Category: Graphic Novels

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Showcase Presents World’s Finest volume 3


By Edmond Hamilton, Cary Bates, Jim Shooter, Leo Dorfman, Bill Finger, Curt Swan, George Klein, Sheldon Moldoff, & Al Plastino (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-585-2

For decades Superman and Batman were quintessential superhero partners: the “World’s Finest” team. They were friends as well as colleagues, and the pairing made sound financial sense since DC’s top heroes could cross-pollinate and cross-sell their combined readerships.

This third magnificent monochrome compendium gathers their cataclysmic collaborations from the glory days of the mid 1960’s (World’s Finest Comics #146-173, with the exception of reprint 80-Page Giant issues #161 and 170, covering December 1964 to February 1968): a period when the entire Free World went superhero gaga in response to the Batman live action and Superman animated TV shows…

A new era had already begun in World’s Finest Comics #141 when author Edmond Hamilton and artists Curt Swan & George Klein (who illustrated the bulk of the tales in this tome) ushered in a more dramatic, realistic and far less whimsical tone, and that titanic creative trio continued their rationalist run in this volume with #146’s ‘Batman, Son of Krypton!’ wherein uncovered evidence from the Bottle City of Kandor and bizarre recovered memories seemed to indicate that the Caped Crusader was in fact a de-powered, amnesiac Kryptonian. Moreover, as the heroes dug deeper Superman thought he had found the Earthman responsible for his homeworld’s destruction and became crazed with a hunger for vengeance…

Issue #147’s saw the sidekicks step up in a stirring blend of science fiction thriller and crime caper, all masquerading as an engaging drama of youth-in-revolt when ‘The New Terrific Team!’ (February 1965 Hamilton, Swan & Klein) saw Jimmy Olsen and Robin quit their underappreciated assistant roles to strike out on their disgruntled own. Naturally there was a perfectly rational, if incredible, reason…

In #148 ‘Superman and Batman – Outlaws!’ (with Sheldon Moldoff temporarily replacing Klein) saw the Cape and Cowl Crimebusters transported to another dimension where arch-villains Lex Luthor and Clayface were heroes and Dark Knight and Action Ace the ruthless hunted criminals, after which World’s Finest Comics #149 (May 1965 and also inked by Moldoff) ‘The Game of Secret Identities!’ found Superman locked into an increasingly obsessive battle of wits with Batman that seemed likely to break up the partnership and even lead to violent disaster…

‘The Super-Gamble with Doom!’ in #150 introduced manipulative alien’s Rokk and Sorban whose addictive and staggeringly spectacular wagering almost got Batman killed and Earth destroyed, whilst ‘The Infinite Evolutions of Batman and Superman!’ in #151 introduced young writer Cary Bates, who paired with Hamilton to produce a beguiling science fiction thriller with the Gotham Guardian transformed into a callous future-man and the Metropolis Marvel reduced to a savage Neanderthal….

Hamilton solo-scripted #152’s ‘The Colossal Kids!’ wherein a brace of impossibly powered brats outmatched outdid but never outwitted Batman or Superman – and of course there were old antagonists behind the challenging campaign of humiliation – after which Bates rejoined his writing mentor for a taut and dramatic “Imaginary Story” in #153.

When Editor Mort Weisinger was expanding the Superman continuity and building the legend he knew that the each new tale was an event that added to a nigh-sacred canon: that what was written and drawn mattered to the readers. But as an ideas man he wasn’t going to let that aggregated “history” stifle a good idea, nor would he allow his eager yet sophisticated audience to endure clichéd deus ex machina cop-outs to mar the sheer enjoyment of a captivating concept.

The mantra known to every baby-boomer fan was “Not a Dream! Not a Hoax! Not a Robot!” boldly emblazoned on covers depicting scenes that couldn’t possibly be true… even if it was only a comic book.

Imaginary Stories were conceived as a way of exploring non-continuity plots and scenarios devised at a time when editors believed that entertainment trumped consistency and knew that every comic read was somebody’s first – or potentially last – and ‘The Clash of Cape and Cowl!’, illustrated by as ever by Swan & Klein, posited a situation where brilliant young Bruce Wayne grew up believing Superboy had murdered his father, thereafter dedicating his life to crushing all criminals as a Bat Man and waiting for the day when he could expose Superman as a killer and sanctimonious fraud…

WF #154 ‘The Sons of Superman and Batman’ (by Hamilton) opened the doors to a far less tragic Imaginary world: one where the crime fighters finally found time to marry Lois Lane and Kathy Kane and have kids. Unfortunately the lads proved to be both a trial and initially a huge disappointment…

‘Exit Batman – Enter Nightman!’ saw the World’s Finest Team on the cusp of their 1,000th successful shared case when a new costumed crusader threatened to break up the partnership and replace the burned out Batman in a canny psychological thriller, whilst ‘The Federation of Bizarro Idiots!’ in #156 saw the well-meaning but imbecilic imperfect duplicates of Superman and Batman set up shop on Earth and end up as pawns of the duplicitous Joker, after which #157’s ‘The Abominable Brats’ – drawn with inevitable brilliance by Swan and inked by both Klein & Moldoff – featured an Imaginary Story sequel as the wayward sons of heroes returned to cause even more mischief, although once more there were other insidious influences in play…

In ‘The Invulnerable Super-Enemy!’ (#158 by Hamilton, Swan & Klein), the Olsen-Robin Team stumbled upon three Bottled Cities and inadvertently drew their mentors into a terrifying odyssey of evil which at first seemed to be the work of Brainiac but was in fact far from it, whilst ‘The Cape and Cowl Crooks!’ (WFC #159) dealt with foes possessing far mightier powers than our heroes – a major concern for young readers of the times.

To this day whenever fans gather the cry eventually echoes out, “Who’s the strongest/fastest/better dressed…?” but this canny conundrum took the theme to superbly suspenseful heights as Anti-Superman and Anti-Batman continually outwitted and outmanoeuvred the heroes, seemingly possessed of impossible knowledge of their antagonists..

Leo Dorfman debuted as scripter in#160 as the heroes struggled to discredit ‘The Fatal Forecasts of Dr. Zodiac’, a scurrilous Swami who appeared to control fate itself.

World’s Finest Comics #161 was an 80-Page Giant reprinting past tales and is not included in this collection, and jumping in with #162’s ‘Pawns of the Jousting Master!’ is another fresh scripting face in Jim Shooter, who produced an engaging time travel romp wherein Superman and Batman were defeated in combat and compelled to travel back to Camelot in a beguiling tale of King Arthur, super-powered knights and invading aliens…

‘The Duel of the Super-Duo!’ in #163 (Shooter, Swan & Klein) pitted Superman against a brainwashed Batman on a world where his mighty powers were negated and the heroes of the galaxy were imprisoned by a master manipulator, after which Dorfman produced an engaging thriller where a girl who was more powerful than Superman and smarter than Batman proved to be ‘Brainiac’s Super Brain-Child!’

Bill Finger & Al Plastino stepped in to craft WF #165’s ‘The Crown of Crime’ (March 1967) which depicted the last days of dying mega-gangster King Wolff whose plan to go out with a bang set the underworld ablaze and almost stymied both Superman and Batman, after which Shooter, Swan & Klein produced ‘The Danger of the Deadly Duo!’ in which the twentieth generation of Batman and Superman united to battle the Joker of 2967 and his uncanny ally Muto: a superb flight of fantasy that was the sequel to a brief series of stories starring Superman’s heroic descendent in a fantastic far future world

WF #167 saw Cary Bates fly solo by scripting ‘The New Superman and Batman Team!’: an Imaginary Story wherein boy scientist Lex Luthor gave himself super-powers and a Kal-El who had landed on Earth without Kryptonian abilities trained himself to become an avenging Batman after his foster-father Jonathan Kent was murdered. The Smallville Stalwarts briefly united in a crime-fighting partnership but destiny had other plans for the fore-doomed friends…

In World’s Finest Comics #142 a lowly and embittered janitor suddenly gained all the powers of the Legion of Super-Heroes and attacked the heroes out of frustration and jealousy. He was revived by Bates in #168’s ‘The Return of the Composite Superman!’ as the pawn of a truly evil villain but gloriously triumphed over his own venal nature, after which #169 featured ‘The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot’ a whimsical fantasy feast from Bates, Swan & Klein wherein the uppity lasses seemingly worked tirelessly to supplant and replace Batman and Superman before it was revealed that the Dynamic Damsels were mere pawns of an extremely duplicitous team of female felons – although a brace of old WF antagonists were actually behind the Byzantine scheme…

Issue #170 was another mammoth reprint edition, after which #171 revealed ‘The Executioner’s List!’ (script by Dorfman); an intriguing and tense murder-mystery wherein a mysterious sniper seemingly targeted the friends of Superman and Batman, whilst the stirring and hard-hitting Imaginary Story ‘Superman and Batman… Brothers!’ (WF #172 December 1967) posited a grim scenario wherein orphaned Bruce Wayne was adopted by the Kents, but could not escape a destiny of tragedy and darkness.

Written by Shooter and brilliantly interpreted by Swan & Klein, this moody thriller in many ways signalled the end of the angst-free days and the beginning of the darker, crueller and more dramatically cohesive DC universe for a less casual readership, and thereby surrendered the mythology to the increasingly devout fan-based audience.

This stunning compendium closes with World’s Finest Comics #173 and ‘The Jekyll-Hyde Heroes!’ again by Shooter, Swan & Klein, as a criminal scientist devises a way to literally transform the Cape and Cowl Crusaders into their own worst enemies…

These are gloriously clever yet uncomplicated tales whose dazzling, timeless style has returned to inform if not dictate the form for much of DC’s modern television animation – especially the fabulous Batman: the Brave and the Bold series – and the contents of this tome are a veritable feast of witty, gritty thrillers packing as much punch and wonder now as they always have.

Unmissable adventure for fans of all ages!
© 1964-1968, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman: Blind Justice


By Sam Hamm, Denys Cowan & Dick Giordano (DC Comics)
ISBN 10: 1-56389-047-X       ISBN 10: 978-1563890475

1989 was a banner year for Batman. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the Caped Crusader and the world was about to go completely Bat-crazy for the second time in twenty-five years, so DC were pushing the boat out preparing a brand-new title to add to the Gotham Guardian’s stable of comicbooks.

Two years earlier in 1985-1986, the venerable publisher had grabbed headlines by boldly retconning their entire ponderous continuity via the groundbreaking maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths; ejecting the entire concept of a multiverse and re-knitting time so that there had only ever been one Earth. For readers, the planet was now a perfect place to jump on at the start: a world literally festooned with iconic heroes and villains draped in a clear and cogent backstory nobody knew yet.

Many of their greatest characters got a unique restart, with the conceit being that the characters had been around for years and the readership were simply tuning in on just another working day.

Because of the Tim Burton movie Batman’s popularity was at an intoxicating peak and, since DC was still in the throes of re-jigging the entire narrative continuity, this three-part epic (two 80-page specials bracketing a single regular issue, reprinting Detective Comics #598-600, March-May 1989) can in many ways be seen as a transitional tale in the re-imagining of the Dark Knight for the 1990s…

After an introduction by the author the saga begins with ‘The Sleep of Reason’: Bruce Wayne awakes from an uncharacteristic nightmare and walks into a perplexing and macabre murder mystery wherein a night watchman has been reduced to a sack of powdered bones and organs. Across town, plucky Jeannie Bowen has just hit Gotham, looking for her brother who simply vanished one day after leaving work at Waynetech…

The nightmares continue to plague the Batman’s alter ego as Jeannie comes up against an administrative stone wall. Her brother’s boss claims no “Roy Kane” has ever worked for the cutting-edge research firm, but when the Dark Knight barely survives an encounter with a technological monster dubbed the Bonecrusher the disparate events begin to gel together…

‘The Kindness of Strangers’ brings Bruce Wayne to Jeannie’s aid and together they pierce the corporate wall at Waynetech and discover brother Roy was indeed employed there, but his tenure and subsequent disappearance have been excised from all records.

Roy had been the assistant to the company’s paraplegic genius Kenneth Harbinger, whose groundbreaking discoveries into cybernetic replacements and enhancements had offered great hope for physical trauma patients, but the junior had simply not turned up for work one day…

Now a police sweep finds Roy amnesiac and derelict on the streets. Apparently brain-damaged, he also seems to have a psychic connection to the devastating Bonecrusher…

When the hulking brute self-destructs rather than surrender to Batman and the cops, Roy and Jeannie move into Wayne Manor and, as the billionaire begins to clean house at Waynetech, they discover that the young man has been surreptitiously fitted with a memory transceiver biochip: a cybernetic back-door which allows a mystery mastermind to possess bodies at will. Bonecrusher is not one man but a slave army of remote control killers…

Only the seemingly benign Harbinger can be behind it, but further investigations in ‘The Price of Knowledge’ reveal that he had not worked alone. Wayne’s companies have been targeted by a clandestine “Cartel” of corporate raiders intent on possessing all his wealth and technologies, but as the Batman moves in all he finds is Harbinger’s corpse…

Moreover, someone has pieced together Wayne’s eccentric lifestyle, history and expenses and had the playboy arrested as a communist spy…

Harbinger is not dead. The crippled genius has simply abandoned his broken body and taken up residence in other unsuspecting biochip recipients. Free and fit, he goes on a spree of physical excess and wilful murder whilst Bruce Wayne festers under house arrest, enforced helplessness and increasingly horrific dreams…

As the government prosecutors track down the men who individually trained the boy-orphan Wayne as he travelled across Europe and the East years ago, the case against the accused spy looks to be unshakable, especially once French manhunter Henri Ducard agrees to be a bought witness and say whatever the prosecutors wish…

However proceedings take a dark turn when Harbinger in another borrowed body and, now at odds with his former Cartel paymasters, shoots Wayne on the Courthouse steps, possibly crippling him permanently…

‘Hidden Agendas’ finds Harbinger setting up his own organisation and powerbase just as the ruthless and amoral Ducard puts together scraps of information and deduces Bruce Wayne’s real secret. However the broken and demoralised Gotham Guardian gets a new lease of life when Roy discovers the Batcave and offers to lend his bio-chipped body to the disabled crusader for use as a surrogate Batman…

Wayne refuses but Roy is persistent and the continual threat of Harbinger’s hidden new life eventually leads the desperate and debilitated detective to make the biggest mistake of his career…

‘Covert Operations’ sees a Dark Knight haunting the alleys and rooftops of Gotham after weeks of absence, prompting Ducard to fetch up at the mansion with an astonishing proposition…

‘Ulterior Motives’ sees the compelling if convoluted saga come to a shattering climax as Wayne’s mind in Roy’s body tracks down and confronts Harbinger and his platoon of augmented Bonecrushers before turning the tables on the cartel. Of course the price paid for the victory is heartbreak, tragedy death and relentless guilt…

This is amongst the very best of modern Batman yarns: dark, intense, cunning and incredibly complex; blending high-tech adventure with brooding psychological drama, doomed romance with corporate and political intrigue, all illustrated with mesmerising verve and style by Denys Cowan & Dick Giordano.

Moreover, as an anniversary event, the collected edition also includes a superb gallery of graphic appreciations from Bob Kane, Neal Adams, Kyle Baker, Norm Breyfogle, Howard Chaykin, Mike Zeck, Mike Mignola, Walt Simonson and David Mazzucchelli.

If you haven’t seen this supremely engaging tale – criminally out of print but well worth hunting down – then you don’t really know the Dark Knight yet…
© 1989, 1990, 1992 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Teen Titans/Outsiders: the Insiders

New Expanded Review

By Geoff Johns, Winick & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-247-6
Once upon a time superheroes, like firemen, sat around their assorted lairs or went about their civilian pursuits until the call of duty summoned them to deal with a breaking emergency. In the increasingly sober and serious world after Crisis on Infinite Earths, that precept was challenged with a number of costumed adventurers evolving into pre-emptive strikers…

After the deaths of two Teen Titans, Arsenal convinced the heartbroken Nightwing to run a covert and pre-emptive pack of self-professed “hunters”: seeking out and taking down metahuman threats and extraordinary criminals before they could do harm …

Nominally the fourth Outsiders collection this tome is also technically a Teen Titans graphic novel, as a case involving the kids overlaps and crosses over with the covert hunters’ latest disaster as originally seen in Teen Titans #24-26 and Outsiders #24-25 and 28…

This edgy chronicle is set in the slow and ponderous build-up to DC’s Infinite Crisis crossover event with lots of long-running story-threads pulling together ready for the big bang, and the tense tale contained herein collects a shared storyline that began with ‘The Insiders Part 1’ by Geoff Johns, Matthew Clark & Art Thibert, from TT #24, wherein Superboy, who had always believed himself a clone of Superman, discovered that part of his DNA was Lex Luthor‘s – just as a deeply embedded psychological program activated, forcing him to mercilessly attack his fellow Titans.

With Wonder Girl, Cyborg, Kid Flash, Beast Boy, Raven and Speedy out of action the severely injured Robin desperately contacts the team’s mentors, but the Outsiders have a few problems of their own…

‘The Insiders Part 2’ in Outsiders #24 (by Judd Winick & Carlos D’anda) opens moments after the embattled team – Nightwing, Arsenal, Shift, Jade, Grace, Thunder and Starfire – have discovered that the innocuous Indigo (a robotic being from the future who travelled back to our time and inadvertently caused the death of Omen and Donna Troy) is in fact the deadly artificial invader Brainiac 8, with her affable cover personality finally subsumed by the cybernetic monster within. Her mission has always been to ensure the future dominance of the planet Colu by assassinating key Earth heroes and re-configuring the time-continuum, and now the time has come…

The battered heroes unite in the third chapter as Lex Luthor and the first Brainiac rendezvous with their corrupted pawns. With a wave of robotic automatons reprogrammed by the former Indigo massing to attack humanity, the Titans once more confront Superboy in a cataclysmic battle…

Despite being painfully outmatched, some vestige of their comrade still remains and they narrowly survive, whilst Brainiac 8’s conversion also seems less than total and she alternatively taunts and begs the Outsiders to kill her if they can…

The crisis culminates when Superboy at last turns on Luthor, and a heartbroken Shift finally acquiesces to his former lover’s pleas and destroys Indigo in a manner only he can…

In the aftermath a key member quits the outsiders whilst in ‘Soul Searching’ (Johns, Tony Daniel & Marlo Alquiza from Teen Titans #26) the restored Conner Kent ponders his recent actions and agonises over whether a test tube hero with the genes of the World’s Wickedest Man has any right to happiness or any spark of the Divine, before mystic Raven offers him a shred of redemption, whilst from Outsiders #28 ‘Letting it Go’ (Winick, Clark & Thibert) shows the individual survivors each commemorating their lost comrade Indigo in their own unique way

In case you’re wondering: issues #26-27 were a fill-in tale starring Batman and the original Outsiders and are neither germane nor included here…

Riotous, rocket-paced and compellingly poignant, this engaging Fights ‘n’ Tights thriller reset and repositioned both series for the cosmic shenanigans to come and, whilst not perhaps the sort of tale to tempt a casual reader, will certainly delight any devotee of Costumed Dramas.
© 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Avengers: The Children’s Crusade


By Allan Heinberg, Jim Cheung, Alan Davis, Olivier Coipel & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-485-0

As the new Avengers film screens across the world, Marvel has again released a bunch of tie-in books and trade paperback collections to maximise exposure and cater to those movie fans wanting to follow up the cinematic exposure with a comics experience.

This stunning yarn is every bit as epic as any big screen extravaganza but does depend a bit too much on a thorough grounding in Avengers lore so newbies might struggle a bit with the minutiae…

Once upon a time the mutant Scarlet Witch married the android Vision and they had – through the agency of magic and Wanda’s unsuspected ability to reshape reality – twin boys. Over the course of time it was revealed that the boys were not real (for further details see Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Avengers) and as the years passed the tragedy drove the Scarlet Witch to insanity.

When Wanda tipped completely over the edge and destroyed at least three of her team-mates, the “World’s Mightiest Heroes” were shut down and rebooted in a highly publicised event known as Avengers Disassembled. Of course it was only to replace them with both The New and Young Avengers. The event also spilled over into the regular titles of current team members, and affiliated comic-books such as the Fantastic Four and Spectacular Spider-Man ran parallel but not necessarily interconnected story-arcs to accompany the Big Show.

Said Big Show consisted of the worst day in the team’s history as the Witch manipulated people and events: betraying her oldest, closest friends and causing the destruction of everything they held dear.

In the later company crossover event House of M reality was rewritten (yes, again!) when she had another breakdown and altered Earth continuity so that Magneto’s mutants ruled a society where normal humans (“sapiens”) were an acknowledged evolutionary dead-end living out their lives and destined for extinction within two generations. It took every hero on Earth and a great deal of luck to put that genie back in a bottle and in the aftermath almost no mutants were left on Earth…

Needless to say in recent time Wanda Maximoff has not been anybody’s favourite person so it’s perhaps lucky that no one on Earth seems to know her current whereabouts…

This compilation collects portions of Uncanny X-Men #526, Avengers: the Children’s Crusade #1-9 and Avengers: the Children’s Crusade – Young Avengers issue #1 (published in comicbook form from October 2011 to March 2012) which comprised the core-story for the latest relaunch of the constantly-changing grim and gritty alternate universe.

This gripping but convoluted tale opens with ‘Rebuilding’ (from X-Men #526 by author Allan Heinberg and artists Olivier Coipel & Mark Morales) as the aging Magneto, now loosely aligned with the remaining mutants in the semi-autonomous enclave “Utopia”, learns that two members of the teen superhero team Young Avengers bear an impossible similarity to the twins his daughter conjured up years ago.

Moreover, the ultra-swift Speed and sorcerous Wiccan bear an uncanny resemblance to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch at the same age…

Can these superhero twins possibly be his grandchildren? When he decides to investigate, X-Man and Avenger Wolverine warns the master of Magnetism to leave them alone… or else…

The story proper begins with Young Avengers Stature, Vision, Hulkling, Hawkeye, Patriot, Speed and Wiccan battling the racist terrorists Sons of the Serpent just as the elder Avengers arrive. When the child sorcerer displays a terrifying burst of power, alarm bells start ringing for Captain America, Iron Man and Ms. Marvel who have also noticed the startling similarities to their crazed and deadly former member…

In a world where the impossible happens every day and twice on Sundays, Wiccan has always suspected that Wanda was his true mother, and as the veteran heroes seek to curb his rapidly developing powers the boy mage convinces his team-mates to accompany him on a search for the missing Scarlet Witch and the true story of how and why she went bad…

Every Young Avenger has a different motive for the quest: for Speed it’s a chance to prove his annoying twin wrong, whilst Hulkling sees a chance to give his boyfriend Wiccan a sense of peace and closure. For Stature it’s the remote possibility of resurrecting the father Wanda murdered…

As the kids break out of Avenger custody they are joined by Magneto, sparking a clash with Wolverine and the rest of the “A” Team…

Bloodshed is avoided only by Wiccan transporting his friends and the Mutant Mastermind to the Balkan nation of Transia where Wanda and her brother Pietro grew up. Here they discover that Quicksilver – who blames his father and the Avengers in equal part for his beloved sister’s fate – is waiting.

…And so is Wanda herself…

Except that it’s only a carefully constructed android facsimile, but one which takes the reluctant and inimical fellow questers to the door of one the world’s most dangerous men, who has been harbouring the Scarlet Witch ever since the cataclysmic events following her magical decimation of the planet’s mutant population…

Meanwhile the Avengers have recruited Wonder Man – who was brought back from the dead by Wanda – but he proves to be an unreliable ally once he realises that the World’s Mightiest Heroes intend to kill the Witch at the first sign of trouble…

In Avengers: the Children’s Crusade – Young Avengers issue #1, illustrated by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, founding member Iron Lad returns to finish the mission he gathered the young heroes for.

The futuristic technologist is the teen iteration of Kang the Conqueror and formed the Young Avengers to prevent himself growing into the merciless Master of Time, but as this pithy behind-the-scenes and out of continuity saga shows, history and destiny are not easily cheated…

Back in Avengers: the Children’s Crusade #5 the chaos builds and the fabric of reality itself begins to unravel as Wanda and her notional boys are reunited and discover the true nature of her powers.

All Wanda wants to do is make amends whilst the man who claims to have caused all her breakdowns is prepared to keep her at all costs. Just as the Avengers arrive, determined to save the world from their former comrade, all hell breaks loose. When Iron Lad rejoins his team in real time he changes the recent past and the situation escalates to a catastrophic crescendo when the X-Men turn up, seeking justice for all the mutants “Wanda” destroyed in her crazy days…

With the dead rising, history unmaking itself and the true villain seizing control of all creation the stage is set for a truly tragic and spectacular climax…

Bombastic and cosmically broad in scope, this impressive tale by Allan (Wonder Woman, JLA, Sex and the City, The O.C., Gilmore Girls, Grey’s Anatomy) Heinberg seeks to undo and reset key milestones of Marvel history with boldness and generally succeeds in all his goals, aided by the impressive art of Jim Cheung and inkers Mark Morales, John Livesay, David Meikis & Dexter Vimes, but although this yarn will delight long-time fans I fear casual and new readers will struggle to pick up the nuances or even follow the plot. Still, the spectacular alternate cover gallery by Cheung, Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic, Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, Travis Charest and Art Adams will enthrall art fans and the impetus afforded by the film release will certainly draw new followers to this extremely attractive package with many small and big screen connections.

™ & © 2010, 2011, 2012 Marvel and subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A, Italy. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

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Ultimate Comics X-Men: Reborn


By Nick Spencer, Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-506-2

Marvel’s Ultimates imprint launched in 2000 with major characters and concepts re-imagined to bring them into line with the presumed different tastes of modern readers.

Eventually the alternate, darkly nihilistic universe became as continuity-constricted as its predecessor, and in 2008 the cleansing event “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which apparently (this is still comics, after all) killed dozens of super-humans and millions of lesser mortals.

The era-ending event was a colossal tsunami triggered by Magneto which inundated the superhero-heavy island of Manhattan and utterly devastated the world’s mutant population. The X-Men as well as many other superhuman heroes and villains died and in the aftermath anybody classed as ‘”Homo Superior” had to surrender to the authorities or be shot on sight. Understandably most survivors as well any newly emergent X-people kept themselves well hidden…

Mutants had always been feared and despised: as the indisputable inheritors of Earth, the often lethally-empowered and wildly uncontrollable creatures were seen by many as an alien, inimical species; a new race destined to take the world from humanity the way we took it from the Neanderthals…

This compilation continues to describe the gradual return of mutants to the post-deluge public gaze which began in Ultimate X: Origins by collecting Ultimate Comics: X-Men #1-6 and pertinent portions of Ultimate Comics: Fallout #4 (published in comicbook form from September 2011 to March 2012) which provided a game-changing new reality and status quo for the latest relaunch of the constantly-changing, grim and gritty alternate universe.

In a stunning story-arc by writer Nick Spencer, artists Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco and colourist Marte Gracia, the slow descent into uncontrolled chaos begins when Presidential Special Advisor on Superhuman and Mutant Affairs Valerie Cooper is forced to admit to the entire world that – rather than a result of inexorable evolution and natural selection – Mutants are the result of a fifty year old American covert program of genetic manipulation which got out of control…

In a world where Homo Superior are registered like guns, kept in internment camps and where good, God-fearing folk would rather execute their children than have them grow up afflicted with the sin of “mutant-ness”, the news instantly causes uproar and riot across the nation and around the planet…

Former X-Man Karen Grant (nee Jean Grey) has been continuing Charles Xavier‘s dream of fostering Human/Mutant co-existence but the news not only rips the rug out from under her; it also proves intolerable for her young charge Jimmy Hudson, who hears on National TV that his dead father Wolverine was the US Military’s ‘Mutant Zero’ and from his initial escape five decades ago has stemmed all the pain and horror and super-powered proliferation…

With a downtrodden, oppressed emergent species suddenly reduced to a virus or failed science experiment, global tensions are explosively high, and when renegade X-survivor Rogue very publicly battles American Nimrod Sentinels, the US President is faced with a civil crisis like no other…

Meanwhile hunted “Mutant Terrorist” Kitty Pryde is holed-up with fellow fugitives Iceman and the Human Torch, all on the run since their friend and fellow teen Peter Parker was murdered in his Spider-Man guise.

With the entire world in crisis (see Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye and The Ultimates: The Republic is Burning), the President consults S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury but is also approached by the deceased Magneto’s son Pietro Lensherr who has since inherited control of the terrorist group known as the Brotherhood of Mutants. The super-swift master manipulator has an arcane Faustian Bargain for the severely embattled Leader of the Free World…

Soon after the deluge hit, fundamentalist preacher Reverend William Stryker seized Sentinel technology and attacked the Xavier School, murdering many of the mutants Magneto’s flood had missed. Now he has returned, intent on capitalising on the troubled times and expediting his genocidal crusade.

Acting as a new X-team and against Pryde’s best judgment Iceman and the Torch rescue Rogue, but are horrified to discover that the fugitive powerhouse has literally “seen God”.

However, as they all hide in subterranean tunnels beneath New York, picking up stray mutant children as they flee, the young misfits have no idea just how far their former comrade has fallen or what lengths Rogue will go to in order to fulfil her divinely ordained mission…

With the nation in chaos Stryker plans a massive event in Times Square, offering a cure for mutantcy and a final solution to the crisis, but his true plan is to ambush the gathered deviants and end their blasphemous existence forever…

In the White House Quicksilver has his own scheme: he knows the secret Stryker is concealing and intends to use it for his own ends, but when the Reverend takes control of the entire Sentinel program and sends every killer robot in America’s arsenal to hunt down all the remaining mutants still in hiding, the cataclysmic battles leads to a stunning series of revelations and a breathtaking cliffhanger…

This welcome return to the bleak and cynical Ultimate fare, with the trademark post-modernity, sharp abrasive humour and darkly brutal action, still delivers the grim ‘n’ gritty punch fans crave, but with so much backstory to absorb Reborn might not be the best book for anybody thinking on jumping on to decidedly different world of Wonder. Nevertheless the striking drama and returning cast-favourites will certainly please those older readers who love this trenchant iteration of superhero sagas and any casual readers who are more familiar with the company’s movies than the comic-books.

A British edition licensed and published by Panini UK, Ltd. ™ & © 2012 Marvel Entertainment LLC and its subsidiaries. Licensed from Marvel Characters B.V. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents All Star Comics Volume 1


By Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, Wally Wood, Joe Staton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-810-0

In the torrid and turbulent 1970s many of the Comics industry’s oldest publishing ideas were finally laid to rest. The belief that characters could be “over-exposed” was one of the most pernicious and long-lasting (although it never hurt Superman, Batman or the original Captain Marvel), garnered from years of experience in an industry which lived or died on that fractional portion of pennies derived each month from the pocket-money and allowances of children which wasn’t spent on candy, toys or movies.

By the end of the 1960s comicbook costs and prices were inexorably rising and a proportion of titles – especially the newly revived horror stories – were consciously being produced for older readerships. Nearly a decade of organised fan publications and letter writing crusades had finally convinced publishing bean-counters what editors already knew: grown-ups avidly read comics too; they would happily spend more than kids and, most importantly, they wanted more, more, more of what they loved.

Explicitly: If one appearance per month was popular, extras, specials and second series would be more so. By the time Marvel Wunderkind Gerry Conway was preparing to leave The House of Ideas, DC was willing and ready to expand its variegated line-up with some oft-requested fan-favourite characters.

Paramount among these was the Justice Society of America, the first comicbook super-team and a perennial gem whose annual guest-appearances in the Justice League of America had become an inescapable and beloved summer tradition.

Thus in 1976 Writer/Editor Conway marked his DC tenure (where he had first broken in to the game by writing horror shorts for Joe Orlando) by reviving All Star Comics with number #58; in 1951 as the first Heroic Age ended the original title had transformed overnight into All Star Western with that number running for a further decade as the home of such cowboy crusaders as Strong Bow, the Trigger Twins, Johnny Thunder and Super-Chief. If you’re interested, among the other revivals/introductions in “Conway’s Corner” were Blackhawk, Plastic Man, Secret Society of Super-Villains, Freedom Fighters, Kobra, Blitzkrieg – and many others

Set on the parallel world of Earth-2 and in keeping with the editorial sense of ensuring that the series was relevant to young readers too, Conway reintroduced the veteran team and leavened it with a smattering of teen heroes, combined into a contentious, generation-gap fuelled “Super Squad”.

The youngsters included Robin (already a JSA member since the mid 1960s – as per Showcase Presents the Justice League of America volume 3), Sylvester Pemberton, AKA The Star-Spangled Kid (in actuality a boy-hero from the 1940s who had spent decades lost in time) and a busty young nymphet who quickly became the feisty favourite of a generation of growing boys: Kara Zor-L; soon to become infamous as the “take-charge” dynamo Power Girl.

This superb titanic monochrome volume gathers the four year run of the JSA from the late 1970s into a sublime showcase of different, ever-changing times and includes All-Star Comics #58-74, the series’ continuation and conclusion from giant anthology title Adventure Comics #461-466 plus the seminal DC Special #29 which, after almost four decades, at last provided the team with an origin…

The action begins with ‘Prologue’ – a three-page introduction, recap and summation of the Society’s history and the celestial mechanics of Alternate Earths, by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton & Bob Layton From Adventure #461 (January/February 1979) outlining the history and mechanics of the alternate Earths, after which the two-part debut tale from All- Star Comics #58 (January/February 1976 by Conway, Ric Estrada and Wally Wood) found newly-inducted Pemberton chafing at his time-lost plight and revelling in his new powers (he had been given a cosmic power device by retired veteran Starman) when a crisis propelled him and elder heroes Flash, Dr. Mid-Nite, Wildcat, Hawkman, Green Lantern and Dr. Fate into a three-pronged calamity devastating Seattle, Cape Town and Peking (which you youngsters now know as Beijing) with man-made natural disasters.

The veterans split up but were overwhelmed, giving the new kids a chance to shine in ‘All Star Super-Squad’. With the abrasive, impatient Power Girl in the vanguard the entire team was soon on the trail of old foe Degaton and his mind-bending ally in the concluding ‘Brainwave Blows Up!’

Keith Giffen replaced Estrada in issue #60 for the introduction of a psychotic super-arsonist who attacked the squad just as the age-divide started to chafe and Power Girl began to tick off or “re-educate” the stuffy, paternalistic JSA elders in ‘Vulcan: Son of Fire!’.

The closing instalment ‘Hellfire and Holocaust’ saw the flaming fury mortally wound Dr. Fate before his own defeat, just as a new mystic menace was beginning to stir…

Conway’s last issue as scripter was #62’s ‘When Fall the Mighty’ as antediluvian sorcerer Zanadu attacked, whilst the criminal Injustice Gang opened their latest vengeful assault using mind-control to turn friend against friend…

The cast expanded with the return of Hourman and Power Girl’s Kryptonian mentor, but even they were insufficient to prevent ‘The Death of Doctor Fate’ (written by Paul Levitz and fully illustrated by the inimitable Wally Wood). Attacked on all sides, the team splintered: Wildcat, Hawkman and the Kryptonian Cousins tackling the assembled super-villains, Flash and Green Lantern searching Egypt for a cure to Fate’s condition, and Hourman, Mid-Nite and Star-Spangled Kid desperately attempting to keep their fallen comrade alive.

They failed and Zanadu attacked once more, almost adding the moribund Fate’s death-watch defenders to his tally until the archaic alien’s very presence called Kent Nelson back from beyond the grave…

With that crisis averted Superman made ready to leave but was embroiled in a last-minute, manic time-travel assassination plot (Levitz & Wood) which dragged the team and guest-star Shining Knight from an embattled Camelot in ‘Yesterday Begins Today!’ to the far-flung future and ‘The Master Plan of Vandal Savage’: a breathtaking spectacle of drama and excitement that signalled Wood’s departure from the series.

Joe Staton & Bob Layton had the unenviable task of filling his artistic shoes, beginning with #66 as ‘Injustice Strikes Twice!’ with the reunited team – sans Superman – falling prey to an ambush from their arch-enemies, whilst the emotion-warping Psycho-Pirate began to twist Green Lantern into an out-of-control menace determined to crush Corporate America beneath his emerald heel, which subsequently led to the return of Earth-2’s Bruce Wayne, who had retired his masked persona to become Gotham’s Police Commissioner.

The Injustice Society had monstrous allies who were revealed in ‘Attack of the Underlord!’ (All-Star Comics #67, July/Aug 1977) as a subterranean race of conquerors who nearly ended the team forever. Meanwhile Wayne’s plans to close down the JSA before their increasingly destructive exploits demolished his beloved city neared fruition…

The modern adventures pause here as the aforementioned case from DC Special #29 (September 1977) disclosed ‘The Untold Origin of the Justice Society’

In this extra-length epic Levitz, Staton & Layton, revealed the previously “classified” events which saw Adolf Hitler acquire the mystical Spear of Destiny in 1940 and immediately summon mythical Teutonic Valkyries to aid in the in 1940 invasion of Britain.

Alerted to the threat, American President Roosevelt, hampered by his country’s neutrality, asked a select band of masked mystery-men to lend their aid as non-political private citizens. In a cataclysmic escalation the struggle ranged from the heart of Europe, throughout the British Isles and even to the Oval office of the White House before ten bold costumed heroes finally – if only temporarily – stopped the Nazis’ evil plans…

Back in All Star #68 (October, 1977) the curvy Kryptonian was clearly becoming the star of the show and as ‘Divided We Stand!’ by Levitz, Staton & Bob Layton, concluded the Psycho-Pirate’s scheme to discredit and destroy the JSA, she was well on the way to her first solo outing in Showcase #97-98 (reprinted in Power Girl, but not included here). Meanwhile GL resumed a maniacal rampage through Gotham City and Police Commissioner Bruce Wayne took extreme measures to bring the seemingly out-of-control JSA to book.

In #69’s ‘United We Fall!’ Commissioner Wayne brought in his own team of retired JSA heroes to arrest the “rogue” squad, resulting in a classic fanboy dream duel as Dr. Fate, Wildcat, Hawkman, Flash, GL and Star Spangled Kid battled the one-time Batman, Robin, Hourman, Starman, Dr. Mid-Nite and Wonder Woman. It was a colourful catastrophe in waiting until PG and Superman intervened to reveal the true cause of all the madness.

…And in the background, a new character was about to make a landmark debut…

With order (temporarily) restored ‘A Parting of the Ways!’ focussed on Wildcat and Star Spangled Kid as the off-duty heroes stumbled upon a high-tech gang of super-thieves called Strike Force. The robbers initially proved too much for the pair and even new star The Huntress, but with a pair of startling revelations in ‘The Deadliest Game in Town!’ the trio finally triumphed.

In the aftermath the Kid resigned and the daughter of Batman and Catwoman (alternate Earth, remember?) replaced him.

All-Star Comics #72 reintroduced a couple of classic Golden Age villainesses in ‘A Thorn by Any Other Name’ wherein the psychopathic floral fury returned to poison Wildcat, leaving Helena Wayne to battle the original 1950’s Huntress for an antidote and the rights to the name…

The concluding ‘Be it Ever So Deadly’ (with Joe Giella taking over the inker’s role) saw the entire team in action as Huntress battled Huntress whilst Thorn and the Sportsmaster did their deadly best to destroy the heroes and their loved ones. Simultaneously in Egypt Hawkman and Dr. Fate stumbled upon a deadly ancient menace to all of reality…

The late 1970s was a perilous period for comics with exponentially rising costs inevitably resulting in drastically dwindling sales. Many titles were abruptly cancelled in a “DC Implosion” and All-Star Comics was one of the casualties. Issue #74 was the last and pitted the entire team against a mystic Armageddon perpetrated by the nigh-omnipotent Master Summoner who orchestrated a ‘World on the Edge of Ending’ before the Justice Society triumphed dragged victory from the jaws of defeat…

Although the book was gone, the series continued in the massive 68 page anthology title Adventure Comics, beginning in #461 (January/February 1979) with the first half of a blockbuster tale originally intended for the anniversary 75th issue. Drawn and inked by Staton, ‘Only Legends Live Forever’ detailed the last case of the Batman as the Dark Knight came out of retirement to battle a seeming nonentity who had mysteriously acquired god-like power.

Issue #462 delivered the shocking, heartbreaking conclusion in ‘The Legend Lives Again!’ whilst ‘The Night of the Soul Thief!’ saw Huntress, Robin and the assembled JSA deliver righteous justice to the mysterious mastermind who had actually orchestrated the death of the World’s Greatest Detective.

Adventure #464 then provided an intriguing insight into aging warrior Wildcat, as with ‘To Everything There is a Season…’ he embraced his own mortality and began a new career as a teacher of heroes, whilst ‘Countdown to Disaster!’ (inked by Dave Hunt) saw Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Power Girl, Huntress and Dr. Fate hunt a doomsday device lost in the teeming masses of Gotham. It would be the last modern outing of the team for decades.

But not the last in this volume: that honour falls to another Levitz & Staton landmark history lesson wherein they exposed the reason why the team had vanished at the beginning of the 1950s.

From Adventure #466 ‘The Defeat of the Justice Society!’ showed how the American Government had cravenly betrayed their greatest champions during the McCarthy Witch-hunts; provoking the mystery-men into withdrawing from public, heroic life for over a decade – that is until the costumed stalwarts of Earth-1 started the whole Fights ‘n’ Tights scene all over again…

Although perhaps a tad dated now, these exuberant, rapid-paced and imaginative yarns perfectly blended the naive charm of Golden Age derring-do with cynical yet hopeful modern sensibilities that never doubted that, in the end. heroes would always find a way to save the day.

These classic tales from a simpler time are a glorious example of traditional superhero storytelling at its finest: fun, furious and ferociously engaging, exciting written and beguilingly illustrated. No Fights ‘n’ Tights fan can afford to miss these marvellous sagas.
© 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told: volume 2


By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Dennis O’Neill, Irv Novick, Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-037-2

By the time this sequel collection of Batman classics appeared, graphic novels were becoming fully established as a valuable second marketplace for comic adventures, not just celebrating standout stories from the company’s illustrious and varied history but also as a format for new and significant works.

They were also a superb high-ticket item for enhancing public buzz from media events such as the follow-up Batman Returns movie. However, although this tantalising selection of tales starring Catwoman and the Penguin was designed to cash in on the second feature film, it does contain a superb procession of brilliant criminal clashes which no true fan of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction could resist…

After ‘Of Fowls and Felines: Fifty Years of Felony’, an erudite introduction by Marty Pasko, and Mike Gold’s fact-filled Foreword ‘The Deadliest Duo’, both liberally illustrated with pin-ups by José Luis García–López, Brian Stelfreeze, Jim Aparo, Don Newton, Brent Anderson and others, the dramatic duels begin with ‘The Cat’ (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane & Jerry Robinson from Batman #1, Spring 1940) – later adding the suffix ‘Woman’ to her name to avoid any possible doubt or confusion – who plied her felonious trade of jewel theft aboard the wrong cruise liner and fell foul for the first time of the dashing Dynamic Duo, whilst the perfidious Penguin debuted in Detective Comics #58 (December 1941, by Kane, Finger, Robinson & George Roussos) primed to make the Batman and Robin the victims of ‘One of the Most Perfect Frame-Ups’…

‘The Secret Life of Catwoman’ comes from Batman #62 (December 1950-January 1951, by Finger, Kane & Charles Paris) and saw the Felonious Feline reform and retire after a head trauma cured her larcenous tendencies, after which ‘The Penguin’s Fabulous Fowls’ from #76 (April-May 1953 by Edmond Hamilton, Kane & Paris) found the Umbrella King turn xeno(crypto?)-biologist to capture mythical avian monsters and turn them loose in Gotham…

January 1954’s Detective Comics #203 exposed the ‘Crimes of the Catwoman’ when the bored and neglected Selina Kyle took up her whip and claws once more to prove she was still the Queen of Crime in a classy caper by Hamilton, Kane & Paris.

In the mid 1950s costumed villains faded from view for almost a decade until the Batman TV show made them stars in their own right.

Batman #169 (February 1965) saw the wily, bird-themed bad-man triumphantly return to make the Caped Crusaders his unwilling dupes and ‘Partners in Plunder!’ in a stirring romp by Ed “France” Herron, Sheldon Moldoff & Joe Giella, whilst full-length epic ‘The Penguin Takes a Flyer into the Future’ (#190 March 1967 by Gardner Fox, Chic Stone & Giella) mixed super-villainy and faux science fiction motifs for an enjoyable if predictable fist-fest.

When the Tigress of Terror eventually resurfaced with Batman #197’s ‘Catwoman Sets her Claws for Batman’ (December by Fox, Frank Springer and Sid Greene) the frankly daft tale pitted her in romantic combat against Batgirl for the Gotham Gangbuster’s attentions. This one is most fondly remembered for the classic cover of Batgirl and whip-wielding Catwoman squaring off over Batman’s prone body – comic fans have a psychopathology all their very own…

Batman #257 in July-August 1974 produced a canny thriller in ‘Hail Emperor Penguin’ by Denny O’Neil, Irv Novick& Dick Giordano, wherein the Parasol Plunderer kidnapped a young Middle Eastern potentate and fell foul of both Batman & Robin and Demon’s Daughter Talia Al Ghul.

The Teen Wonder returned in Detective Comics #473’s ‘The Malay Penguin!’ as the podgy Napoleon of Crime challenged the temporarily reunited Dynamic Duo to an entrancing, intoxicating duel of wits, courtesy of Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin from November 1977.

After an informative ‘Catwoman Featurette’ from Batman #256 May (Jun 1974), a two part Catwoman solo feature by Bruce Jones, Trevor Von Eeden & Pablo Marcos proved her potential as a force for Good in ‘Terror Train’ and ‘In the Land of the Dead’ from Batman #345-346 (March and April 1982) whilst ‘Never Scratch a Cat’ from #355 (January 1983, by Gerry Conway, Don Newton & Alfredo Alcala) re-emphasised her savage, independent nature and unwillingness to be ignored by the Dark Knight…

A ‘Penguin Featurette’ from Batman #257 then precedes ‘Love Birds’ from Batman Annual #11 (1987) wherein Max Allen Collins & Norm Breyfogle explored the Penguin’s softer side – and found it lacking – before ‘Eyrie’ (Detective #568, November 1986 by Joey Cavalieri & Klaus Janson) firmly re-established the Little Emperor of Crime’s stylish, deadly and bloody bona fides in a chilling tale of extortion and murder…

This terrific tome, edited by Paul Kupperberg and Robert Greenberger – who provided the creator biographies and End-notes – is also packed with many compelling cover reproductions filling up all those half-page breaks which advertised new comics in the originals to make this another captivating collection of utter superhero excellence: fun-filled, action-packed and wildly beguiling.
© 1940, 1941, 1953, 1954, 1965, 1967, 1974, 1977, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1987, 1992 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told


By Bob Kane, Bill Finger & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: hc 0930-289-35-8        pb 978-0-93028-966-9

When the very concept and feasibility of high priced graphic novels was just being tested in the early 1990s, DC Comics produced a line of glorious hardback compilations spotlighting star characters and celebrating standout stories from the company’s illustrious and varied history decade by decade. They even produced themed collections which shaped the output of the industry to this day such as this captivating compendium of tales released in 1988 designed to promote interest in the then still-forthcoming Batman movie.

As one of the earliest graphic novel collections of the time the accreditations in this tome are sometimes incorrect and I’ve endeavoured to correct any inaccuracies I’ve spotted wherever they occur…

The non-stop rollercoaster ride begins with ‘Batman versus the Vampire parts 1 and 2’ which originally appeared in Detective Comics #31-32 (September and October 1939 by Gardner Fox & Bob Kane), a sublime two-part gothic shocker which introduced the first bat-plane, Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend Julie Madison and vampiric horror The Monk: a saga which concluded in an epic chase across Eastern Europe and a spectacularly chilling climax. The tale was re-imagined by Matt Wagner in 2007 as Batman and the Mad Monk.

From Batman #1, 1940 ‘Dr. Hugo Strange and the Mutant Monsters’ follows as a brilliant old enemy (see Batman Archives volume 1) returned with laboratory-grown hyperthyroid horrors to rampage through the terrified city. Bill Finger, Kane & Jerry Robinson’s pulp masterpiece was also later reworked by Wagner as Batman & the Monster Men.

‘Nights of Knavery’ from Batman #25 (October/November 1944, Don Cameron, Hardin “Jack” Jack Burnley & Jerry Robinson) saw the Joker and Penguin temporarily united in a tempestuous and foredoomed alliance against the Dynamic Duo after which the Wily Old Bird starred in a solo saga from the Sunday section of the short-lived Batman syndicated newspaper strip.

‘1001 Umbrellas of the Penguin’ (from February 10th – March 10th 1946, by Alvin Schwartz, Burnley & Charles Paris) recounted a hilarious episode wherein the arch-criminal’s formidable Aunt Miranda came to visit, blithely unaware of her nephew’s nefarious career, after which ‘The Origin of Batman’ (#47 of his solo title, June 1948, by Finger, Kane & Paris) added tone and depth to the traumatic event when The Gotham Gangbuster at last confronted the triggerman who murdered his parents…

A new high-tech, gadget-fuelled era opened with ‘The Birth of Batplane II’ (Batman #61, October 1950: David Vern, Dick Sprang & Paris) as the Dynamic Duo lost their old aircraft to criminal aviators and constructed a whole new look for themselves…

After WWII Robin had a long-running solo-strip in Star-Spangled Comics and from #124 (January 1952) comes ‘Operation Escape’ by an unknown writer – possibly Bill Finger – and artist Jim Mooney wherein the Boy Wonder proved his ingenuity in liberating himself from an impossible criminal trap, whilst in ‘The Jungle Cat-Queen’ (Detective #211 September 1954, by Edmond Hamilton, Sprang & Paris) he and his mentor were hard-pressed to outwit the sultry Catwoman after she marooned them on a tropical island rife with deadly killers, animal and human…

‘The First Batman’ (Detective Comics #235, September 1955) was a key story of this period and introduced a strong psychological component to Batman’s origins courtesy of Finger, Sheldon Moldoff & Stan Kaye, disclosing how when Bruce Wayne was still a toddler his father had clashed with gangsters whilst clad in a fancy dress bat costume…

When the Man of Tomorrow replaced the Caped Crusader with a new partner in World’s Finest Comics #94 (1958) it led to a timely review and partial revision of ‘The Origin of the Superman-Batman Team’ in a timeless tale by Hamilton, Sprang & Stan Kaye after which ‘Robin Dies at Dawn’ re-presents the eerie epic which first appeared in Batman #156 (June 1963, Finger, Moldoff & Paris) wherein the Gotham Guardian experienced truly hideous travails on an alien world culminating in the death of his young partner.

Detective #345 (November 1966) introduced a terrifying, tragic new villain in ‘The Blockbuster Invasion of Gotham City!’ (Fox, Infantino & Giella) as a monstrous giant with the mind of a child and the raw, physical power of a tank was constantly driven to madness at sight of Batman and only placated by the sight of Bruce Wayne…

This is followed by a chilling murder-mystery from the most celebrated creative team of the 1970s. ‘Ghost of the Killer Skies’ (Detective Comics #404, October 1970, by Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams & Dick Giordano) found Batman attempting to solve a series of impossible murders on the set of a film about German WWI fighter ace Hans von Hammer and the same team are responsible for the moody masterpiece which follows, reintroducing one of Batman’s most tragic and dangerous foes.

As comics became increasingly more anodyne in the 1950s the actualised schizophrenic Two-Face had faded from view, but with the return of a grimmer, grittier hero the scene was set for a revival of Batman’s most murderously warped villains too. ‘Half an Evil’ from Batman #234, August 1971 is a spectacular action-packed mystery, as the long-gone two-in-one man perpetrated a series of bizarre events for no perceptible purpose…

‘Man-Bat Over Vegas’ (Detective #429, November 1972, written and illustrated by Frank Robbins) was an epilogue to the triptych of tales which introduced the tragic Kirk Langstrom, whose experiments doomed him to life as a monstrous winged mutant. Although Batman assumed the scientist was cured, when a nuclear test led to a rash of vampire attacks in Nevada the Caped Crusader rushed west to investigate…

‘The Batman Nobody Knows’ comes from Batman #250, July 1973 and was a celebrated attempt by Robbins & Giordano to rationalize the then newly-restored aura of mystery to the character. This quirky campfire tale recently inspired the creation of African Dark Knight Batwing as part of DC’s “New 52”…

When Archie Goodwin took over the editor’s desk from Julie Schwartz in Detective Comics #437 (November 1973) he also wrote a stunning run of experimental yarns, beginning with ‘Deathmask’: a brilliant supernatural murder-mystery featuring an Aztec curse; magnificently depicted by Jim Aparo. From #442 (September 1974) ‘Death Flies the Haunted Sky’ provided reclusive graphic genius Alex Toth with an opportunity to show everybody how powerful comic art could be.

Goodwin & Toth’s collaboration on the magnificent barnstorming murder-spree thriller is one of the best Batman tales ever created.

Next up is ‘There is no Hope in Crime Alley!’ (Detective Comics #457, March 1976): a powerful and genuinely moving tale which introduced Leslie Thompkins, the woman who first cared for the boy Bruce Wayne on the night his parents were murdered, delivered with great skill and sensitivity by O’Neil & Giordano.

‘Death Strikes at Midnight and Three’ comes from DC Special Series #15 (Summer, 1978): an ambitious but not quite successful text-thriller which married a wealth of superb illustrations by Marshall Rogers to O’Neil’s surprisingly lacklustre prose.

Rogers had first come to prominence drawing Steve Englehart’s classic reinterpretation of the Batman legend and ‘The Deadshot Ricochet’ (Detective #474, December 1977, and with Terry Austin on inks) was perhaps the best of a truly stellar run. The second ever appearance of the murderous high society sniper (after an initial outing in Batman #59, 1950) so reinvigorated the third-rate trick-shooter that he’s seldom been missing from the DC Universe since, starring in a number of series such as Suicide Squad and Secret Six, and even in a couple of eponymous miniseries.

‘Bat-Mite’s New York Adventure’ from Detective 482 (March 1979) is a hilarious fourth-wall busting romp by Bob Rozakis, Michael Golden & Bob Smith which finds the geeky fifth-dimensional sprite invading the offices of DC comics to deliver a protest in person, whilst its back to grim business as usual in the bombastic ‘A Caper a Day Keeps the Batman at Bay’ (Batman #312, June 1979, by Len Wein, Walt Simonson & Giordano) as the obsessed bandit Calendar Man attempts to commit a themed robbery every 24 hours…

In Detective #500 (March 1981) Alan Brennert & Giordano sent Batman and Robin to another Earth to prevent the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne in the beguiling ‘To Kill a Legend’ and the story-portion of this book concludes with another Brennert alternate world saga as in 1955 the Earth-2 Batman and Catwoman clashed with the Scarecrow before finally sheathing their claws and getting married in ‘The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne’ (The Brave and the Bold #197 April 1983) illustrated by Joe Staton & George Freeman.

The hardcover book is edited by Mike Gold, Brian Augustyn, Mark Waid & Robert Greenberger, with a spectacular collage of covers as endpaper illustrations, ‘Growing up with the Greatest’ – an introduction from Dick Giordano, and text features ‘Our Darkest Knight’ from Gold and a captivating end-note article by Greenberger. Also on show are copious creator biographies liberally enhanced with even more tantalising cover reproductions, even filling up all those half-page breaks which advertised new comics in the originals.

I defy any nostalgia-soaked fan not to start muttering “got; got; need it; Mother threw it away…”

This unbelievably enchanting collection was released in both hardcover and paperback editions and is a pure parcel of superhero magnificence: fun-filled, action-packed and utterly addictive.
© 1939-1983, 1988 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Shazam! Archives volume 2


By Bill Parker, C.C. Beck, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Pete Costanza, Charles Sultan & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 01-56389-521-8

One of the most venerated and beloved characters of America’s Golden Age of comics was created by Bill Parker and Charles Clarence Beck in 1940 as part of the wave of opportunistic creativity which followed the stunning success of Superman in 1938. Although there were many similarities in the early years, the Fawcett character quickly moved squarely into the area of light entertainment and even straight comedy, whilst as the years passed the Man of Steel increasingly left whimsy behind in favour of action, drama and suspense.

Homeless orphan and good kid Billy Batson was selected by an ancient wizard to be given the powers of six gods and heroes to battle injustice. He transforms from scrawny precocious kid to brawny (adult) hero Captain Marvel by speaking aloud the wizard’s acronymic name – invoking the powers of legendary patrons Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury.

At the height of his popularity Captain Marvel outsold Superman and was even published twice a month, but as the Furious Forties closed tastes changed, sales slowed and Fawcett saw the way the wind was blowing. They settled an infamous long-running copyright infringement case begun by National Comics in 1940 and the Big Red Cheese disappeared – as did so many superheroes – becoming little more than a fond memory for older fans…

This second magnificent deluxe full-colour hardback compendium re-presents the lead strips and pertinent Spy Smasher episodes from the fortnightly Whiz Comics #15-20 where Fawcett conducted one of comics’ first character crossover sagas, as well as the premier issue of solo title Captain Marvel Adventures and the magnificent Special Edition Comics #1 which opens this spectacular box of delights after an enthralling introduction by cartoonist, author and historian R.C. Harvey.

Fawcett had a brilliant hit on their hands and in late 1940 released a 64-page bonus comic dedicated to their dashing hero with four all-new adventures by Parker & Beck.

It began with an untitled epic wherein Billy and his adult alter ego battled mystery powerhouse Slaughter Slade and his ghastly monsters – including a giant spider and a super-intelligent gorilla – when they tried to lay waste to the nation’s Capitol.

‘Captain Marvel and the Haunted House’ was an old-fashioned spooky chiller where a dead man’s curse proved to have a mortal and mercenary cause whilst ‘Captain Marvel and the Gamblers of Death’ pitted the hero against betting racketeers who preferred to kill athletes rather than pay out to winning punters.

The Special Edition ended with the epic ‘Captain Marvel and Sivana, the Weather Wizard’ wherein Billy returned to Venus and discovered the deranged genius had devised a method of creating natural disasters on Earth. Sivana’s scheme to get rich from millions of insurance claims naturally fell foul of the World’s Mightiest Mortal and Billy’s sheer ingenuity…

In the formative years as the feature catapulted to the first rank of superhero superstars, there was actually a scramble to fill pages so Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (1941) was farmed out to up-and-coming whiz-kids Joe Simon & Jack Kirby who produced the entire issue in a hurry from Beck and Parker’s guides.

First up was a visually impressive drama with the irrepressible Sivana creating ‘Z’; a hulking brute designed to be every inch the Captain’s equal. After a spectacular knock-down, drag-out, Kirby-co-ordinated dust-up it was apparent that he wasn’t…

‘Captain Marvel Out West’ found Billy in Rimrock City covering a rodeo for radio listeners before stumbling onto a rustling plot that only the big Red Galoot could quash and, after ‘Captain Marvel’s Puzzle Page’, the Big Guy headed into outer space to crush a gang of alien slavers who had invaded a peaceful Earth-like planet.

Following another perplexing ‘Billy Batson’s Game Page’ the Golden Age Dream-Team wrapped up their stint by crafting ‘Captain Marvel Battles the Vampire’, a manic thriller in the movie haunted vein that would so influence their Captain America stories a year later, as Billy is just too late to stop unwise scientist Doctor Deever’s attempt to reanimate the deadly blood-sucker Bram Thirla. Luckily all the powers of the undead were no match for the Good Captain…

This is followed by an ad for the blockbusting Captain Marvel Movie Serial, which might have inspired the next bold innovation (by a tragically unknown scripter or scripters, although I suspect Parker had a hand in the proceedings somewhere…)

From the middle of Whiz Comics #15 (March 2nd 1941) comes ‘Spy Smasher’ – illustrated by Pete Costanza – which saw the physical and mental marvel Alan Armstrong defeat the giant Grosso only to be brainwashed by his master: a Nazi agent called The Mask.

Soon the costumed hero had become America’s greatest foe, terrorising and sabotaging the country he loved, so two weeks later in Whiz #16 the Captain Marvel lead feature carried on the serial suspense in a dazzling duel (illustrated by Beck & Costanza) wherein Marvel’s brawn and Billy’s brains proved no match for the mesmerised former hero, who after murdering the Mask, released a prison full of convicts and used the brainwashing ray on the Captain…

Happily it didn’t work but in the Spy Smasher instalment (with art by Charles Sultan) Armstrong’s destructive campaign decimated America’s heavy industry and almost killed his girlfriend and sidekick Eve Corby until a certain crimson comet stepped in…

Issue #17 saw Armstrong try to kill Billy’s boss Sterling Morris and steal a deadly new poison gas despite Marvel’s best efforts before continuing into that issue’s Spy Smasher instalment where the tireless madman struck into the nation’s heartland; devastating crops and natural resources with an artificial cyclone.

The crossover continued until the splendid climax in #18 (June 13th 1941) as Armstrong met the Axis spymasters in America and declared war on them too. The hypnotised hero was determine to destroy all governments but finally met his match and was successfully cured in a blistering final fight with Marvel before the concluding Spy Smasher chapter saw them join forces to route the enemy espionage ring…

Whiz Comics #19 (July 11th 1941) then follows with business as unusual when ‘Captain Marvel and the Black Magician’ (possibly written by Otto Binder?) found Billy exposing supernatural charlatans and being targeted by an affronted but genuine backwoods witch-man after which this tome terminates with the rousing ‘Crusher of Crime’ from #20 (August 8th) wherein Sivana laid a deadly trap for Billy before making himself Marvel’s physical match.

Of course, there was much more going on than first appeared…

DC eventually acquired the Fawcett properties and characters and in 1973 revived the Captain for a new generation to see if his unique charm would work another sales miracle during one of comics’ periodic downturns.

Re-titled Shazam! due to the incontestable power of lawyers and copyright convention, the revived heroic ideal enjoyed mixed success before being subsumed into the company’s vast stable of characters…

Nevertheless Captain Marvel is a true icon of American comic history and a brilliantly conceived superhero for all ages. This second stellar collection further proves that these timeless and sublime comic masterpieces are an ideal introduction to the world of superhero fiction: tales that will appeal to readers of any age and temperament.
© 1940, 1941, 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Avengers


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Neal Adams, John Byrne, Kurt Busiek, George Pérez, Brian Michael Bendis & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-507-9

The Avengers have always proved that putting all one’s star eggs in one single basket pays off big-time: even when all Marvel’s all-stars such as Thor, Captain America and Iron Man were absent, it merely allowed the team’s lesser lights to shine more brightly.

Of course all the founding stars regularly featured due to the rotating, open-door policy which meant most issues included somebody’s fave-rave – and the boldly grand-scale impressive stories and artwork were no hindrance either.

As the new Avengers film screens across the world, Marvel has again released a bunch of tie-in books and trade paperback collections to maximise exposure and cater to those movie fans wanting to follow up the cinematic exposure with a comics experience.

Under the Marvel Platinum/Definitive Editions umbrella, this treasury of tales reprints some obvious landmarks from the pantheon’s serried history, specifically Avengers volume 1 #1, 4, 57, 93, Avengers West Coast #51-52, Avengers volume 3, #10-11, Avengers volume 1 #503, Avengers Finale and New Avengers #3 which, whilst not all absolutely “definitive” epics, certainly offer a sublime snapshot of just how very great the ever-shifting team of titans can be.

During the Marvel Renaissance of the early 1960’s Stan Lee and Jack Kirby aped the tactic which had worked so tellingly for DC Comics, but with mixed results. Julie Schwartz had incredible success with revised and modernised versions of the company’s Golden Age greats, so it seemed natural to try and revive the characters that had dominated Timely/Atlas in those halcyon days. The JLA inspired Fantastic Four featured a new Human Torch and before long Sub-Mariner was back too…

As the costumed hero revival brought continuing success, the next stage was obvious and is covered here at then end of the volume by historian Mike Conroy’s informative essay ‘The True Origin of the Avengers’…

The concept of combining individual stars into a group had already made the Justice League of America a commercial winner and inspired the moribund Atlas outfit of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to invent many “super-characters” after the Fantastic Four. Nearly 18 months later the fledgling House of Ideas had a viable stable of leading men (but only sidekick women) so Lee & Kirby assembled a handful of them and moulded them into a force for justice and even higher sales…

After a period of meteoric expansion, in 1963 the burgeoning Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that had truly kick-started the Silver Age of comics and this stunning historical retrospective begins as it should with two stories from the groundbreaking Lee/Kirby run which graced the first eight issues of the World’s Mightiest Heroes.

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

‘The Coming of the Avengers’ is one of the cannier origin tales in comics. Instead of starting at a zero point and acting as if the reader knew nothing, Stan & Jack (plus inker Dick Ayers) assumed readers had at least a passing familiarity with their other efforts and wasted very little time or energy on introductions.

In Asgard Loki, god of evil, was imprisoned on a dank isle, hungry for vengeance on his half-brother Thor. Observing Earth he espied the monstrous, misunderstood Hulk and engineered a situation wherein the man-brute seemingly went berserk to trick the Thunder God into battling the monster. When the Hulk’s sidekick Rick Jones radioed the Fantastic Four for assistance, Loki diverted the transmission and smugly waited for the mayhem to manifest.

Unfortunately for him, Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp also picked up the SOS….

As the heroes converged in the American Southwest to search for the Jade Giant they realized that something was oddly amiss…

This terse, epic, compelling and wide-ranging yarn (New York, New Mexico, Detroit and Asgard in 22 pages) is Lee & Kirby at their bombastic best and one of the greatest adventure stories of the Silver Age and is followed by the long-awaited return of the last of the “Big Three”…

Avengers #4 (March 1964) was a true landmark of the genre as Marvel’s greatest Golden Age sensation was revived. ‘Captain America Joins the Avengers!’ has everything that made the company’s early tales so fresh and vital. The majesty of a legendary warrior (that most of the readers had never heard of!) returned in our time of greatest need, stark tragedy in the loss of his boon companion Bucky, aliens, gangsters, Sub-Mariner and even wry social commentary. This story by Lee, Kirby & George Roussos just cannot be bettered.

In #57 (October 1968) Roy Thomas, John Buscema & George Klein produced a Golden Age revival of their own as ‘Behold… the Vision!’ introduced a terrifying android apparition designed by arch-foe Ultron to destroy the heroes. Sadly not appearing here is the conclusion wherein the eerie, amnesiac, artificial man with complete control of his mass and density discovered a fraction of his origins and joined the human heroes….

Avengers #89-97 comprised perhaps the most ambitious and certainly boldest saga in Marvel’s early history: an astounding epic of tremendous scope which dumped Earth into a cosmic war the likes of which comics fans had never before seen and creating the template for all multi-part crossovers and publishing events ever since.

The Kree-Skull War captivated a generation of comics readers and from that epic comes the extra-long ‘This Beachhead Earth’ (Avengers #93 November 1972, by Thomas, Neal Adams & Tom Palmer) as the Vision was almost destroyed by alien invaders and Ant-Man was forced to undertake ‘A Journey to the Center of the Android!’ to save the android’s unconventional life. Thereafter the Avengers became aware of not one but two alien presences on Earth: bellicose Kree and sneaky shape-shifting Skrulls, beginning a ‘War of the Weirds!’ on our fragile globe.

Acting too late, the assembled team were unable to prevent the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Captain Marvel from being abducted by the Skrulls…

That cliff-hanging drama is followed by a revelatory two-part tale from Avengers West Coast #51-52 (November and December 1989) by John Byrne & Mike Machlan which opens with ‘I Sing of Arms and Heroes…’ wherein the Scarlet Witch hunted for her missing children only to discover some horrifying truths about them and her own powers. The tragedy was only resolved when demonic foe Master Pandemonium and supernal arch-tempter Mephisto deprived her of everything she had ever believed, wanted or loved in ‘Fragments of a Greater Darkness’…

Avengers volume 3, #10-11 (November and December 1998) by Kurt Busiek, George Pérez, Al Vey & Bob Wiacek) recaps the history and celebrates the team’s anniversary with a parade in ‘Pomp and Pageantry’ until the ghostly Grim Reaper hijacked the affair and attacked them through the medium of their own dead yet resurrected members Wonder Man, Mockingbird, Swordsman, Hellcat, Dr. Druid, Thunderstrike and Captain Marvel. At the same time the increasingly unstable Scarlet Witch learned the true nature of her reality-altering powers in the catastrophic concluding clash ‘…Always an Avenger!’

A few years later the “World’s Mightiest Heroes” were shut down and rebooted in a highly publicised event known as Avengers Disassembled. Of course it was only to replace them with both The New and The Young Avengers. Affiliated comic-books Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Spectacular Spider-Man ran parallel but not necessarily interconnected story-arcs to accompany the Big Show.

Said Show consisted of the worst day in the team’s history as a trusted comrade betrayed the World’s Mightiest Superteam resulting in the destruction of everything they held dear and the death of several members, all of which originally appeared in issues #500-503 plus the one-shot Avengers Finale.

From that epic event comes the closing chapter ‘Chaos part four’ (#503, December 2004, by Brian Michael Bendis, David Finch, Olivier Coipel & Danny Miki) wherein the uncomprehending, surviving heroes discovered and reluctantly despatched the true author of all their woes and losses, after which the moody and elegiac Avengers Finale signalled the end of an era in a powerful tribute by a host of creators including Bendis and artists Finch, Miki, Frank D’Armata, Alex Maleev, Steve Epting, Lee Weeks, Brian Reber, Michael Gaydos, Eric Powell, Darick Robertson, Mike Mayhew, Andy Troy, David Mack, Gary Frank, Mike Avon Oeming, Pete Patanzis, Jim Cheung, Mark Morales, Justin Ponsor, Steve McNiven, George Pérez, Mike Perkins, Neal Adams & Laura Martin.

It is undeniably one of the best superhero “Last Battles” ever created, and loses little impact whether it was your five hundredth or first experience with these tragic heroes.

Shocking and beautiful, there was a genuine feeling of an “End of Days” to this epic Armageddon.

The final comics tale in this sturdy volume comes from New Avengers #3 (March 2005) as, in the aftermath of a massive breakout of super-villains, Captain America and Iron Man tried to put the band back together with a whole new generation including Luke Cage, Spider-Woman and the Amazing Spider-Man.

‘Breakout Part 3’ is just a fraction of a longer epic by Bendis, Finch, Allen Martinez, Miki & Victor Olazaba, but ends this action-adventure compendium on a solid note indicating that the best is still yet to come…

Also contained herein is an extensive prose feature covering the history of the team, the aforementioned ‘true origin’ piece and a raft of classic covers to tantalise and tempt…

This book is one of the very best of these perennial supplements to cinema spectacle, but more importantly it is a supremely well-tailored device to turn curious movie-goers into fans of the comic incarnation too. If there’s a movie sequel, I’m sure Marvel has plans for reprinting much of the masterful material necessarily omitted here, but at least until then we have a superb selection to entice newcomers and charm the veteran American Dreamers.
™ and © 1963, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1989, 1998, 2004, 2005, 2012 Marvel & subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A, Italy. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.