Category: Graphic Novels

Posted on

Superman volume 2: Endgame


By Jeph Loeb, Mark Schultz, Joe Kelly, Mark Millar, Stuart Immonen, Butch Guice, Ed McGuiness, Doug Mahnke, German Garcia, & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-701-6

The Man of Tomorrow has proven to be all things to most people over more than three quarters of a century of drama and adventure, with Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s iconic Superman now practically unrecognisable to most fans after the latest radical shake-up. Nevertheless, every refit and reboot has resulted in appalled fans and new devotees in pretty much equal proportion, so perhaps the Action Ace’s greatest ability is the power to survive change…

Although largely out of favour these days as all the myriad decades of accrued mythology are inexorably re-assimilated into an overarching, all-inclusive multi-media dominant, film-favoured continuity, the grittily stripped-down, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Man of Steel (as re-imagined by John Byrne and superbly built upon by a succession of immensely talented comics craftsmen) resulted in some stunning high points.

As soon as the Byrne restart had demolished much of the mythology and iconography which had grown up around the “Strange Visitor from Another World” over fifty glorious years, successive creators began spending a great deal of time and ingenuity putting much of it back, albeit in terms more accessible to a cynical and well-informed audience far more sophisticated than their grandparents ever were.

Even so, by the mid-1990’s Byrne’s baby was beginning to look a little tired and the sales kick generated by the Death of and Return of Superman was fading fast, so the decision was made to give the big guy a bit of a tweak for the fast-approaching new millennium: bringing in new writers and artists and gradually moving the stories into more bombastic, hyper-powered territory.

The fresh tone was augmented by a new sequence and style of trade paperback editions and this second (not strictly chronological) collection gathers material from Superman Y2K, Superman #154, Superman: Man of Steel # 98, Action Comics #763 and The Adventures of Superman #576, covering December 1999-March 2000.

The tension-wracked doom days begin with the Superman Y2K one-shot special, crafted by scripter Joe Casey and artists Butch Guice, Kevin Conrad, Mark Prompst & Richard Bonk.

‘The End’ traces the history of the Luthor family in Metropolis from the first settlers in America to the present day when Last Son Lex practically owns the entire place as a counterpoint to the ongoing action…

With the end of the Holidays fast approaching, staunch traditionalist Clark Kent is facing a shocking crisis: new wife Lois and his own mother want to elbow the sacrosanct seasonal tradition of a quiet New Year’s on the Smallville farm for a (non-catering) vacation in the Big City…

Bowing to the inevitable, the Husband of Steel ferries the family to a Metropolis gripped with terror that all the computers in the world will imminently expire prompting the end of civilisation as the millennium closes (kids – this was genuine abiding fear at the time: for more information check here)…

When the countdown concludes everybody’s fears are completely justified as an alien entity overwhelms the world’s computer systems, triggering a wave of destruction affecting every electronic device on Earth…

Alien digital dictator Brainac 2.5 has upgraded himself since his last attack but his hatred for Lex Luthor remains unchanged. Whilst every hero on Earth battles panic, riots and failing technologies, Superman and Green Lantern are busy trying to catch all the nuclear missiles launched during the terrifying induced glitch, the computer dictator is trying his hardest to murder Lex and his baby daughter Lena.

As part of his scheme Brainiac 2.5 has also enslaved Earth’s many robotic and android entities such as Red Tornado, Hourman and the Metal Men, but the AI invader is blithely unaware that he too is being used…

With the world – and especially Metropolis – crashing into ruin the secret invader makes its move: from the far distant future the merciless Brainac 13 program has been attempting to overwrite its ancient ancestor and take over Earth centuries before it was even devised…

The tension intensifies in ‘Whatever Happened to the City of Tomorrow?’ by Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuiness & Cam Smith (Superman volume 2 #154, March 2000) as the colossal chronologically-displaced construct begins reformatting the world; converting matter into materials and designs analogous to its own time. Unfortunately that’s very bad news for the billions of human beings inside buildings, vehicles and vessels undergoing those transformations…

Even Luthor is helpless, locked out of his own corporate tower as “his” city falls apart and the Man of Steel is occupied battling Brainiac 13 and upgraded cyborg assassin Metallo. Assistance arrives in most unwelcome form as little Lena begins offering technical advice. The toddler has been possessed by presumed-destroyed Brainiac 2.5: simultaneously becoming hostage and bolt-hole for the outmoded and nigh-obsolete alien menace…

With the aid of the Metal Men Superman finally defeats Metallo and confers with Lois and Jimmy Olsen. The games-mad lad theorises that the transforming city is starting to resemble a gigantic motherboard…

As elsewhere Jonathan and Martha Kent are trapped aboard a subway train programmed to deliver organic units to a slave-indoctrination station, the Man of Tomorrow attempts to dislodge the computerising city’s main power cable. When Brainiac 13 tries to digitise and absorb the annoying Kryptonian it accidentally reverts the hero to a previous incarnation: the electrical form of Superman Blue…

The hostile planetary hacking continues in ‘AnarchY2Knowledge’ (by Mark Millar, Stuart Immonen & José Marzan, Jr. from The Adventures of Superman #576) wherein the Man of Energy hopelessly tackles Brainiac 13 and tries to quell the rising body count of helpless humans, whilst far below Luthor and Lena 2.5 battle through the overwritten bowels of the LexCorp Tower past marauding B13 creations to a stolen secret weapon…

The possessed tot shares a direct link with all Brainiacs’ core programming and has discovered a possible backdoor that could enable them to destroy the all-pervasive program from the future.

Their progress is greatly facilitated after Luthor’s lethally devoted bodyguards Hope and Mercy finally locate them. As their preparations proceed the villains opt to rescue Superman, incidentally restoring the Action Ace to his flesh and blood state. To save Metropolis for his family, the evil billionaire will even work with his most hated enemy…

Superman: Man of Steel # 98 continued the epic in ‘Thirty Minutes to Oblivion’ by Mark Schultz, Doug Mahnke & Tom Nguyen as the senior Kents face conversion into B13 drones but enjoy a last moment rescue by the Man of Steel and his sometime foe The Eradicator.

After a lengthy period of self-impose banishment in deep space (for which see Superman: Exile) the Man of Tomorrow returned to Earth carrying an incredibly powerful Kryptonian artefact which had survived the destruction of the planet. The Eradicator could reshape matter and was programmed to preserve, or indeed, resurrect and restore the heritage and influence of the lost civilisation at all costs.

After a number of close calls Superman realised the device was too dangerous to leave loose so he buried it in an Antarctic crevasse and foolishly assumed that ended the affair.

Such was not the case and the miracle machine returned many times, always attempting to remake Earth into a New Krypton.

When Superman died it created a new body and sought to carry on Kal-El‘s legacy… Eventually it failed once more and fell into the hands of dying scientist David Connor who merged with the manufactured body to produce a phenomenally powerful – if morally and emotionally conflicted – new hero…

Superman’s understandable anxiety is soon assuaged as Eradicator assures him he is there to help and proves it by pointing out a weakness in the B13 tech assimilation. The transmode programs have as yet been unable to infect Kryptonian systems such as those in the hero’s Fortress of Solitude, but the base has now become the invader’s primary target.

If the program masters Kryptonian systems it will be utterly unstoppable…

After finishing off Metallo and the Metal Men, Eradicator and Superman head to the Fortress whilst in his factory inventor John Henry Irons (AKA Steel, part-time hero and hi-tech armourer to the City police force) and his niece Natasha find their own temporary answer to the threat of the constantly encroaching and bloodthirsty B13 drones…

Deep below LexCorp, Luthor and Lena 2.5 are working towards similar goals with the same insights whilst planning to betray each other later.

Admitting that the Brainiac core systems can’t even see Kryptonian tech, the baby bodysnatcher advises Lex to modify the robotic warsuit stolen from Superman and use it against the apparently omnipotent digital invader.

In the Antarctic however events have moved to a crisis point as the Fortress – transformed by echoes of the original Eradicator – has reconstructed itself into a colossal warrior and attempts to co-opt the predatory B13 programs to facilitate its own primary mission of recreating Krypton.

To counter this threat David Connor pays an intolerable price…

The epic comes to a startling conclusion in‘Sacrifice for Tomorrow’ (Joe Kelly, German Garcia, Kano & Marlo Alquiza from Action Comics #763) as Superman heads back to Metropolis armed with the knowledge of B13’s Achilles heel and his swiftly repurposed Kryptonian butler Kelex…

Attacking the monstrous computer tyrant with a wave of robotic heroes, the Man of Tomorrow is again repulsed and goes looking for Luthor’s aid. However, despite Lex’s resolve to work with the Man of Steel to defeat Brainiac, the billionaire cannot resist turning the warsuit on its previous owner – a character flaw Superman was counting on – creating an opportunity to hijack the Kryptonian armour’s systems to power a forced crash in Brainiac 13…

The blockbuster battle ends as the world is rapidly reconverted to its original state, but for some inexplicable reason the remission halts outside Metropolis. The city remains an incomprehensible artefact of a far future with Luthor in control, frantically patenting thousands of incredible technological advances.

There is no sign of baby Lena and the master of Metropolis refuses to hear her name mentioned…

To Be Continued…

With covers by Guice, McGuiness & Cam Smith, Immonen & Marzan, Mahnke & John Dell, German Garcia & Jaime Mendoza, this staggering compilation introduced a whole new world – and a wealth of fresh problems – for the venerable, wide-ranging cast to cope with and further built upon the scintillating re-casting of the greatest of all superheroes. Lovers of the genre cannot help but respond to sheer scale, spectacle and compelling soap opera melodrama of these tales which will still delight all fans of pure untrammelled Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction.
© 2000, 2001 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Ultimate Annuals volume 1


By Mark Millar, Brian K. Vaughn, Brian Michael Bendis, Jae Lee, Tom Raney, Mark Brooks, Jaime Mendoza Steve Dillon,& various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2035-3

After Marvel’s financial problems and creative impasse in the late 1990s, the company took stock, braced itself and came back swinging. A critical new concept was the remodelling and modernising of their core characters for the new 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.

Creepy vigilante Spider-Man Parker was not-so-secretly a high-school geek, brilliant but bullied by his physical superiors whilst mutants were a dangerous, oppressed ethnic minority scaring the pants off the ordinary Americans they frequently hid amongst.

The Fantastic Four were two science nerds and their dim pals transformed into monsters, and global peacekeeping force S.H.I.E.L.D. kept them all under control with their own metahuman taskforce humbly designated The Ultimates…

The revived series all sported fresh and fashionable, modernistic, scientifically feasible rationales for all those insane super-abilities and freaks 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 reworked into The Ultimates in 2002 with Ultimate Fantastic Four joining the party in 2004.

The stories, design and even tone of the heroes were retooled for the perceived-as-different tastes of a new readership: those tired of or unwilling to stick with precepts originated by inspirational founding fathers Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, or (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 new universe quickly prospered and soon filled up with more refashioned, morally ambiguous heroes and villains but eventually even this darkly nihilistic new universe became as continuity-constricted as its ancestor.

Eventually, in 2008, an 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 that, however, Marvel’s original keystone concepts were awarded their own celebratory summer specials and this stellar volume collects Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual#1, Ultimate X-Men Annual#1, Ultimate Spider-Man Annual#1 and The Ultimates Annual#1 (all from October 2005): a selection of relatively stand-alone sagas displaying the daringly different tone of the alternate yet chillingly familiar world.

The compilation kicks off with ‘Enter the Inhumans’ by Marl Millar, Jae Lee and colourist June Chung from Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual#1 wherein dim but pretty party boy Johnny Storm gets involved with a runaway princess bride.

The ethereally beautiful girl is named Crystal and she is fleeing from an arranged marriage to her creepy, crazy cousin Maximus. The match was decreed by her sister Medusa and King Black Bolt, rulers of a hidden race of super-powered parahumans who have concealed their existence from humanity for ten thousand years.

Even after the Human Torch almost dies defending her, Crystal is successfully abducted, compelling Reed, Sue, Ben and recuperating Johnny to go after her into the heart of hidden city Attilan, thanks to the teleporting talents of the princess’ faithful giant bulldog Lockjaw…

The subsequent confrontation with the lethally powerful Inhuman Royal Family leads to an inconclusive resolution but a shattering end to the lost city…

Romance plays a part in the next tale too. ‘Ultimate Sacrifice’ by Brian K. Vaughn, Tom Raney, Scott Hanna & Gina Going (Ultimate X-Men Annual#1) finds Nick Fury warning Charles Xavier that the unstoppable Juggernaut has escaped and is hunting the mutant girl he holds responsible for all his recent woes…

Unfortunately for everyone, Rogue has absconded to Las Vegas in the company of sexy bad-boy thief Gambit, where the rampaging monster maniac finally corners the duplicitous duo. Tragically Juggernaut completely underestimates his former squeeze’s lethal powers and the self-sacrificing ingenuity of the besotted Cajun…

The most significant change to Stan, Jack and Steve’s breakthrough concepts was a rather telling one: all the heroes were conceived as being far, far younger than their mainstream antecedents. This even affected the sensational Spider-Man tales wherein – after decades of comicbook stardom – the perennially youthful Peter Parker was at last portrayed as a proper High School kid rather than a stodgy 40-year old geek trapped in a teen’s body…

In ‘More than you Bargained For’ by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Brooks, Jaime Mendoza, Scott Hanna & Dave Stewart – from Ultimate Spider-Man Annual#1 – the guilt-driven lad’s constant round of villain thrashing is derailed when cute but shy mutant Kitty Pryde makes the first tentative moves in her painfully adorable bid to make the mysterious hero her boyfriend…

That sweet, silly and utterly charming yarn is followed by a far darker and cunningly convoluted tale focusing on S.H.I.E.L.D. supremo Nick Fury and his long-term plan to mass produce an army of metahumans in ‘The Reserves’ by Millar, Steve Dillon & Paul Mounts.

Rather than highlighting stars like Iron Man and Captain America, the story follows the far from smooth development of a legion of Rocketmen, Goliaths, weather based warriors “The Four Seasons” and the short, tragic career of heroic hopeful super-soldier Lieberman. Of course the one-eyed master strategist has no time for regrets as he’s busy trying to avoid becoming the latest successful contract of infallible hitman Mister Nix…

Rocket-paced, razor sharp and blisteringly action-packed, this riotous romp is also liberally dosed with teen-oriented humour for the era of the acceptable nerd and go-getting geek, offering a smart and beguiling entrée into of Marvel’s other Universe that will impress open-minded old fans of the medium just as much as the newcomers they were ostensibly aiming for.
© 2005, 2006 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Wolverine: Mortal


By Paul Cornell, Ryan Stegman, Mirco Pierfederici, Mark Farmer & Karl Kesel (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-606-9

James Howlett, AKA Logan, AKA Wolverine has faced a multitude of impossible situations in his long and danger-filled life but possibly the most groundbreaking shake-up only came at the conclusion of Wolverine: Killable which saw the mayhem-making mutant Methuselah coming to terms with the fact that his healing factor – and therefore his virtual immortality – were gone, courtesy of a sentient virus from an incredible alien “microverse”.

Now he could no longer properly defend himself and, most importantly, his loved ones and innocent civilians from the likes of monsters such as Mystique or Sabretooth.

To emphasise that point his most pernicious foe Victor Creed – tenacious, savage, still possessing the powers and skills Howlett once boasted and current leader of a deviant sect of ninja cult The Hand – orchestrated a murderous snipe-hunt which killed dozens of helpless humans at a shopping mall whilst leaving the helpless Canadian Crusader physically crushed, emotionally humiliated and spiritually broken…

Written by Paul Cornell, the first seven issues of Wolverine volume 6 (spanning February to May 2014) offer a brand new look and fresh modus operandi for the down but never out outlaw hero…

The action begins with the 4-part‘Rogue Logan’ (illustrated by Ryan Stegman & Mark Morales, with David Baldeon, John Livesay & Scott Hanna) which finds Logan in high-tech armour running with a new – bad – crowd.

Supported by a band of young super-powered criminals – Lost Boy, Fuel, Reflex and Pinch – Logan appears to have lost his way; joining the gang of up-and-coming underworld boss The Offer…

The feral fury seems blithely unaware that his new boss is in negotiation with and opposition to Creed/Sabretooth…

He also appears to have gone completely off the rails. When The Offer uncovers a S.H.I.E.L.D. mole in his base, it is Wolverine who eagerly shoots the agent in the head…

Flashing back to weeks earlier when all Logan’s comrades were failing to help him come to terms with his losses and failures, ‘Bad Advice’ reveals how a tense confrontation with the Superior Spider-Man changed his perspective…

The Wallcrawler (at that time Doctor Octopus inhabiting Peter Parker‘s body) and a near-death experience when Logan joined old sidekick Jubilee and the X-Men in a battle against killer mechanoids led the powerless old warrior to a serious reappraisal and the adoption of a mechanised ablation-armour outfit devised by a brilliant master of robotics. It also resulted in Wolverine quitting the X-Men and the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning…

The truth comes out in the third chapter. S.H.I.E.L.D. has learned that Sabretooth is seeking a weapon of cosmic importance and understandably wants him stopped. Their Byzantine plan involves Logan going deep undercover with a potential rival to the Hand’s new Lord and even fighting old allies like Thor…

Fully immersed in his role and unwisely starting an affair with new comrade Pinch, Logan is fully in ‘His Own Skin’ (illustrated by Gerardo Sandoval) when the mission proper begins. This involves invading The Hand’s home base on the pirate island of Madripoor, where the Canadian Canucklehead revives his old identity of debonair rogue Patch – much to the astonished hilarity of his youthful posse…

The scheme to stop Sabretooth is a multinational deal and when Patch makes contact with already-in-place assets Faiza Hussain and Peter Wisdom of Britain’s paranormal spy agency MI-13 (outrageously aided and abetted by the Carry-On Team‘s Charles Hawtrey as technical adviser “O”!) Pinch realises with horror that her new man is a plant. Quite understandably she throws a major wobbly…

Forced to act precipitately, Logan goes after Sabretooth in ‘The Madripoor Job’ and is just in time to see him acquire the mysterious ultimate weapon and promptly lose it again to one of the thieving mutated monkeys infesting the island.

Giving chase Wolverine reunites with his extremely disappointed gang as the glowing orb defends itself by manifesting an army of Wolverines from different realities…

During the subsequent melee Sabretooth catches up and by the time our hero battles free of his doppelgangers the heartbroken and furious Pinch is in possession of the artefact. As Wolverine pleads with her to hand over the potentially planet-shattering globe, Creed makes her a counter-offer: give him the device and he’ll tell his Hand ninjas not to kill the baby daughter she had kept safely apart from her deadly lifestyle…

To Be Continued…

Tense suspense, non-stop visceral action, compelling mystery and superbly surreal comedy moments carry this gripping yarn from high-octane start to fraught finish and this splendidly devious “Man from M.U.TA.N.T.” espionage extravaganza also includes a beautiful gallery of covers-&-variants by Stegman & Edgar Delgado, Kristafer Anka, Katie Cook, Frank Kozik, Jerome Opeña and Greg Horn.
™ & © 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.

Posted on

Origin II


By Kieron Gillen, Adam Kubert & Frank Martin (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-590-1

After years of mystery and imagination, in 2001 the perennially punching-above-his-weight feral fury Wolverine was finally accorded a definitive back-story in the miniseries Origin: the True Story of Wolverine.

The Canadian Wildman had captivated audiences from his earliest appearances in the X-Men comics, and did it all over again for a far larger audience in his movie incarnation, but the story when it came did not please or satisfy everyone.

Now writerKieron Gillen, artist Adam Kubert and colourist Frank Martin have collaborated on in-filling the next chapter and their 5-part miniseries Origin II (February to July 2014) makes an extremely appetising if perhaps controversial titbit to add to the canonical menu…

In Canada at the turn of the 19th century, 12 year old Rose was hired as the companion of sickly child James Howlett, on the palatial estate of his wealthy grandfather. Among the servants she befriended an all but feral child called Logan, abused son of the estate groundskeeper and general handyman.

Tragedy occurred one night as a murder-suicide shattered the uneasy stability of the gothic estate forever, forcing Rose and the Wolverine-to-be to flee for their lives. For years they lived life on the run, eventually settling in a quarrying camp where the harsh conditions and physical toil rapidly matured the sickly mutant.

However even here the repercussions of the Howlett Estate tragedy inevitably found them leading to a final, appalling confrontation in which a hasty unplanned unsheathing of bone claws cost Rose her life…

A few years later: It’s 1907 in the icy wilds of Canada. A man more beast than human runs with the wolves, fully accepted by the pack as one of them. Their harsh but happy life is destroyed however when a colossal white bear enters the territory. The creature doesn’t know how to eat like other bears and inexorably tracks the pack to its den before destroying the cubs.

The Wolfish Man’s peace of mind is shattered and after almost dying in killing the beast an even greater tragedy begins. The loss of his family has forced the not-wolf to start thinking again…

The Polar Bear was no unhappy wanderer, but introduced by men into the unfamiliar wilderness. Now showman Hugo Haversham, the trapper Creed and his disfigured woman Clara are scouring the icy wastes for other potentially profitable attractions. Creed and Clara share some strange secret; and react badly when their erstwhile employer – creepy English scientist Dr. Nathaniel Essex – turns up in the frozen frontier town.

He clearly knows something of her amazing affinity with animals and Creed’s uncanny healing abilities and is very angry that the entrepreneur has appropriated the butchered bear carcass for his circus show…

Haversham knows a dangerous rival when he sees one, too, and takes the first opportunity to leave when Creed announces they are heading out.

The scientist continues his own endeavours, using his paramilitary “Marauders” to disseminate a poison gas of his own devising in the deep woods, intent on finding what killed his white bear…

The tactic proves disastrous as the fumes drive a bizarre clawed aborigine to attack and butcher the gas-masked Marauders. Moreover the attacker seems utterly immune to the deadly vapours…

Essex’s remaining men pursue, driving the furious wild man straight into Creed’s traps. Although the snares don’t stand up to his claws, the human beast is helpless against Clara’s uncanny calming influence. To cruel Creed’s mounting fury the connection seems to be mutual…

Soon, suitably caged, the Clawed Man of the Woods is the star attraction of Hugo the Great’s Travelling Circus. Regularly tortured and baited by Creed and fawned upon by Clara, the no-longer mute beast-man has only one thought in his head: the sight of another beloved blond girl dying on his claws…

Essex is still in the picture too: following the show and trying to buy the feral exhibit for his ongoing experiments. When his frustrated patience finally expires so does Hugo – thanks to Essex’s gas – leaving the rapid-healing Clawed Man to undying agonies on the sinister scientist’s vivisection tables…

When all hope seems lost, Clara, having convinced Creed to help, breaks her new pet out and the trio flee into the night. Thanks to the torture – or perhaps Clara’s devotion – the poor, benighted creature who now calls himself Logan has begun to speak again…

A month later the fugitives are starving in New York City and Creed has had enough. He is not there when Essex’s men try to capture Clara’s wild lover and does not see history tragically, bloodily repeat itself…

He does however join the heartbroken, traumatised Logan in going after Essex, whilst happily concealing the true nature and extent of Clara’s powers…

The man who will be Mr. Sinister is unrepentant and working on his next project: an impossibly tempting solution that can lobotomise the imbiber and eradicate all painful memories…

The saga ends in more horrific score-settling before Logan escapes into the night and into history, but this tales still has a couple of shocking twists to reveal…

Brutal, visceral and compulsive; cleverly laying as much intriguing groundwork for future stories as answering long-asked questions, Origin II is a superior yarn that will delight true aficionados of the complex Canadian crusader and this engaging tome also includes an impressive covers-&-variants gallery by Kubert & Martin, Salvador Larroca & David Ocampo, Steve Leiber, Salva Espin & Pete Pantazis and Skottie Young.

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

Posted on

Marvel Platinum: the Definitive X-Men


By Stan Lee, Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Grant Morrison, Jack Kirby, John Byrne, Brent Eric Anderson, Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Frank Quitely & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-599-4

Here’s another addition to the sterling Marvel Platinum/Definitive Edition series: a long-awaited treasury of tales reprinting certified landmarks from Uncanny X-Men #1, 141-142 and 281, Giant Size X-Men #1, Marvel Graphic Novel #5, X-Men volume 2, #1 and New X-Men #114-116 thereby providing a prodigious primer containing an immense amount of marvellously mythological mutagenic madness and Fights ‘n’ Tights fun.

Moreover, this mammoth tome offers a cover gallery by Jack Kirby & Sol Brodsky, Gil Kane & Cockrum, John Byrne & Terry Austin, Brent Anderson, Whilce Portacio & Art Thibert, Jim Lee & Scott Williams and Frank Quitely, an informative Foreword from editor Brady Webb, a vast text feature detailing the complex and convoluted history of the veritable army of heroes to have worn and Mike Conroy’s scholarly trawl through comicbook mythology in ‘The True Origin of the X-Men.

Cover-dated September 1963, X-Men #1 introduced gloomy, serious Scott “Slim” Summers (Cyclops), ebullient Bobby Drake AKA Iceman, wealthy golden boy Warren Worthington III codenamed Angel, and erudite, brutish genius Henry McCoy as The Beast.

These teens were very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between the sprawling masses of humanity and Homo Superior: an emergent off-shoot race of mutants with incredible extra abilities.

Scripted by Stan Lee ‘X-Men’ opens with the boisterous students welcoming their newest classmate… Jean Grey (promptly dubbed Marvel Girl) – a beautiful young woman possessing the ability to move objects with her mind.

Whilst the Professor is explaining the team goals and mission in life an actual Evil Mutant, Magneto, is single-handedly taking over American missile-base Cape Citadel. A seemingly unassailable threat, the master of magnetism is nonetheless valiantly driven off by the young heroes on their first outing in under 15 minutes…

It doesn’t sound like much, but the gritty, dynamic power of Kirby’s art, solidly inked by veteran Paul Reinman, imparted a raw aggressive energy to the tale which carried the bi-monthly book irresistibly forward.

As the decade proceeded the team was occasionally supplemented by magnetic minx Polaris and cosmic powerhouse Havok – although they were usually referred to respectively if not respectfully as Lorna Dane and Scott’s brother Alex.

After nearly a decade of eccentric, mind-blowing adventures, the masked misfits faded away in early 1970 as mystery and supernatural horror themes once again gripped the world’s entertainment fields, consequently causing a sustained downturn in costumed hero comics.

Their title was cancelled then revived at the end of the year as a modest reprint vehicle: the missing mutants reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel universe. The Beast was made over into a monster to fit the fashion of the times.

Then in the summer of 1975, at the behest of Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Chris Claremont & Dave Cockrum revived and refashioned the mutant mystique with a brand new team in Giant Size X-Men #1.

The big, big blockbuster details how the original team was lost in action, forcing the distraught Professor X to scour Earth for replacements…

Recruiting already-established old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire – plus recent Hulk foe and Canadian secret agent Wolverine – most of Xavier’s time and attention was invested in unexploited and hidden new mutants scattered around the globe.

One such was Kurt Wagner, a demonic-looking German teleporter who would be codenamed Nightcrawler, whom Xavier saved from a religious lynch mob. Another was young Russian farm worker Peter Rasputin who could transform into a living steel Colossus and a third embittered, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who was cajoled and pressured into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird.

The final replacement was Ororo Monroe, a young woman who comported herself as an African weather goddess and would be known as Storm. These raw replacements were all introduced in the stirring opening chapter ‘Second Genesis’…

‘…And When There Was One!’ found wounded team-captain Cyclops swiftly drilling the far from willing or eager association before leading them into primordial danger against the monolithic threat of ‘Krakoa… the Island That Walks Like a Man!’

Overcoming the phenomenal terror of a sentient mutant eco-system and rescuing the original team should have led to another Special, but so great was the groundswell of support that the follow-up adventure was reworked into a 2-parter for the rapidly reconfigured reprint monthly which became a bimonthly home to the team and began the mutant madness we’re still experiencing today…

The revision was an unstoppable hit and soon grew to become the company’s most popular and high quality title. In time Cockrum was succeeded by John Byrne and as the team roster shifted and changed the series rose to even greater heights, culminating in the landmark “Dark Phoenix” storyline which saw the death of arguably the book’s most beloved and imaginative character.

In the aftermath team leader Cyclops left and a naive teenaged girl named Kitty Pryde signed up…

Next in this compilation comes a brace of supremely impressive and influential issues. Uncanny X-Men #141-142 (January & February 1980) perfectly encapsulate everything that made the outrageous outcasts such an unalloyed triumph and touchstone of youthful alienation.

‘Days of Future Past’ by Claremont, Byrne & Austin depicts an imminently approaching dystopian apocalypse wherein mutants, paranormals and superheroes will have been eradicated by Federally-controlled Sentinel robots, who would then rule a shattered world on the edge of utter annihilation. New York will be a charnel pit with most surviving mutants kept in concentration camps and only a precious few free to fight a doomed and futile war of resistance.

The middle-aged Kitty is the lynchpin of a desperate plan to unmake history. With the aid of telepath named Rachel (eventually to escape that time-line and become the second Phoenix) Pryde swaps consciousness with her younger self in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the pivotal event which created the bleak, black tomorrow where all her remaining friends and comrades are being pitilessly exterminated one by valiant one…

‘Mind Out of Time’ sees the mature Pryde in our era, inhabiting her juvenile body and leading her disbelieving X-Men team-mates on a frantic mission to foil the assassination of US senator David Kelly on prime-time TV by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants – super-powered terrorists determined to make a very public example of the human politician attacking the cause of Mutant Rights…

Fast-paced, action-packed, spectacularly multi-layered, bitterly tragic and tensely inconclusive – as all such time-travel tales should be – this cunning, compact yarn is indubitably one of the best individual stories of the Claremont/Byrne era and set the mood, tone and agenda for the next decade of mutant mayhem…

The series went from strength to strength and the franchise inexorably expanded. In 1982 a fresh generation of students enrolled in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Following hard on the heels of that X-line expansion with The New Mutants, Marvel capitalised on the buzz a year later by releasing a hard-hitting original Marvel Graphic Novel (#5) which emphasised the harsher aspects of alienation and bigotry which underpinned relations between Homo Sapiens and Superior in a stunningly effective modern parable starring the misunderstood mutants in a landmark tale truly worthy of the company’s hot new format.

‘God Loves, Man Kills’ is a grim cautionary tale: one of the most disturbingly true-to-life in the entire canon and opens with the murder of two children. The “Purifier” zealots responsible then proudly display the bodies in the playground where they died with the placard “muties” around their necks.

When mutant terrorist/freedom fighter Magneto finds the bodies the stage is set for one of the X-Men’s darkest cases…

Fundamentalist preacher Reverend William Stryker is the demagogue of the hour: his evangelical crusade against unholy, ungodly mutants has made him rich and powerful whilst his sinister secret death-squads have enabled him to undertake the latest stage of his mission in the full, controversial glare of the public eye. He even has powerful friends and allies within the Government…

Stryker’s divinely-inspired mission is to incite a race-war and eradicate the entire emergent sub-species, using not only his television ministries to whip up public fear and hatred, but with a private army of merciless mutant-hating racist killers.

His next step involves taking out the X-Men and begins when Professor Xavier, Cyclops and Storm are seemingly assassinated after participating in a TV debate.

When news of their deaths reaches the test of the team, Colossus, Wolverine and Nightcrawler track down the assailants and discover that their friends are captives of Stryker’s Purifiers, just as old enemy Magneto appears, proposing a temporary truce…

Meanwhile Colossus’s sister Illyana and Kitty Pryde have stumbled upon the captives’ fate and been attacked too. Kitty escapes and goes on the run with murderous Purifiers hot on her trail…

Stryker has been busy: whilst happily torturing his captives he has devised a way to use Xavier’s telepathic abilities to destroy mutants and all those with latent mutant genes at one genocidal stroke.

As the hate-peddler’s plans enter the final stage Magneto and the remaining X-Men prepare for their most important battle, but the showdown on live TV from Madison Square Gardens offers many surprises and reversals of fortune as Stryker, in his paranoid hubris, overestimates the power of blind prejudice and the underestimates the basic humanity of the common man …

This tale is perhaps the most plainspoken and shocking example of mutants as metaphors for racial abuse in society and the stark message herein, savagely delivered by author Chris Claremont and artist Brent Anderson at the very top of their game, made explicit the power of bigotry and the ghastly repercussions of allowing it to bloom uncontested…

Moving, scary and immensely influential, God Loves, Man Kills is the X-Men at their most effective and movie-going readers will recognise much of the tale since it formed the basis for the X-Men film sequel X2.

This moving epic is followed by the first tantalising snippet of another landmark extended saga. The team had grown in popularity and was split into Blue and Gold teams by Xavier; the division engendering the launch of another X-title.

In Uncanny X-Men #281 (October 1991) ‘Fresh Upstart’ by Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio & Art Thibert over a Byrne script saw new villains The Upstarts – led by Shinobi Shaw and Trevor Fitzroy – murderously target the Hellfire Club elite such as cyborg Donald Pierce and White Queen Emma Frost and her young protégés The Hellions, with Storm’s Gold team Archangel, Colossus, Iceman and Jean Grey unable to stop the slaughter.

The same monthClaremont, Jim Lee & Scott Williamsscored monumental sales with X-Men volume 2, #1 wherein Magneto is drawn out of self-imposed exile in ‘Rubicon’.

The weary freedom fighter had distanced himself from Earthly affairs but is gulled by ambitious, devious mutant firebrand Fabian Cortez and his band of Acolytes into renewing his defence of oppressed mutants by attacking Earth and stealing nuclear missiles.

Xavier and Cyclops’ Blue team – Beast, Wolverine, Gambit, Rogue and Psylocke – were able to thwart his attempt but only pushed the master of magnetism further into the clutches of the murderously Machiavellian Acolytes…

New X-Men #114-116 (July to September 2001) wraps up this spectacular comics collection of comicbook X-cellence with a 3-part saga that changed the landscape of Marvel continuity and introduced psychic apex mutant predator Cassandra Nova in a globe-girdling yarn of primal terror.

‘E is for Extinction’ by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely – with Tim Townsend, Dan Green & Mark Morales – saw the creepy old lady gorily secure the DNA of the last surviving Trask (the troubled family which had first invented Sentinels) and cause the robotic nemeses to undergo uncontrolled mechanical evolution before eradicating more than eleven million mutants on their safe haven island state Genosha.

She then turned her attention to the Xavier school and met her match in Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Wolverine and Emma Frost – who was undergoing her own starling secondary metamorphosis.

In the aftermath Professor X made a personal decision which would change the nature of human/mutant relations forever…

Despite the minor quibble that the “Upstarts” story is unsatisfactorily incomplete, I can’t deny that what’s on offer here is of great quality and indisputably excellent examples of the mighty mutants at their most memorable and entertaining.

Most importantly this is another perfectly-designed literary device to turn curious movie-goers into fans of the comic incarnations too. Filled with non-stop tension and blockbuster action, this the ideal tool to make film-goers into funnybook fans and another solid sampling to entice and charm even the most jaded lapsed reader to return.

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

Posted on

Avengers World: A.I.M.Pire


By Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spenser, Stefano Caselli, Rags Morales & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-596-3

Post-Infinity, the reshaping of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes into an unbeatable legion of justice continues in the new title Avengers World which serves the function of a core title from which other associated series would derive direction. Of course, that’s pretty much irrelevant if all you want is high stakes, high octane Fights ‘n’ Tights fun in the traditional Summer Blockbuster manner…

Scriptedby Jonathan Hickman & Nick Spenser with art by Stefano Caselli, Avengers World: A.I.M.Pire collects the first five issues (cover-dated January to June 2014) and includes a pertinent portion from one-shot All-New Marvel Now! Point One which nicely sets the ball rolling for the unending rollercoaster ride to come.

The drama begins as Captain America and Bruce Banner attempt to restore relations and rebuild bridges with peacekeeping security organisation S.H.I.E.L.D. by doing a favour for long-suffering Director Maria Hill.

During the Origin Bomb bombardment by planetary sculptor-turned-probationary Avenger Ex Nihilo (see Avengers: Avengers World and The Last White Event), large parts of the planet were subjected to forced, random and rapid evolution, and now Hill needs a team of seasoned metahumans to go into a transformed area of Canada which has already cost the lives of national superteam Alpha Flight.

However in a frantically fast-changing world she supersedes her own request when news comes in from the rogue state of Madripoor. Apparently the pacific island is burning…

An espionage stealth team consisting of Shang-Chi, The Falcon, Black Widow and Wolverine are soon in play but the bloody civil unrest only masks a deeper problem.

In the meantime Avengers Nightmask, Hawkeye, Spider-Woman and Starbrand are dispatched to Velletai in Italy when the entire population vanishes. Soon after arriving all contact is lost with the team…

At S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ Banner has been crunching data and pinpoints the newly autonomous nation known as A.I.M. Island as the crux of the cluster of strange crises. He also realises the island is changing shape and size and Cap reacts by sending relative neophytes Cannonball, Sunspot and Smasher in to investigate…

On Madripoor Shang-Chi has divined the reason for the unrest: mystic ninja clan The Hand, at the behest of most recent Master The Gorgon, have enacted a ritual whose collateral effects have enflamed the populace. The true purpose, however, was to awaken the unbelievably vast dragon the island rests upon. Tragically the Avengers are too late to stop the creature taking flight wearing Madripoor as a hat…

In Velletai, things are going badly too. The heroes have found a City of the Dead beneath the surface and the frantic departed are all screaming in Starbrand’s head…

The third prong of a triple threat manifests over A.I.M. Island as Smasher, Sunspot and Cannonball are easily captured by the techno-terrorists and delivered to the Scientist Supreme in his grand new capital city Barbuda: soon-to-be hub from where A.I.M. will rule the world…

The second chapter begins with the trio languishing in Barbuda even as the island continues its exponential growth. Whilst Captain America readies his rescue team, Smasher – latest Superguardian of the Shi’ar Empire and granddaughter of Golden Age hero Captain Terror – is being given a guided tour by Scientist Supreme Andrew Forson. His honeyed words are a mere trick to lull her suspicions before he turns her into the nation’s latest super-weapon with the aid of the cabal’s hidden ally: a cosmic force designated The Entropic Man…

High over Southeast Asia, in Mardipoor, Shang-Chi valiantly challenges the Gorgon to single combat only to be cruelly beaten and tossed over the edge into the void, whilst in Velletai the heroes are attacked by undead monsters and Kevin Connor is forced to confront the hundreds of classmates and neighbours who died when the White Event explosively transformed him into Starbrand…

On the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier Director Hill addresses the Avengers’ glaring lack of a mystic member by seconding neophyte wizard Sebastian Druid whilst Cap prepares an away-team to rescue the prisoners of A.I.M. island/continent.

Druid divines the nature of the Velletai situation: the location is a spirit trap built by the Entropy worshipping Cult of Yagzan. What he doesn’t know, however, is that control of the City has been usurped by infernal Avengers’ arch-foe Morgan Le Fay…

Events spiral out of control as Cap and Iron Man try to draw reality-warping former team-mate Manifold back into action, only to discover that the Australian is still trying to repair his abilities, which were damaged during the Infinity crisis.

His salvation only begins after a strange and painfully close encounter with Captain Universe who is still somewhat trapped in her role as “Mother of Creation”…

With time running out for Earth on three fronts, Manifold then teleports back to gather the remaining Avengers and transport then to the most significant battle of their lives…

To Be Continued…

Rounding off this action-packed, tantalising teaser tome is ‘Short Term Fixes’ by Nick Spenser & Rags Morales from All-New Marvel Now! Point One which reveals the background to Smasher, Sunspot and Cannonball’s mission to A.I.M. Island and the devious backroom dickering between Hill and the Sentinel of Liberty which led to the current relationship between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers…

This collection 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 plethora of astounding covers-and-variants by John Cassaday& Laura Martin, Jung-Geon Yoon, Morales, Mike Deodato Jr., In-Hyuk Lee, Art Adams, Milo Manara, Skottie Young, Carlo Barberi, Chris Samnee, Simone Bianchi, Agustin Alessio, Ron Garney & Steve McNiven.
™ 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.

Posted on

Avengers: Adapt or Die


By Jonathan Hickman, Salvador Larroca, Mike Deodato Jr., Butch Guice, Esad Ribic, Steve Pugh & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-583-3

Following an unending string of universe-shattering crises, Iron Man and Captain America swallowed old animosities and united to reshape The Avengers into a planetary defence force more army than voluntary association, with more than twenty active members – human or alien or something less clear cut – whose specialities range from stealth and counter-intelligence to sheer, blockbusting stopping power.

The posture and attitude also changed as the new group actively sought out potential disaster points rather than waiting for trouble to start.

Collecting Avengers volume 5 #24-28 (covering December 2013 to April 2014), the ongoing Big Picture series as scripted by Jonathan Hickman and illustrated Salvador Larroca, Mike Deodato Jr., Butch Guice, Esad Ribic & Steve Pugh continues to lay down the law, beginning with a Christmas present from 3030AD…

From that distant tomorrow comes a far-futuristic iteration of the Armoured Avenger bearing a timely warning of danger to interrupt a much-needed decompression barbecue on top of Avengers Tower.

Inside the building Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are working. Following twin invasions by the extra-galactic Builders and Thanos of Titan plus a mutagenic plague of new metahumans triggered by the Inhumans (Infinity and Inhumanity), the master strategists are readying the latest design of their “Avengers Machine” for safeguarding mankind…

On materialisation Iron Man 3030 panics. This cannot be the right place or time. There are heroes present that history never recorded as Avengers…

After the mandatory clash of arms the situation settles enough for the assemblage to take heed of the time-traveller who warns that a ‘Rogue Planet’ has been aimed at the Earth like a giant bullet…

With time to prepare, the heroes relocate to their frontier outpost on Mars and enact a truly original solution which leaves Earth with a monolithic secret weapon for future emergencies…

A chilling murder mystery then begins when size-changing savant Hank Pym is found dead amongst a mass of slaughtered New Yorkers in ‘Carve a Hole… Climb Inside’. With an Avenger murdered, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill makes the case her topmost priority…

As the investigation proceeds, the truth slowly comes out. Resurgent techno-terrorist cabal A.I.M. has been unwisely exploring the fringes between universes and plucked a sextet of Avengers from their own Earth in the moments before it died as part of the ongoing collapse of the multiverse.

As previously established, Reality is composed of discrete universes all held apart by an infinite crimson underspace dubbed the Superflow. Now that immemorial barrier is somehow fragmenting, with the timeless alien engineers who maintain it helpless to stop the carnage whenever an Earth drifts into contact with another Earth. On those occasions at least one is always obliterated…

A.I.M. has no grudge against their rescued finds and lets them loose upon the world as they prepare for the next phase of their research into other dimensions. Unfortunately General America, Thorr, Iron Monger, Ant-Man, Wasp and their lobotomised Hulk are no heroes and establish their credentials by slaughtering an entire district of annoying New Yorkers…

In ‘Look Around… There’s No Way Out’ Director Hill’s suspicions prove unfounded as the real Avengers go into action and the true facts unfold.

Months ago A.I.M., using genetic material stolen from the World’s Mightiest Heroes, upgraded their latest design of Super-Adaptoid, intent on tasking the six uncanny mechanoids with exploring the void between universes. The crazy scientists unwisely made their creations autonomous, self-aware and able to draw on an armoury of Avenger abilities: well able to mine the multiverse for technological treasures.

They never considered that new experiences might reshape their creatures’ programming or desires and foolishly despatched the Adaptoids to capture the extra-dimensional Avengers as they ran amok on Earth. In the resultant clash Ant-Man was killed and the enslaved Hulk broke free and fled…

Reverting to Bruce Banner the trans-dimensional fugitive made for a safe house he hoped his doppelganger also secretly maintained, whilst at A.I.M. HQ the Explorer Class Adaptoids took advantage of their newly-won free will and seized control of their own destinies…

‘Only Dirt… Six Feet Deep’ opens with Dr. Banner coming face to face with his other-Earthly counterpart and taking a very uncharacteristic chance even as on A.I.M. Island the Scientist Supreme reacts very badly to the news that his prime experiment is completely out of control. The variant Avengers have made savage contact with this Earth’s heroes and a devastating battle is wrecking the Big Apple. He wants all evidence of A.I.M. involvement eradicated…

The battle is just going the good guys’ way when an utterly out of control Hulk turns up and attacks everyone, giving the A.I.M. units a perfect opportunity to step in and surreptitiously extract the evil Avengers…

In the aftermath Bruce confronts Tony Stark, carrying ‘The Case’ and claiming to have deduced the billionaire inventor’s long-term goals. In a tense stand-off he reveals that he – not his double – was recovered by A.I.M. forces and has subsequently ensured that the evil Avengers will not be back.

Even as Captain America was agreeing to surrender the rampaging out of control Hulk to Maria Hill’s custody, Banner was learning from the Scientist Supreme that all the universes are dying – a fact Stark has concealed from his team-mates.

The rogue physicist reasoned the how and why of Iron Man’s recent actions and drive to reshape the Avengers. He also deduced that Stark had reformed the intellectual star-chamber dubbed The Illuminati to make all the really hard decisions and take those actions his fellow heroes would baulk at…

As Stark admits everything and makes Banner a shocking offer, in the trans-dimensional void the free will Adaptoids meet something strangely familiar and begin their next evolution…

To Be Continued…

A spectacular Fights ‘n’ Tights overload that will delight and astonish lovers of cosmic Costumed Dramas, this tome also offers a stunning 28 covers-and-variants gallery by Ribic, Deodato Jr., Agustin Alessio, Simone Bianchi, Joe Quinones, Carlo Barberi, J. Scott Campbell, Daniel Acuña, John Tyler Christopher, Lee Garbett, Tom Scioli, Walt Simonson, Art Adams, Michael Allred, Kris Anka, Alex Ross and Dustin Weaver, as well as 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.
™ 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.

Posted on

Mighty Avengers volume 2: Family Bonding


By Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti, Greg Land, Jay Leisten & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-607-6

The colossal Infinity storyline detailed a staggering two-pronged threat to humanity: intergalactic eradication via all-out attack by an impossibly ancient race dubbed The Builders and – whilst the Avengers mobilised most of their assemblage off-planet to thwart that armada – a separate savage invasion at the behest of Thanos of Titan, who took advantage of the dearth of metahuman defenders to crush mankind…

In the Avengers’ absence, family man Luke Cage led a spirited superhero resistance movement and in the aftermath as the planet rebuilt itself, elected to keep his Mighty Avengers together as a decidedly different kind of crusading team…

Opening a storefront operation in his old Gem Theatre office, Cage’s intention was to bring the Avengers back to ordinary people.

His bold new idea: opening the heroic volunteer brigade to the public who can come to them with meta-related problems or issues of injustice or help the costumed folk in any way they feel able.

The core empowered team comprises The Falcon, Monica Rambeau (formerly Captain Marvel and Photon but now calling herself Spectrum), sidelined and forgotten 1960s black superman Dr. Adam Brashear AKA Blue Marvel, She-Hulk/Jennifer Walters, old comrade Iron Fist and a couple of promising if troubled new kids: Víctor “Power Man 2.0” Álvarez and Ava Ayala, the latest mortal to become the godly avatar White Tiger.

Also helpfully hanging around is a mystically savvy mystery hero who helped out in an early case and now borrows the hand-me-down guise and gear of masked marauder Ronin…

Scripted by Al Ewing, Mighty Avengers volume 2 #6-10 (April-September 2014) opens with the first shots rendered by Valerio Schiti for a sinisterly seditious saga wherein Falcon tracks a far-right radical who has just torched an anti-capitalist bookshop.

Elsewhere Cage is having an uncomfortable conversation with Brashear.

Required in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy to cease public activities lest his example harm the already torturous pace of racial integration in America, Blue Marvel has only recently returned to public life; stirred from a lengthy self-imposed exile due to the impending and building crises threatening Earth.

He doesn’t welcome veiled accusations that his past capitulation actually hindered progress and justice for his fellow African-Americans, but before the discussion can get anywhere meaningful, a cosmic alarm calls the mighty Marvel away …

All conversation is shelved when Ava joins the gathering. She has suffered intolerable personal losses in recent days, heaped atop a long-unsatisfied desire to avenge her murdered family and the chilling pact she has recently made with the primeval Tiger God who supplies her strength, speed and martial arts mastery – for a price. She cannot remember the last time she rested…

On Liberty Island Spectrum and She-Hulk are testing the junior Power Man’s limits before returning to base, but the evening goes into overdrive when Falcon radios in that his book burner was working for army renegade and paramilitary extremist Gideon Mace.

On a lonely rooftop Ava Ayala overhears that the man who slaughtered her family has been released from the psychiatric institution which kept him from her, and the White Tiger cries out to her broken soul…

The story resumes as the fury-filled girl allows her predatory patron deity to take full control of their shared body in return for the promise of justice. Her Avenger friends quickly mobilise to stop her from crossing a line there’s no coming back from, but Victor and Iron Fist are no match for her feral feline rage…

Mace has been adopted as the spokes-figure for a shady but powerful hard right lobbying organisation called the American Policy Research Initiative, and their despicable lawyers make it clear that should anything happen to their poster-boy, the repercussions would be litigious and catastrophic for the store front champions.

With no choice but to play bodyguard to a bloodthirsty, bigoted maniac, the Avengers are waiting when White Tiger attacks. Ava almost defeats them all before finally succumbing to overwhelming force.

She awakens securely bound in Kadesh – Brashear’s undersea super-science fortress – with her friends desperately trying to contact one of their numerous supernatural allies to loosen the Tiger God’s grip on her.

Although Blue Marvel compliantly vanished from America for fifty years, Brashear covertly carried on the good fight under a number of aliases in Europe, Asia and the greater universe. Now a distress call comes in alerting him that techno-terrorists and old enemies W.E.S.P.E. have sponsored an extra-dimensional incursion of devastating force. When the old soldier hurtles off to fix it, he is accompanied by Spectrum and She-Hulk.

Behind the catastrophe is flamboyant, novice mad scientist Dr. Positron who has a deeply personal score to settle with Brashear…

As the away team tackle his deadly robo-insects and the remaining Avengers bicker on over how best to help Ava, in her cell the indomitable captive White Tiger takes her fate into her own hands and finally puts her manipulative power-patron in his proper place…

On Positron’s base Brashear faces shock after shock as his deranged foe opens a portal to the astounding Neutral Zone (where matter and anti-matter collide yet somehow co-exist), liberating Marvel’s long lost son Kevin from a ghastly, torturous imprisonment…

Issue #9 (illustrated by Greg Land & Jay Leisten) opens with enigmatic eldritch warrior Ronin targeted by an increasingly varied army of ninja were-beasts, whilst on the island of Dr. Positron, Kevin Brashear – mutated to monstrous size and shape – gradually oozes though a cascading dimensional portal and Blue Marvel shares his most tragic secret.

From the 1970’s until the early years of the new superheroic age, “Doc Brashear” and his super-genius son clandestinely combatted a host of uncanny evils until one day their arch-nemesis Evald Skorpion opened a hole into infinity and Kevin was sucked into it.

To save the world, a doting parent resolutely sacrificed his son…

Now as the colossal thing that was Kevin ponderously squeezes out of the wormhole, the terrifying effects of that sojourn in other-space can be fully seen, compelling heroes and villain to unite in putting the tragic victim back there at all costs…

In New York meanwhile a flock of were-roosters and snake-ninjas have succeeded in battle against the mystery hero, exposing his shocking identity to the world as a prelude to their expediting the coming of the appalling Age of the Deathwalkers…

The epic adventure concludes – for now – with an intoxicating Original Sin crossover (another mega-major publishing event which disclosed many of the Marvel Universe’s most closely guarded secrets) as Blue Marvel is summoned to the moon to comply with the last wishes of a dead friend.

Whilst Cage and Co. resist mounting mystical menaces in New York, Adam ponders an impossible situation. Over his many years of isolation and ostracization, the seemingly immortal superman somehow became close to the aloof, remote and unshakably distant cosmic entity known as Uatu the Watcher.

Now the omnipotent sidereal witness has been murdered by agents unknown and the deeply shaken defender of the Earth is further astounded and gratified when Uatu’s significant other Ulana gives their baby into his safekeeping…

To Be Continued…

With covers by Land & Leisten Family Bonding is a fast, furious, fabulously inventive and fantastically offbeat collection combining eerie horror, amazing action and outrageous humour into an unforgettable frolic no Fights ‘n’ Tights fanboy could possibly resist.
™ & © 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.

Posted on

Showcase Presents Super Friends volume 1


By E. Nelson Bridwell, Denny O’Neil, Ric Estrada, Joe Orlando, Ramona Fradon, Kurt Schaffenberger, Bob Smith & Vince Colletta (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4757-7

Once upon a time comics were primarily created with kids in mind and, whilst I’d never advocate exclusively going back to those days, the modern industry is greatly lacking for not properly addressing the needs and tastes of younger fans these days.

A superb case in point of all-ages comics done right can be seen in Showcase Presents Super Friends volume 1 which gathers the licensed comicbook tales which spun off from a popular Saturday Morning TV Cartoon show: one that, thanks to the canny craftsmanship and loving invention of lead scripter E. Nelson Bridwell, became an integral and unmissable component of the greater DC Universe.

It was also one of the most universally thrilling and satisfying superhero titles of the period for older fans: featuring the kind of smart and witty, straightforward adventures people my age grew up with, produced during a period when the entire industry was increasingly losing itself in colossal continued storylines and angsty, soap opera melodrama.

Sometimes all you really want is a smart plot well illustrated; sinister villains well-smacked, a solid resolution and early bed…

The TV show Super Friends ran (under various iterations) from 1973 to 1986; starring Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and a brace of studio-originated kids as student crimebusters, supplemented by occasional guest stars from the DCU on a case by case basis.

The series then made the transition to print as part of the publisher’s 1976 foray into “boutiqued” comics which saw titles with a television connection cross-marketed as “DC TV Comics”.

Child-friendly Golden Age comicbook revival Shazam!- the Original Captain Marvel had been adapted into a successful live action television series and its Saturday Morning silver screen stablemate The Secrets of Isis consequently reversed the process by becoming a comicbook.

With the additions of hit comedy show Welcome Back Kotter and animated blockbuster Super Friends into four-colour format, DC had a neat little outreach imprimatur tailor-made to draw viewers into the magic word of funnybooks.

At least that was the plan: with the exception of Super Friends none of the titles lasted more than ten issues beyond their launch…

This bombastic black-&-white extravaganza collects Super Friends #1-24 (spanning November 1976 to September 1979) and opens with a crafty two-part caper by Bridwell, Ric Estrada, Vince Colletta & Joe Orlando.

‘The Fury of the Super Foes’ found heroes-in-training Wendy and Marvin – and their incredible astute mutt Wonderdog – studying at the palatial Hall of Justice, even as elsewhere a confederation of villains prove that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery if not outright intellectual theft…

The Penguin, Cheetah, Flying Fish, Poison Ivy and Toyman, having auditioned a host of young criminals, are creating a squad of sidekicks and protégés to follow in their felonious footsteps and Chick, Kitten, Sardine, Honeysuckle and Toyboy are all ready and willing to carry out their first caper.

When the giant “Troubalert” screen informs the heroes of a three-pronged attack on S.T.A.R. Labs’ latest inventions, the champions split up to tackle the crises but are thoroughly trounced until Wendy and Marvin break curfew to help them.

As a result of the clash, Chick and Kitten are brought back to the Hall of Justice, but their talk of repentance is a rascally ruse and they secretly sabotage vital equipment…

Unluckily for them Wonderdog has seen everything and quickly finds a way to inform the still-oblivious good guys in issue #2 but too late to prevent the Super Friends being briefly ‘Trapped by the Super Foes’…

The incomparable Ramona Fradon – aided and abetted by inker Bob Smith – took over the pencilling with #3 as ‘The Cosmic Hit Man?’ saw fifty intergalactic super-villains murdered by infernal Dr. Ihdrom, who then combined their harvested essences to create an apparently unbeatable hyper-horror who utterly overwhelmed Earth’s heroic defenders. However he soon fell victim to his own arrogance and Wendy and Marvin’s logical deductions…

‘Riddles and Rockets!’ found the Super Friends overmatched by new ne’er-do-well Skyrocket whilst simultaneously trying to cope with a rash of crimes contrived by King of Conundra The Riddler.

It wasn’t too long before a pattern emerged and a criminal connection was confirmed…

Author Bridwell was justly famed as DC’s keeper of the continuity, possessing an astoundingly encyclopaedic knowledge of DC’s publishing minutiae. ‘Telethon Treachery!’ gave him plenty of scope to display it with a host of near-forgotten guest-stars joining our heroes as they hosted a televised charity event whilst money-mad menace Greenback lurked in the wings, awaiting the perfect moment to grab the loot and kidnap the wealthiest donators…

The Atom played a crucial role in stopping the dastardly depredations of an animal trainer who used beasts as bandits in ‘The Menace of the Menagerie Man!’ before a huge cast change was unveiled in #7 (October 1977) with ‘The Warning of the Wondertwins’…

TV is very different from comics. When the new season of Super Friends aired, Wendy, Marvin and Wonderdog were gone, replaced without warning or explanation by alien shapeshifters Zan and Jayna and their elastic-tailed space monkey Gleek.

With more room – and consideration for the fans – Bridwell turned the sudden cast change into a bombastic battle to save Earth from total annihilation whilst properly introducing the adult heroes’ newest students in memorable style…

At the Hall of Justice Wendy and Marvin spot a spaceship hurtling to Earth on the Troubalert monitor and dash off to intercept it. Aboard are two siblings from distant planet Exor: a girl who can change into animals and a boy who can become any form of water from steam to ice. They have come with an urgent warning…

Superman’s alien enemy Grax has determined to eradicate humanity and devised a dozen different super-bombs and attendant weird-science traps to ensure his victory. The weapons are scattered all over Earth and even the entire Justice League cannot stretch its resources to cover every angle and threat…

To Wendy and Marvin the answer is obvious: call upon the help and knowledge of hyper-powered local heroes…

Soon Superman and Israel’s champion The Seraph are dismantling a black hole bomb whilst Elongated Man and titan-tressed Godiva are performing similar duties on a life-eradicator in England and Flash and mighty-leaping Impala are dismantling uncatchable ordnance in South Africa…

Hawkman and Hawkwoman then join Native American avenger Owlwoman to crush darkness-breeding monsters in Oklahoma whilst from the Hall of Justice Wendy, Marvin and the Wondertwins monitor the crisis with a modicum of mounting hope…

The cataclysmic epic continues in #8 with ‘The Mind Killers!’ as Atom and Rising Son tackle a deadly device designed to decimate Japan even as in Ireland Green Lantern and Jack O’Lantern battle multi-hued monstrosities before switching off their target of technological terror.

In New Zealand time-scanning Tuatara tips off Red Tornado to the position of a bomb cached in the distant past and Venezuela’s doom is diverted through a team-up between Batman and Robin and reptile-themed champion Bushmaster whilst Taiwan benefits from a melding of sonic superpowers possessed by Black Canary and the astounding Thunderlord…

The saga soars to a classic climax with ‘Three Ways to Kill a World!’ in which the final phases of Grax’s scheme finally fail thanks to Green Arrow and Tasmanian Devil in Australia, Aquaman and Little Mermaid in the seas off Denmark and Wonder Woman and The Olympian in Greece.

Or at least they would have if the Hellenic heroes had found the right foe. Sadly their triumph against Wrong-Place, Right-Time terrorist Colonel Conquest almost upset everything. Thankfully the quick thinking students send an army of defenders to Antarctica where Norwegian novice Icemaiden dismantles the final booby-trap bomb.

However, whilst the adult champions are thus engaged, Grax invades the Hall of Justice seeking revenge on the pesky whistleblowing Exorian kids, but is completely unprepared for and overwhelmed by Wendy, Marvin and Wonderdog who categorically prove they are ready to graduate to the big leagues…

With Zan and Jayna enrolled as the latest heroes-in-training, Super Friends #10 details their adoption by Batman’s old associate – and eccentric time travel theoretician – Professor Carter Nichols just before a legion of alien horrors arrives on Earth to teach the kids that appearances can be lethally deceiving in ‘The Monster Menace!’ after which Kingslayer’ pits the heroes against criminal mastermind Overlord who has contracted the world’s greatest hitman to murder more than one hundred leaders at one sitting…

Another deep dive into DC’s past then resurrected Golden Age titans T.N.T and Dan, the Dyna-Mite in ‘The Atomic Twosome!’

The 1940s mystery men had been under government wraps ever since their radioactive powers began to melt down, but when an underground catastrophe ruptured their individual lead-lined vaults, the Super Friends were called in to prevent a potential nuclear nightmare…

The subterranean reason for the near tragedy was tracked to a monstrous mole creature, and led to the introduction of eternal mystic Doctor Mist who revealed the secret history of civilisation and begged help to halt ‘The Mindless Immortal!’ before its random burrowing shattered mankind’s cities…

Super Friends #14 opened with ‘Elementary!’; introducing four ordinary mortals forever changed when they were possessed by ancient sprits and tasked with plundering the world by Overlord. When the heroes scotched the scheme, Undine, Salamander, Sylph and Gnome retained their powers and determined to become a crime-fighting team dubbed The Elementals…

The issue also contained a short back-up tale illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger & Bob Smith. ‘The Origin of the Wondertwins’ at last revealed how the Exorian genetic throwbacks – despised outcasts on their own world – fled from a circus of freaks and uncovered Grax’s plot before taking that fateful rocketship to Earth…

Big surprises were in store in ‘The Overlord Goes Under!’ (Fradon & Smith) as the Elementals began their battle against evil by joining the Super Friends in crushing the crimelord. All the heroes were blithely unaware that they were merely clearing the way for a far more cunningly subtle mastermind to take Overlord’s place…

‘The People Who Stole the Sky!’ in #16 was a grand, old fashioned alien invasion yarn, perfectly foiled by the team and the increasingly adept Wondertwins whilst ‘Trapped in Two Times!’ found Zan and Jayna used by the insidious Time Trapper (nee Time Master) to lure the adult heroes into deadly peril on Krypton in the days before it detonated and future water world Neryla in the hours before it was swallowed by its critically expanding red sun.

After rescuing the kids – thanks in no small part to Superman’s legendary lost love Lyla Ler-rol – the Super Friends used Tuatara’s chronal insight and Professor Nichol’s obscure methodologies to go after the Trapper in the riotous yet educational ‘Manhunt in Time!’ (illustrated by Schaffenberger & Smith), by way of Atlantis before it sank, medieval Spain and Michigan in 1860AD, to thwart a triple-strength scheme to derail history and end Earth civilisation…

Issue #19 saw the return of Menagerie Man in ‘The Mystery of the Missing Monkey!’ (Fradon & Smith) as the beast-breaker boosted Gleek, intent on turning his elastic-tailed talents into the perfect pickpocketing tool, after which Denny O’Neil – writing as Sergius O’Shaugnessy – teamed with Schaffenberger & Smith for a more jocular turn.

Chaos and comedy ensued when the team tackled vegetable monsters unleashed when self-obsessed shlock-movie director Frownin’ Fritz Frazzle got hold of Merlin’s actually magical Magic Lantern and tried to make a masterpiece on the cheap in ‘Revenge of the Leafy Monsters!’…

Bridwell, Fradon & Smith were back in #21 where ‘Battle Against the Super Fiends!’ found the heroes travelling to Exor to combat a brace of super-criminals who could duplicate all their power-sets, after which ‘It’s Never Too Late!’ (#22, O’Neil, Fradon & Smith) revealed how temporal bandit Chronos subjected the Super Friends to a time-delay treatment which made them perennially too late to stop him – until Batman and the Wondertwins out-thought him…

The Mirror Master divided and banished teachers and students in #23 but was unable to prevent an ‘SOS from Nowhere!’ (Bridwell, Fradon & Smith) to the fleet-footed Flash. This episode also spent some time fleshing out the Wondertwin’s earthly secret identities as Gotham Central highschoolers John and Joanna Fleming…

This splendid selection of super thrills then concludes with ‘Past, Present and Danger!’ by O’Neil, Fradon & Smith wherein Zan and Jayna’s faces are found engraved on a recently unearthed Egyptian pyramid. Upon investigation inside the edifice, the heroes awaken two ancient exiles who resemble the kids, but are in fact criminals who have been fleeing Exorian justice for thousands of years.

How lucky then that the kids are perfect doubles the crooks can send back with the robot cops surrounding the pyramid – once they’ve got rid of the Earthling heroes…

Brilliantly entertaining, masterfully crafted and always utterly engaging, these stories are comics gold that will delight children and adults in equal proportion. Truly generational in appeal, they are probably the closest thing to an American answer to the magic of Tintin or Asterix and no family home should be without this tome.
© 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 2014 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Usagi Yojimbo book 8: Shades of Death


By Stan Sakai (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-259-7

Usagi Yojimbo (which translates as “rabbit bodyguard”) first appeared as a background character in anthropomorphic comedy The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper and Hermy, which premiered in 1984 amongst the assorted furry ‘n’ fuzzy folk in Albedo Anthropomorphics #1. He subsequently graduated to a solo act in Critters, Amazing Heroes, Furrlough and the Munden’s Bar back-up series in Grimjack.

In 1955, when Stan Sakai was two years old, his family moved to Hawaii from Kyoto, Japan. He left the University of Hawaii with a BA in Fine Arts, and pursued further studies at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design in California.

His early forays into comics were as a letterer – most famously for the inimitable Groo the Wanderer – before his nimble pens and brushes found a way to express his passion for Japanese history, legend and the filmic works of Akira Kurosawa and his peers, and transformed a proposed story about a human historical hero into one of the most enticing and impressive fantasy sagas of all time.

And it’s still more educational, informative and authentic than any dozen Samurai sagas you can name…

Although the deliriously peripatetic and expansive period epic stars sentient animals and details the life of a Lord-less wandering Samurai eking out as honourable a living as possible by selling his sword as a Yojimbo (bodyguard-for-hire), the milieu and scenarios all scrupulously mirror the Feudal Edo Period of Japan (roughly the 17th century AD by our reckoning) whilst simultaneously referencing other cultural icons from sources as varied as Zatoichi and Godzilla.

Miyamoto Usagi is brave, noble, industrious, honest, sentimental, gentle, artistic, empathetic, long-suffering and conscientious: a rabbit devoted to the spiritual tenets of Bushido.  He simply cannot turn down any request for help or ignore the slightest evidence of injustice. As such, his destiny is to be perpetually drawn into an unending panorama of incredible situations.

The title was as much a nomad as its star. This guest-star stuffed eighth monochrome masterpiece marshals yarns released by Mirage Publishing as Usagi Yojimbo volume 2, #1-6, and also offers some short tales from #7-8.

Following an evocative Introduction from legendary illustrator and Dean of dinosauria William Stout, the medieval mystery play continues with the 3-part crossover epic ‘Shades of Green’ wherein Usagi and his crusty companion Gennosuké (an irascibly bombastic, money-mad bounty-hunter and conniving thief-taking rhino with a heart of gold) are recruited by Kakera: a ratty shaman in dire need of protection from the dwindling remnants of the once-mighty Neko Ninja clan.

The former imperial favourites have fallen upon hard times since they and the Ronin Rabbit crushed the Dragon Bellow plot of rebel Lord Takamuro. Now, the bat assassins of the Komori Ninja clan are constantly harrying, harassing and actively trying to replace them in patron Lord Hikiji‘s service…

Chunin (deputy leader) Gunji believes the rodent wizard would make a mighty slave, and is scheming to usurp the new – female – clan chief Chizu whilst acquiring him…

With the Neko’s trap closing around them all, the sensei summons the spirits of four fantastic fighters to aid Usagi and Gen. The phantoms promptly posses a quartet of little Kamé (tortoises) and are reshaped into adolescent amphibian Ninja Turtles, identifying themselves as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello.

Usagi has fought beside one of their number before…

The subsequent battles go badly and eventually Gunji’s forces make off with Kakera-sensei. As Usagi leads the remaining heroes in relentless pursuit, the conniving chunin makes his move. Gunji’s attempt to assassinate Chizu is bloodily and efficiently ended by the late-arriving Rabbit Ronin who is astounded to be told by the lady he has saved that the Neko’s lethal interest in him is now at an end…

With the shaman rescued and Gunji dead, the adventure closes with the turtle spirits returned to their own place and time, leaving Gen and Usagi to follow their own (temporarily) separate roads…

‘Jizo’ then offers a delightful interlude as a grieving mother dedicates a roadside shrine to her murdered child and mysterious Karma places the killers in the path of a certain justice-dispensing, long-eared wanderer before 2-part tale ‘Shi’ leads Usagi to the assistance of a valley of poor farmers under constant attack by bullies and brigands seeking to make them leave their impoverished homes.

The thugs are secretly employed by a local magistrate and his ruthless brother who have discovered gold under the peasants land and want to extract it without attracting the attention of the local Lord’s tax collectors.

When the Ronin’s formidable opposition stalls the brothers’ scheme they hire a quartet of assassins whose collective name means “death”, but the killers are far less trouble than the head farmer’s daughter Kimie who has never seen someone as glamorous or attractive as the soft-spoken samurai…

Although there are battles aplenty for Usagi, the remorseless greed of the brothers finishes them before the yojimbo can…

A delightful silent comedy follows as ‘The Lizard’s Tale’ sees the Ronin play unwilling Pied Piper and guardian to a wandering flock of tokagé lizards (ubiquitous, omnivorous reptiles that populate the anthropomorphic world, replacing scavenger species like rats, cats and dogs in the fictitious ecosystem). The rambunctious trouble-magnets then repay the favour when the wanderer is ambushed in the snow-drowned mountains by an army of vengeful bandits…

The remainder of the stories offer elucidating glimpses of the rabbit’s boyhood. Once, Miyamoto Usagi was simply the son of a small-town magistrate sent to spend his formative years learning the Way of Bushido from a gruff and distant leonine hermit named Katsuichi.

The stern sensei taught not just superior technique and tactics, but also an ironclad creed of justice and restraint which would serve the Ronin well throughout his turbulent life.

In ‘Usagi’s Garden’ the pupil rebels against the arduous and undignified task of growing food until the lion delivers a subtle but life changing lesson, whilst in ‘Autumn’ a painful fall propels the lad into a nightmare confrontation with a monster who has trapped the changing of the seasons in a bamboo cage…

The 3-chapter fable ‘Battlefield’ then discloses a key moment and turning point in the trainee warrior’s life.

It begins when a mind-broken, fleeing soldier shatters the boy’s childish dreams of warrior glory. The fugitive is a survivor of the losing side in a mighty battle and his sorry state forces Usagi to rethink his preconceptions of war.

Eager to ram home the lesson, Katsuichi takes his student to the battlefield where peasants and scavengers are busy snatching up whatever they can from the scattered corpses. Usagi is horrified. To take a samurai’s swords is to steal his soul, but even so a little later he cannot stop himself picking up a fallen hero’s Wakizashi (short sword).

However, after concealing the blade in safe place, the boy is haunted by visions of the unquiet corpse and sneaks off to return the stolen steel soul.

He is caught by soldiers who think him a scavenger and looter. About to lose his thieving hands he is only saved by the intervention of victorious Great Lord MifunÄ—.

The noble looks into the boy’s face and sees something honest, honourable and perhaps, one day, useful…

This medieval monochrome masterwork also includes a gallery of covers to charm and delight one and all.

Despite changing publishers a few times the Roaming Rabbit has been in continuous publication since 1987, with more than 30 collections and books to date. He has guest-starred in many other series (most notably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its TV incarnation) and even almost made it into his own small-screen show.

There are high-end collectibles, art prints, computer games and RPGs, a spin-off sci-fi comics serial and lots of toys. Sakai and his creation have won numerous awards both within the Comics community and amongst the greater reading public.

Fast-paced yet lyrical, informative and funny, the saga alternately bristles with tension and thrills and often breaks your heart with astounding tales of pride and tragedy.

Simply bursting with veracity and verve, Usagi Yojimbo is a perfect comics experience: a monolithic, magical saga of irresistible appeal that will delight devotees and make converts of the most hardened hater of “funny animal” stories.

Sheer comicbook poetry by a sublime Comicbook Sensei…
Text and illustrations © 1993, 1994, 1997 Stan Sakai. All other material and registered characters are © and™ their respective owners. Usagi Yojimbo is a registered trademark of Stan Sakai. All rights reserved.