Category: Graphic Novels

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Amazing Spider-Man: The Gauntlet volume 1 – Electro and Sandman


By Mark Waid, Dan Slott, Fred Van Lente, Joe Kelly, Adam Kubert, Barry Kitson, Paul Azaceta, JM Ken Niimura, Javier Pulido & Stefano Gaudiano (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3871-6

Nerdy school kid Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and, whilst seeking to cash-in on the astonishing abilities he’d developed, suffered an irreconcilable personal tragedy.

His beloved guardian Uncle Ben was murdered, and the traumatised boy determined henceforward to always use his powers to help those in need. For years the brilliant young champion suffered privation and travail in his domestic situation, whilst his heroic alter ego endured public condemnation and mistrust as he valiantly battled all manner of threat and foe…

During a particularly hellish period a multitude of disasters seemed to ride hard on his heels and a veritable army of old enemies simultaneously resurfaced to attack him (an overlapping series of stories comprising and defined as “The Gauntlet”), before Parker’s recent tidal wave of woes was revealed to be the culmination of a sinister, slow-building scheme by the surviving family of one of his most implacable foes – and one who had long been despatched to his final reward.

Spanning January and February 2010, the first skirmishes in that campaign of terror are collected here, having originated in Dark Reign: The List – Amazing Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man #612-616 and as pertinent extracts from Web of Spider-Man #2, as old foes returned to trouble a hero already reeling from the fact that his most despised and crazy enemy has just been made the second most powerful man in America…

Officially psychotic Norman Osborn has bedevilled both Spider-Man and Peter for years. His abused son Harry was the misunderstood hero’s greatest friend but the stress and strain, over time, turned the Osborn heir into a drug addict, a costumed carbon copy of his old man and, latterly, a certifiable basket case.

Callously oblivious, Norman – through various machinations – became America’s Security Czar: the “top-cop” in sole charge of the beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom, especially in regard to the USA’s costumed community.

Capitalising on the Skrull Secret Invasion he rose to power on a tidal wave of public popularity but soon instituted an oppressive Dark Reign, driving the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes underground and forming his own team of deadly Dark Avengers, all in the grossly debased name of “national security”…

Not content with commanding all the covert and military resources of the USA, Osborn personally led the team, wearing a formidable suit of “requisitioned” Iron Man armour and calling himself the Iron Patriot, even whilst covertly conspiring with a coalition of major super-villains to divvy up the world between them.

From Dark Reign: The List – Amazing Spider-Man, ‘The Last Name’ by Dan Slott, Adam Kubert & Mark Morales finds the whiny media liberals of digital news-source Front Line (populated and staffed by all the ethical reporters from the former Daily Bugle) searching for ways to expose Osborn’s true nature and plans.

When Joe Robertson reminds Parker that no narcissist egomaniac ever destroyed anything he was in, the Astounding Arachnid invades the high tech Oscorp Tower and makes off with incriminating recordings of the former Green Goblin torturing prisoners and testing weapons on human subjects.

With his new position imperilled, Osborn dons the Iron Patriot Armour and gives chase, consequently devastating much of Midtown as he exultantly thrashes his greatest foe. However he’s too late to stop Parker from uploading the films to the world wide web and his brutal behaviour in front of the gathered witnesses is his first big mistake. Now the public are talking, wondering and starting to remember what he used to be…

‘Gauntlet Origins: Electro’ (written by Fred Van Lente and illustrated by Barry Kitson from Web of Spider-Man #2) then discloses just how blue collar electrical lineman Max Dillon came to grips with the power he developed after being hit by lightning. Stealing components from Stark Industries, being disdained and rejected by Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants all fostered his determination to be a big shot one day and make everybody pay…

Amazing Spider-Man #612-614 cumulatively bring ‘Power to the People’ (Mark Waid & Paul Azaceta) as, against a backdrop of rolling power outages and an economic downturn, Dillon makes his move after hiring the Mad Thinker to stabilise and augment his famously erratic electrical abilities.

Unfortunately that calls for more cash than he’s got and soon Electro is looking to make more – and quickly…

Rather than robbery, however, he cunningly opts for a very public crusade against skeevy and controversial publisher Dexter Bennett who has just been deemed too big to fail. Awarded a huge government bailout to keep his trashy newspaper The DB (nee Daily Bugle) open, the billionaire is clearly living large even as decent, hard working Americans are suffering the biggest recession in history…

The campaign leads to riots in the streets and Electro makes his move, offering Bennett the chance to buy off the electrical agitator with a quick cash injection.

…And that’s when Spider-Man tracks down the Thinker’s lair and spoils the perfect plan…

With his scheme in ruins, all that’s left for Dillon is revenge and destruction and death…

As the dust finally settles after a spectacular clash which demolishes a New York landmark, Dillon is visited in jail by an old ally who offers another chance for payback…

A backup in Amazing Spider-Man #612, ‘The Other Woman’ by Joe Kelly & JM Ken Niimura then cheekily examines the odd relationship of Spider-Man and amoral adventuress Black Cat, contrasting their commitment-free flings to Peter’s ongoing problems with old flames like Mary Jane Watson and intriguing new co-worker Norah Winters before ‘Keemia’s Castle’ (Amazing Spider-Man #615-616 by Van Lente & Javier Pulido) sees the start of another baffling mystery…

Carlie Cooper is a CI for the police and when robbery and murder evidence in her custody goes missing she turns to science whiz Peter Parker to clear her name. The trail leads the unlikely sleuth to the South Bronx and a missing girl named Keemia Alvarado.

Keemia’s mother was something of a prison groupie and her relationship with metamorphic felon Flint Marko – the Sandman – apparently resulted in a child. After fact – and suspicion – checking with journalist Betty Brant, Spider-Man puts a few together and heads out to closed-for-the-winter Governors Island where he finds his reformed former foe and the missing girl.

Marko denies all knowledge of the crimes. All he wants is to spend time with his little princess and he uses his new power to create autonomous sandy doppelgangers to emphatically press home his point.

It’s only after defeating the outnumbered arachnid that the stunned Sandman realises that some of his duplicates are more autonomous – and bloodthirstily evil – than others…

Fast, furious, and easily combining frantic action with moving character vignettes and ferociously addictive soap opera melodrama, these tales are offbeat even by Spider-Man’s standards – which is no bad thing – but sometimes suffer from a surfeit of unaddressed backstory… which rather is.

Nonetheless, the stories here are clever, compelling and beautifully illustrated throughout, so art lovers and established fans have plenty to enjoy. Moreover the explosive, if occasionally confusing, Fights ‘n’ Tights rollercoaster is graced with an expansive gallery of covers-&-variants by Adam Kubert, Jelena Kevic Djurdjevic, Marko Djurdjevic, Paolo Rivera, Frank Cho, Adi Granov, Ed McGuiness and Joe Quinones

All in all, this is that oddest and most disappointing of beasts: a great story but an unsatisfactory book…
© 2009, 2010, Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Gotham Central book 1: In the Line of Duty


By Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka & Michael Lark & Stephen Gaudiano (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1923-9 (HC)        : 978-1-4012-2037-2 (SC)

One of the great joys of long-lasting, legendary comics characters is their potential for innovation and reinterpretation. There always seems to be another facet or corner to develop. Such a case was Gotham Central, wherein modern television sensibilities cannily combined with the deadly drudgery of the long-suffering boys in blue of the world’s most famous four-colour city.

Owing as much to shows such as Hill Street Blues, Homicide: Life on the Streets and Law & Order as it did to the baroque continuity of Batman, the series mixed gritty, authentic police action with a soft-underbelly peek at what the merely mortal guardians and peacekeepers had to put up with in a world of psychotic clowns, flying aliens and scumbag hairballs who just won’t stay dead.

This compilation – collecting Gotham Central #1-10 (February – October 2003, by writers Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka and sublimely illustrated by Michael Lark) – revisits those much-missed stories in either standard paperback or lavish hardcover format and starts off with an erudite and informative Introduction on ‘The Mean Streets of Gotham’ by celebrated crime author Lawrence Block.

Brubaker and Rucka co-wrote the eponymous two-part premier tale ‘In the Line of Duty’ wherein a desperate child-kidnap investigation by detectives Marcus Driver and Charlie Fields of ex-Commissioner Gordon‘s hand-picked Major Crimes Unit leads them all unawares to the temporary hideout of murderous superfreak Mr Freeze.

The cold killer horrifically destroys Charlie and sadistically leaves Driver injured but alive as an object lesson.

The GCPD have a strange relationship with the Dark Knight. They all know he’s out there, but the official line is that he’s an urban myth and the Administration refuses to acknowledge his existence. Thus a civilian is employed to turn on the bat-signal on the roof when crises occur and the public are told the eerie light is simply used to keep the cowardly, superstitious underworld cowed…

In such circumstances all real cops are loath to ask for The Bat’s help so Driver and his grieving, angry colleagues pull out all the stops to find and capture Freeze before the masked vigilante insultingly finishes their job for them.

However, as night falls and the frozen bodycount rises, Marcus deduces what Freeze is planning and has no choice but to ask new Police Commissioner Akins to suspend his embargo and call in the whacko expert before hundreds more die…

From an era when comicbook noir was enjoying a superb renaissance, this classic take on the theme of the hunt for a cop-killer is a masterpiece of edgy and fast-paced tension whilst simultaneously perfectly introducing a large cast of splendidly realised new and very individual players…

Brubaker scripts the second story solo as ‘Motive’ finds the again fit-for-duty Driver and his temporary partner Romy Chandler using solid police work to solve the outstanding kidnap case, all the while under the gun as arson villain The Firebug dances on the horizon burning down the city one building at a time.

Fourteen year old babysitter Bonnie Lewis vanished while walking home from her yuppie client’s house and a subsequent ransom demand later proved to be a fake. Now, after her body is found, Driver and Chandler carefully re-examine the facts and discover that almost everybody involved has been lying…

As they methodically sift evidence, alibis and possible motives, they begin to realise that even this tragically normal crime has its roots in both common greed and the gaudy madness of Gotham’s metahuman menaces…

The gripping procedural drama then segues back to the city’s aristocracy of maniacs as Greg Rucka scripts ‘Half a Life’ with focus switching to Renee Montoya: a solid cop with too many secrets.

After her former partner Harvey Bullock was fired with extreme prejudice, tongues started wagging, but now an old case threatens to destroy her career and end her life…

When arresting rapist Marty Lipari, he tried to stab her, and she subdued him. Now her morning is ruined when the skel sues her for ten million dollars in damages.

It only gets worse when she and partner Crispus Allen get a bogus case dumped on them by the corrupt, lazy meatheads in Robbery Division, but the capper is dinner with her traditional, devout Catholic parents who still want her to settle down and have kids…

Her life begins to truly unravel when a photo of her kissing another woman does the round of colleagues, friends and family. Not all her fellow cops are homophobic bigots: but just enough that’s she kept her life private for years. Now, apparently outed by Lipari’s hired gumshoe Brian Selker, she is targeted by Internal Affairs when first the PI and then Lipari himself are shot to death.

With her lover Darla threatened, her gun identified as the murder weapon and a huge amount of illicit drugs found in her apartment, Renee is soon on her way to jail – another bad egg just like Bullock.

Nobody in MCU thinks she’s guilty but the evidence is overwhelming, and the crisis comes when en route she’s busted out by masked men and taken to the hidden citadel of one of Batman’s most nightmarish nemeses…

Utterly alone, in the unfriendliest job in the world, in the nastiest town on Earth, Montoya has to deal alone with a crazed maniac who’s destroyed her life just so he can be with her forever.

As a Major Crimes Detective she’s seen how bad The Bat’s enemies can get, but this time she’s the target, not the hunter or witness, and it’s not just her life at stake…

This engrossing drama never steps outside of human bounds irrespective of the nature of evil in Gotham, and the original comic presentation (from issues #6-10) won Eisner, Harvey, Eagle and Prism awards for Best Story in 2003.

Sadly not included in this volume are the two earlier tales from Renee’s past (Batman Chronicles #16 – Two Down, by Rucka & Jason Pearson & Cam Smith, and Detective Comics #747 – Happy Birthday Two You, by Rucka, William Rosado & Steve Mitchell) which explained that oblique connection to her obsessive suitor – although you can find then in the original 2005 trade paperback Gotham Central: Half a Life.

The appropriate quota of human drama, tension, stress and machismo all play well under Michael Lark’s deftly understated illustrations, adding a grimy patina of pseudo-reality to good old fashioned cops ‘n’ robbers stories, played out in what can only be described as the urban city of the damned.

The procedural cop thriller on the edge of hell is a stunning study in genre-crossing storytelling, and this edition includes a full cover gallery by Lark as well as a fulsome section of designs and character sketches in ‘Staffing the GCPD’.

Dark, suspenseful and so very addictive, this is a book no batfreak or crime buff can afford to miss.
© 2004, 2005, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Loki Agent of Asgard: Trust Me


By Al Ewing, Lee Garbett & Nolan Woodard (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-600-7

One of Marvel’s richest seams of pure imagination, the Nine Realms impacted by the mighty races of Asgard and its satellites have always offered stirring, expansive tales of a non-traditional nature to comicbook readers.

As iconic a character as his adoptive sibling Thor, God of Evil Loki has worked his vile, self-serving machinations for millennia and was rightly deemed one of the most diabolical villains in creation.

Things are different now.

What you need to know: after millennia of doctrinaire double-dealing and abusive micro-management All-Father Odin is gone, and the governance of his puissant kingdom, having been briefly misruled by his sons Thor and Balder, has been left to his wife Freyja and sister goddesses Idunn and Gaea who act in concert as a co-operative “All-Mother”.

The city they rule from now resides on Earth a few paltry feet above the ground of Broxton, Oklahoma and has been renamed Asgardia…

Moreover the eternally capricious and malign Loki has undergone some shocking changes too. Resurrected from death and hell by his eternally optimistic half-brother Thor, the trickster has recently endured life as a woman and been reborn again as an (ostensibly) innocent boy-child whilst his long-suffering and constantly betrayed family attempt one final gambit to reform the villain and raise a true and decent scion of Asgard.

Collecting Loki Agent of Asgard issues #1-5, published between April and August 2014 and captivatingly concocted by scripter Al Ewing, illustrator Lee Garbett and colour artist Nolan Woodard, this initial compilation traces the latest career path of the apparently reformed great trickster.

Now, after mooching around being generally benevolent and non-threatening as one of the Young Avengers, the former menace is approaching physical maturity and discovers that the All-Mother of Asgardia have a use for a smart young man who is still at heart the wily, devious God of Mischief – nor will they take nay for an answer…

Asgardians all understand the overwhelming, inescapable force and power generated by Stories, and the triumvirate have an intriguing proposition for Loki. In ‘Trust Me’, as payment for his performing certain tasks as a one-man Asgardian Secret Service, they will delete select portions of his appalling life history from every record in the Nine Realms, one insidious exploit per mission.

It’s a most tempting deal. For as long as that fearsome history remains it will always pull at him, dragging him back to what he once was, so the reincarnated godling is keen to diminish the temptations of his past, escape the heavy chains of reputation and prophecy and be his own man at last…

With the promise of becoming less potentially evil through each successive task, Loki sets out on his first case. Over the years there has been a slow, steady bleed of gods and artefacts from Asgard to the lesser realms and now the All-Mother wants those things back where they belong.

Thus the callow trickster invades Avengers Tower and battles Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, messing with their extensive database on him whilst extracting a horrific Asgardian monster secretly possessing noble Thor.

However, as always with the Trickster, things are not quite what they seem…

In ‘Loki and Lorelei, Sitting in a Tree’ he is despatched to retrieve the seductively wanton sorceress who has been preying on humans, gods and monsters for years and, during an unlikely night of Speed Dating, makes the charming acquaintance of Verity Willis, a mortal with the unfortunate gift of being able to see through any lie, subterfuge of illusion…

Lorelei’s trail leads to Monte Carlo and a monumental heist – which the Asgardian agent takes for his own – but he subsequently lets the witch go. The mischief-maker has a plan brewing and is putting together select crew. He might be working for the authorities now and trying to modify his behaviour, but he is still Loki…

Nobody is playing a straight game. In ‘Your Life is a Story I’ve Already Written’ the shocking identity of the vile spirit that possessed Thor is revealed. Despite being a prisoner of the All-Mother, the most wicked creature in the Nine Realms reveals thus how in ages past he deviously implicated the boy Odin in senseless murder and orchestrated the conditions whereby proto-god Sigurd the Ever-Glorious came to possess the unrelenting, unstoppable, truth-rending sword Gram.

As a result of many Machiavellian machinations, young Odin became Lord of all the Realms years before his time, Gram was safely locked away until Loki could claim it and Asgard grew to be mighty and all-conquering… but now the devil in his dungeon waits for the final pieces in his astoundingly long game to fall into place…

The saga returns to the present where ‘Lets You & Him Fight’ finds the long absent Sigurd attempting to reclaim the irresistible Gram from young Loki but subsequently press-ganged into the trickster’s secret service.

These diversions are also starting to gain the unwelcome attention of the All-Mother who have also tasked their Earthly Agent with bringing back in the millennially truant Sigurd.

To expedite matters they have cited the ferocious Exdesir as back-up, but a bunch of short-tempered Valkyries is the last thing Loki needs watching him at this fragile juncture.

…And that’s before arch tempter Mephisto involves himself in the scheme, seeking to gull a few unwary gods into signing infernal contracts of damnation by flaunting hidden truths like jewels…

All the crafty conniving results in a cosmic confrontation in Asgardia with ‘This Mission Will Self-Destruct in Five Seconds’ as Loki’s crew breach the mythical city-state in search of answers to the All-Mother’s increasingly off-kilter behaviour and the truth about the creature not so safely locked in the citadel’s deepest dungeon…

Sly, cool and witty, exceedingly engaging, fast and funny – like all the very best caper stories – this canny, time-bending chronicle succeeds in deftly delineating the reborn Loki as a sharp operator doing good deeds whilst never actually proving whether he’s really reformed or is still a subtle and beguiling Master of Evil…

This delicious Costumed Drama also offers digitally-diverting extra content for tech-savvy consumers courtesy of AR icon sections all accessible through a free digital code and the Marvel Comics app for iPhone®, iPad®, iPad Touch® & Android devices at Marvel’s Digital Comics Shop as well as a glorious covers-and-variants gallery by Jenny Frison, Frank Cho, Mike Del Mundo & Olivier Coipel.
™ and © 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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X-Factor volume 8: Overtime


By Peter David, Valentine De Landro, Andrew Hennessey, Pat Davidson & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3837-2

Since its debut in 1982, X-Factor has been a splendidly effective umbrella title for many uniquely off-kilter iterations of Marvel’s mutant phenomena. Undoubtedly the most impressive and enduring assemblage was created by writer Peter David in 2006; mixing starkly violent suspense with cool detective mystery, laugh-out-loud comedy and fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tights action – and even slyly addressing social issues in a regular riot of superbly adult Costumed Drama.

The premise saw Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man – veteran of a formerly government-sponsored (and controlled) team – appropriating the name for his own specialist metahuman private detective agency: X-Factor Investigations.

Setting up shop in the wake of “The Decimation”, which had reduced the world’s mutant population to a couple of hundred empowered individuals and millions of distressingly humanised (ex) Homo Superior, he and a perpetually fluctuating team set out to discover why and how it had happened…

What Happened Was: crossover event House of M saw reality overwritten when mutant Avenger Scarlet Witch had a mental breakdown, changing history and reality so that mutantkind out-competed base-line humans, driving “sapiens” to the brink of extinction.

It took every hero on Earth, a huge helping of luck and a strange little girl named Layla Miller to correct that situation, but in the aftermath, the abhorred inheritor species had been winnowed to less than 200 super-powered souls …

Madrox later expanded his brief to specialise in strange cases and metahuman mysteries, but spent an awful lot of unprofitable time dealing with the machinations of insidious menaces like the Karma Project and scheming immortal Damian Tryp…

This temporally-twisted tome collects X-Factor volume 3 #46-50 and X-Factor Special: Layla Miller (September 2009-December 2009), wrapping up a few long-running plot threads whilst answering some pertinent questions about the team’s most enigmatic member.

Madrox and Co. had relocated to scenic Detroit to avoid interference from old boss and Office of National Emergency bureaucrat Valerie Cooper but she and her Federal flunkies had pursued, and continued with attempts to put the team under government control.

Following the tragic loss of Madrox and TheresaRourke Cassidy‘s (AKA Siryn) baby, the multiple man went off the deep end and on a monolithic bender which might have ended in his suicide or murder, if not for somehow fully-grown Layla Miller who suddenly popped up to drag him into a furious future where humans and mutants were engaged in a vicious struggle for survival dubbed The Summers Rebellion.

The detective had been summoned by the formidable Ruby Summers and her elderly but still scary dad Cyclops to find out why key members of their mutant army kept winking out of existence, but for Madrox it just felt like being abused and exploited by a different bunch of supposed friends…

Abandoned in the present, Theresa took charge at X-Factor Investigations, assigning de-powered Julio Richter (AKA Rictor) and astoundingly attractive Longshot as bodyguards for frightened former-mutant Lenore Wilkinson who was having problems with a stalker.

However, as Guido “Strong Guy” Carosella, super-woman Monet St. Croix – AKA “M” – Armando “Darwin” Muñoz and Shatterstar are subsequently called in to help protect the perpetually endangered Lenore, a new menace surfaces.

Psychic assassin Cortex is capable of dominating and warping even the most determined minds and before long the teammates are battling each other to the death even as, eighty years up-time, the nature of physical existence is failing and the embattled mutants are forced to consult a big brain to save everything else before they can save their species.

With few choices available Layla takes Madrox and Ruby to aged, senile Victor Von Doom who already knows quite a lot about their recurring reality problems, whilst in the past crafty, craven Cortex overextends himself trying to simultaneously mentally manipulate Shatterstar and Monet into killing their comrades.

Despite his diminished condition Doom knows the cause of the disappearances and tantalises his visitors with possible solutions to the a time-crisis, even as elsewhere, Future America’s Presidential Special Advisor Dr. Anthony Falcone ponders the expense of sending Cortex back to eradicate the ancestors of current Summers Rebellion mutants.

Somehow that simple covert task has morphed into pre-emptively dealing with X-Factor and the inexplicably pivotal Madrox…

Falcone’s ill timed and ill-advised intervention distracts his technologically-augmented chronal killer just as he is completing the mission, giving Shatterstar an opportunity to shrug off Cortex’s mind-lock and save the day…

Scripted throughout by David and illustrated by Valentine De Landro & Pat Davidson, the adventure continues with ‘X-It Strategies’ as the President loses confidence in Falcone’s plan to end America’s Mutant problem and tries to remove his now-unnecessary stooge.

The anti-mutant fanatic has been long-prepared for such a move and activates a contingency plan, taking personal control of the nation’s vast army of Sentinels, whilst in The Now Cortex regains the advantage, using his psychic slave Monet to press his attack.

In the future Doom discloses how he built the device used to alter history and gave it to Falcone, also letting slip that he has had a decades-long relationship with Layla, but the revelation is quickly sidelined when a trio of Omeganoid Sentinels blast in…

Cortex/M’s assault founders in old Detroit when Siryn arrives, but the spirited resistance falters when Sentinels materialise and – as per their programming – attack all the mutants in front of them…

In the future Madrox is experiencing relief and horror in equal amounts. They have just been saved by Ruby’s boyfriend Trevor Fitzroy whose portal-power has sent the trio of murderous mechanoids who knows where. Until this moment the Multiple Man only knew the charmingly cocky teen as a malevolent and rapacious – adult – evil mutant vampire who tried to destroy the X-Men numerous times…

Whilst Falcone uses battalions of Sentinel to secure his own ascension, in the past three that he no longer controls are blasting every mutant in sight. Unable to complete his mission in the growing chaos, Cortex is jumped by the miraculously lucky Longshot and their battle gives Monet the chance to forever throw off his technoid infection and influence…

Enraged beyond endurance she smashes into the killer and discovers he’s Madrox in a hoodie…

With the fabric of time unravelling ‘The Cortex Equation’ reveals a few secrets as the old enemy behind so many of Jamie’s problems is shown to be the power behind Falcone even as demented old Doom has a surprising confrontation with Cyclops.

In the present Siryn and Monet are still battling the apparently unbeatable Cortex who is exposed as one of Jamie’s “dupes”.

Madrox’s duplicates are autonomous facsimiles of him. Often displaying one particular aspect of his emotional makeup they can live their own lives for years until he touches them and they are reabsorbed – whether he or they want to. Being self-aware, some abscond, never wanting to come back and “die”. This one went to the future and fell into the hand of a truly evil genius…

Beaten but seemingly unkillable, Cortex teleports away from the furious women and goes after original target Lenore, but is interrupted by Darwin and the late arriving Guido, Rictor and Shatterstar who have just experienced a most elucidating (and sophisticatedly hilarious) road trip which encompassed angry priests, love-sick suicides, and some frank revelations about gender – and species – orientations.

After such a journey, they’re in the mood for some palate-cleansing violence…

Eighty years from then in Philadelphia, Falcone’s Sentinel brigade is ravaging the population – mutant and otherwise. When the Summers’ Army counterattack they are greeted as heroes by humanity.

However, even decrepit and out of his mind Doom is still Doom, and he betrays the alliance, plucking Cortex back to the future, overriding his command systems and ordering him to “kill all the mutants”…

X-Factor #50 (with additional art by Craig Yeung) spectacularly wraps up everything as Falcone and his sinister sponsor track Cortex and despatch Sentinels to wipe out the despised Homo Superior. They might not have time, though, as Doom’s new puppet is wreaking havoc amongst the mutant warriors.

First to die is Fitzroy, and the situation worsens when Doom takes control of Cyclops too…

Cortex meanwhile is stalking the apparently ineffectual Layla, but she takes off when Jamie appears for a final confrontation with his rogue appendage…

Distraught Ruby pleads with Layla to use her real power, and after much deliberation – and to save the time line – she finally acquiesces.

Although everyone thinks she’s some kind of prescient or precog, Miller’s actual mutant power is to raise the dead. It doesn’t matter much when she reanimates cats or butterflies, since nobody really notices when they come back without soul or conscience, but when someone like Fitzroy is resurrected as a being of selfish evil all humanity might suffer…

At that moment the Sentinels arrive and terrifyingly merge into one colossal unit designed to carry out Falcone’s long-planned mutant extinction. With everybody dying Fitzroy fatally drains Cortex and uses the stolen energies to open a portal sending the amalgamated Armageddon-Sentinel to where it can do the most harm…

In the shell-shocked aftermath Madrox and Layla use Doom’s time machine to rejoin X-Factor in the present, sensibly leaving the future to fend for itself.

A little later she tracks down her younger self and reveals just how the enigmatic young lady learned how to “know stuff”, starting the cycle again, for the first time…

Although intricate, action-packed, beguiling, cathartic and immensely enjoyable, X-Factor: Overtime is utterly impenetrable on its own and if you read it (and you really should) make sure it’s in conjunction with its immediate predecessor X-Factor: Time and a Half.

This supremely entertaining Fights ‘n’ Tights delight also includes the chillingly effective X-Factor Special: Layla Miller, which covers the beginning of the Summers Rebellion in that turbulent tomorrow, where a mute girl named Layla escapes from a mutant “Containment Centre” to link up with fugitive Homo Superior and begin the toppling of an oppressive totalitarian American in the powerfully evocative ‘Stuff Happens’ by David, De Landro, Andrew Hennessy & Davidson.

Augmented by a covers-&-variants gallery by David Yardin, Nathan Fairbairn, Paolo Raimondi, Brian Reber and Boo Cook, this volume is complex, compelling, compulsive and supremely funny in a way most adult comics just aren’t. X-Factor is a splendid example of mature Costume Dramas for everyone who needs wit to underpin their superhero soap opera shenanigans.
© 2008, 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Batman: Monsters


By James Robinson, Warren Ellis, Alan Grant, John Watkiss, John McCrea, Quique Alcatena & various(DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2494-3

In 1989, when DC found the world had gone completely Bat-crazy for the second time in twenty-five years, they quickly supplemented the Gotham Guardian’s regular stable of comicbooks with a new title designed to redefine the early days and cases of a revamped and revitalised Caped Crusader.

Three years earlier the publisher had boldly begun to retcon their entire ponderous continuity via the landmark maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths; rejecting the concept of a vast multiverse and re-knitting time so that there had only ever been one Earth.

For new readers, this solitary DC world provided a perfect place to jump on at the start: a planet literally festooned with iconic heroes and villains draped in a clear and cogent backstory that was now fresh and newly unfolding.

Many of their greatest properties were graced with a reboot, all employing the tacit conceit that the characters had been around for years and the readership were simply tuning in on just another working day.

Batman’s popularity was at an intoxicating peak and, as DC was still in the throes of re-jigging the entire narrative continuity, his latest title presented multi-part epics rewriting established villains and classic stories: infilling the new history of the re-imagined, post-Crisis hero and his entourage. The added fillip was a fluid cast of premiere and up-and-coming creators each getting “their shot” at one of the most iconic figures of the industry

Most of the early story-arcs were collected as trade paperbacks, and helped jump-start the graphic novel sector of the comics industry, whilst the careful re-imagining of the hero’s early days gave fans a wholly modern insight into the highly malleable core-concept.

Later collections took a more selective approach, such as this one gathering Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #71-73, 83-83 and 89-90: mini-epics which could be comfortably grouped together under the theme of Monsters…

After two seemingly unconnected murders in Gotham, ‘Werewolf’ (by James Robinson & John Watkiss from B:LDK #71-73, May to July 1995) finds the Dark Detective prowling the streets of London…

The killings are completely dissimilar: one a cool, precise hit by a professional and the other a savage, brutal attack by something strong and probably inhuman. The victims are only linked by their relationship to the Wayne Foundation.

The assassinated Fitzroy was investigating money-laundering in the London office whilst mauled and mutilated Dr. Hugh Downs had, at the behest of great friend Alfred Pennyworth, recently taken up a position with the company in America.

The latter death is further complicated by an eyewitness who swears the attacker was a werewolf…

Linking Downs’ murder to two similar killings overseas, soon hero and valet are stalking foggy London streets and moody rooftops in search of answers. As the hitman who most likely killed Fitzroy also hails from the Seat of Empire, Batman wastes no time in rousting the local underworld in search of ruthless mercenary Captain Carruthers and discovers the ex-Foreign Legionnaire used to be called Le Loup – “the Wolf”…

Unlike Gotham where the unwelcome vigilante is barely tolerated by the police, in London Batman is eagerly welcomed by Inspector Colman Nash, who first meets the masked avenger at an abattoir where the grisly remains of the two Wayne Foundation executives Fitzroy had been investigating are found hanging on meathooks.

With his butchered former employees’ guilt apparently confirmed, the Dark Knight then focuses on the werewolf’s English kills. That trail leads to a confrontation with psychotic East End gang lord Tommy Twist whose even crazier brother Danny was the second victim of the lethal lycanthrope…

Danny was a loan shark who died after putting the squeeze on defaulting maverick inventor Charles Blake, who has since gone missing. Possibilities start to gel when Batman – in cunning disguise – interviews the widow of the first mauled corpse and discovers that her first husband was the odd duck and person of interest Charles Blake…

With the more outré case seemingly solved but for an arrest, Batman turns his attention to finding Curruthers but is soon distracted by New Age celebrity Raven Maguire who claims the Werewolf is a primal god-beast that she and her acolytes have a right and duty to worship…

Days pass and the two cases remain frustratingly stalled until Batman tracks Curruthers to Docklands. However, after a blistering battle the hero only manages to hold onto the killer’s blood-money as the ferociously competent soldier-of-fortune spectacularly escapes to wreak more mayhem and vengeance…

When Batman returns to Scotland Yard, Nash has a lead on two more prospective victims Blake has targeted, but as the Dark Knight rushes to Belgravia, in a wave of roiling fog the Werewolf jumps him…

Smart, moody and action-packed, this yarn is actually a savvy classical detective thriller, brimming with notable characters, intricate chains of clues, devious plot twists and beguiling red herrings which all lead inexorably to a surprise shock ending that will delight fans of the genre.

Moreover, as magnificently rendered in the eerie illustration style of artistic Renaissance Man John Watkiss, the tale unfolds with a quintessentially British tone and timbre…

A far more visceral and cynical shocker comes in the two-part ‘Infected’ by Warren Ellis & John McCrea (Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #83-83, from May and June 1996) which begins when a pair of biologically altered solders escape their (perhaps) rogue military doctors and begin slaughtering indigents and low level thugs in the dingy backstreets of Gotham.

The ghastly slaughter escalates when Chief Branden of Gotham SWAT takes over. A holdover from the city’s recent corrupt political regime, the barely rational gun-nut is as happy blasting away at the despised caped vigilante as at the clear and present danger…

For Batman, mere months into his obsessive war on crime, this first brush with rampant, unbridled super-nature goes badly wrong. When he tracks one of the beasts it shoots him with bone bullets manufactured from the harvested corpses of previous victims before escaping…

Despite his wounds the Dark Knight perseveres and doses the kill-crazy beast with a lethal nerve agent before retreating.

Back in the Batcave, as Alfred tends to his wounds, the battered champion’s formidable computer resources examine the bone bullet and uncover a doomsday project harking back to the Cold War paranoia of the 1970s which sought to create warriors who could fight on even after America had succumbed to atomic, bacterial and chemical Armageddon.

Now somebody has revived and completed the research and the results of this programmable cancer are loose in his city…

When word comes in that one of the creatures is dead, his first thought is that his weapon was responsible. However the truth soon comes out. The mutant killed itself, forcing Batman to consider that they too might be victims.

Further research then reveals a chilling codicil: the creatures are designed to work in pairs and if one dies the other immediately goes into reproductive mode. Somewhere in Gotham the other killer is already growing spore sacs. Soon they will explode, dispersing an airborne wave of instantly infectious transformative mutative contagion to reinforce the nightmare army…

Bleak, chilling and gut-wrenching, this ferociously manic countdown to catastrophe shows the Gotham Guardian at his most brutal and uncompromising…

This quirky compilation closes with a canny reworking of a silver age super-villain into a truly modern monster in Clay’ by Alan Grant & Quique Alcatena from B:LDK #89-90 (December 1996-January 1997).

Having been the Batman for less than a month, the neophyte crimefighter’s attempts to rescue a hostage girl from the goons of mobster Boss Xylas are brutally thwarted by a hulking mass of mud who casually tosses him aside before killing the captors and making off with the girl itself.

Although his body swiftly heals thanks to Alfred’s ministrations, Batman’s psyche and morale are crippled…

Elsewhere, Lisa is shocked to discover that the merciless mass of mud that saved her is actually her new boyfriend Matthew Hagen. Still besotted with him, the ingenuous lass fails to realise that he was also responsible for her plight, leaving her to carry the can when Xylas found him appropriating a haul of diamonds the gang had stolen.

In his desperate flight, ratbag Matt had stumbled into a submerged cave and a strange chemical pool which transformed him into this monstrous state. Horrified, Lisa swears to stand by him, determined to bring out the sweet, decent, honourable side the petty thug just doesn’t have…

In trying to calm the increasingly unstable “Clayface”, she accidentally seals her own fate by helping Hagen learn how to hone his powers and perfect the ability to mimic or duplicate anything he can visualise…

As Clayface goes on a robbing rampage, he discovers that there is a time-limit to his abilities, whilst under Wayne Manor the still-debilitated Dark Knight potters in his lab, creating an arsenal of weapons to fill his utility belt and augment his mere human prowess. He also begins devising tactics and strategies to make his crusade more efficient and all-consuming…

With the monster running wild in the streets and Xylas’ murderous goons hunting Hagen, eventually the psychologically-impaired Batman is compelled to leave his cave and return to action, but for all his preparation he is unable to handle Clayface… until he sees what the killer has done to Lisa.

In that ghastly moment the true agent of vengeance is born…

Oppressive, action-packed and deviously compelling, this frantic caper is a breathtaking Fights ‘n’ Tights fiesta for fans and casual readers alike, further redefining the Caped Crusader’s previously shiny, innocuous Gotham as a truly scary world of urban decay, corrupt authority, all-pervasive criminal violence and nightmarish insanity.

Taken in total this is another superb Batman extravaganza: dark, intense, cunning and superbly engaging. What more do you need to know?
© 1995, 1996, 1997, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Ultimate Fantastic Four volume 3: N-Zone


By Warren Ellis, Adam Kubert & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-904159-93-1

After Marvel’s financial problems and creative roadblock in the late 1990s, the company came back swinging. A critical new concept was the remodelling and modernising of their core characters for an older and more sophisticated “youth culture”.

The Ultimate imprint abandoned monumental long-grown continuity – which had always been Marvel’s greatest asset – to re-imagine major characters in their own self-sufficient universe, offering varying degrees of radical makeover to appeal to the contemporary 21st century audience and offer them a chance to get in on the ground floor.

Peter Parker became again a nerdy high-school geek, brilliant but bullied by his physical superiors, and mutants were a dangerous, oppressed ethic minority scaring the pants off the ordinary Americans they hid amongst. There were also fresh and fashionable, modernistic, scientifically feasible rationales for all those insane super-abilities manifesting everywhere…

The experiment began in 2000 with a post-modern take on Ultimate Spider-Man. Ultimate X-Men followed in 2001 and the Mighty Avengers were remodelled, becoming The Ultimates in 2002.

The stories, design and even tone of the heroes were reworked to cater to the apparently-different tastes of a new readership: (hopefully) new consumers unprepared or unwilling to deal with five decades (seven if you include Golden Age Timely tales retroactively co-opted into the mix) of interconnected story baggage.

The experiment prospered but quickly filled up with refashioned, morally ambiguous heroes and villains. Eventually even this darkly nihilistic new universe became as continuity-constricted as its ancestor.

In 2008, imprint-wide decluttering exercise “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which excised dozens of superhumans and millions of lesser mortals in a devastating tsunami which inundated Manhattan, courtesy of mutant menace Magneto.

Long before then, though, Marvel’s original keystone concept was given its Ultimate work out and this third tumultuous collection, gathering Ultimate Fantastic Four #17-12 (January to June 2005), relates how a subtly different, still clandestine Awesome Foursome explosively came to public attention in their brand new, yet chillingly familiar world.

The most significant change to Stan & Jack’s breakthrough concept was a rather telling one: all four heroes were far, far younger than their mainstream antecedents…

Whereas in the original, middle-aged maverick genius Reed Richards, doughty college buddy Ben Grimm, ineffectual girlfriend Sue Storm and her younger brother Johnny survived a privately-funded space-shot which foundered when cosmic rays penetrated their vessel’s inadequate shielding before mutating into a quartet into quirky freaks, here a child prodigy and lonely super-genius was increasingly despised by his abusive blue-collar dad.

Bullied at school and obsessed with other dimensions, Reed’s only friend was classmate and school sports star Ben, who had unaccountably appointed himself the wonder-nerd’s protector…

Reed’s life changed the day his High School science project – teleportation – caught the eye of a government talent scout from a high powered think tank. Soon the kid was ensconced in a federally funded New York facility for budding geniuses…

Run by Professor Franklin Storm, the Baxter Building was a wonderland of top-flight resources, intellectual challenges and guarded support, but the school was primarily an ideas factory and the 100 strange, bright kids were expected to produce results…

The Chief Administrator’s little boy Johnny was there mostly as a courtesy, but daughter Sue was a biology prodigy and one of the biggest young brains on Earth…

Reed’s teleportation researches were just a necessary preliminary to his greater goal: mastery of a strange sub-dimension – a place the Baxter scientists call the Negative Zone. With their aid the passing years were largely spent in trying to fully access it, but regular studies continued too, with quite a few burn-outs and casualties.

Some kids thrived on the aggressive hot-housing; especially creepy, arrogant, insular Victor Van Damme who, after a particularly galling incident with Reed, somehow managed to swallow his seething animosity to collaborate on cracking the dimension calculations…

At last 21-year-old Reed and still-fractious lab partner Victor were shipped out to Nevada for the first full test of the N-Zone teleport system. The Storm kids went along for the ride, but as army technicians counted down, Victor argued with Reed before secretly changing the still hotly debated and contested calculations…

At that moment backpacker Ben Grimm had wandered into camp to see his old sidekick after more than a decade apart, and snotty Johnny distracted Reed by disclosing that his sister Sue had the hots for the long-obsessed but crushingly shy wonderboy…

The test firing was a literal catastrophe. The site was devastated in a shattering release of energy with Reed regaining consciousness some distance away as an amorphous blob of eerily boneless flesh, mistaken by the soldiers for an extra-dimensional invader.

Ben came to in Mexico, a huge rocky monster, and Johnny eventually called in from a hospital bed in France. He kept catching on fire without ever burning himself…

Sue simply vanished without a trace…

She was eventually recovered from miles below New York City, gifted with invisibility and force field powers but captured by disgraced, long-missing Baxter boffin Arthur Molekevic: a literal Mole Man re-populating ancient, previously inhabited caverns with a selection of his own dish-grown monsters and homunculi…

The unsavoury savant had deduced that the quartet’s uncontrolled projection through N-Space – utterly unprotected from whatever transformative energies and unknown physical laws might apply there – had transformed them on some unfathomable fundamental level. Their incredible new gifts and appearances were the result…

When Mole Man attacked the surface world the foursome had chaotically united to defeat him – although their participation had been covered up by the army, as were all their subsequent activities.

This third 6-part saga – by Warren Ellis, Adam Kubert, and inkers John Dell, Scott Hanna, Mark Morales, Nelson and Larry Stucker plus digital colour wizard Dave Stewart – picks up the story after Reed and his companions met again their old classmate Victor…

Always seeking the most intimate secrets of their incredible transformations, Reed’s quest for a cure to their conditions temporarily stalled after his clash with “Dr. Doom”, but upon returning to the Baxter Building the young genius resumed researching and as this tale opens has not only deduced how Johnny’s flame powers actually work but also discovered something new about the enigmatic N-Zone…

Before long he has convinced Dr. Storm – and military liaison General Thaddeus Ross – to let him pilot a reconditioned space shuttle into the mystery realm…

Greed and the thought of potential military advantage eventually seduce the reluctant adults in charge and soon the mutated quartet are exploring a completely new kind of space in a dimension previously impossible to define.

As they progress, Reed and Sue deduce that the crimson otherspace might be a sub-universe in the process of dying. The sheer amazement of the revelation is quickly surpassed however when they pick up a signal that can only have been made by thinking beings…

Johnny doesn’t really care: for the first time since he got his powers, he’s feeling sick…

Their rendezvous with an immense creature leads to a meeting with a wide variety of life forms on a colossal, ramshackle space station, but Ben has a hit upon a worrying thought that has escaped the wonderstruck Reed. If your world was ending, wouldn’t you try to find another?

Soon the heroes are being feted by the bizarre ancient insectoid their translator tech describes as “Nihil”. The ruler of a ragtag world of survivors from a myriad races and species is happy to share knowledge, explaining the true nature of multiversal architecture and the perilous state of the N-Zone.

Unfortunately as Johnny’s condition worsens and the humans prepare to take him back to Earth for medical treatment, the arthropod alien shows his true colours, attempting to kill Ben and Reed, determined to make their fresh, healthy young universe his own…

Breaking free and making a desperate dash for home, the explorers inadvertently bring a legion of hungry monsters with them and Earth learns of its newest heroes when the team is forced to battle the ravening hungry horrors who so spectacularly crash into Las Vegas…

With their unlikely triumph captured by a thousand phones and cameras, the Fantastic Four are now the world’s latest super-sensations and no amount of military manoeuvring can change the fact…

To Be Continued…

Rocket-paced, razor sharp and blisteringly action-packed, this riotous romp is also awash with smart engaging teen-oriented humour for the era of the acceptable nerd and go-getting geek, delivering another sublimely enthralling alternate view of Marvel’s most important title that will impress open-minded old fans of the medium just as much as the newcomers they were ostensibly aiming for.
© 2004, 2005 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

 

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Essential Avengers volume 8


By Jim Shooter, George Pérez, David Michelinie, Tom DeFalco, Jim Starlin, John Byrne, Sal Buscema, Jim Mooney & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-6322-0

The Avengers always proved that putting all one’s star eggs in a single basket pays off big-time: even if the team’s Big Three – Iron Man, Captain America and Thor – are absent, it simply allows the lesser lights and continuity players to shine more brightly.

Although the founding stars were regularly featured due to the rotating, constantly churning, open door policy, human-scale narrative drivers featured the regulars without titles of their own whose eventful lives played out only within these stories and no others.

This electric eighth black and white compilation collects Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ extraordinary exploits from issues #164-184 of the monthly comicbook (spanning October 1977-June 1979), the contents of Avengers Annuals #7 and 8 plus the concluding half of an acclaimed crossover epic from Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2.

During this period Jim Shooter, having galvanised and steadied the company’s notional flagship, moved on, leaving David Michelinie to impress his own ideas and personality upon the team, even as Cosmic Doomsmith Jim Starlin recruited the team to inscribe an epic ending to his seminal interpretation of tragic antihero Adam Warlock…

Opening this titanic tome is a stunning 3-part saga by Shooter, John Byrne & Pablo Marcos which reinvented one of the team’s oldest adversaries.

It began in #164 wherein, after months of speculation and experimentation, the resurrected Wonder Man was finally discovered to have evolved into a creature of pure ionic energy. Elsewhere, aging Maggia Don Count Nefaria had recruited Whirlwind, Power Man (the original mercenary who had undergone the same transformative experiment as Wonder Man) and Living Laser to amass plunder for him, but the tactic was mere subterfuge.

After the thieves trashed a squad of Avengers, Nefaria used his flunkies’ bodies as template and power source to turn himself into a literal Superman and attack the already battered heroes in ‘To Fall by Treachery!’

The tension built in #165 as ‘Hammer of Vengeance’ saw the lethally out-powered team fall, only to be saved by elderly speedster The Whizzer who pointed out that, for all his incredible strength, Nefaria too was an old man with death inevitably dogging his heels.

Panicked and galvanised, the Overman went berserk, carving a swathe of destruction through the city whilst seeking a confrontation with Thunder God Thor and the secret of his immortality.

Before too long he had reason to regret his demands…

The surprise arrival of the Thunderer in ‘Day of the Godslayer!’ ended the madman’s dreams but also highlighted growing tensions within the victorious team…

This superb thriller is followed by‘The Final Threat’ (Jim Starlin & Joe Rubinstein) from Avengers Annual #7, which saw Captain Marvel and Moondragon return to Earth with vague anticipations of an impending cosmic catastrophe.

Their premonitions were confirmed when galactic wanderer Adam Warlock arrived with news that death-obsessed Thanos had amassed an alien armada and built a soul-gem powered weapon to snuff out the stars like candles…

Broaching interstellar space to stop the scheme, the united heroes forestalled the stellar invasion and prevented the Dark Titan from destroying the Sun – but only at the cost of Warlock’s life…

Then ‘Death Watch!’ (Starlin & Rubinstein from Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2) saw Peter Parker plagued by prophetic nightmares, which disclosed how Thanos had snatched victory from defeat and now held the Avengers captive whilst he again prepared to extinguish Sol.

With nowhere else to turn, the anguished, disbelieving Spider-Man headed for the Baxter Building, hoping to borrow a spacecraft, unaware that The Thing also had a history with the terrifying Titan.

Although utterly overmatched, the mismatched champions of Life subsequently upset Thanos’ plans enough so that the Avengers and the Universe’s true agent of retribution were able to end the Titan’s threat forever… or at least until next time…

Back in the monthly an epic of equal import was about to unfold. Shooter’s connection to the series, although episodic, was long-lived and produced some of that period’s greatest tales, none more so than the stellar – if deadline-plagued – saga which unravelled over the succeeding months: a sprawling tale of time-travel and universal conquest which began in Avengers #167-168 and, after a brief pause, resumed for #170 through 177.

In previous issues a difference of opinion between Captain America and Iron Man over leadership styles had begun to polarise the team and tensions started to show in #167 with ‘Tomorrow Dies Today!’ by Shooter, George Pérez & Marcos.

In the Gods-&-Monsters filled Marvel Universe there are entrenched and jealous Hierarchies of Power, so when a new player mysteriously materialises in the 20th Century the very Fabric of Reality is threatened…

It all kicked off when star-spanning 31st century superheroes Guardians of the Galaxy materialised in Earth orbit, hotly pursuing a cyborg despot named Korvac.

Inadvertently setting off planetary incursion alarms, their minor-moon sized ship was swiftly penetrated by an Avengers squad, where, after the customary introductory squabble, the future men – Charlie-27, Yondu, Martinex, Nikki, Vance Astro and enigmatic space God Starhawk – explained the purpose of their mission…

Captain America had fought beside them to liberate their home era from Badoon rule and Thor had faced the fugitive Korvac before so peace soon broke out, but even with the resources of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes the time travellers were unable to find their quarry…

Meanwhile on Earth a new and mysterious being named Michael is lurking in the background. At a fashion show staged by the Wasp he achieves a psychic communion with model Carina Walters and they both vanish…

Avengers #168 reveals ‘First Blood’ and stirs up more trouble as Federal liaison and hidebound martinet Henry Peter Gyrich begins making like bureaucratically hot for the maverick team. In Colorado meanwhile Hawkeye gets a shock as his travelling partner Two-Gun Kid vanishes before his eyes whilst in suburban Forest Hills Starhawk – in his female iteration of Aleta – approaches a quiet residence…

Michael/Korvac’s plan consists of subtly altering events as he gathers strength in secret preparation for a sneak attack on those aforementioned Cosmic Hierarchies. His entire plan revolves around not being noticed. When Starhawk confronts him the villain kills the intruder and instantly resurrects him without the ability to perceive Michael or any of his works…

The drama screeches to a halt in #169, which declared ‘If We Should Fail… The World Dies Tonight!’ The out of context potboiler – by Marv Wolfman, Sal Buscema & Dave Hunt – saw Cap, Iron Man and Black Panther travel the planet in search of doomsday bombs wired to the failing heart of a dying man before the major mayhem resumed in #170 with ‘…Though Hell Should Bar the Way!’ by Shooter, Pérez & Marcos.

As Sentinel of Liberty and Golden Avenger finally settle their differences, in Inhuman city Attilan ex-Avenger Quicksilver suddenly disappears even as dormant mechanoid Jocasta (designed by maniac AI Ultron to be his bride) goes on a rampage and escapes into New York City.

In stealthy pursuit and hoping her trail will lead to Ultron himself, the team stride into a trap ‘…Where Angels Fear to Tread’ but nevertheless triumph thanks to the hex powers of the Scarlet Witch, the assistance of pushy, no-nonsense new hero Ms. Marvel and Jocasta’s own rebellion against the metal monster who made her.

However at their moment of triumph the Avengers are stunned to see Cap and Jocasta wink out of existence…

The problems pile up in #172 as Watchdog-come-Gadfly Gyrich is roughly manhandled and captured by out-of-the-loop returnee Hawkeye and responds by rescinding the team’s Federal clearances.

Thus handicapped the heroes are unable to warn other inactive members of the increasing disappearances as a squad of heavy hitters rushes off to tackle marauding Atlantean maverick Tyrak the Treacherous who is bloodily enacting a ‘Holocaust in New York Harbor!’ (Shooter, Sal Buscema & Klaus Janson)…

Answers to the growing mystery are finally forthcoming in ‘Threshold of Oblivion!’, plotted by Shooter, with David Michelinie scripting for Sal Buscema & D(iverse) Hands to illustrate.

As the vanishings escalate the remaining Avengers (Thor, Wasp, Hawkeye and Iron Man), with the assistance of Vance Astro, finally track down their hidden foe and beam into a cloaked starship to liberate the ‘Captives of the Collector!’ (Shooter, Bill Mantlo, Dave Wenzel & Marcos)…

After a staggering struggle the heroes triumph and their old foe reveals the shocking truth: he is in fact an Elder of the Universe who foresaw cosmic doom millennia ago and sought to preserve special artefacts and creatures – such as the Avengers – from the slowly approaching apocalypse.

As he reveals that predicted end-time is here and that he has sent his own daughter Carina to infiltrate the Enemy’s stronghold, the cosmic Noah is obliterated in a devastating blast of energy. The damage however is done and the entrenched hierarchies of creation may well be alerted…

Issue #175 began the final countdown as ‘The End… and Beginning!’ (Shooter, Michelinie, Wenzel & Marcos) saw the amassed and liberated ranks of Avengers and Guardians follow the clues to Michael as the new god shared the incredible secret of his apotheosis with Carina, before ‘The Destiny Hunt!’ and ‘The Hope… and the Slaughter!’ (Shooter, Wenzel, Marcos & Ricardo Villamonte) saw the entire army of champions destroyed and resurrected as Michael easily overpowered all opposition but faltered for lack of one fundamental failing…

Spread through a series of lesser adventures the overarching epic ponderously and ominously unfolds before finally exploding into a devastating and tragic Battle Royale that is the epitome of superhero comics. This is pure escapist fantasy at its finest.

Despite being somewhat let down by the artwork when the magnificent George Perez gave way to less enthusiastic hands such as Sal Buscema, David Wenzel and Tom Morgan, and cursed by the inability to keep a regular inker (Pablo Marcos, Klaus Janson Ricardo Villamonte and Tom Morgan all pitched in), the sheer scope of the epic plot nevertheless carries this story through to its cataclysmic and fulfilling conclusion.

Even Shooter’s reluctant replacement by scripters Dave Michelinie and Bill Mantlo (as his editorial career advanced) couldn’t derail this juggernaut of adventure.

If you want to see what makes Superhero fiction work, and can keep track of nearly two dozen flamboyant characters, this is a fine example of how to make such an unwieldy proposition easily accessible to the new and returning reader.

After the death and triumphant resurrection of the heroes Avengers Annual #8 gets back to business with a spectacular Fights ‘n’ Tights clash in ‘Spectrums of Deceit!’ by Roger Slifer, Pérez, Marcos & Villamonte, wherein the sentient power-prism of arch villain Doctor Spectrum begins possessing Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, leading the team into another blockbusting battle against the Squadron Sinister and ethically ambivalent Femazon Thundra…

A complete change of pace came in Avengers #178. ‘The Martyr Perplex!’ by Steve Gerber, Carmine Infantino &Rudy Nebres saw Beast targeted by master brainwasher The Manipulator in a tense psycho-thriller teeming with shady crooks and government spooks, after which Tom DeFalco, Jim Mooney, Al Gordon & Mike Esposito concocted a 2-part yarn introducing tragic mutant Bloodhawk and an ambitious hitman in ‘Slowly Slays the Stinger!’

Whilst the Stinger cautiously executed his plan another squad of heroes return with Bloodhawk to his desolate island home of Maura for a ‘Berserkers’ Holiday’, just in time to battle an animated and agitated stone idol.

When they returned victorious Stinger was waiting and the assemblage lost its newest ally forever…

Avengers #181 introduced new regular team Michelinie & Byrne – augmented by inker Gene Day – as ‘On the Matter of Heroes!’ had Agent Gyrich lay down the law and winnow the army of heroes down to a federally acceptable seven.

As the Guardians of the Galaxy headed back to the future, Iron Man, Vision, Captain America, Scarlet Witch, Beast and Wasp had to placate Hawkeye after he was rejected in favour of new member The Falcon – parachuted in to conform to government quotas on affirmative action…

Almost immediately Gyrich’s plans were in ruins as a strange gipsy sorcerer attacked, claiming Wanda and Pietro were his long lost children. He stole their souls, trapping them in little wooden dolls, and the resultant clash in #182’s ‘Honor Thy Father’ (inked by Klaus Janson) only created more questions, as overwhelming evidence seemed to confirm Django Maximoff‘s story; compelling the Witch and Quicksilver to leave with him on a quest for answers…

This breathtaking collection concludes with a 2-part confrontation by Michelinie, Byrne, Janson & D. Hands from Avengers #183-184.

‘The Redoubtable Return of Crusher Creel!’ began as Ms. Marvel was cleared by Gyrich to replace Wanda whilst elsewhere in the Big Apple the formidable Absorbing Man decided to quit being thrashed by heroes and leave the country. Unfortunately his departure plans included kidnapping a young woman “for company” and led to a cataclysmic showdown with the heroes and Hawkeye (who was determined to win back his place on the team) leading to carnage, chaos and a ‘Death on the Hudson!’…

These truly epic yarns set the tone for the compulsive, calamitous Costumed Dramas for decades to come and can still boggle the mind and take the breath away, even here in the so slick and cool 21st century…

No lovers of superhero sagas can afford to ignore this superbly bombastic book, and fans who think themselves above Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy will also be pleasantly surprised…
© 1977, 1978, 1979, 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Showcase Presents Superman Family volume 4


By Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein, Jerry Siegel, Edmond Hamilton, Leo Dorfman, Curt Swan, Kurt Schaffenberger, Al Plastino & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3837-7

When the groundbreaking Man of Steel debuted in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) he was instantly the centre of attention, but even then the need for a solid supporting cast was apparent and cleverly catered for. Glamorous daredevil girl reporter Lois Lane premiered right beside Clark Kent and was a constant companion and foil from the outset.

Although unnamed, a plucky red-headed, be-freckled kid started working alongside Lois and Clark from issue #6 (November 1938) onwards.

His first name was disclosed in Superman #13 (November-December 1941) having already been revealed as Jimmy Olsen to radio listeners as when he had become a major player in The Adventures of Superman show from its debut on April 15th 1940. As somebody the same age as the target audience, on hand for the hero to explain stuff to (all for the listener’s benefit) he was the closest thing to a sidekick the Action Ace ever needed…

When the similarly titled television show launched in the autumn of 1952 it was again an overnight sensation and National Periodicals began cautiously expanding their revitalised franchise with new characters and titles.

First to get a promotion to solo-star status was the Daily Planet‘s impetuously capable if naïve “cub reporter”. His gloriously charming, light-hearted, semi-solo escapades began in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #1 (September-October 1954), the first spin-off star in the Caped Kryptonian’s ever-expanding entourage.

It took three years for the cautious Editors to tentatively extend the franchise again. In 1957, just as the Silver Age of Comics was getting underway, try-out title Showcase – which had already launched The Flash (#4) and Challengers of the Unknown (#6) -followed up with a pair of issues entitled Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane (#9-10) before swiftly awarding the “plucky News-hen” a series of her own. Technically it was her second, since for a brief while in the mid-1940s she had held a regular solo-spot in Superman.

In previous reviews I’ve banged on at length about the strange, patronising, parochial – and to at least some of us potentially offensive – portrayals of kids and most especially women during this period, and although at least fairer and more affirmative instances were beginning to appear, the warnings still bear repeating.

At that timeLois Lane was one of precious few titles with a female lead, and, in the context of today, one that gives many 21st century fans a few uncontrollable qualms of conscience. Within the confines of her series the valiant, capable working woman careered crazily from man-hungry, unscrupulous bitch through ditzy simpleton to indomitable and brilliant heroine – often all in the same issue. The comic was clearly intended to appeal to the family demographic that made I Love Lucy a national phenomenon, and many stories were played for laughs in that same patriarchal, parochial manner; a “gosh, aren’t women funny?” tone that appals me today – but not as much as the fact that I still love them to bits.

It helps that they’re mostly sublimely illustrated by the wonderfully whimsical Kurt Schaffenberger.

For the Superman family and cast the tone of the times dictated a highly strictured code of conduct and parameters: Daily Planet Editor Perry White was a stern, shouty elder statesman with a heart of gold, Cub Reporter Jimmy Olsen was a brave and impulsive unseasoned fool – with a heart of gold – and plucky News-hen Lois Lane was brash, nosy, impetuous and unscrupulous in her obsession to marry Superman although she too was – deep down – another possessor of an Auric aorta.

Yet somehow even with these mandates in place the talented writers and artists assigned to detail their wholesomely uncanny exploits managed to craft tales both beguiling and breathtakingly memorable and usually as funny as they were exciting.

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen wasn’t quite as contentious, but still far too often stories meant to amuse portrayed the bright, plucky kid in a variety of socially demeaning – if not downright cruel – situations and humiliating physical transformations. Even so the winning blend of slapstick adventure, action, fantasy and science fiction (in the gentle but insidiously charming manner scripter Otto Binder had perfected a decade previously at Fawcett Comics on the magnificent Captain Marvel) made the series one of the most popular of the era.

Again, originally most yarns were played for laughs in a father-knows-best manner and tone which can again appal me today, even though I still count them amongst some of my very favourite comics.

Confusing, ain’t it?

This fourth intriguingly intermingled, chronologically complete compendium collects the affable, all-ages tales from Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #17-26, (May 1960-July 1961) and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #45-53 (June 1960-June 1961): a period of infinite wackiness and outrageous absurdity, but one which also saw the inevitable dawning of a far more serious milieu for the Man of Tomorrow and his human family.

This particular black-&-white ethical conundrum commences with the Man of Steel’s perpetual lady-in-waiting as Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #17 (May 1960) introduced ‘The Girl that Almost Married Clark Kent’ – by Robert Bernstein & Schaffenberger – revealing how Lois covertly helped heiress Doris Drake win her reporter partner’s affections, unaware that the conniving rich girl had proof of the Caped Kryptonian’s secret identity…

‘Lana Lang, Superwoman’ (Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan & Stan Kaye) then saw jealousy run wild as Superman gave first one then the other girl in his life superpowers in a secret scheme to foil Brainiac – with no thought as to how either woman would feel once the crisis was over…

The issue ended with ‘How Lois Lane Got Her Job’ by Binder & Schaffenberger, which disclosed how, even before she had even met him, Superman was inadvertently helping the neophyte journalist score scoops…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #45, (June 1960 and illustrated throughout by Swan & John Forte) kicked off with ‘Tom Baker, Power Lad’ by Binder; a clever tale in which an apparently ordinary boy temporarily gained super powers – although the shocking truth involved then-top secret weapon Supergirl and the Bottle City of Kandor…

Meddling with resident crackpot genius Professor Phineas Potter‘s experimental time machine hurled Jimmy back to the Wild West where he became accidental killer ‘The Gunsmoke Kid’ (by a sadly uncredited scripter) whilst in ‘The Animal Master of Metropolis’ (by Bernstein) Jimmy became a local hero and target of crooked gamblers after he started playing with a magic wand that gave him absolute mastery of the world’s fauna.

From July 1960, Lois Lane #18 opened with ‘The Star Reporter of Metropolis’ (possibly Binder & definitely Schaffenberger) wherein a mousy protégé stole Lois’s thunder for the best possible reasons, whilst ‘The Sleeping Doom’ (Bernstein & Schaffenberger) offered a superb thriller as aliens invaded Earth by taking over people after they fell asleep. The valiant lass staved off slumber for days until Superman could return to send the invaders packing, after which ‘Lois Lane Weds Astounding Man’ by Binder & Al Plastino, found the flabbergasted journalist wooed by an alien wonder warrior with a very strange secret…

That same month in Jimmy Olsen #46 – another all-Swan & Forte art-extravaganza – Siegel’s ‘Jimmy Olsen, Orphan’ revealed how an accident gave the cub reporter amnesia and he ended up in the same institution where Linda Lee was hiding whilst learning how to be a Supergirl, after which ‘The Irresistible Jimmy Olsen’ (Bernstein) hilariously lampooned Hollywood as a succession of starlets tried to romance the baffled but willing lad.

Of course the eager actresses were all operating on the mistaken assumption that our boy was Tinseltown’s latest genius Movie Producer…

The issue then concluded with another outing for Jimmy’s occasional alter ego in ‘Elastic Lad’s Greatest Feats’ with scripter Binder perfectly blending drama and comedy to deliver a punishing moral to the ever-impulsive kid…

Lois Lane #19 (August 1960 and fully illustrated by Schaffenberger) opened with ‘The Day Lois Lane Forgot Superman’ (Bernstein) with devoted sister Lucy convincing her perennially heartbroken elder sibling to try hypnosis to get over her destructive obsession.

Of course once it worked, it gave Lois time to pester Clark Kent so much he had no time to save the world…

When an accident seemingly catapulted Lois into the past she quickly became enamoured of Samson, a hero with a secret identity and ‘The Superman of the Past’ in a quirky yarn by scripter Binder, after which Jerry Siegel debuted a new occasional series.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Clark (Superman) Kent!’ was the first tale of a poignant comedy feature depicting the laughter and tears that might result if Lois secretly married the Man of Steel. Although seemingly having achieved her heart’s desire, she is officially only married to dull, safe Clark and must keep her relationship with the Man of Tomorrow quiet. She can’t brag or show pride and has to swallow the rage she feels whenever another woman throws herself at the still eligible bachelor Superman…

For an artefact of an era uncomfortably dismissive of women, there’s actually a lot of genuine heart and understanding in this tale and a minimum of snide sniping about “silly, empty-headed girls”…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #47, (September 1960) found Jimmy in over his head as he impersonated an escaped convict and was trapped as gangland big shot Winky McCoy,‘The King of Crime’ in a cracking suspense tale by Bernstein, after which the impatiently under-age lad was transformed into a husky thirty-something by another Prof. Potter potion in ‘Jimmy Grows Up!’

Once Binder sagely proved that maturity isn’t everything, Siegelwrapped up the issue with a thrilling romp as the alien producers of horror movies starring Superman and Jimmy returned seeking sequels. Their robot cub reporter didn’t like the prospect of being junked at shooting’s end, however, and tried to replace the flesh and blood original in ‘The Monsters from Earth!’…

Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #20 (October 1960) opened with the whimsical ‘Superman’s Flight from Lois Lane’ (Siegel & Schaffenberger), wherein the Man of Tomorrow fled into his own past to see if a different life-path would have resulted in a civilian existence unencumbered by a nosy snooping female.

Disc Jockey Clark soon realised his inquisitive assistant Liza Landis made Miss Lane look positively disinterested and happily ended the experiment, after which ‘The Luckiest Girl in Metropolis’ (Bernstein & Plastino) saw Lois targeted by a Machiavellian mobster seeking to destroy her credibility as a witness before ‘Lois Lane’s Super-Daughter’ by Siegel & Schaffenberger returned to the Imaginary Mr. & Mrs. scenario where their attempts to adopt Linda (Supergirl) Lee led to heartbreak and disaster…

Over in Jimmy Olsen #48 that same month, anonymously scripted ‘The Story of Camp Superman!’ presented a heart-warming mystery as the cub worked as counsellor to a bunch of youngsters – one of whom knew entirely too much about Superman – before ‘The Disguises of Danger’ again saw undercover Jimmy use his acting abilities to get close to a cunning crook. ‘The Mystery of the Tiny Supermen’ (by Binder) then saw the diminutive Superman Emergency Squad from Kandor repeatedly harass Jimmy in a clandestine scheme to stop the lad accidentally exposing the Man of Steel’s civilian identity…

The all-Schaffenberger November 1960 Lois Lane (#21) featured a double-length epic by author unknown (perhaps Edmond Hamilton?) which saw the Anti-Superman Gang utilise explosive toys to endanger the news-hen in ‘The Lois Lane Doll’: an act which forced the Action Ace to hide her in his Fortress of Solitude.

When even that proved insufficient she found refuge – and unlikely romance – whilst ‘Trapped in Kandor!’ Siegel then scripted a classic comic yarn as sworn rivals gained incredible abilities from a magic lake and decided to duke it out like men in ‘The Battle Between Super-Lois and Super-Lana!’

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #49, December 1960 opened with ‘Jimmy’s Gorilla Identity!’ wherein the luckless lad met DC stalwart Congo Bill and got his personality trapped in the hunter’s occasional alter ego, the giant golden ape dubbed Congorilla, whilst Professor Potter was blamed for, but entirely innocent of, turning the cub reporter into ‘The Fat Boy of Metropolis!’ in a daft but clever crime caper and Siegel played with contemporary trends as Jimmy impersonated a rock ‘n’ roll star to impress Lucy Lane in ‘Alias, Chip O’Doole!’

Another all-Schaffenberger affair, Lois Lane #22 (January 1961), began with a Red Kryptonite experiment that afflicted the Man of Steel with a compulsion to repeatedly pop the question to an increasingly dubious and suspicious Lois on ‘The Day When Superman Proposed!’ (Binder & Schaffenberger), after which ‘Lois Lane’s X-Ray Vision!’ (Bernstein) saw a pair of irradiated sunglasses create a tidal wave of problems for the Metropolis Marvel, whilst in ‘Sweetheart of Robin Hood!’ another time-shift dream found Lois courted by a very familiar-seeming Defender of Truth, Justice and the Nottinghamshire Way…

Over in Jimmy Olsen #50, ‘The Lord of Olsen Castle’ by Siegel, Swan & Sheldon Moldoff saw Jimmy as the potential heir of a Swedish castle and title. All he had to do was accomplish a slew of fantastic feats and defeat an ogre, utterly unaware that Superman and a host of other Kryptonians were secretly pitching in…

‘The Weirdest Asteroid in Space’ by Binder, Swan & Moldoff offered a spectacular monster mystery before a Potter experiment transferred all the Man of Steel’s might into his teenage pal resulting in ‘The Super-Life of Jimmy Olsen!’ by an unknown author and artist Al Plastino.

Lois Lane#23 (February 1961) opened with Binder & Schaffenberger’s riotous romp ‘The 10 Feats of Elastic Lass!’ as the impetuous reporter borrowed some of Jimmy’s stretching serum to track down mad bomber The Wrecker, whilst ‘The Curse of Lena Thorul!’ (Siegel) exposed a bewitching beauty’s incredible connection to Lex Luthor before another Imaginary visit to a possible future found ‘The Wife of Superman!’ (Siegel again) worn to a frazzle by two super-toddlers and yearning for her old job at the Daily Planet…

Jimmy Olsen #51, March 1961 revealed ‘Jimmy Olsen’s 1000th Scoop!’ by Bernstein, Swan & Forte, with the prospective milestone repeatedly delayed by Superman for the best possible reasons, after which a sultry alien took a very unlikely shine to the lad. Sadly ‘The Girl with Green Hair’ (Binder, Swan & Forte), was the result of a scheme by a well-meaning third party to get Lucy to be nicer to Jimmy and it all went painfully, horribly wrong…

The issue ended with ‘The Dream Detective!’ (Swan & Stan Kaye) as the cub reporter inexplicably developed psychometric abilities and unravelled mysteries in his sleep, whilst in Lois Lane #24 (April 1961) anonymously scripted ‘The Super-Surprise!’ saw Lois undercover as a platinum blonde scuppering a deadly plot against the Man of Tomorrow, superbly illustrated by Schaffenberger, as was Bernstein’s ‘The Perfect Husband’ wherein a TV dating show led Lois into a doomed affair with a he-man hunk who was almost the spitting image of Clark Kent.

…Almost…

The issue ended on ‘Lois Lane… Traitor!’ by Bernstein & John Forte, with Lois in the frame for the murder of the King of Pahla until the incredible, unbelievable true culprit came forward…

Also available that April, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #52 featured ‘The Specter of the Haunted House’ by Leo Dorfman, Swan & Kaye wherein a gang of cunning thieves used supernatural sceptic Olsen as a patsy for a bold robbery scheme, whilst ‘The Perils of Jimmy Olsen!’ – illustrated by Swan & Forte – saw the laid-up cub reporter use a robot double to perform feats of escalating daring and stupidity before ‘Jimmy Olsen, Wolfman!’ (Siegel, Swan & Kaye) offered a welcome sequel to the original hit tale wherein Superman’s Pal was again afflicted by lycanthropy thanks to the pranks of other-dimensional imp Mr. Mxyzptlk…

In Lois Lane#25 (May 1961) the Imaginary series reached an impressively bittersweet high point in ‘Lois Lane and Superman, Newlyweds!’ (Siegel & Schaffenberger) as she convinced hubby to announce their relationship to the world and had to live with the shocking consequences…

The brilliant reporter side was then highlighted in Bernstein’s diabolical thriller ‘Lois Lane’s Darkest Secret!’ with the daring reporter risking her life to draw out and capture a mesmeric master criminal before ‘The Three Lives of Lois Lane!’ (possibly Dorfman with Forte illustrating) found the journalist surviving a car crash only to be subsumed into the personalities of dead historical figures Florence Nightingale, Betsy Ross and Queen Isabella of Spain whilst Superman could only stay near and try to limit the damage…

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #53, June 1961 opened with ‘The Boy in the Bottle!’ (Siegel, Swan & Kaye) as the cub suffered future shock whilst trapped in Kandor, after which sheer medical mischance resulted in the now-legendary saga of ‘The Giant Turtle Man!’ and an oddly casualty-free rampage (courtesy of Siegel, Swan & Forte) before ‘The Black Magician!’ (unknown writer, Swan & Forte) had Jimmy banished to the court of King Arthur by spiteful Mr. Mxyzptlk

The contents of Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane#26 (July 1961) closes this time-sensitive titanic tome, with three more Schaffenberger classics, beginning with Siegel’s ‘The Day Superman Married Lana Lang!’

In this imaginary tragedy the Action Ace finally made his decision and settled down with his childhood sweetheart but lived to regret it, whilst ‘Lois Lane’s Childhood!’ (Siegel) revealed how the lives of Kal-El on doomed Krypton and baby Lois on Earth were intertwined by fate and providence before Bernstein’s ‘The Mad Woman of Metropolis’ concludes the comics cavalcade on a stunning high as Lois foiled a diabolical plot by criminals to murder Clark and drive her insane.

As well as containing some of the most delightful episodes of the pre angst-drenched, cosmically catastrophic DC, these fun, thrilling, deeply peculiar and, yes, sometimes offensive tales perfectly capture the changing tone and tastes which reshaped comics from the smug, safe 1950s to the seditious, rebellious 1970s, all the while keeping to the prime directive of the industry – “keep them entertained and keep them wanting more”.

Despite all the well-intentioned quibbles from my high horse here in the 21st century, I think these stories still have a huge amount to offer funnybook fun-seekers and I strongly urge you to check them out for yourselves. You won’t be sorry…

© 1960, 1961, 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Platinum: The Definitive Guardians of the Galaxy


By Arnold Drake, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Bill Mantlo, Jim Valentino, Keith Giffen, Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Gene Colan, Mike Mignola, Timothy Green, Paul Pelletier & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-601-4

With another Marvel filmic franchise kicking off around the world, here’s a timely tie-in trade paperback collection designed to perfectly augment the cinematic exposure and cater to movie fans wanting to follow up with a comics experience.

Part of the always rewarding Marvel Platinum/Definitive Edition series, this treasury of tales reprints intriguing landmarks and key moments from Marvel Super Heroes #18, Marvel Preview #11, Rocket Raccoon #1-4, Guardians of the Galaxy volume 1, #1, Annihilation Conquest: Star-Lord #1-4 and Guardians of the Galaxy volume 1, spanning January 1969-July 2008, and hopefully answering any questions the silver screen story might throw up whilst providing an immense amount of spectacularly bombastic fighting fun.

One thing to recall at all times though is that there are two distinct and separate iterations of the team. The film concentrates on the second but there are inescapable connections between them so pay attention here…

Moreover, in addition to the sparkling Brady Webb Foreword, this compendium contains text features detailing the secret history and statistics of Drax, Gamora, Groot, Rocket Raccoon and Star-Lord, plus Mike Conroy’s scholarly trawl through comicbook history in ‘The True Origin of the Guardians of the Galaxy’.

Although heralded since its genesis in the early 1960s with making superheroes more realistic, The House of Ideas has also always maintained its close connection with outlandish and outrageous cosmic calamity (as best exemplified in their pre-superhero “monster-mag” days), and their pantheon of much-travelled space stalwarts maintain that delightful “Anything Goes” attitude in all of their many and varied iterations.

This titanic tome’s blistering battle-fest begins with ‘Guardians of the Galaxy: Earth Shall Overcome!’ first seen in combination new-concept try-out/Golden Age reprint vehicle Marvel Super Heroes #18 (cover-dated January 1969). The terse, gritty episode introduced a disparate band of freedom fighters battling to save Earth from occupation and humanity from extinction at the scaly hands of the sinister, reptilian Brotherhood of Badoon.

It all starts when Jovian militia-man Charlie-27 returns home from a six month tour of scout duty to find his entire colony subjugated by invading aliens. Fighting free, he jumps into a randomly programmed teleporter and emerges on Pluto, just in time to scotch the escape of crystaline scientist Martinex.

Both are examples of human genetic engineering: subspecies designed to populate and colonise Sol system’s outer planets but now potentially the last of their kinds. After helping the mineral man complete his mission of sabotage – blowing up potentially useful material before the Badoon can get their hands on it – the odd couple set the teleporter for Earth and jump…

Unfortunately the invaders have already taken the homeworld.

The Supreme Badoon Elite are there, busily mocking the oldest Earthman alive. Major Vance Astro had been the world’s first intersolar astronaut; solo flying in cold sleep to Alpha Centauri at a fraction of the speed of light.

When he got there 1000 years later, humanity was waiting for him, having cracked trans-luminal speeds a mere two centuries after he took off. Now he and Centauri aborigine Yondu were a comedy exhibit for the cruel reptilian conquerors who were eradicating both of their races…

The smug invaders were utterly overwhelmed when Astro broke free, utilising the psionic powers he had developed in hibernation before Yondu slaughtered them with the sound-controlled energy arrows he carried.

In their pell-mell flight the pair stumbled across the incoming Martinex and Charlie-27 and a new legend of valiant resistance was born…

The eccentric team, as originally envisioned by Arnold Drake, Gene Colan & Mike Esposito in 1968, were presented to an audience undergoing immense social change, with dissent in the air, riot in the streets and with the Vietnam War on their TV screens every night.

Perhaps the jingoistic militaristic overtones were off-putting or maybe the times were against the Guardians since costumed hero titles were entering a temporary downturn, but whatever the reason the feature was a rare “Miss” for Marvel and the futuristic freedom fighters were not seen again for years.

They floated in limbo until 1974 when Steve Gerber incorporated them into some of his assigned titles (Marvel Two-In-One and The Defenders), wherein assorted 20th century champions travelled a millennium into the future to ensure humanity’s survival. Rejuvenated by exposure the squad rededicated themselves to liberating star-scattered Mankind, and eventually gained a short-lived series in Marvel Presents (#3-12, February 1976-August 1977, but not represented here) before cancellation left them roaming the Marvel Universe as perennial guest-stars in such cosmically-tinged titles as Thor, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One and most significantly The Avengers.

In June 1990 they secured a relatively successful relaunch (#62 issues + annuals and spin-off miniseries) before cancellation again claimed them in July 1995.

However before we get there this volume highlights two seemingly unrelated characters who made their debuts elsewhere in the 20th century Marvel Universe.

Starlord (without the hyphen) premiered in black-&-white mature-reader magazine Marvel Preview # 4 in 1976, appearing thrice more – in #11, 14 and 15 – during the height of the Star Wars inspired Science Fiction explosion.

Years previously a warrior prince of an interstellar empire was shot down over Colorado and had a brief fling with solitary Earther Meredith Quill. Despite his desire to remain in idyllic isolation, duty called the starman back to the battle and he left, leaving behind an unborn son and a unique weapon…

A decade later, the troubled boy saw his mother assassinated by alien lizard men. Peter Jason Quill vengefully slew the creatures with Meredith’s shotgun, before his home was explosively destroyed by a flying saucer.

The orphan awoke in hospital, his only possession a “toy” ray-gun his mother had hidden from him his entire life. Years later his destiny found him, as the half-breed scion was elevated by the divinity dubbed the “Master of the Sun”, becoming StarLord. Rejecting both Earth and his missing father Peter chose freedom, the pursuit of justice and the expanse of the cosmos.

In his second outing (Marvel Preview #11, Summer 1977) Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Terry Austin crafted a classic space opera which saw the deity-appointed galactic policeman scupper a slaving ring and follow a string of clues back to his own incredible origins.

Presented here in the original monochrome, that tale opens on decimated agrarian planet ‘Windhölme’ where fisherman’s son Kip sees his entire community abducted like cattle by alien criminals. Aboard their vessel he is befriended by feisty fellow abductee Sandy but before they can enact their childish dreams of revenge the slaver dreadnought is attacked by Starlord and his sentient super vehicle “Ship”…

The traffickers are no match for the aggrieved heroes and, after the victims have been repatriated, psychic interrogation leads Kip, Sandy and the stellar paladin up the criminal chain to flesh-peddler and imperial favourite Kyras Shakti on his debauched pleasure world ‘Cinnibar’.

The monolithic battle there reveals even greater Royal involvement, drawing Starlord to ‘Sparta’, and a shocking family connection before ‘The Hollow Crown’ sees Quill uncover his true origins when he is unexpectedly reunited with his alien father. Despite renewed emotional ties the hero forswears a life of impossible luxury for the heavens, duty and justice…

Rocket Raccoon was a minor character who appeared in backup serial ‘The Sword in the Star’ (Marvel Preview #7 in 1976). He won a larger role in Incredible Hulk #271 (May 1982), and like Wolverine years before refused to go away quietly.

Reprinted here in its entirety is the 4-issue Rocket Raccoon miniseries (cover-dated May to August 1985 and crafted by Bill Mantlo, Mike Mignola, Al Gordon & Al Milgrom), a bizarre and baroque sci-fi fantasy which blended the charm of Pogo with the biting social satire of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest all whilst ostensibly describing a battle between Good and Evil in a sector of space crazy even by comicbook standards.

Rocket was one of many talking animals in the impenetrable, inescapable Keystone Quadrant; a Ranger in charge of keeping the peace as robots and anamorphic beasties went about their holy tasks of caring for the distinctly odd and carefree humans known as The Loonies on their idyllic, sybaritic planet Halfworld.

However when a brutal shooting war between voracious apex toymakers Judson Jakes and Lord Dyvyne led to Rocket’s girlfriend Lylla Otter being kidnapped, the planet went wild, or perhaps… ‘Animal Crackers’.

In rescuing her, Rocket and his faithful deputy Wal Rus had to contend with a murderous army of mechanised Killer Clowns, face an horrific, all-consuming bio-weapon at ‘The Masque of the Red Breath’, and even team up with arch-foe and disreputable mercenary bunny Blackjack O’Hare before uncovering the horrendous truth behind the mad society he so tirelessly defended in ‘The Book of Revelations!’

The final chapter then shook everything up as ‘The Age of Enlightenment’ saw the end of The Loonies, allowing the Raccoon and his surviving companions to escape the confines of the eternally segregated Keystone Quadrant into the greater universe beyond…

Back on Earth, a speculator-fuelled boom in comics sales led to Marvel launching a bunch of new titles in the early 1990s. Amongst them was Guardians of the Galaxy volume 1, #1, once again focusing on the 31st century centurions.

Conceived, written and drawn by Jim Valentino – with Steve Montano inking – the debut issue reprinted here reprised the entire eccentric combined careers of Vance, Yondu, Charlie and Martinex (plus later recruits Mercurian Nikki and Starhawk – an alien god who shared a single body with his estranged wife Aleta) as the team set off on a quest.

They were following a string of ancient clues to recover Captain America‘s legendary shield, only to fall foul of cyborg-enhanced warrior ‘Taserface!’

For the rest of that epic journey and their battle against the alien Stark race who had based their entire warrior culture on Iron Man‘s armour, you’ll need to track down one of the many other GotG collections flooding out now…

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

Among the stalwarts in the big event were Silver Surfer, Galactus, Firelord (and other previous heralds of the world-eater), Moondragon, Quasar, Star-Lord, Thanos, Super-Skrull, Rigellian Colonizer Tana Nile, Gamora (“Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy”), Ronan the Accuser, Nova, Drax (the Destroyer), a Watcher and many previously established alien civilisations such as the Kree, Skrulls, Xandarians, Shi’ar et al., all falling before an invasion of rapacious Negative Zone bugs and beasties unleashed by insectoid horror Annihilus..

After that shooting match subsided the decimated sectors and empires were left helpless as sentient, aggressive all-subsuming technological parasite The Phalanx struck, absorbing and thriving inside all the machines and electronic engines the shaken civilisations were using to rebuild in a follow-up apocalypse designated Annihilation: Conquest.

From that second sidereal saga came the beginnings of the Guardians the world has gone crazy over – specifically the side-bar miniseries Annihilation Conquest: Star-Lord #1-4 from September-December 2007 and which is reprinted here in full.

What You’ll Need to Know: in the scarred and war-torn realm of known space, still reeling from the chaos of the Annihilation Wave and its aftermath, both the Kree and Skrull empires are splintered, Xandar‘s Nova Corps (the universal police force) has been reduced to a single agent, ancient gods are loose and a sizable number of the Negative Zone invaders have tenuously established themselves in territories stolen from the billions of dead sentients that once populated the cosmos.

The Supreme Intelligence is gone and arch-villain Ronan has become a surprisingly effective ruler of the Kree remnants. Cosmic Protector Quasar is dead and Phyla-Vell, daughter of the first Captain Marvel has inherited both his powers and name…

Whilst Phyla and psychic demi-goddess Moondragon were working with the pacifist Priests of Pama to relieve the suffering of starving survivors, Peter Quill (no longer Star-Lord) was working with Ronan and the pitiful Kree remnants on Hala to shore up the battered communal interstellar defences of the myriad races in the sector.

Quill had brokered an alliance with the Spaceknights of Galador (an old noble cyborg species most famously represented by 1980s hero Rom) which should enhance the all-pervasive etheric war-net, but once uploaded the data instantly causes disastrous problems throughout the system.

In seconds all technology in the region is compromised: overruled and overwritten by a ruthlessly efficient electronic sentience whose cybernetic credo is “peace and order through assimilation”. Once more organic life is facing total extinction…

On Pama, Phyla and Moondragon are targeted by repurposed Kree automatons as the Phalanx attempt to destroy any credible resistance before cutting off the entire quadrant from the rest of the universe.

If life was to survive this threat it must besaved by the champions trapped inside…

The 4-part miniseries Annihilation Conquest: Star-Lord – written by Keith Giffen and illustrated by Timothy Green II, Victor Olazaba & Nathan Fairbairn, finds the former Cosmic Avenger stripped of his powers and hi-tech enhancements – all liabilities when facing a predator species that infests electronic devices – and forcibly seconded to a Kree resistance division.

Here he is tasked with turning a bunch of Kree convicts into a Penal Strike Force (a highly engaging intergalactic Dirty Half-Dozen) to take out the complex where the Phalanx are perfecting an efficient way to assimilate organics into their electro-mechanistic hive-mind.

The Kree were once the major bad-guy race in the Marvel mainstream, so whoever they consider criminals look surprising like failed heroes to us. Firstly there’s Galactic Warrior Bug (originally from 1970’s phenomenon Micronauts), the current Captain Universe (ditto), the Shi’ar berserker Deathcry, failed Celestial Madonna Mantis, the so-very-far-from-home Rocket Raccoon and gloriously whacky “Kirby Kritter” Groot: a Walking Tree and one-time “Monarch of Planet X.”

With this reluctant team in tow and using natural abilities and decidedly primitive Earth weapons the squad invades Hala – central beachhead of the Phalanx – to discover and destroy the augmented assimilation project, but they have drastically underestimated the remorselessly callous creativity of the electronic invaders…

Happily the Phalanx have no grasp of the ingenuity, bloody-minded determination and willingness to die stupidly for a cause that afflicts organics and heroes…

Sharp, witty and engaging, this is a magnificent romp full of humour, shocks and thrills no comic fan could possibly resist…

The roaring success of all that intergalactic derring-do led to a new rootin’, tootin’, blaster-shootin’ conclave of outer space reprobates who formed a new 21st century iteration and this titanic tome concludes its comics cavalcade with Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2, #1, (July 2008) wherein some of those recently acquainted adventurers get back into the business of saving the universe…

‘Somebody’s Got To Do It’ – by Abnett, Lanning, Paul Pelletier & Rick Magyar – reveals how, due to fellow Earthling Nova’s prompting, Star-Lord forms a pro-active defence force to handle the next inevitable cosmic crisis as soon as – if not before – it starts.

To that end he convinces Phyla-Vell, Drax, Gamora, Groot, Warlock and the Raccoon to relocate with him to the pan-species science-station Knowhere (situated in the hollowed-out skull of a dead Celestial Space God) and start putting out a never-ending progression of interstellar brush-fires before they become really serious…

The station is guarded and run by Cosmo – an elderly Soviet dog with astounding telepathic abilities – and is where Mantis now works as chief medic. It also offers unlimited teleportational transport which the team soon needs as it tries to prevent an out-of-control Universal Church of Truth Templeship from crashing into a time/space distortion and shredding the fabric of reality…

Soon the surly scratch squad are battling savage, crazed missionary-zealots empowered by the worship of enslaved adherents channelled through the Templeship’s colossal Faith Generators whilst desperately attempting to divert the vessel before it impacts the fissure in space.

Such a collision would cause catastrophic destruction to the galaxy but the UCT crusaders only see heretics trying to interfere with their mission to convert unbelievers…

The crisis is exacerbated by another small problem: there are very nasty things on the other side of the fissure that really want to come and play in our universe, and when one of them breaks through the only thing to do is destroy the Templeship…

In the aftermath, Warlock reveals that the non-stop string of cosmic Armageddons since Annihilus’ invasion has fundamentally damaged the substance of space and inevitably more fissures will appear. He wants to repurpose the team to find and close them all before anything else escapes.

And on Sacrosanct, homeworld of the Universal Church of Truth, the Matriarch issues a decree for her Cardinals to deal with the interfering unbelievers…

With covers by Colan & Esposito, Ken Barr, Mignola & Gordon, Valentino, Nic Klein, and Clint Langley, this spectacular slice of riotous star-roving is a non-stop feast of tense suspense, surreal fun and blockbuster action: another well-tailored, on-target tool to turn curious movie-goers into fans of the comic incarnation and another solid sampling to entice the newcomers and charm even the most jaded slice ‘n’ dice fanatic.

© 2014 Marvel. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. British edition published by Panini UK.

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Marvel Masterworks volume 16: Amazing-Spider-Man 31-40 & Annual 2


By Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr. & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-730-5

After a shaky start The Amazing Spider-Man quickly became a popular sensation with kids of all ages, rivalling the creative powerhouse that was Fantastic Four. Before too long the quirky, charming, action-packed comics soap-opera would become the model for an entire generation of younger heroes impatiently elbowing aside the staid, (relatively) old thirty-something mystery-men of previous publications and hallowed tradition.

The rise and rise of the wondrous Web-spinner continued and even increased pace as the Swinging Sixties unfolded and, by the time of the tales in this third sumptuous hardcover (re-presenting Amazing Spider-Man #31-40 and including Annual 2, originally released between December 1965 and September 1966), Peter Parker and friends were on the way to being household names as well as the darlings of college campuses and the media intelligentsia.

Sadly by 1966 Stan Lee and Steve Ditko could no longer work together on their greatest creation. After increasingly fraught months the artist simply resigned, leaving Spider-Man without an illustrator.

In the coincidental meantime John Romita had been lured away from DC’s romance line and given odd assignments before assuming the artistic reins of Daredevil, the Man Without Fear. Before long he was co-piloting the company’s biggest property and expected to run with it.

In this momentous compilation of (mostly) chronological Arachnoid adventures, the World’s Most Misunderstood Hero successfully challenged the dominant Fantastic Four as Marvel’s top comicbook both in sales and quality.

Ditko’s off-beat plots and quirkily bizarre art had reached an accommodation with the slick and potent superhero house-style that Jack Kirby had developed (at least as much as such a unique talent ever could), with a marked reduction of signature line-feathering and moody backgrounds plus a lessening of concentration on totemic villains.

Although still very much a Ditko baby, The Amazing Spider-Man had attained a sleek pictorial gloss whilst Lee’s scripts were comfortably in tune with the times if not his collaborator. Although Lee’s assessment of the audience was probably the correct one, disagreements with the artist over the strip’s editorial direction were still confined to the office and not the pages themselves.

However an indication of the growing tensions could be seen once Ditko began being credited as plotter of the stories…

After a period where old-fashioned crime and gangsterism predominated, science fiction themes and costumes crazies started to return full force here as the world went gaga for superheroes and the creators experimented with longer storylines and protracted subplots…

When Ditko abruptly left, the company feared a drastic loss in quality and sales but it didn’t happen. John Romita (senior) considered himself a mere “safe pair of hands” keeping the momentum going until a better artist could be found but instead blossomed into a major talent in his own right, and the Wallcrawler continued his unstoppable rise at an accelerated pace…

Change was in the air everywhere. Included amongst the milestones for the ever-anxious Peter Parker collected here are graduating High School, starting college, meeting true love Gwen Stacy and tragic friend/enemy Harry Osborn and the introduction of arch nemesis Norman Osborn. Old friends Flash Thompson and Betty Brant subsequently begin to drift out of his life…

The fabulous four-colour fantasy opens – following the standard Stan Lee Introduction – with  ‘If This Be My Destiny…!’ from issue #31 which depicted a spate of high-tech robberies by the Master Planner and a spectacular confrontation with Spider-Man. Also on show was the aforementioned college debut, first sight of Harry and Gwen and Aunt May on the edge of death.

This led to indisputably Ditko’s finest and most iconic moments on the series – and perhaps of his entire career. ‘Man on a Rampage!’ showed Parker pushed to the very edge of desperation as the Planner’s men made off with the chemicals that might save Aunt May, resulting in an utterly driven, berserk Wallcrawler ripping the town apart trying to find them.

Trapped in an underwater fortress, pinned under tons of machinery, the hero faced his greatest failure as the clock ticked down the seconds of May’s life…

This in turn produced the most memorable visual sequence in Spidey history as the opening of ‘The Final Chapter!’ took five full, glorious pages to depict the ultimate triumph of will over circumstance. Freeing himself from tons of fallen debris Spider-Man gave his absolute all delivering the medicine May needed, to be rewarded with a rare happy ending…

Russian exile Kraven the Hunter returned in ‘The Thrill of the Hunt!’ seeking vengeance by impersonating the Web-spinner whilst #35 offered ‘The Molten Man Regrets…!’: a plot-light but inimitably action-packed combat classic as the gleaming bandit foolishly resumed his career of pinching other peoples jewels…

Amazing Spider-Man #36 featured a deliciously off-beat, almost comedic turn in ‘When Falls the Meteor!’ as deranged scientist Norton G. Fester began stealing museum exhibits whilst calling himself the Looter…

In retrospect these brief, fight-oriented tales, coming after such an intricate, passionate epic as the Master Planner saga, should have been seen as some sort of clue that things were not going well, but the fans had no idea that ‘Once Upon a Time, There was a Robot…!’ which featured a beleaguered Norman Osborn being targeted by his disgraced ex-partner and some eccentrically bizarre murder machines in #37 and the tragic comedy of ‘Just a Guy Named Joe!‘ – wherein a hapless sad-sack stumblebum boxer gains super-strength and a bad-temper – were to be Ditko’s last arachnid adventures.

When Amazing Spider-Man #39 appeared with the first of a two-part adventure that featured the ultimate victory of the Wall-Crawler’s greatest foe no reader knew what had happened – and no one told them…

‘How Green Was My Goblin!’ and ‘Spidey Saves the Day! (“Featuring the End of the Green Goblin!”)’ calamitously changed everything whilst describing how the arch-foes learned each other’s true identities before the Goblin “perished” in a climactic showdown. It would have been memorable even it the tale didn’t feature the debut of a new artist & a whole new manner of story-telling…

Issues #39 and 40 (August – September 1966) were a turning point in many ways, and inked by old DC colleague Mike Esposito (under the pseudonym Mickey Demeo) they still stand as another of the greatest Spider-Man yarns of all time, heralding a run of classic tales from the Lee/Romita team that saw sales rise and rise, even without the seemingly irreplaceable Ditko.

Earlier in 1965 however the artist was blowing away audiences with another oddly tangential superhero. ‘The Wondrous World of Dr. Strange!’ was the lead story in the second Spider-Man Annual (October of that year and filled out with vintage Spidey classics).

The entrancing fable unforgettably introduced the Webslinger to arcane other realities as he teamed up with the Master of the Mystic Arts to battle power-crazed wizard Xandu in a phantasmagorical, dimension-hopping masterpiece involving ensorcelled zombie thugs and the stolen Wand of Watoomb.

After this story it was clear that Spider-Man could work in any milieu and nothing could hold him back…

Also included from that immensely impressive landmark are more Ditko pin-ups in ‘A Gallery of Spider-Man’s Most Famous Foes’ – exposing such nefarious ne’er-do-wells as The Scorpion, Circus of Crime and the Beetle, making this astounding tome one of the most impressive Spider-Man books you could ever read, even if later editions have slightly altered contents. If you want to experience the quintessential magic of the Amazing Arachnid this book has to be your first stop…
© 1965, 1966, 1996 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.