth, but as the series unexpectedly ended with that issue the story went nowhere until the February 1970 Sub-Mariner (#22) ‘The Monarch and the Mystic!’ brought the Prince of Atlantis into the mix, as Thomas, Marie Severin & Johnny Craig told a sterling tale of sacrifice in which the Master of the Mystic Arts seemingly died holding the gates of Hell shut with the Undying Ones pent behind them.

The extended saga concluded on an upbeat note with The Incredible Hulk #126 (April 1970) with ‘…Where Stalks the Night-Crawler!’ by Thomas and Herb Trimpe wherein a New England cult dispatched helpless Bruce Banner to the nether realms in an attempt to undo Strange’s sacrifice. Luckily cultist Barbara Norris had last minute second thoughts and her own dire fate freed the mystic, seemingly ending the threat of the Undying Ones forever.

At the end of that issue Strange retired, forsaking magic, although he was back before too long as the fates – and changing reading tastes – called him back to duty. Meanwhile Sub-Mariner had become an early advocate of the ecology movement, and in issues #34-35 of his own title (February and March 1971) he took the next step in the evolution of the Defenders when he recruited Hulk and Silver Surfer to help him destroy an American Nuclear Weather-Control station.

In ‘Titans Three’ and the concluding ‘Confrontation’ (by Thomas, Sal Buscema & Jim Mooney) the always misunderstood trio battled a despotic dictator’s forces, the US Army and the Mighty Avengers to prevent the malfunctioning station from accidentally vaporising half the planet…

With that debacle smoothed over life resumed its usual frenetic pace for the Hulk and Namor until giant sized try-out comic Marvel Feature #1 (December 1971) presented ‘The Day of the Defenders!’ as a mysteriously returned Dr. Strange recruited the Avenging Son and the Jade Giant to help him stop the deathbed doom of crazed super-mind Yandroth.

Determined to not go gently into the dark the Scientist Supreme had built an Omegatron weapon programmed to obliterate the Earth as soon as Yandroth’s heart stopped beating and only the brute strength of the misunderstood misanthropes could possibly stop it…

Naturally the fiend hadn’t told the whole truth but the day was saved – or at least postponed – in a canny classic from Thomas, Ross Andru and Bill Everett. That comic also revealed how Strange regained his mojo in ‘The Return’ by Thomas, Don Heck and Frank Giacoia: a heady ten-page thriller which proved that not all good things come in large packages.

Clearly destined for great things the Defenders returned in Marvel Feature #2 (March 1972) with Sal Buscema replacing Everett as inker for a Halloween treat ‘Nightmare on Bald Mountain!’ Capturing his arch-foe Dr. Strange, extra-dimensional dark lord Dormammu invaded our realm through a portal in Vermont only to be beaten back by the mage’s surly sometimes comrades, whilst in #3 (June 1972) Thomas, Andru and Everett reunited to revive an old Lee/Kirby “furry underpants” monster in ‘A Titan Walks Among Us!’

Xemnu the Titan was an alien super-telepath who wanted to repopulate his desolate homeworld by stealing America’s children until thrashed by the Defenders, but older fans recognised him as the cover-hogging star of Journey into Mystery #62 (November 1960) where he acted as a road-test for a later Marvel star in a short tale entitled ‘I Was a Slave of the Living Hulk!‘

An assured hit now The Defenders leapt swiftly into their own title (cover-dated August 1972), to begin a bold and offbeat run of reluctant adventures scripted by super-team wunderkind Steve Englehart. As a group of eclectic associates occasionally called together to save the world (albeit on a miraculously monotonous monthly basis) they were billed as a “non-team” – whatever that is – but that didn’t affect the quality of their super-heroic shenanigans.

With Sal Buscema as regular penciller an epic adventure ensued with ‘I Slay by the Stars!’ (inked by Giacoia) as sorcerer Necrodamus attempted to sacrifice Namor and free The Undying Ones, a mission that led to conflict with an old ally in ‘The Secret of the Silver Surfer!’ (inked by John Verpoorten) and the concluding, Jim Mooney inked ‘Four Against the Gods!’ as the Defenders took the war to the dimensional dungeon of the Undying Ones and rescued the long imprisoned and now totally insane Barbara Norris.

Clearly a fan of large casts and extended epics Englehart added a fighting female to the non-team with ‘The New Defender!’ (inks by new regular Frank McLaughlin) as the Asgardians Enchantress and Executioner embroiled the anti-heroes in their long-running love-spat, bringing the Black Knight briefly into the mix, and turning Barbara into the latest incarnation of Feminist Fury (these were far less enlightened days) The Valkyrie.

Issue #5 began a long running plot thread that would have major repercussions for the Marvel Universe. The denouement of the previous tale had left the Black Knight an ensorcelled, immobile stone statue, and as Strange and Co. searched for a cure the long defused Omegatron resumed its countdown to global annihilation in ‘World Without End?’

The Surfer “rejoined” in #6’s ‘The Dreams of Death!’ as new lightweight magic menace Cyrus Black attacked, and, after a spiffy pin-up, issue #7 saw  Len Wein co-script ‘War Below the Waves!’ (inked by Frank Bolle) as tempestuous ex-Avenger Hawkeye climbed aboard to help defeat the undersea threat of Attuma and the soviet renegade Red Ghost; a bombastic battle-tale concluded in ‘…If Atlantis Should Fall!’

Since issue #4 Englehart had been putting players in place for a hugely ambitious cross-over experiment: one that would turn the comics industry on its head, and in a little prologue taken from the end of Avengers #115 he finally set the ball rolling here. Drawn by Bob Brown and Mike Esposito, ‘Alliance Most Foul!’ saw Dormammu and the Asgardian god of Evil Loki unite to search for an ultimate weapon that would give them final victory against their foes. They would trick the Defenders into securing the six component parts by “revealing” that the reconstructed Evil Eye could restore the petrified Black Knight, a plan that began at the end of Defenders #8…

The first chapter in ‘The Avengers/Defenders Clash’ was ‘Deception!’ as a message from the spirit of the Black Knight was intercepted by the twin gods of evil, leading directly to ‘Betrayal!’ wherein the Avengers, hunting for their missing comrade, “discover” that their oldest enemies Hulk and Sub-Mariner may have turned the Black Knight to stone. This and the third chapter ‘Silver Surfer Vs. the Vision and the Scarlet Witch’ comprise the contents of Avengers #116, illustrated by Brown & Esposito, wherein the rival teams split up: one to gather the scattered sections of the Eye and the other to stop them at all costs…

Defenders #9 (Buscema & McLaughlin) began with the tense recap ‘Divide …and Conquer’ before ‘The Invincible Iron Man Vs. Hawkeye the Archer’ and ‘Dr. Strange Vs. the Black Panther and Mantis’ shed more suspicion and doubt on the mystical villain’s subtle master-plan. Avengers #117 ‘Holocaust’, ‘Swordsman Vs. the Valkyrie’ and the turning point ‘Captain America Vs. Sub-Mariner’ by Brown and Esposito, led to the penultimate clash in Defenders #10 (Buscema & Bolle) ‘Breakthrough! The Incredible Hulk Vs. Thor’ and the inevitable joining together of the warring camps in ‘United We Stand!’, but sadly too late as Dormammu seized the reconstructed Evil Eye using its power to merge his monstrous realm with ours.

Avengers #118 provided the cathartic climactic conclusion in ‘To the Death’ (Brown, Esposito & Giacoia) as all the heroes of the Marvel Universe battled the demonic invasion whilst the Avengers and Defenders plunged deep into the Dark Dimension itself to end the threat of the evil gods forever (or at least for the moment…).

With the overwhelming cosmic threat over the victorious Defenders attempted to use the Eye to cure their stony comrade only to find that his spirit had found a new home in the 12^th century. In #11’s ‘A Dark and Stormy Knight’ (inked by Frank Bolle), the group battled black magic during the Crusades, failed to retrieve the Knight and went their separate ways – as did departing scripter Englehart.

With issue #12 Len Wein assumed the writer’s role and Sal Buscema & Jack Abel illustrated the return of the mind-bending Xemnu in ‘The Titan Strikes Back!’ as the pared down cast of Strange, Valkyrie and the Hulk began a run of slightly more traditional fights ‘n’ tights capers.

The first of these and the last storyline in this volume was a Saves-the-World struggle against the villainous Squadron Sinister that began with ‘For Sale: One Planet… Slightly Used!’ (with an early inking job from Klaus Janson) and concluded in the Dan Green embellished ‘And Who Shall Inherit the Earth?’ as the Batman-analogue Nighthawk joined the Defenders to defeat his murderous ex-team-mates and the aquatic alien marauder Nebulon, the Celestial Man.

With the next volume the Defenders would become one of the best and weirdest superhero comics in the business, but to get there you really need to observe this unruly, uncomfortable selection of misfit heroes in their salad days here. So the fact that their widespread and far-reaching origins are still so eminently entertaining is both a relief and delight.

Go on, Enjoy, Pilgrim…
© 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Gerry Conway, George Freeman & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0- 87135-643-0

By 1990 Marvel’s ambitious line of all-new graphic novels was beginning to falter, and some less-than-stellar tales were squeaking into the line-up. Moreover, the company was increasingly resorting to in-continuity stories with established – and company copyrighted – characters rather than creator-owned properties and original concepts.

Not that that necessarily meant poor product, as this intriguing superhero spy thriller proves. The Coldest War is set in the last days of the US/Soviet face-off with what looks to be a pasted-on epilogue added as an afterthought, but as the entire affair was clearly scripted as a miniseries – most probably for the fortnightly anthology Marvel Comics Presents – an afterword set after the fall of the Berlin Wall doesn’t jar too much and must have lent an air of imminent urgency to the mix.

The Black Widow started life as a svelte and sultry honey-trap Russian agent during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days. She fell for an assortment of Yankee superheroes – including Hawkeye and Daredevil – and finally defected; becoming an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and occasional leader of the Avengers. Throughout her career she has been considered competent, deadly, efficient and cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours.

Gerry Conway provides a typically twisty, double-dealing tale set in the dog-days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s “Perestroika” (“openness”) government when ambitious KGB upstarts undertake a plan to subvert Natasha (nee Natalia) Romanova and return her to Soviet control using the bait of her husband Alexei Shostokoff – whom she has believed dead for years. Naturally nothing is as it seems, nobody can be trusted and only the last spy standing can be called the winner…

Low key and high-tech go hand in hand in this sort of tale, and although there’s much reference to earlier Marvel classics this tale can be easily enjoyed by the casual reader and art fan.

And what art! George Freeman is a supreme stylist, whose drawing work – although infrequent – is always top rate. Starting out on the seminal Captain Canuck, he has excelled on Jack of Hearts, Green Lantern, Avengers, Batman (Annual #11, with Alan Moore), Wasteland, Elric, Nexus and The X-Files (for which he won the Eisner Award for colouring). He co-founded the design/colouring studio Digital Chameleon in 1991.

Here, inked by Ernie Colon, Mark Farmer, Mike Harris, Val Mayerik and Joe Rubinstein with colours from Lovern Kindzierski he produced a subtle and sophisticated blend of costumed chic and espionage glamour that easily elevated this tale to a “must-have” item.
© 1990 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Otto Binder (Bantam Books)
ISBN: F3569

One thing you could never accuse Stan Lee of was reticence, especially in promoting his burgeoning line of superstars. In the 1960s most adults, including the people who worked there, considered comic-books a ghetto. Some disguised their identities whilst others were “just there until they caught a break.” Stan and Jack had another idea – change the perception.

Whilst Jack passionately pursued his imagination waiting for the quality of the work to be noticed, Stan sought every opportunity to break down the ghetto walls: college lecture tours, animated TV shows (of frankly dubious quality at the start, but always improving), and of course getting their product onto “real” bookshelves in real book shops.

In the 1960s on the back of the “Batmania” craze, many comics publishers repackaged their old comics stories in cheap and cheerful paperbacks, but to my knowledge only monolithic DC and brash upstart Marvel went to the next level and commissioned all-new prose novels starring their costumed superstars. The publisher Bantam Books had been specialising in superhero fiction since 1964 when they began reprinting the 1930s pulp novels of Doc Savage, so they must have seemed the ideal partner in this frankly risky enterprise.

The first of these novels was an unlikely choice, considering the swelling appeal of both Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four, but I imagine that the colourful team of adventurers selected was one that Lee was happy to let another writer work on, and perhaps it was even a way of defending their trademark in all arenas (after all the British TV series The Avengers was screening in America to great success (necessitating Gold Key’s comic book tie-in being titled John Steed and Emma Peel).

Whatever the reason, The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker launched with little fanfare (I don’t even recall an ad in the comic-books themselves, at a time when company policy dictated that changing one’s socks got a full write-up on the “Marvel Bullpen Bulletins Page”) and it didn’t garner a lot of praise…

Which is actually a real shame, as it’s a pretty good yarn extremely well told by pulp and comics veteran Otto Binder, whose Adam Link prose stories inspired Isaac Asimov’s ‘I, Robot’ tales whilst his Captain Marvel, Superman, Captain America and uncounted other comics scripts inspired just about everybody.

The heroic team, consisting of Goliath, the Wasp, Hawkeye, Iron Man and Captain America (but not Quicksilver or the Scarlet Witch who both look so good on that spiffy painted cover) are called upon to battle Karzz, a monstrous alien mastermind from the future who has travelled back in time to eradicate the entire Earth, in a fast-paced thriller that barrels along in fine old style, and doesn’t suffer at all from the lack of pulse-pounding pictures.

This is, of course, only really a treat for the most devout fan, either of the Marvel Universe or the vastly underrated work of one of the true pioneers of two genres. At least it’s not that hard to track down if you’re intrigued and hungry for something a little bit old-school and a little bit different…
© 1967 Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved.