Category: Graphic Novels

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Tiny Titans: The First Rule of Pet Club…


By Art Baltazar & Franco with Geoff Johns (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2892-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: just buy it – it’s so funny you’ll burst … 10/10

The links between animated features and comicbooks are long established and I suspect, for young consumers, indistinguishable. After all, it’s just entertainment in the end…

DC’s Cartoon Network imprint was arguably the last bastion of children’s comics in Americaand consolidated that link between TV and 2D fun and thrills with stunning interpretations of such television landmarks as Ben 10, Scooby Doo, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory and others.

The kids’ comics line also produced some truly exceptional material based on TV iterations of their proprietary characters such as Legion of Super Heroes, Batman: Brave and the Bold and Krypto the Super Dog as well as material like Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam! which was merely similar in tone and content.

Perhaps the imprint’s finest release was a series ostensibly aimed at beginning readers but which quickly became a firm favourite of older fans and a multi-award winner too.

Superbly mirroring the magical wonderland inside a child’s head where everything is happily mixed up together, Tiny Titans became a sublime antidote to continuity cops and slavish fan-boy quibbling (erm, uh… I think you’ll find that in…) by reducing the vast cast of the Teen Titans Go! animated series, the greater boutique of the mainstream comicbooks and eventually the entire DC Universe to little kids and their parents/guardians in the wholesome kindergarten environment ofSidekickCityElementary School.

It’s a scenario spring-loaded with in-jokes, sight-gags and beloved yet gently mocked paraphernalia of generations of strip readers and screen-watchers….

Collecting issues #19-25 (spanning October 2009 – April 2010) of the magically madcap and infinitely addictive all-ages mini-masterpiece, this fourth volume begins on a romantic note with Deep in Like.

Art Baltazar and co-creator Franco (Aureliani) have mastered a witty, bemusingly gentle manner of storytelling that just happily rolls along, with the assorted characters getting by and trying to make sense of the great big world having “Adventures in Awesomeness”. The method generally involves stringing together smaller incidents and moments into an overall themed portmanteau tale and it works astoundingly well.

After a handy and as-standard identifying roll-call page ‘Imagine Me and You…’ finds scary blob Plasmus and tiny winged Bumblebee brighten up each other’s drab day before a similar cupid moment affects the Brain and M’sieu Mallah whilst the diligent Robin finds his attempts to finish his homework disturbed by a succession of pesky lasses including Starfire, Batgirl and Duella all caught up in a ‘Like Triangle’.

‘Dates’ sees Bumblebee and Plasmus inadvertently cause chaos during an afternoon movie monster mash and even the ‘Intermission’ after which a sly sight gag for the oldies derides the company’s many Wonder Girls in ‘Jump Rope’.

The hallowed anthropoid obsession of DC is highlighted in ‘New Recruits’ when Beast Boy chairs a meeting of the Titans Ape Club after which The Kroc Files finds ultimate butler Alfred, roguish reptile Kroc and Plasmus each demonstrating ‘How to Enjoy a Lollipop’.

The issue ends with a word puzzle and the next promises to disclose The Hole Truth about Raven, beginning with a daybreak disaster at ‘Home with the Trigons’. Raven’s dad is an antlered crimson devil – and a teacher at the School – so when he oversleeps his sorceress scion gets him to work on time by opening a few wormholes. Of course leaving those dimensional doors around is just asking for trouble…

Meanwhile it’s washday at Wayne Manor but Alfred won’t let Robin, Beast Boy or Aqualad go down ‘To the Batcave’. However even the dapper domestic can’t withstand united pester-power and eventually he gives in and learns to regret it…

Following a perplexing maze game, the All Pet Club Issue! launches when Starfire and mean sister Blackfire write home for their beloved critters Silky and Poopu so that they can go to the secret social event, whilst can-do kid cyborg actually builds himself a brace of chrome companions in ‘Pet-Tronics’…

With ‘Club Hoppin” the entire school gathers with their uniquely compatible pets and even interview some new guys – specifically the tongue-tied and thunderstruck Captain Marvel Junior and his fuzzy pal Hoppy, the Marvel Bunny. With so many members the club then has to find roomier quarters leading to a painful tryst of Beast Boy and Terra in ‘Meanwhile, on the Moon…’

There’s a brilliant vacuum-packed bonus pin-up of the Tiny Titans in space from Franco before Hot Dogs, Titans, & Stretchy Guys! finds the kids back on solid ground and wrapped up with the DCU’s many flexible fellows as ‘Offspring into Action’ introduces Plastic Man’s excitably bonny boy.

In ‘Just Playing and Bouncing’ when Bumblebee spends some time with the diminutive Atoms Family she loses control of their Teeny-Weeny, Super Duper Bouncy Ball and accidentally gets Plastic Man, Offspring, Elongated Man and Elastic Lad all wound up before helplessly watching it bowl over Principal Slade and Coach Lobo in ‘Coffee Dog Latte’.

Thankfully Robin has the right gimmick in his utility belt to set things straight but can’t stay since he’s en route to his Bird Scouts meeting where potential new members Hot Spot and Flamebird are trying out for Hawk, Dove, Raven and Talon. Sadly when shiny Golden Eagle turns up the girls want to make him the new leader…

A semi-regular ‘Epilogue’ page often supplies one more punch-line to cap each themed issue and this one leads directly into a convoluted and confounding Elastic Four pin-up which in turn precedes a spookily uproarious tale of Bats, Bunnies, and Penguins in the Batcave! Oh My!...

It all begins in ‘Ice to Meet Ya!’ when Wayne Manor’s large penguin population get into a turf war with the house rabbits and the Batcave’s regular inhabitants are displaced in ‘Driving Me Batty’. The conflict escalates in ‘All in the Batman Family’ and Robin gets a rather stern admonition from his senior partner to put things right or else…

Happily the ever-so-cute and capable Batgirl is willing to lend a hand – but unfortunately so too are the kids she’s baby-sitting (Tim and Jason – and you’ll either get that or you won’t) and the impishly infuriating Batmite…

With even Batcow helping, things son start calming down but ‘Meanwhile, at the Titans’ Treehouse…’ not all of the fugitive Bat bats have heard the good news…

Once your ribs have stopped hurting you can then enjoy a Tiny Titans Aw Yeah Pin-up by Franco before The All Small Issue! starts with assorted big kids accidentally drinking ‘Milk! Milk!’ from the Atoms’ fridge and shrinking away to nearly nothing. Good thing the Atomic nippers think to call their dad, who’s with fellow dwindlers Ant, Molecule and substitute Atoms Adam and Ryan (another in-continuity howler, fans) for a Team Nucleus meeting…

That compressive cow-juice causes more trouble in the ‘Epilogue’ before a Blue Beetle puzzle clears the mind prior to an outrageous ending in Superboy Returns! in a fairly cosmic crossover – with additional scripting from Geoff Johns.

When Conner Kent shows up all the girls are really impressed and distracted, whilst across town Speedy is trading a lot of junk he shouldn’t be touching to Mr. Johns’ Sidekick City Pawn Shop and Bubblegum Emporium in ‘Brightest Day in the Afternoon!’ When Starfire and Stargirl then buy the seven different coloured “mood rings” from the shop they and BFFs Duella, Batgirl, Wonder Girl, Terra and Shelly, are turned into Green, Red, Yellow, Orange, Blue, Violet and Indigo Lanterns!

Soon the Tiny Titans are up in the air again and ticking off the Guardians of the Universe and their Green Lantern Corps.

It all ends well though, first in an Emerald ‘Epilogue’ and then a lavish pin-up of a passel of the Pistachio peace-keepers…

Despite being ostensibly aimed at super-juniors and TV kids, these wonderful, wacky yarns – which marvellously marry the heart and spirit of such classic strips as Peanuts and The Perishers with something uniquely mired and marinated in pure comic-bookery – are unforgettable tales no self-respecting fun-fan should miss: accessible, entertaining, and wickedly intoxicating. What more do you need to know?

© 2009, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Adventures Spider-Man volume 1: Amazing


By Paul Tobin, Matteo Lolli, Scott Koblish & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4118-1

Since its earliest days the company we know as Marvel has always courted the youngest comicbook audiences. Whether animated tie-ins such as Terrytoons Comics, Mighty Mouse, Super Rabbit Comics, Duckula, assorted Hanna-Barbera and Disney licenses and a myriad of others, or original creations such as Tessie the Typist, Millie the Model, Homer the Happy Ghost, Li’l Kids or even Calvin, the House of Ideas has always understood the necessity of cultivating the next generation of readers.

These days however, general kid’s interest titles are on the wane and with Marvel’s proprietary characters all over screens large and small, the company usually prefers to create child-friendly versions of its own pantheon, making that eventual hoped-for transition to more mature comics as painless as possible.

In 2003 the company created a Marvel Age line which updated and retold classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and mixed in with the remnants of the manga-based Tsunami imprint, all intended for a younger readership. The experiment was tweaked in 2005 becoming Marvel Adventures with the core titles transformed into Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man and the reconstituted classics replaced by all new stories. Additional series included Marvel Adventures series Super Heroes, The Avengers and Hulk. These iterations ran until 2010 when they were cancelled and replaced by new – and continuity-continuing – volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man.

This digest-sized collection collects the first four stories from the second (2010) volume and actually starts in the middle of the action – although writer Paul Tobin and artists Matteo Lolli and Scott Koblish (as well as inkers Christian Dalla Vecchia, Terry Pallot Koblish & Andrew Hennessy) take great pains to keep the stories as clear as possible.

Sixteen year old Peter Parker has been the mysterious Spider-Man for little more than six months. In that time he has constantly prowled the streets and skyscrapers ofNew York, driven to fight injustice. However as a kid just learning the ropes he’s pretty much in over his head all the time…

The opening tale finds him on a crusade against the all-pervasive Torino crime-family, and attempting to expose their bought-and-paid-for Judge Clive Baraby, whilst ex-girlfriend and wannabe journalist Gwen dogs his webbed heels and her father Police Captain George Stacy – who knows the boy’s secret and allows him to continue his vigilante antics – picks up all the well-thumped thugs the incensed wall-crawler leaves in his wake.

Even though Spidey can’t touch the corrupt Baraby, his campaign of attrition has the Torinos on the ropes and the Mafioso have engaged the services of super-assassin Bullseye to kill the Web-spinner. However, the Man who Never Misses is infuriatingly slow to act and soon there’s on open contract on the kid crusader…

Peter’s civilian life is pretty complicated too. Since he and Gwen split, the lad has taken up with schoolmate Sophia Sanduval – an extremely talented lass nicknamed Chat – who knows Peter’s secret, can communicate with animals and has a part-time job with the Blonde Phantom Detective Agency…

She also pays attention in class and suggests how what they learned in history can be used to trap the untouchable Baraby…

The second story opens with a brutal dog-napping and leads inexorably to a clash with merciless mercenary Midnight when the villain invades Peter’s school during a martial arts exhibition by Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu. Along the way Chat introduces Pete to new buddy Flapper – a very wise owl indeed – and new kid Carter Torino enrols at Parker’s school. How does the troubled new boy know the constantly watching Bullseye…?

Before the subplots get too intense however,Midnightand his ninjas attack Shang-Chi and Spider-Man joins the fracas, subsequently learning a few things from the combat expert – including who to return that stolen dog to…

Whilst close-mouthed gang-prince Carter gets closer to Gwen, Wolverine guest-stars in the third untitled tale when Chat asks her bug-boy beau to help hunt down the wild-haired mutant for a client who wants Logan to model their hair gel. Typically, whenever the Clawed Canadian appears trouble isn’t far behind, and when a gang ofTorino goons jumps Wolverine, Spidey is forced to join in the carnage. And that’s when Bullseye makes his move…

As conflicted Carter Torino confronts his criminal family, this volume concludes with a savage showdown between Bullseye and the sorely overmatched Spider-Man and also sees the death of one of the supporting cast…

Never the success the company hoped, the Marvel Adventures project was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to those Disney XD television shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories are still an intriguing and more culturally accessible means of introducing the character and concepts to kids born sometimes two generations or more away from the originating events.

Fast-paced and impressive, these Spidey tales are extremely enjoyable yarns but parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action” and would perhaps better suit older kids…
© 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Batman: the Brave and the Bold volume 1


By Matt Wayne, J. Torres, Andy Suriano, Phil Moy, Carlo Barberi, Dan Davis & Terry Beatty (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2878-1

The Brave and the Bold began in 1955 as an anthology adventure comic featuring short complete tales about a variety of period heroes: a format which mirrored that era’s filmic fascination with historical dramas. Devised and written by Bob Kanigher, issue #1 led with Roman epic Golden Gladiator, medieval mystery-man The Silent Knight and Joe Kubert’s now legendary Viking Prince. Soon the Gladiator was increasingly alternated with Robin Hood, but the adventure theme carried the title until the end of the decade when the burgeoning costumed character revival saw B&B transform into a try-out vehicle like Showcase.

Used to premiere concepts and characters such as Task Force X: the Suicide Squad, Cave Carson, Hawkman and Strange Sports Stories and the epochal Justice League of America, the comic soldiered on until issue #50 when it provided another innovative new direction which once again truly caught the public’s imagination.

That issue paired two superheroes – Green Arrow & Martian Manhunter – in a one-off team-up, as did succeeding ones: Aquaman and Hawkman in #51, WWII Battle Stars Sgt Rock, Captain Cloud, Mme. Marie & the Haunted Tank in #52 and Atom & Flash in #53. The next team-up, Robin, Aqualad & Kid Flash, evolved into the Teen Titans and after Metal Men/the Atom and Flash/Martian Manhunter appeared a new hero; Metamorpho, the Element Man debuted in #57-58.

From then it was back to the extremely popular superhero pairings with #59, and although no one realised it at the time, this particular conjunction, Batman with Green Lantern, would be particularly significant….

After a return engagement for the Teen Titans, two issues spotlighting Earth-2 champions Starman & Black Canary and Wonder Woman with Supergirl, an indication of things to come came when Batman duelled hero/villain Eclipso in #64: an acknowledgement of the brewing TV-induced mania mere months away.

Within two issues, following Flash/Doom Patrol and Metamorpho/Metal Men, Brave and the Bold #67 saw the Caped Crusader take de facto control of the title and the lion’s share of the team-ups. With the exception of #72-73 (Spectre/the Flash and Aquaman/Atom) the comic was henceforth a place where Batman invited the rest of company’s heroic pantheon to come and play…

Decades later the Batman Animated TV series masterminded by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini in the 1990s revolutionised the Dark Knight and subsequently led to some of the absolute best comicbook adventures in his seventy-year publishing history with the creation of the spin-off print title.

With constant funnybook iterations and tie-ins to a succession of TV cartoon series, Batman has remained popular and a sublime introducer of kids to the magical world of the printed page.

The most recent incarnation was Batman: the Brave and the Bold, which gloriously teamed up the all-ages small-screen Dark Knight with a torrent and profusion of DC’s other heroic creations, and once again the show was supplemented by a cool kid’s comicbook full of fun, verve and swashbuckling dash, cunningly crafted to appeal as much to the parents and grandparents as those fresh-faced neophyte kids…

This stellar premier collection re-presents the first 6 issues in a hip and trendy, immensely entertaining package suitable for newcomers, fans and aficionados of all ages and, although not necessary to the reader’s enjoyment, a passing familiarity with the TV episodes will enhance the overall experience (and they’re pretty good too)…

Following the format of the TV show, each tale opens with a brief vignette adventure before telling a longer tale. Issue #1 has the Caped Crimebuster and Aquaman putting paid to robotic rogue Carapax. This fed into main feature ‘The Panic of the Composite Creature’ (by Matt Wayne, Andy Suriano & Dan Davis) wherein Batman and the pulchritudinous Power Girl saved London from Lex Luthor‘s latest monster-making mechanism.

Phil Moy then illustrates Superman and the Gotham Guardian mopping up the terrible Toyman before ‘The Attack of the Virtual Villains’ finds the Bat and Blue Beetle in El Paso battling evil Artificial Intellect The Thinker in a compelling computer-game world…

After an introductory battle between Wonder Woman, Dark Knight and telepathic tyrant Dr. Psycho‘s zombie villains, ‘President Batman!’ (Wayne, Suriano & Davis) sees the Great Detective substitute for the Commander-in-Chief with Green Arrow as bodyguard when body-swapping mastermind Ultra-Humanite attempts to seize control of the nation. Then, in the full-length ‘Menace of the Time Thief!’ Aquaman and his bat-eared chum prevent well-intentioned Dr. Cyber from catastrophically rewriting history, following a magical and too brief prologue wherein sorcerer Felix Faust is foiled by a baby Batman and the glorious pushy terrible toddlers Sugar and Spike…

J. Torres, Carlo Barberi & Terry Beatty stepped in for both the chilling vignette wherein the nefarious Key was caught by Batman and a Haunted Tank whilst ‘The Case of the Fractured Fairy Tale’ began when the awesome Queen of Fables started stealing children for her Enchanted Forest and the Caped Crusader needed the help of both Billy Batson and his adult alter ego Captain Marvel…

This first compilation concludes with a preliminary clash between Hourman and Batman against the crafty Calculator, after which ‘Charge of the Army Eternal!’ (Torres, Suriano & Davis) finds the villainous General Immortus at the mercy of his own army of time-lost warriors and bandits and desperately seeking the help of the Gotham Gangbuster and ghostly Guardian Kid Eternity.

Although greatly outnumbered, the Kid’s ability to summon past heroes such as The Vigilante, Shining Knight, Viking Prince and G.I. Robot proves invaluable, especially once the General inevitably betrays his rescuers…

This fabulously fun rollercoaster ride also includes informative ‘Secret Bat Files’ on Luthor, Power Girl, Thinker, Blue Beetle, Ultra-Humanite, Green Arrow, Dr. Cyber, Aquaman, Queen of Fables, Captain Marvel, General Immortus and Kid Eternity, and the package is topped off with a spiffy cover gallery courtesy of James Tucker, Scott Jeralds & Hi-Fi.

DC’s Cartoon Network imprint is arguably the last bastion of all-ages children’s comics in Americaand has produced some truly magical homespun material (such as Tiny Titans or Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam!) as well as stunning interpretations of such television landmarks as Scooby Doo, Powerpuff Girls, Ben 10, Dexter’s Laboratory and others.

The links between kids’ animated features and comicbooks are long established and, I suspect, for young consumers, indistinguishable. After all, it’s just adventure entertainment in the end…

Despite being ostensibly aimed at TV viewing kids, these mini-sagas are also wonderful, traditional comics thrillers no self-respecting fun-fan should miss: accessible, entertaining, well-rendered yarns for the broadest range of excitement-seeking readers, making this terrific tome a perfect, old fashioned delight. What more do you need to know?
© 2009 DC Comics. Compilation © 2008, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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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 …
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