Category: Graphic Novels

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Hey you! – all the parents, uncles, aunts, childless family friends and generally-nonplussed, bemused or bewildered, child-adjacent comics fans. Do you ever wonder what to get the scary, somehow unfathomable younglings, footling ankle-biters and drooling rug-rats that implacably impinge on every Christmas, birthday (so, so many birthdays!) or extended family event?

Have you ever considered that if you catch ’em early enough you could actually turn those little devils dears into readers and even actual Comics Fans too? Then perhaps you’ll actually have something to talk about whenever you’re stuck with them… 

Here’s some more suggestions that should make gift-shopping easier this year – and why not read the books, before wrapping them up? They’re all awfully good… 

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Ultimate Spider-Man: Venom


By Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Art Thibert & Rodney Ramos (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2873-1

After Marvel’s financial – and indeed creative – problems in the later 1990s, the company came back swinging. A key new concept was the remodelling and modernising of their core characters for the new youth culture. The ‘Ultimate‘ imprint abandoned the monumental continuity which had always been Marvel’s greatest asset, and the company’s major characters were given a separate universe to play in, with varying degrees of radical makeover to appeal to a contemporary 21st century audience.

Peter Parker was once again a nerdy high-school geek, brilliant but bullied by his physical superiors, and there was a fresh and fashionable, more modern and scientifically feasible rationale for the spider bite which imparted impossible arachnoid abilities.

Uncle Ben still died because of his lack of responsibility. The Daily Bugle was still there as was the outrageous J. Jonah Jameson. But now in a more cynical, litigious world, well-used to cover-ups and conspiracy theories, arch-foe Norman Osborn – a corrupt, ruthless billionaire businessman – was behind everything.

Any gesture towards the faux-realism of traditional superhero fare was surrendered to a tried-and-tested soap-opera melodrama that inevitably links all characters together in invisible threads of karmic coincidence and familial consanguinity, but, to be honest, it seldom hurt the narrative. After all as long as internal logic isn’t contravened, subplots don’t have to make sense to be entertaining.

By reworking key moments of Lee & Ditko’s Spider-Man – and their myriad successors – writer Brian Michael Bendis and illustrator Mark Bagley succinctly captured the core values of the original and certainly re-cast in it terms that newer readers readily assimilated. The Ultimate Peter Parker spoke to modern teen readers in the same way the 1960s incarnation spoke to me and my peers…

Collecting issues #33-39 of Ultimate Spider-Man from 2003, this premiere hardcover edition introduces an alternative vision for the web-spinner’s most memorable foe of recent vintage, and upped the angst-quotient by revealing untold connections with Peter’s long-dead parents.

The convoluted, clotted web of coincidence and continuity which had eventually bogged down the original Spider-Man was just beginning to creep into these tales, but perhaps that’s unavoidable if you’re concocting contemporary super-heroics.

What you need to know: Parker is the perennial hard-luck loser kid, a brilliant geek just trying to get by in a world where daily education is infinitely more scary than monsters and villains. His alter ego’s already shaky reputation has been destroyed by a burglar, who impersonated Spider-Man, went on a very public crime-spree and murdered Police Captain George Stacy.

Whilst Peter was dealing with the deadly doppelganger his widowed Aunt May was inviting Stacy’s orphaned daughter Gwen to move into the Parker household. In the aftermath Pete’s girlfriend and confidante Mary Jane Watson dumped him, unable to deal with the constant stress of having an underage superhero and perpetually potential corpse for a lover…

Shell-shocked and emotionally gutted by his bad break-up, Peter broods and mopes around the house until he finds an old box of junk which contains notes and video tapes of his 5-year old self and his parents; dead for a decade in a plane crash.

The idyllic scenes show a picnic in the park, attended by geneticists Richard and Mary Parker, their research partners the Brocks, Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Although he had forgotten, Eddie Brock Jr., despite being an older kid, was young Pete’s best friend for years – almost a brother…

Eddie’s folks had also died in the crash and the boy had been forced to leave the city and live with his grandparents.

All fired up, Peter tracks down Eddie and, discovering he’s now a student at Empire State University, resolves to find his old buddy and show him the tapes. So eager is the Arachnid kid that he doesn’t even glance at the notes and files in the box: enigmatic records pertaining to an incredible, radical cancer-cure code-named the Venom Project…

Under the tutelage of Dr. Curt Connors (whom Spidey once battled when the scientist temporarily mutated into a sentient Lizard), Eddie has grown into the coolest guy imaginable: a science student carrying on their father’s work and a player with lots of great-sounding advice about girls…

At the end of a great day on Campus, Eddie takes Peter to the labs and shows his bro-besotted pal “the work” – a shared inheritance from their departed fathers which will change the world forever…

The miracle-cure is a gloopy black liquid based on Ray Parker’s DNA: designed to coat a cancer sufferer’s entire body in a living bio-suit that would boost the victim’s system and repair organic malfunctions, and as Eddie shows it off he also discloses how corporate skulduggery scuttled the bold project even before the groundbreaking technologists died in that mysterious crash…

The suspicious and embittered Brock has spent years reconstructing the project using notes and samples kept by his grandfather. Now the student is close to total, vindicating success…

Back in High School Pete wants to confront Mary Jane, but Gwen advises against it. However when college-guy Eddie shows up in flashy sports car she joins the distracted Parker in another jaunt to ESU…

Fuming for hours at the imagined cause of his parents’ death and how well Gwen is getting on with Eddie, Parker breaks into the university labs to “obtain” his own test samples of the Venom prototype and is horrified when the goo attacks and utterly envelops his body…

That night, a new Spider-Man rampages through New York, clad in deepest black. Stronger, faster, tougher, far more reckless and wild and spectacularly crushing crimes big and small. After brutally foiling a celebrity kidnapping and easily trashing super-villain the Shocker, the dark Spider tackles a petty thief who reminds him of Uncle Ben’s killer and, lost in an emotional flashback, mutates into a fanged horror which tries to eat the gun-toting thug…

Petrified and aghast, Peter comes to his senses in time and tries to escape but the suit won’t let him go until the panicked lad blunders into high tension power cables and crashes to earth in the cemetery where his parents are buried…

Eddie is far from the cool guy he seems. After trying to take advantage of Gwen the frustrated frat boy sees TV footage of the Black Spider-Man and puts the pieces together. Rushing to the lab he finds Peter with the Venom sample and demands to know everything. Peter’s desperate warnings seem to hit home and he allows Parker to destroy the potentially homicidal sludge. Returning home he finds the still-shaking Gwen who tells him what Eddie did and slowly realises that his childhood friend might not be the paragon he imagined…

Brock meanwhile has retrieved another sample in his ongoing series of Venom experiments and activated it with his own body…

Plagued by nightmares, Peter seeks out Mary Jane who again rejects him and his dangerous lifestyle, whilst at ESU Eddie’s rash act has already cost the life of the cleaning woman who tried to help the mewling ebony mess on a lab floor.

Next day at Midtown High, Peter’s Spider-Sense alerts him to incredible peril and he realises that the suit has copied his memories and passed them on. Eddie has become a ravening, shape-shifting carnivorous version of Spider-Man, fuelled by a now unsuppressed psychotic paranoia and hatred…

With Richard Parker’s video-taped fears and misgivings on the Venom Project and life in general echoing in his head, Peter confronts the exultant, mutated Eddie and is soundly thrashed. The big black beast is going wild: slaughtering cops and civilians, whilst only really craving Peter. The savage suit is madly trying to reunite with Peter’s memories and Parker DNA…

In the pointless battle that follows, the monstrous avatar is vaporised by lightning and Peter flees. Dodging cops who want to arrest him for his various impostors’ crimes, the totally traumatised kid runs straight into the formidable Nick Fury.

The Director of covert security agency S.H.I.E.L.D. is the government’s go-to guy: responsible for superhuman affairs and crises. Moreover he had previously threatened to draft Spider-Man once he turned eighteen…

Despondent and dejected, the boy surrenders and begs to be cured of the curse of Arachnid powers, but instead receives an unexpected and life-changing pep-talk… Bewildered Peter again breaks into the ESU lab and meets Dr. Connors, wearily examining the vaults from which all the remaining Venom samples have been removed…

This version of the Wondrous Wall-crawler is very close to the movie iteration – surely a welcome benefit for all converts from celluloid to paper adventuring – and this book also includes added value features ‘Venom Arc Outline’ and 8 pages of beautiful Bagley pencils for the assorted comics and collection covers.

Moody and scary, but far more-concerned with angst-ridden melodrama than Fights ‘n’ Tights action, this thriller ends on a pensive, low-key and unsatisfactorily inconclusive note, deferring the eventual, inevitable showdown with the Venom-Brock amalgam to another day and leaving tragic Peter Parker even more conflicted and confused than before…

And that’s probably the point. Frenetic and compelling, the geeky charisma of the misunderstood alienated outsider fuels and permeates this readable pot-boiler of turbulent teen-tribulation and fashionable school-daze. Light yet addictive, this glossy super-soap brings great comics entertainment to the post-literate generation.
© 2003, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman Secret Origin


By Geoff Johns, Gary Frank & Jon Sibal (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3299-3

One of the perennial dangers of comicbook longevity is the incessant – and, as you get older, apparently hyper-accelerated – revisionism afflicting origin stories. Characters with any measure of success are continually reinvented to appeal to new readers and generally appal or gradually disaffect veteran aficionados. Moreover, nowadays it seems to happen sooner and sooner into a rebooted hero’s run.

Batman and Superman in particular are cursed by this situation, as much because of their broad mass-media appeal as their perfectly simple bedrock concepts. In recent years DC has been sedulously and assiduously editing, in-filling and cross-fertilising its icons until whether through movies, animated cartoons, TV shows, video games or the comics themselves, followers of the World’s Finest heroes can be assured that the ephemera and backstory always remain consistent and reliably reconcilable.

The upside of this is that as long as we fanboys can stifle our chagrin and curb our umbrage, every so often we can enjoy a fresh but not condescending, vivacious but not fatuous re-imagining of our best-beloved childhood touchstones…

In 2009-2010 Geoff Johns and Gary Frank remastered the Man of Tomorrow with their 6-issue miniseries Superman: Secret Origin which, whilst reinstating many formerly-erased elements of the classic Silver Age mythology, also incorporated much of John Byrne’s groundbreaking 1986 reboot (as collected in the Man of Steel tpb volumes) with Mark Waid, Lenil Francis Yu & Gerry Alanguilan’s 2003 (Smallville TV-show inspired) Superman: Birthright.

Moreover the tale also legitimised and fully absorbed the Christopher Reeve Superman movies into the canon, with Frank’s supremely authentic renditions making the actor’s appearance and demeanour as both Action Ace and klutzy Clark Kent the definitive comicbook look of the Caped Kryptonian.

This particularly well-known folk-tale-retold opens with an introduction by screenwriter, producer and occasional comics scribe David S. Goyer after which ‘The Boy of Steel’ hones in on Clark Kent’s formative years as the Kansas farmboy begins to realise just how truly different he is from his friends and classmates.

Traumatised when he accidentally breaks best pal Pete Ross‘ arm playing football, Clark’s only confidante is Lana Lang – who has long known about his incredible strength and durability – but even she can offer no solace. The strange boy’s abilities are growing every day and his father is increasingly advising him to distance himself from ordinary kids.

When Lana kisses Clark, his eyes blast forth heat rays and nearly set the school on fire, prompting Jonathan and Martha Kent to reveal the truth to their troubled son. Buried under the barn is a small spaceship, and when Clark touches it a recorded hologram message from his birth-parents Jor-El and Lara shockingly discloses the orphan’s incredible origins as Kal-El, the Last Son of the dead planet Krypton…

As the stunned and traumatised youth flees into the night, in another part of Smallville an equally unique youngster discovers a glowing green meteor fragment…

In the days that follow Clark, weighed down by a new sense of responsibility and isolation, begins the life-long masquerade that will forever deflect attention from the being he really is. Meanwhile Martha, using materials from the fallen star-ship, makes her son a suit based on the garments she saw in the alien’s message and bearing the proud family crest of the House of El…

On the day of the County Fair Clark meets Lex Luthor and feels sick for the first time in his life when the arrogantly abrasive boy-genius shows him the green rock he had found in the fields. At that moment a tornado strikes the little town and Lana is swept to her doom in the skies until impossiblyClark chases after her and flies her to safety…

Issue #2 features ‘Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes’ and reveals how Smallville is seemingly protected by an invisible guardian angel who mysteriously saves people and property. Clark is lonelier than ever and, with only Lana and his folks to talk to, tries to strike up a friendship with Lex, but the aggressively disdainful and disparaging prodigy can only dream of escaping the revoltingly provincial backwater and moving to the big city of Metropolis…

Everything changes when the boy from Krypton meets a trio of super-powered strangers from the future. Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy have travelled back to meet the youth who inspired a thousand years of heroism and show it by taking the Boy of Steel on a breathtaking vacation into the fabulous future.

…And when he eventually returns home there’s one more glorious surprise when Superboy intercepts an extraterrestrial projectile and is reunited with his long-lost Kryptonian pet…

Things are looking up for Luthor too: his despised but fully-insured father having just died, the brilliant boy and his little sister are now on their way to bigger and better things…

‘Mild-Mannered Reporter’ begins as, after years of travelling, bumbling Clark Kent begins work at the Metropolis Daily Planet; a once-great newspaper on the verge of bankruptcy in a once-great city. The venerable rag was slowly dying; suffering and expiring by degrees for the crucial mistake of trying to expose the billionaire plutocrat who owned most of the vast conurbation – the swaggering self-styled philanthropist Lex Luthor.

Even so, Editor Perry White, intern and aspiring photo-journalist Jimmy Olsen and particularly lead reporter Lois Lane were determined to go down fighting…

Every day Luthor appears on the balcony of his corporate HQ and deigns to grant the tawdry request of one of the fawning desperate rabble, but his gloating is spoiled when Lane and her new stooge Kent break through security and disrupt the demonstration of a new high-tech fighting-suit. In the melee Lois and a helicopter are knocked off the skyscraper roof and impossibly saved by a flying blue and red Adonis…

Fully revealed to the world, the mysterious Superman captures humanity’s imagination and soon exclusive reports and Olsen’s photos in the Planet turn the paper’s fortunes around. Luthor instinctively knows he has a rival for Metropolis’ attention and approbation and savagely dedicates all his vast resources to destroying his foe…

An early opportunity comes when destitute and grasping janitor Rudy Jones accepts Luthor’ daily benison and is accidentally mutated by exposure to Green Rock waste into a life-absorbing energy-leeching monster. ‘Parasites’ sees the Man of Tomorrow’s spectacular victory thrown in his face by Luthor who publicly brands the hero an alien spy and vanguard of invasion…

Tension escalates in ‘Strange Visitor’ as Lois’s estranged father General Sam Lane collaborates with Luthor to capture Superman, using the military man’s pet psycho Sgt. John Corben (a creepy stalker the elder Lane selected and groomed to marry Lois and “set her straight”) in an armoured war-suit powered by the mysterious Green Rock.

When the naïve Kryptonian hero agrees to be interviewed by the army he is ambushed by crack attack units and Corben. Valiantly fighting his way free, the Caped Crimebuster critically injures the war-suit pilot in the process and, sensing a unique opportunity, Luthor then rebuilds the broken soldier, inserting Green Rock into his heart and creating a relentless, anti-Superman cyborg weapon: Metallo…

The drama concludes in ‘Man of Steel’ as the desperate hero, hunted by Lane’s troops through the city, faces the berserk Cyborg in the streets and wins over the fickle public with his overweening nobility, instilling in the venal masses who were once Luthor’s cowering creatures a new spirit of hope, optimism and individuality…

The Adventure Begins… Again…

Inspiring and suitably mythic, this epic retelling (containing also a baker’s dozen of covers, variants and an unused extra) combines modern insights with unchanging Lore: paying lip service to the Smallville TV show and venerating the movies, whilst still managing to hew closely to many of the fan-favourite idiosyncrasies that keep old duffers like me coming back for more.

This is another sterling reinvigoration and visually intoxicating reworking that shouldn’t offend the faithful whilst providing an efficient jump-on guide for any newcomers and potential converts.
© 2009, 2010, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mighty Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest


By Dan Slott, Khoi Pham, Rafa Sandoval, Stephen Segovia, Paco Diaz, Harvey Tolibao & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3746-7

One of the most momentous events in Marvel Comics history occurred in 1963 when a disparate array of individual heroes banded together to stop the Incredible Hulk. The Mighty Avengers combined most of the company’s fledgling superhero line in one bright, shiny and highly commercial package.

Over the decades the roster has continually changed until now almost every character in their universe has at some time numbered amongst their colourful ranks.

In recent years, Norman Osborn (the original Green Goblin) had, through various machinations, replaced Tony Stark asAmerica’s Security Czar: the “top cop” in sole charge of a beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom, especially in regard to ultra-technological threats and all metahuman influences…

Under Stark’s tenure a Superhuman Registration Act had resulted in a divisive Civil War amongst the costumed community with tragic repercussions, but the nation and the world were no safer.

At one stage the planet was almost lost to an insidious Secret Invasion by alien Skrulls leading to Osborn’s succession and the former villain’s exerting overt control over America by instigating an oppressive “Dark Reign” which saw the World’s Mightiest Heroes driven underground. To cement his position Osborn actually replaced the Avengers with his own hand-picked team of criminals and impostors.

From that particularly troubled time comes this fast and furious compilation collecting issues #21-26 of Mighty Avengers (2009) and material from Secret Invasion: Requiem wherein Stark/Iron Man’s lack of leadership and poor judgement during the crisis has led returned founding-member Henry Pym to seize control of the Avengers.

What You Need to Know: the Skrulls are shape-shifting aliens who’ve bedevilled Earth ever since Fantastic Four #2 and they’ve long been a pernicious cornerstone of the Marvel Universe. After years of humiliation and defeat the metamorphic malcontents finally hit on a winning plan, and to this end they gradually replaced a number of key Earth denizens – most notably superheroes and other metahumans.

When the plot was first uncovered it led to a confrontation between Earth’s champions and a Skrull ship full of what appeared to be old friends – some of whom had been dead for years. Were they escaped humans or yet another army of newly undetectable super-Skrulls? With no defender of the Earth knowing who to trust the planet almost fell to a determined massed onslaught…

With all stories written by Dan Slott, ‘How I’ll Remember You’ (illustrated by Khoi Pham & colourist Chris Sotomayor) opens proceedings as robotic Avenger Jocasta looks through the copious wardrobes of Janet Van Dyne whose ultimate sacrifice ended the Skrull assaults. Although the Wasp died, her memory patterns were encoded in the very confused robot and the conflicting data is beginning to cause a few problems…

For a start she is increasingly drawn to Pym, a man Jan was married to for years and a bi-polar genius who has just changed his powers and identity again. In the past Dr. Pym created the roles of Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath and Yellowjacket, but now he’s calling himself the Wasp…

The 3-part ‘Earth’s Mightiest’ begins with ‘The Smartest Man in the Room’ (inked by Crimelab Studios’ Allen Martinez & Danny Miki) and sees two survivors of the decimated Young Avengers sifting through the rubble of the group’s iconic Mansion when the long-gone Scarlet Witch appears. The last time she was seen her madness caused the deaths of many team-mates and the dissolution of the Avengers, but now the enigmatic figure seems intent on putting the band back together.

As well as now commanding all of America’s covert agencies and military resources under his umbrella organisation H.A.M.M.E.R., Osborn also has his own suit of super-armour. As Iron Patriot he leads a hand-picked team which includes Greek War-God Ares, golden superman Sentry, a new Marvel Boy and seemingly familiar heroes Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man and Wolverine (played by criminal killers Bullseye, Moonstone, Venom and the clawed mutant’s deeply disturbed son Daken) on high profile missions as part of a prolonged charm offensive.

Whilst Iron Patriot leads his ersatz team in media-hogging missions, the juvenile Vision and Stature are manipulated by the Scarlet Witch into joining Hercules, child genius Amadeus Cho, U.S.Agent, the Hulk and even faithful butler Edwin Jarvis as they petition Pym to reorganise and revitalise the Avengers.

She even approaches the out-of-favour Iron Man…

The boy Cho – “seventh smartest person on the planet” has deduced that a Chaos Cascade is warping the laws of physics and threatens humanity but whilst Osborn’s Avengers are wasting time fighting the catastrophic symptoms, the young genius has come to someone potentially even sharper to help tackle the cause…

Pym deduces that the crisis has originated in the mystic provinceof Transia and he’s right. On haunted Mount Wundagore the cursed mystic Modred has been working to bring Cthon, god of Chaos to Earth through the terrifyingly puissant tome the Darkhold.

By the time the scratch-team reach the Balkan ground zero however, the mage has succeeded in his task and the demon deity strides the Earth in the once-comatose body of the Witch’s brother Quicksilver…

‘The Writing on the Wall’ opens with a Cthonic crisis slowly wrecking the planet, even as the extremely unwelcome Iron Man strong-arms his way onto the team and straight into a knock-down, drag-out tussle with the ever-irascible Hulk. Pym and the rest of his ill-fitting squad ignore them and instead brave Modred’s lair where the size-shifting scientist gleans a possible solution.

It all has to do with Quicksilver’s mind and soul which are now trapped in the pages of the discarded Darkhold…

The first epic concludes with ‘Three Little Words’ when, in final battle with the disunited defenders, the smugly omnipotent Cthon stupidly underestimates the devious subtlety of the Shrinking Man’s science…

In the happy aftermath with the demon-god banished and both Quicksilver and the World restored, the Scarlet Witch disappears again, taking with her a dark and very damaging secret…

On a high, the Mighty Avengers decide to stick together in ‘Chasing Ghosts’ (with art by Rafa Sandoval, Roger Bonet Martinez & John Rauch) as the provocatively intransigent Witch orchestrates a distracting clash with Nazi bee hive-mind Swarm whilst her obsessed mutant speedster brother Quicksilver desperately tries to catch a few moments alone with his estranged and oddly acting sister.

Meanwhile Osborn (who is also secretly conspiring with a Cabal of super-villains including Asgardian God Loki, gang-boss The Hood, mutant Emma Frost, Taskmaster, Sub-Mariner and Doctor Doom) finally acts to remove his Avenging rivals by sending H.A.M.M.E.R. troops to shut down Pym’s trans-dimension laboratory/citadel…

With the lab slowly detaching from the Real World and Pym’s impossible, hush-hush dream project critically endangered, the embattled heroes split up as the final story-arc ‘Mighty/Fantastic’ (illustrated by Stephen Segovia, Paco Diaz, Harvey Tolibao, Noah Salonga, Jean-Francois Beaulieu & June Chung) finds The Wasp forced into conflict with one of his oldest friends and allies.

By most people’s standards Reed Richards is the Smartest Man Alive, but when he is asked by Pym to return a device which could save the dissolving extra-dimensional lab, the leader of the Fantastic Four makes a big mistake by saying no and even questioning the erstwhile Ant-Man’s intellect and stability.

Of course you realise this means war….

Desperate and really ticked off, Pym and his team launch an assault on the FF to regain the urgently needed doodad in a tension-drenched caper dubbed ‘The Baxter Job’ which culminates in a spectacular, impossibly even-matched fracas and a delightfully off-beat but apropos ending in ‘You Can’t Get There from Here’…

Remarkably self-contained and clear-cut for a book so mired in multiple complex continuities, Earth’s Mightiest offers a huge amount of fun, thrills and tense suspense which will delight fans of Costumed Dramas.

This sterling tome also offers a gallery of covers used and unused from Khoi Pham, Marko Djurdjevic, Crimelab Studios’ Allen Martinez, Dave McCaig, Danny Miki, Dean White, Jason Keith, and a Dark Reign teaser ad by Daniel Acuña.
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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X-Men: Worlds Apart


By Christopher Yost, Diogenes Neves & Ed Tadeo, Priest, Sal Velluto & Bob Almond, Chris Claremont & John Byrne & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3533-3

In 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants: Homo Superior.

After years of eccentric and spectacular adventures the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 as mystery and all things supernatural once more gripped the world’s entertainment fields and provoked a sustained downturn in costumed hero comics.

Although their title was revived at the end of the year as a cheap reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel universe and the Beast was transformed into a monster to cash in on the horror boom, until Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas green-lighted a bold one-shot in 1975 as part of the company’s line of Giant-Sized specials.

Giant Size X-Men #1 detailed how the classic team had been lost in action, leaving Xavier to scour the Earth for a replacement team. Recruiting old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire and one-shot Hulk villain Wolverine, most of the savant’s time and attention was invested in newcomers Kurt Wagner, a demonic German teleporter who would be codenamed Nightcrawler, Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin, who could transform into a living steel Colossus, embittered, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who was cajoled into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird and a young woman who comported herself as an African weather goddess.

Ororo Munroe AKA Storm was actually the lost daughter of African royalty and an American journalist, and after joining Xavier’s team spent years fighting the world’s most deadly threats as part – and often leader – of the outlaw unloved, distrusted mutant hero horde, but eventually left her second home to marry a boy she had met whilst trekking across the Dark Continent decades previously.

In Fantastic Four #52 (August 1966) an incredible individual calling himself the Black Panther tested himself against the Cosmic Quartet and disclosed in the next issue how, as a child, he had lost his father to a ruthless scientist’s mercenary army when they invaded his hidden African homeland Wakanda.

The young Prince T’Challa had single-handedly avenged the murder of his father T’Chaka and driven off the raiders, and inherited the role of king and spiritual leader of his people. Eventually The Black Panther became a member of the Mighty Avengers and introduced his country to the world, with technologically-advanced Wakanda swiftly advancing to the forefront of nations by trading its scientific secrets and greatest natural resource – the incredible alien mineral Vibranium.

Whilst a boy wandering the plains of Africa, he had met a beautiful young girl with incredible powers trekking from Egypt to West Africa and years later found her again as one the X-Men. Slowly rediscovering old feelings the pair married and Storm became the First Lady of Wakanda…

This compilation, collecting the 4-issue miniseries X-Men: Worlds Apart from 2008-2009 plus Black Panther volume 3, #26 (January 2001) and material from Marvel Team-Up #100 (December 1980), follows the African Queen through her darkest hours and affords a little space to examine key moments in her tempestuous relationship with the earthly agent of the very-real Panther God.

The romance commences with the eponymous ‘Worlds Apart’ crafted by Christopher Yost, Diogenes Neves, Ed Tadeo & Raul Treviño with the action opening in New York’s sewers where Storm and some-time comrade Scott “Cyclops” Summers seek to convince hidden Morlock refugees to join the West Coast mutant enclave and safe-haven known as Utopia. When she suddenly called back toAfrica, Ororo’s erstwhile friend contentiously questions her loyalties…

Even as the august and elevated co-ruler of a fabulous kingdom, Ororo iq adi T’Challa is still painfully aware of humanity’s – and more specifically her own subjects’ – bigotry regarding the genetic offshoot politely dubbed Homo Superior, so when one of her protégés – young Wakandan mutant Nezhno Abidemi – is accused of murder she rushes to defend him.

…But the evidence is overwhelming, incontrovertible and damning…

Nevertheless, she knows something is amiss and when she arbitrarily frees him the entire country turns against her: even her husband wants her blood…

The cause soon smugly reveals himself as Amahl Farouk, a sinister, corrupting telepath she and Charles Xavier had killed years ago, when Ororo was only an orphan child-thief in Cairo. Sadly the monster evolved then into a malign body-stealing psychic force; an untouchable Shadow King feeding on hatred and polluting everything it touches…

Biding its time the Shadow King has insinuated itself into Wakanda, stoking ill-feeling throughout. Now wearing her beloved T’Challa, it plans on extracting a much-postponed final vengeance…

As the poisonous presence gloats Ororo realises it is not just her at risk: the Shadow King has simultaneously taken Cyclops in America and is using her fellow X-Man as a weapon to kill the only earthly threat to Farouk’s power – the supreme telepath Emma Frost who is also Scott Summers’ lover…

With an entire nation and the precious body of her beloved mercilessly hunting her and Nezhno, the wondrous weather-warrior must first direct her powers half-a-world away to stop Cyclops whatever the cost, before somehow destroying a foe no power on Earth can touch.

Happily the Spiritual co-ruler of Wakanda has her own direct line to the country’s cat god – or is that goddess?

Short, sharp, spectacularly action-packed and wickedly satisfying – especially the climactic battles with the assembled X-Men and friendly rival Cyclops – this bombastic Fights ‘n’ Tights adventure is bafflingly complemented with ‘Echoes’ (from Black Panther #26, created by Priest, Sal Velluto & Bob Almond and the first part of a longer epic entitled ‘Stürm und Drang – a Story of Love and War’).

Here T’Challa’s childhood friendship with Ororo is slowly and painfully re-cultivated during an incursion into Wakanda by alien-hunting US Federal Agents and a barely-civil embassy from the secret race known as Deviants, all seeking possession of an unearthly parent and child and eventually forcing a drastic reaction from the sympathetic African heroes…

As an orphaned part of an ongoing storyline this interlude, though smart and pretty, is pretty baffling and aggravating too, ending as it does on an unsatisfying cliffhanger, and unless you already know the greater tale, is far more annoying than elucidating…

This intriguing safari into the unknown concludes with the far more pleasing story of Ororo and T’Challa’s first meeting as kids in the wilds of Africa. This tale first appeared as a back-up in Marvel Team-Up #100 in 1980 and cleverly revealed how the kids enjoyed an idyllic time on the veldt (reminiscent of Henry De Vere Stacpoole’s 1908 novel The Blue Lagoon) until a South African commando team tried to kidnap the Wakandan prince as a bargaining chip.

Now as adults in America they are hunted by the vicious Afrikaner Andreas de Ruyter who has returned, attempting to assassinate Ororo, before seeking to exact final revenge upon the Black Panther. Cue long-delayed lover’s reunion and team-raid on an automated House of Horrors…

Always designed as an outreach project to draw in audience demographics perceived to be short-changed by mainstream Marvel, Storm and the Black Panther have proved to be a winning combination in terms of story if not sales, and Worlds Apart is the kind of tale that should please most fans of the genre and followers of the film franchise.
© 1980, 2001, 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Thor/Iron Man: God Complex


By Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Scot Eaton, Jaime Mendoza, Jeff Huet, Lorenzo Ruggiero & Veronica Gandini (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-936211-4911-8

Two of Marvel’s oldest stars and perennial fan favourites, the Norse God of Thunder and Armoured Avenger, have in their long and chequered careers been the staunchest of allies, fiercely squabbling brothers-in-arms and latterly sworn foes.

In this short, sweet and fabulously straight-shooting traditional team-up however, past grudges are largely forgotten as old foes return with a formidable new master on a fantastic crusade to forever change the world.

Re-presenting the bombastic 4-issue miniseries from 2010, God Complex opens with a horrific assault by a brooding brute on Baron Mordo, resulting in the theft of the evilest of magicians’ mightiest talisman. Simultaneously, the latest ultra-high tech orbital weapons platform of avaricious armaments magnate Moses Magnum is destroyed and its key systems stolen by a mysterious armoured figure…

In Oklahoma the rubble that was Asgard (see Siege and Siege: Dark Avengers) is being slowly checked and cleared by Earthling Emergency teams and latter-day Norse Gods when the workers free a very excitable and ticked-off dragon. Happily, recently reunited Avengers Thor and Iron Man are there to control the irked fire-drake until the beast’s owner Volstagg can calm the poor pet down…

With the infernal rampage suppressed, the work is then interrupted by Steve Rogers – former Captain America and current Chief of National Security – who dispatches the Armoured Avenger toRussia to investigate a runaway Particle Accelerator…

It’s a trap and Iron Man is ambushed by the latest upgrade of the Crimson Dynamo just as back in Oklahoma, Thor is ambushed by ultimate troll Ulik, tasked with retrieving the formidable, unstoppable Asgardian war-armour dubbed the Destroyer.

Although more than a match for their old enemies, the heroes are surprised and subsequently defeated by hidden adversary Diablo and former ally the High Evolutionary…

The latter – an obsessive human geneticist who evolved animals into New Men before turning himself into a cosmic deity – has long dreamed of creating his own gods and now, allied with the malign immortal alchemist, has embarked on his latest experiment: to marry science to sorcery to produce a new supreme being – the one true God of the 21st Century…

For raw material his willing subordinates have been gathering magical artefacts and the most cutting-edge technological components. The last thing needed was a suitable human Petri-dish and vessel. Brilliant, bold Tony Stark ideally fits that bill…

However even as the Evolutionary begins Iron Man’s enforced apotheosis, the hero counterattacks, whilst the bruised but unbowed Thor – and an unlikely ally – hunt for the villains who stole the Destroyer, tracking the sinister god-makers to their unlikely lair…

The consequent catastrophic clash looks set to end in victory for the heroes when the demonic Diablo turns the Avengers against each other with his mystic potions…

Even as the triumphant High Evolutionary begins his the longed-for final transformation, Diablo finally shows his true colours and hijacks the metamorphosis, just as he’d always intended, transcending his merely human villainy to become an omnipotent modern God of  Evil…

However even with the ambitions of centuries at last fulfilled, Diablo has not reckoned on the unfailing courage and determination of heroes or the anger of a master of science frustrated and betrayed…

Splendidly spectacular and visually stunning, this blistering action-epic concludes with one of the best and certainly most literal Deus ex Machina in comics to leave lovers of the genre breathless in wonder and appreciation.

This tumultuous tome also finds space to include text features from the movie tie-in Thor Spotlight, including ‘Abnett/Lanning on Iron Man/Thor: a DnA Q&A’ by Jess Harold, the comedic ‘Iron Man/Thor: Behind the Scenes’, a look at ‘Classic Thor/Iron Man Team-Ups’ from Dana Perkins and a fabulous sneak-peak at Scot Eaton’s many Design Sketches for Crimson Dynamo, Mordo’s Amulet, Ulik and his upgrades and the all-important Cloaking Circuit…

Impossibly recapturing and even improving upon those hallowed and traditional clear-cut, uncomplicated cataclysmic cosmic conflicts of yore, scripters Abnett and Lanning, penciller Eaton, inkers Jaime Mendoza, Jeff Huet & Lorenzo Ruggiero and colourist Veronica Gandini all splendidly combine here to make God Complex a pure joy that will delight fans and readers old and new.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Thunderbolts – Cage


By Jeff Parker & Kev Walker (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4775-6

At the end of 1996 the “Onslaught” publishing event excised the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man and Avengers from the Marvel Universe, unwisely handing over creative control to Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee for a year. For the early part of that period the “Image style” books got all the attention, but a new title created to fill the gap in the “real” universe eventually proved to be the real breakthrough of the period.

Thunderbolts was initially promoted as a replacement team-book; untried champions pitching in because the superhero big guns were dead and gone. They consisted of Captain America clone Citizen V, size-shifting Atlas, super-armoured Mach-1, energy-casting virago Meteorite, sonic siren Songbird and human weapon Techno.

A beleaguered and terrified populace instantly took them to their hearts, but these heroes shared a huge secret – they were all super-villains in disguise and Citizen V (or Baron Helmut Zemo as he actually was) had nasty plans in mind…

Ultimately defeated by his own scheme as his criminal underlings (Mach-I AKA the Beetle, Techno/the Fixer, Atlas/Goliath, Songbird/Screaming Mimi and even the deeply disturbed Meteorite/Moonstone) increasingly yearned to be the heroic ideals they posed as, Zemo was ousted and the Thunderbolts carved out a rocky career as genuine, if controversial, champions under a succession of leaders.

During the superhero Civil War the ever-changing squad – generally comprised of felons looking to change their ways or escape punishment – became Federal hunters, tracking and arresting metahumans who refused to surrender to the Super-Human Registration Act. Eventually the team fell under the aegis of government hard-man Norman Osborn.

Through various deals, deeds and malign machinations Osborn – the former Green Goblin – sought to control the Thunderbolt project as a stepping-stone to becoming became theUSA’s Security Czar…

As the “top-cop” in sole charge of a beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom, the psychotic Osborn dominated America’s costumed and metahuman community. Replacing super-spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. with his own all-pervasive H.A.M.M.E.R. Directorate, the deadly despot saw Captain America arrested and defamed after setting the world’s heroes at each other’s throats; deliberately dedicating all his energies to securing overwhelming political power to match his scientifically-augmented strength and overwhelming financial clout.

Numerous appalling assaults on the nation occurred on his watch, including the Secret Invasion by shape-shifting Skrull infiltrators and his own draconian, oppressive response – dubbed Dark Reign – wherein Osborn drove the World’s Mightiest Heroes underground and formed his own team of deadly Dark Avengers.

Not content with commanding all the covert and military resources of the USA, Osborn personally led this team, wearing appropriated Tony Stark technology and calling himself the Iron Patriot, even whilst betraying his country by conspiring with a coalition of major super-villains to divvy up the world between them.

He finally overreached himself by overruling the American President and directing an unsanctioned military incursion on godly citadel Asgard (see Siege and Siege: Dark Avengers) and when the fugitive outlawed heroes at last reunited to stop him, Osborn’s fall from grace and subsequent incarceration led to a new Heroic Age.

In the aftermath it was discovered that the Security Chief’s monstrous manipulations were even more Machiavellian than suspected. One of his most secret initiatives was the kidnapping of super-powered children: tragic innocents he tortured, psychologically abused and experimented upon in a drive to create the next generation of fanatically loyal super-soldiers…

Those traumatised and potentially lethal kids became the responsibility of the exonerated and reassembled Avengers who decided to teach the surviving lab rats how to be heroes in a new Avengers Academy whilst Osborn, beaten but not broken, was incarcerated in ultra high-security penitentiary The Raft…

Collecting material from the Enter the Heroic Age one-shot and Thunderbolts #144-147 (July-October 2010) this new direction, written by Jeff Parker, illustrated by Kev Walker and coloured by Frank Martin, sees the Legion of the Lost reformed with a fresh brief and a new leader to once again offer penitence, potential redemption and probable death to the defeated dregs of the Marvel Universe…

The drama begins with the arrival on the high-tech island prison of Osborn and a new intake of monstrous convicts who pretty soon learned the ropes at the calloused hands of Luke Cage, Power Man, former Hero for Hire, reserve Avenger and latest director of the Thunderbolts Program. The no-nonsense hard-man offered a last-chance way for some ofAmerica’s worst malefactors to pay back their immense debt to society and maybe buy a slice of salvation…

Issue #144 took up the story as new Warden John Walker (originally super-soldier U.S.Agent before he was maimed during the Siege of Asgard) and Cage began selecting potential recruits in ‘The Boss’.

With original and genuinely reformed Thunderbolts Fixer and Mach-V as Cage’s trusted deputies, the dangerously ambivalent sociopath Moonstone opportunistically joined the best of a reluctant, conflicted and very bad bunch which comprised deranged phasing hacker Ghost, the weary, dispirited mystic mobile monolith Juggernaut and Captain America’s antithesis Cross-Bones, one of the most ruthless killers in existence.

Offering technical support was size-shifting Scientist Supreme and Avengers Academy headmaster Hank Pym (alternatively known as Ant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, The Wasp and Giant-Man), who had devised a most unique method of transportation for the penal battalion: one that utilises the unsuspected teleportational talents of the macabre but insentient monster called the Man-Thing…

However before the team could even undergo basic training the intransigent Zemo attacked the inescapable isle, determined to reclaim his old team…

‘Field Test’ offered a surprise or two before Cage took control again and the squad set off on an emergency first mission: tracking down a trio of man-eating trolls ravaging the Oklahoma countryside and presumably escaped from Asgard after Osborn’s ill-fated attack on the dimensionally-displaced City of the Gods…

That grisly outing promptly led to another crisis-response from the woefully untrained unit as they were then dispatched to New Guinea to rescue scientists and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents investigating mutagenic, metahuman-creating Terrigen crystals found in a cave.

The mission was another tragic debacle. There was no cure for what the techs had uncovered and then become, so the salvation run turned into a grim and nasty bug hunt…

This sleek, effective thriller concludes its dramatic presentation with the intermediate part of a crossover tale which began and ended in Avengers Academy and offered some intriguing insights into the ongoing personal rehabilitation of Juggernaut Cain Marko.

The students at the unique school were being trained under a hidden agenda: although officially declared the most accomplished of Osborn’s next generation protégés, the sextet Reptil, Finesse, Striker, Hazmat, Mettle and Veil were actually adjudged the most experimented upon, abused and psychologically damaged. The Academy not only wanted to turn them into heroes but also intended to ensure the prodigies were not incurably corrupted potential menaces to all mankind…

The crossover tale ‘Scared Straight’ (see Avengers Academy: Permanent Record) revealed how toxic nightmare Hazmat, animated Iridium golem Mettle and slowly dissipating gas-girl Veil turned a school-trip to The Raft into an attempt to gain revenge on their erstwhile tormentor.

Although the most secure and infallible jail on the planet, nobody realised just what Hazmat could really do and when the power went out she and her equally incensed classmates headed straight for Osborn’s Solitary cell…

Their ill-conceived ploy also released an army of irate and murderous villains and the new Thunderbolts were forced to prove how far they had come by choosing which side they were now on. More important than showing Cage and Warden Walker, the convicts and once-pariahs had to examine their own unsuspected ethical changes and how far they had progressed before order was finally, brutally restored…

This collection also includes a superb cover gallery by Marko Djurdjevic, Bryan Hitch & Karl Kesel, Larry Stroman, Frank Martin, a wealth of character designs and pages of un-inked art fromWalkerto complete a wry, clever and suspenseful action-adventure package that all fans of gritty superhero action will adore …
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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The Brave and the Bold volume 2: The Book of Destiny


By Mark Waid, George Pérez, Jerry Ordway, Bob Wiacek & Scott Koblish (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1838-6 (hc)   978-1-4012-1861-4 (tpb)

The Book of Destiny is a mystical ledger which charts the history, progress and fate of all Reality and everything in it – except for the four mortals entrusted with its care at the end of The Brave and the Bold: The Lords of Luck…

The death-defying Challengers of the Unknown – cool pilot Ace Morgan, indomitable strongman Rocky Davis, intellectual aquanaut Prof. Haley and daredevil acrobat Red Ryan – live on borrowed time and were bequeathed the terrifying tome by Destiny of the Endless since their lives are not included within its horrifying pages…

After the staggering spectacle of the previous Brave and the Bold story-arc, here Mark Waid, George Pérez and inkers Bob Wiacek & Scott Koblish are joined by co-penciller Jerry Ordway for a stunning sequel featuring most of the DC universe…

This compilation collects issues #7-12 of the high-energy, all-star revival of the venerable DC title and plays novel games with the traditional team-up format when a mysterious mage begins manipulating heroes and villains in a diabolical alchemical scheme to transform the cosmos forever…

Beginning with ‘Scalpels and Chainsaws’ wherein Wonder Woman and the ever-abrasive Power Girl rub each other the wrong way (oh please, what are you, ten!?) whilst tackling an undead invasion, the case takes a strange turn and the Princess of Power accidentally discovers the Caped Kryptonian has been brainwashed into trying to murder her cousin Superman…

Their ill-tempered investigations lead to the fabled Lost Library of Alexandria and a disastrous confrontation with the deranged Dr. Alchemy, but he too is only a pre-programmed pawn – of a sinister presence called Megistus – who needs Power Girl to use the mystical artefact known as the Philosopher’s Stone to turn the Fortress of Solitude into pure Red Kryptonite…

Thanks to Wonder Woman’s battle savvy, the plot is frustrated and the stone thrown into the sun… just as Megistus intended…

All this has been read in the mystic chronicle by the Challengers and their fifth member Dr. June Robbins – whose merely mortal existence and eventual doom are tragically recorded in the Book. They rush off to investigate the universe-rending menace even as ‘Wally’s Choice’ brings the Flash and his rapidly aging children Jai and Iris West into unwelcome contact with manipulative genius Niles Caulder and his valiant Doom Patrol. “The Chief” claims he can cure the twins’ hyper-velocity malady, but Caulder never does anything for selfless reasons…

With no other hope, Wally and wife Linda acquiescence to the mad doctor’s scheme which relies on using elemental hero Rex Mason to stabilise their kids’ critical conditions. It might even have worked, had not Metamorpho been mystically abducted mid-process – consequently transforming the children into bizarre amalgams of Negative Man and Robot Man…

Worst of all, Flash was almost forced to choose which child to save and which should die…

Thinking faster than ever, the Scarlet Speedster beat the odds and pulled off a miracle, but in a distant place the pages of the Book were suddenly possessed and attacked the Challengers…

‘Changing Times’ featured a triptych of short team-up tales which played out as the Men that History Forgot battled a monster made of Destiny’s pages, beginning as the robotic Metal Men joined forces with young Robby Reed who could become a legion of champions whenever he needed to Dial H for Hero.

Sadly not even genius Will Magnus could have predicted the unfortunate result when crushingly shy robot Tin stuck his shiny digit in the arcane Dial…

Next, during WWII the combative Boy Commandos were joined by the Blackhawks in battling animated mummies intent on purloining the immensely powerful Orb of Ra from a lost pyramid, after which perpetually reincarnating warrior Hawkman joined substitute Atom Ryan Choi in defending Palaeolithic star-charts from the marauding Warlock of Ys, none of them aware that they were all doing the work of the malignly omnipresent Megistus…

The fourth chapter paralleled the Challengers’ incredible victory over the parchment peril with a brace of tales which saw the Man of Steel travel to ancient Britain to join heroic squire Brian of Kent (secretly the oppression-crushing Silent Knight) in bombastic battle against a deadly dragon, whilst the Teen Titans‘ second ever case found Robin, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash in Atlantis for the marriage of Aquaman and Mera.

Unfortunately Megistus’ drone Oceanus crashed the party, intent on turning Aqualad into an enslaved route map to the future…

And inCalifornia, the Challengers attempted to save Green Lantern’s Power Battery from being stolen only to find it in the possession of an ensorcelled Metamorpho…

As the Element Man easily overwhelmed Destiny’s Deputies, Jerry Ordway assumed the penciller’s role for issues #5-6.

‘Superman and Ultraman’ saw the natural enemies initially clash and then collaborate at the behest of an alternate universe’s Mr. Mixyezpitelik, who revealed the appalling scope and nature of Megistus’ supernal transformational ambitions, leading to a gathering of the heroic clans and a blistering Battle Royale in the roaring heart of the Sun…

With the fate of reality at stake and featuring a veritable army of guest stars ‘The Brave and the Bold’ wrapped up the saga with a terrible, tragic sacrifice from the noblest hero of all, whilst subtly setting the scene for the upcoming Final Crisis…

With fascinating designs and pencil art from Ordway to tantalise the art lovers, this second captivating collection superbly embodies all the bravura flash and dazzle thrills superhero comics so perfectly excel at. This is a gripping fanciful epic with many engaging strands that perfectly coalesce into a frantic and fabulous free-for-all overflowing with all the style, enthusiasm and sheer exuberant joy you’d expect from the industry’s top costumed drama talents.

The Brave and the Bold: The Book of Destiny is another great story with great art, ideal for kids of all ages to read and re-read over and over again.
© 2007, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Exiles – Point of No Return


By Jeff Parker, Salva Espin, Casey Jones & Karl Kesel (Marvel Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4044-3

If you’re a fan of comics the head-spinning concept of multiple realities is probably one that holds no terrors. Indeed most superhero, fantasy and science fiction series eventually resort to the tried-and-true theme of alternate heroes and villains as it’s a certified, easily fixable way to test out new ideas and character-traits without the danger of having to reboot your star’s entire continuity if the fans hate it.

Marvel came to the concept relatively late. Whilst DC were radically winnowing and rationalising their own multiverse in 1985 with Crisis on Infinite Earths, the House of Ideas was only cautiously expanding its own Alternity.

Although such surrogate Earthers as Thundra, Arkon, Mahkizmo, Gaard and the Squadron Supreme had cropped up in the Fantastic Four and Avengers, the comicbook which truly built on the idea was What If?, an anthological series wherein cosmic voyeur The Watcher offered peeks into a myriad of other worlds where key “real” continuity stories were replayed with vastly different outcomes.

The first volume (48 issues between February 1977 and June 1988) posed such intriguing questions as ‘What If… Loki had Found the Hammer of Thor?’, ‘the Fantastic Four had not gained Their Powers?’ or ‘Spider-Man’s Clone had Lived?’ and when the title relaunched in 1989 for another 115 issues including ‘What If Wolverine was Lord of the Vampires?’ and ‘What if Captain Marvel had not Died?’, the tales were all back-written into an over-arching continuity and began to catalogued as variant but equally viable Earths/universes and alternate timelines.

There have been seven more volumes since and a series of “Alterniverse” tales…

In case you’re wondering, those gritty Ultimate Marvel sagas all occur on Earth-1610, the Age of Apocalypse happened on Earth 295, the Squadron Supreme originally hailed from Earth-712 and the mainstream Marvel tales take place on Earth-616, whilst we readers all dwell on the dull, ordinary Earth-1218…

In 2001 the concept took a big jump and developed its own internal consistency as an amorphous team of mutants and heroes from that multiplicity of universes were brought together by a mysterious “Time-Broker” to correct mistakes and clear blockages in the fabric of the multiverse.

Reality is a plethora of differing dimensions, you see, and if things go awry in one it can have a cumulative and ultimately catastrophic effect on all of them. Led by super-teleporter Blink (who had her own miniseries and starred in the aforementioned X-Men storyline Age of Apocalypse) and guided by the shape-shifting Morph, this constantly fluctuating squad of rejects zapped from dimension to dimension doing the cosmic Dyno-Rod thing for eight years and 119 issues of Exiles and New Exiles before the series was rebooted in 2009.

Scripted by Jeff Parker and illustrated by Salva Espin, the adventure begins with ‘Déjà Vu’ as mysterious manipulators debate whilst scanning the discernible totality of existence looking for suitable members to staff the latest iteration of reality-repairmen. This time they’re concentrating on heroes plucked from the moment of their inevitable deaths – with the intention of causing as little disruption as possible to the continuum – and select Lorna ‘Polaris’ Dane (Earth-8149, daughter of Magneto and last survivor of a world ruled by mutant-hunting Sentinels) and the bestial Avenger Hank McCoy from 763.

Also included is T’Chaka, heir of the Black Panther and Storm on 1119, mutant tech-smith Forge from 2814 and Wanda Maximoff, The (non-Scarlet) Witch of 8823 and another daughter of a different Magneto…

Snatched from their inescapable dooms, the quintet meet Blink and are briefed by the obnoxiously cavalier Morph on their mission, and are soon reluctantly infiltrating an universe where visionary Charles Xavier was murdered and his best friend Eric Lensherr gathered all the mutants on Earth into a nation united in a cold war against humanity.

There is something decidedly off about the far-from utopian new nation of Genosha. Even as constant attacks by the equally-united Homo Sapiens are getting closer and closer to eradicating the mutants forever, Magneto rules like an emperor, with only his charismatic presence holding the populace together. Moreover whilst former X-Men and Evil Mutants barely tolerate each other, the monarch’s own daughters Wanda and Lorna openly seek to destroy each other…

‘Long Live the King’ (with additional art by Casey Jones & Karl Kesel) sees the Exiles’ attempts to infiltrate and destabilise the court go catastrophically awry, leading to their exposure and capture. Busted loose by reserve and-non-mutant T’Chaka, the Reality Re-aligners uncover the truth about Xavier’s death and are witness to an incipient palace coup, but before they can act upon their dramatic change of fortune the team’s mysterious masters order them to abandon the mission…

Blink’s teleport takes them to Earth-10102, a desert world apparently devoid of life. ‘OK Computer’ (Parker, Casey & Kesel) sees the Exiles attempting to derail and restore a planet where mechanical marvels The Vision, Ultron, Machine Man and Jocasta had joined the X-Men’s now-sentient, mutant-detecting Cerebro super-computer in a plan to eradicate the human genome. However, having already exploded a neutron device which caused humanity to vanish from the Earth, the artificial autocrats seemed in an unassailable position. What could the six sojourners possibly do to rectify this situation?

Possibilities arise after the team easily defeats a squadron of robotic Sentinels and the Ambulatory Automatons personally confront the Exiles. It seems there is a schism between Cerebro and its artificial allies – who are not at all what they seem – and the complacent computer tyrant is quite wrong to assume ‘The Humans are Dead’…

The revival came to an abrupt and rather rushed end with ‘Closure’ as the team, having resoundingly succeeded in putting one Reality back on course, returned to the Genosha state and attempted to complete their aborted first mission.

Even with Magneto gone that universe was still endangered as long as the disparate mutant camps remained allied, but with their own undetectable incarnations of Polaris and the Witch, it was relatively simple to sow dissent and start a filial civil war…

Of course the problem with using perfect doppelgangers is that they can also turn the tables on you…

With the job done – at the cost of only one Exile’s life – the team had earned some shore-leave but the vacation unexpectedly led to betrayal, a revolt within the team and a shocking revelation about the mysterious group who fed them their missions…

And ultimately full disclosure into the very nature of the Exiles existence and the truth about the time, space and the multiverse…

Although intended as an ongoing series, Exiles volume 2 only ran six issues before being summarily cancelled – so swiftly in fact that this enjoyable Fights ‘n’ Tights romp offers a hint at what might have been by including scripts for the aborted issues #7 and 9 as well as the unused script pages for #6, which were replaced at the last moment with a neat and tidy, all-action wrap-up, happy ending and up-beat promise of an eventual return…

Other added-value attractions include lots of preliminary character sketches by Espin, a variant covers gallery by Dave Bullock, Mark Irwin, Anthony Washington, Jason Chan & Mike Grell, as well as Espin’s unused cover, layout and thumbnail artwork intended for #6…

Notwithstanding the hackneyed concept and truncated conclusion, this not such a bad package, but might feel a little rushed in places. Moreover, by relying overmuch on a familiarity with the minutiae of Marvel continuity, this rollercoaster ride might well confuse or deter the casual reader.

Still, if you’re prepared to accept the fact that you won’t get all the gags and references you might enjoy the light tone, sharp dialogue and pretty pictures and, unlike almost all other comicbooks, at least here the dead stay dead.

I think. Perhaps.

Maybe…
© 2009, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman Archives volume 5


By Bob Kane, Alvin Schwartz, Don Cameron, Bill Finger, Dick Sprang, Win Mortimer & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-725-3

Debuting a year after Superman, “The Bat-Man” (and later Robin, the Boy Wonder) cemented National Comics as the market and genre leader of the burgeoning comicbook industry, and the dashing derring-do and strictly human-scaled adventures of the Dynamic Duo rapidly became the swashbuckling benchmark by which all other four-colour crimebusters were judged.

This fifth fantastic deluxe hardback compilation collects the Batman yarns from Detective Comics #103-119 (spanning cover-dates September 1945-December 1947) and safely saw the indefatigable icons delete Nazi spies and saboteurs from their daily itineraries. From this point onward, the stalwarts would again concentrate on home-grown mobsters, monsters, menaces and their ever-active and growing rogues’ gallery of vile villains as the vicissitudes of war were replaced by the never-ending travails of black-hearted crooks and domestic killers…

After a spirited discussion of the days after peace broke out from celebrated bat-scribe Dennis O’Neil in the Foreword, the costumed dramas begin to unfold in #103’s ‘Trouble Incorporated!’ written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Jack Burnley & Charles Paris. Herein a well-meaning retired college Professor set up a free advice service and inadvertently gave the thugs next door a hotline to illicit gain until Batman and Robin offered their own bombastic expertise: also gratis and extremely educational for the eavesdropping creeps…

In Detective #104 Schwartz & Dick Sprang’s ‘The Battle of the Billboards!’ proved a breathtaking and imaginative yarn with blackmail racketeers using prominent signs to publicise the secret crimes and peccadilloes of Gotham’s elite – unless the victims paid off by hiring the signage space themselves.

With no laws broken, the Dynamic Duo were forced to take bold action to end the unique protection scam…

When Bruce Wayne‘s accountant and treasurer embezzled all the company funds in #105 the fallout had appalling consequences for Gotham. ‘The Batman Goes Broke!’ by Don Cameron & the marvellous J. Winslow “Win” Mortimer, saw the heroes reduced to penury and forced to sell their crime-busting possessions and even obtain menial jobs so that they could complete their last case…

Happily the financial absconders were caught – by regular cops – and the Wayne fortunes restored. ‘The Phantom of the Library!’ eerily stalked retired law officials who foolishly visited the city’s repository of knowledge: in search of vengeance on those who had long ago sentenced him to death for murder. Cameron’s run of ingenious crime dramas continued after this spooky mystery by Bob Kane & Ray Burnley, after which a crafty charlatan who preyed on greedy, superstitious businessmen debuted in Detective Comics #107. The wicked Scorpio believed himself above the law and beyond all harm until Batman and Robin invaded his sinister citadel on ‘The Mountain of the Moon!’ – illustrated by Mortimer who had the lion’s share of drawing at this time.

Police officer Ed Gregory was framed by crooks and became ‘The Goat of Gotham City!’ in a moving thriller by limned by Sprang, but as always the Gotham Gangbusters were able to deduce the truth before taking down the villains in a spectacular airplane duel.

A perennial Prince of Plunder returned in #109 as the manic Joker went on a crime spree that lured Dark Knight and Boy Wonder to a deadly purpose-built trap inside ‘The House that Jokes Built!’.

Faithful butler Alfred had a starring role in #110 as ‘Batman and Robin in Scotland Yard!’ found the Masked Manhunters in London to help capture an incredible modern-day Moriarty, after which a trip to ‘Coaltown, U.S.A.’ saw the Caped Crusaders convince a miserly mine owner to listen to his striking workers and modernise the death trap he operated…

Detective #112 riffed delightfully on the classic film The Shop Around the Corner as a small family business was torn apart by the theft of $99. Embroiled in the melodrama was customer Bruce Wayne whose covert investigations uncovered four culprits all eager to confess in Schwartz & Mortimer’s heart-warming tale of ‘The Case Without a Crime!’

Plundering pirates and sinister smugglers were the bad-guys in ‘Crime on the Half-Shell!’ by Bill Finger, Sprang & Gene McDonald, but the story really centred on the tragedy of a blind oyster boat captain and the feisty daughter who took over his “man’s work”, whilst #114 saw the Joker again test Batman’s wits and patience in a sharp puzzler that turned Gotham into the ‘Acrostic of Crime!’ (by Cameron & Mortimer).

‘The Man Who Lived in a Glass House!’ by the same creative team found the Dynamic Duo aiding an inventor against an unscrupulous rival determined to sabotage his life’s work, after which Bruce’s old friend Professor Carter Nichols used his time travelling hypnosis trick to send Wayne and his ward Dick Grayson to Feudal England. Oddly however it was Batman and Robin who came to ‘The Rescue of Robin Hood!’ in a properly swashbuckling romp by Cameron & Mortimer in #116, whilst that writer’s contemporary research made ‘Steeplejack’s Showdown!’ (Kane & Ray Burnley) and the heroes’ campaign against a ring of sky-high bandits a grippingly authentic thriller worthy of Hitchcock…

Issue #118, by Schwartz & Howard Sherman, offered one last hurrah for the Harlequin of Hate as the Joker again attempted to trump the Dark-Knight Detective with The Royal Flush Crimes!’ only to go bust in the wilds of the cowboy West, before this classic collection of seldom-seen tales concludes with Finger, Sprang & McDonald’s gloriously madcap excursion ‘The Case of the Famous Foes!’ wherein a cunning crook recruited George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln to mastermind his crime campaign – straight out of Gotham Sanitarium and into blazing battle against the mystified manhunters…

These evocative, bombastic and action-stuffed yarns provide a perfect snapshot of the Batman’s amazing range from bleak moody avenger to suave swashbuckler, from remorseless Agent of Justice and best pal to sophisticated Devil-May-Care Detective, in timeless tales which have never lost their edge or their power to enthral and enrapture. Moreover, this supremely sturdy Archive Edition is indubitably the most luxurious and satisfying way to enjoy them over and over again.
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