Category: Graphic Novels

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The Mighty Thor Epic Collection volume 7: Ulik Unchained 1973-1975


By Gerry Conway, Bill Mantlo, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Rich Buckler, Sal Buscema, Arvell Jones & Keith Pollard, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2949-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Disabled doctor Donald Blake took a vacation in Norway only to stumble into an alien invasion. Trapped in a cave, he found an ancient walking stick which, when struck against the ground, turned him into the Norse God of Thunder! Within moments he was defending the weak and smiting the wicked.

Months swiftly passed with the Lord of Storms tackling rapacious extraterrestrials, Commie dictators, costumed crazies and cheap thugs, but these soon gave way to a vast kaleidoscope of fantastic worlds and incredible, mythic menaces, usually tackled with an ever-changing cast of stalwart immortal warriors at his side…

As this bombastic compendium (reprinting Mighty Thor #217-241 and Marvel Premier #26 – spanning November 1973 through November 1975) opens, our cosmic cast returns to long-abandoned Asgard after interstellar escapades and bravely endured exile.

Thor #217 sees the triumphant return of Thor with recently rescued from alien enslavement All-Father Odin. He and his fellow heroes Sif, Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, Hildegarde (plus Rigellian Tana Nile and planetary exile Silas Grant) discover a mysteriously rebuilt Eternal Realm filled with their fellow Asgardians who brandish ‘All Swords Against Them!’

Scripted by Gerry Conway with art by John & Sal Buscema, the saga sees them confronting impossible doppelgangers of Odin, Thor and the rest, all offering murderous hostility…

Whilst the Thunderer furiously struggles to unravel this latest mystery and defeat the invading fakes, in another sector of the universe the all-conquering Colonizers of Rigel are put to flight; abandoning their worlds to an all-consuming force of sheer destruction…

Issue #218 proves there’s no rest for the weary as the again-victorious true Asgardians once more take ship to the stars to prevent the Rigellians’ doom affecting Earth. ‘Where Pass the Black Stars There Also Passes… Death!’ (illustrated by J. Buscema & Jim Mooney) finds the hard-travelling heroes facing a nomadic race of colossal, decadent starfarers who fuel their unending flight by converting thriving civilisations into food and power.

In distant Asgard, war woman Hildegarde’s young sister Krista is slowly falling under the sway of sinister seductive evil, even as her hereditary protectors are a cosmos away, daringly infiltrating one of the Black Stars’ cosmic scoops and encountering a race of mechanical slaves in ‘A Galaxy Consumed!’ (Mike Esposito inks) before they and their charismatic messiah Avalon are at last freed – and untold galaxies subsequently saved – from callous consumption in ‘Behold! The Land of Doom!’

With scripter Conway firmly in the driving seat and legendary illustrator John Buscema (aided by inker Esposito) delivering the art, the mythic mayhem intensifies with ‘Hercules Enraged!’ as Thor savagely attacks Olympus, in search of the Grecian Prince of Power.

After Asgardian maiden’s Krista abduction, the All-Father had a vision of her chained in Hades with the Thunder God’s trusted ally gloating over her beside vile Grecian netherlord Pluto…

By the time lordly Zeus stops the shattering clash that follows, half of the celestial city is in ruins, but in that breathing space he proves Hercules innocent of the atrocious act and the abashed comrades duly turn their attentions to the true culprit…

Inked by Joe Sinnott, Thor #222 finds the earnest comrades in search of Hercules’ insidious impersonator and taking advice from a scary sorceress even as war-god Ares receives an eldritch summons to meet his co-conspirator ‘Before the Gates of Hell!’

Sadly for him, the war god is intercepted by our heroes before he gets there and receives the sound thrashing he deserves prior to the enraged companions storming the netherworld itself. At the moment of their triumph, however, Pluto snatches up his hostage and vanishes. The infernal trail leads straight to Earth where one final confrontation results in ‘Hellfire Across the World!’ (Esposito inks) leaving kidnapped Krista wounded unto death…

After a lengthy hiatus, #224 finds Thor resuming his mortal alter ego as surgeon Don Blake is needed to operate on the dying Asgardian, even as elsewhere in Manhattan, a rash scientist accidentally reactivates Odin’s unstoppable battle construct and discovers ‘No One Can Stop… the Destroyer!’

With Krista saved, Thor joins sorely-pressed Hercules and – although outmatched by the Asgardian killing machine – devises a way to stop its human power source, only to then face ‘The Coming of Firelord!’ (inked by Sinnott). The tempestuous, short-tempered herald of planet-consuming Galactus has been sent to fetch Thor and will brook no refusals…

Issue #226 sees the voracious space god on Earth again, personally beseeching the Thunder God’s aid in ‘The Battle Beyond!’ (Esposito) against living planet Ego, who has seemingly gone mad and now poses a threat to the entire universe…

Deftly channelling Jack Kirby, penciller Rich Buckler (aided by his pals Arvell Jones & Keith Pollard) joined Conway & Sinnott in #227 as the Storm Lord, Hercules and Firelord go ‘In Search of… Ego!’

Penetrating deep within the sentient-but-raving planet and defeating incredible biological horrors acting as planetary antibodies, the trio reach his malfunctioning brain and experience the incredible origin of the “bioverse” in ‘Ego: Beginning and End!’, before contriving an earth-shaking solution to the wild world’s rampages. In a final act of unlikely diplomacy, the Thunderer then finds a replacement herald and secures Firelord’s freedom from Galactus…

Joined by veteran inker Chic Stone, Buckler depicts the godly prince safely back on Earth and facing a new kind of terror in Thor #229 as ‘Where Darkness Dwells, Dwell I!’ finds fellow Avenger Hercules investigating an uncanny string of suicides amongst the mortals of Manhattan. After consulting the Storm Lord and recently returned Sif, the Prince of Power is ambushed by a shadowy figure and himself succumbs to dark despondency…

Plucked from psychological catatonia by Iron Man and recuperating Krista, the severely shaken Hercules recovers enough to lead Thor deep beneath the city where they jointly confront and conquer a horrific lord of fear in #230’s climactic ‘The Sky Above… the Pits Below!’ (inked by Sinnott).

Of greater moment is the revelation in hallowed Asgard that almighty Odin is mysteriously missing again…

John Buscema returned in #231, inked by Dick Giordano to limn ‘A Spectre from the Past!’, wherein Thor learns that former true love Jane Foster is dying: another victim of the recently defeated fear lord. Whilst doting current paramour Sif fruitlessly returns to Asgard seeking a cure, the grieving Thunderer is momentarily distracted when Hercules is attacked by an unbelievably powerful anthropoidal throwback. Disembodied spirit Armak the First Man has somehow possessed the body of an unwary séance attendee and now runs savagely amok in the streets…

Since gaining his liberty, former herald Firelord had been aimlessly travelling the globe. Lured by Asgardian magic he now becomes wicked Loki’s vassal in ‘Lo, the Raging Battle!’…

Heartsick Thor will not leave Jane’s hospital bedside, prompting Sif and Hercules to travel alone to the ends of the universe to retrieve the mystic and fabled Runestaff of Kamo Tharnn. No sooner do they depart than ensorcelled Firelord attacks and whilst incensed, impatient Thor is knocking sense back into him, his evil half-brother leads an Asgardian army in a sneak attack on America…

With ‘Midgard Aflame’ (J. Buscema & Stone) Thor furiously leads the human resistance and learns for the first time that his father is missing. Odin’s faithful vizier reveals the All-Father has deliberately divested himself of his memory and chosen to reside somewhere on Earth as a hapless mortal, the better to learn humility…

With humanity preparing to unleash their atomic arsenal against the occupying Asgardians, the invasion abruptly ends after a savage duel between Thor and Loki in ‘O, Bitter Victory!’ (inked by Sinnott) after which the Thunderer returns to Jane’s side, unaware that he is being stalked by a merciless old enemy. Simultaneously but far, far away Sif and Hercules have clashed with the one ‘Who Lurks Beyond the Labyrinth!’ and secured a remedy for Thor’s mortal beloved…

Thor #236 opens as the Thunder God revels in furious combat with The Absorbing Man. Unknown to the blockbusting battlers, at that very moment Sif is expressing her own love for her wayward prince by using the Runestaff to fix Jane in ‘One Life to Give!’

…And somewhere in California, an imposing old man called Orrin ponders his strangely selective amnesia and wonders how he can possibly possess such incredible strength and vitality…

With combat concluded, Thor hastens back to Jane and finds her completely cured. His joy is short-lived, however, as he realises that Sif is gone, seemingly forever…

Issue #237 finds reunited lovers Don Blake and Jane Foster cautiously getting reacquainted and pondering Sif’s incredible sacrifice when an army of Asgardian Trolls led by ‘Ulik Unchained’ attack New York. Before long, they have made off with Jane under cover of the blockbusting melee that inevitably ensues…

Conway concluded his tenure with Thor #238 as the Thunderer capitulates to his hostage-taking foe and is taken below the worlds of Earth and Asgard on the ‘Night of the Troll!’ Ulik wants to overthrow his king Geirrodur and is confident his hold over his mighty archenemy will accomplish the act for him. He is utterly unprepared for the new martial spirit which now infuses his formerly frail mortal hostage…

…And in California old man Orrin decides to use his power to help the poor, arousing the ire of big business, brutal strike-breakers and the local authorities…

Writer/Editor Roy Thomas and artist Sal Buscema join Sinnott in Thor #239 as the Thunder God brutally ends his association with the trolls even as Orrin’s rabble-rousing civil unrest is cut short when a colossal pyramid containing Egyptian gods erupts from the Californian ground in ‘Time-Quake!’

Thor knows nothing of the latest upheaval. He has returned to Asgard, uncovering a mysterious force draining his people of power and vitality. Warned by duplicitous seer Mimir, the anguished godling rushes back to Earth to clash with puissant Horus ‘When the Gods Make War!’ (Thomas, Bill Mantlo, Sal B & Klaus Janson).

The depleted Egyptian pantheon have desperate need of an All-Father and have conditioned Odin/Orrin to believe that he is their long-lost patron Atum-Re…

Go-getting, proactively take-charge Jane is already waiting in California when Thor arrives and is present when the elder deity devastatingly assaults his astounded son. Happily, her cool head prevails and soon the warring deities are talking. An uneasy alliance forms and the truth comes out. Horus, Isis and Osiris are at war with vile Death God Seth and need the power of a supreme over-god to assure victory for the forces of Life. Sadly, that energy is being siphoned from Asgard…

The cosmic conflict concludes in #241 as ‘The Death-Ship Sails the Stars!’ (Mantlo, John B & Sinnott) with ghastly Seth and his demonic servants ultimately repulsed and Jane again playing a major role: even triumphally shaking Odin out of his compliant, mind-wiped state…

To Be Continued…

Adding lustre next is the cover to all-reprint Giant-Size Thor #1, followed by a compelling contemporaneous solo tale of Hercules (November 1975), taken from Marvel Premiere #26. Used to set up his major role in forthcoming team title The Champions, it was crafted by Mantlo, George Tuska & Vince Colletta. Sporting a new Kirby cover, ‘The Game of Raging Gods’ has the legendary hero relocate to California on the college lecture circuit and targeted by old enemies Typhon the Titan and spurned priestess Cylla the Witch of Delphos…

With covers by John Romita, Buckler, Sinnott, John Buscema, Gil Kane, Esposito, Frank Giacoia, Marie Severin, Tom Palmer, Giordano, Dan Adkins, Klaus Janson and Jack Kirby & Vince Colletta, this collection also includes assorted House ads; covers created by Romita, a John Buscema double page pin-up of the Asgardian cast and a frontispiece by Marie Severin from the Thor-starring reprint edition Marvel Treasury Edition #3.

Thor is one of modern comics’ greatest attractions and a cornerstone of the Marvel Universe. Always a high-point in graphic fantasy, his longevity is all the more impressive for the sheer imagination and timeless readability of the tales crafted by an army of creators. This chronicle is an absolute must for all fans of the medium and far-flung fantasy thrills.
© 2021 MARVEL

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Batman: The Scottish Connection


By Alan Grant & Frank Quitely (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-5638-9372-8 (TPB)

Once again we’ve lost another comics great, another uniquely brilliant and imaginative voice. Alan Grant died yesterday, July 21st 2022.

Born on February 9th 1949, in Bristol, Alan Grant grew up as a true Scot in the heart of Midlothian. He was a bit wayward and anarchic and – after trying regular life a couple of times –  began his comics career in 1967 as an editor for DC Thomson. Soon he was writing scripts – many with life-long collaborator John Wagner – and inventing characters, first for British companies but eventually all over the world.

His triumphs include Tarzan, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Batman, Lobo, L.E.G.I.O.N., Judge Anderson, The Bogie Man, Channel Evil, Kidnapped, The Demon, Anarky, Robo-Hunter, The Loxleys and the War of 1812 and countless more.

Alan contributed to amateur fanzines, constantly encouraging and supporting new talent; adapted classic literature to comics form for major art festivals; worked in animation; organized his own comic conventions in home village of Moniaive; self-published and ran his own publishing house Berserker Comics. He was tirelessly inquisitive, deeply philosophical and instinctively socially philanthropic. In 2020, he led a community outreach project to inform about CoVID-19 via a comic book.

Alan Grant was funny, and friendly and amazing. Here’s one of his best books remembered. A fuller tribute will follow shortly: probably one of his more controversial (for which read scandalous and hilarious) efforts, because that would have pleased him greatly…

Way, way back in 1953, Detective Comics #198 cover featured ‘Lord of Bat-Manor’, written by Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton and drawn by the legendary Dick Sprang. In it, Batman inherited a Scottish Castle and it was later established that Bruce Wayne’s ancestors came from Scotland.

Don’t ask me why that bit of ephemera remains when so very much else has been rewritten over the years but it has, and decades later, canny, proud and professional Scots Alan Grant & Frank Quitely parlayed that trivia titbit into this slim yet gripping Caledonian conundrum.

On a visit to the Auld Country, Bruce Wayne stumbles onto a quasi-Masonic plot to locate the lost treasure of the Knights Templar, but that’s simply the tip of the iceberg in a revenge scheme centuries in the making: one involving beautiful tragic women, deadly plagues, ancient super-weapons, crazed claymore-waving maniacs and good old-fashioned Heid-cases and Barm-pots all a-bother…

Beautifully illustrated, seditiously scripted and brilliantly dancing on the line between classic comedy and chilling thriller, this is pure adventurous escapism from two consummate professionals. Go and get it, bonny lads and lassies and all you others…
© 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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DC’s Greatest Detective Stories Ever Told


By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Gardner F. Fox, Mindy Newell, Mike W. Barr, Denny O’Neil, Andy Helfer, Rusty Wells, Creig Flessell, Carmine Infantino, Alan Davis, Paul Neary, Terry Beatty & Dick Giordano, Al Vey, E.R. Cruz, Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar, Mark Badger, Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0594-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

Fundamental and definitive aspects of “detective stories” have been attributed to the Bible, ancient Greek dramas, One Thousand and One Nights and similarly compelling classical texts from China, India and other places, but the true genre of crime and mystery fiction really began with cheap printing and the rise of mass entertainment culture.

Detective stories are a subgenre wherein an investigation – by amateur or professional (active or retired) – into a legal felony or moral/social injustice. Like exploration/adventuring, fantasy, horror and science fiction, Detective Stories blossomed in white western societies in the mid-19th century: spreading from prose books and magazines to other entertainment media like plays and films, with early stars including C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Maigret, Father Brown, Lord Peter Wimsey, Sexton Blake and Hercule Poirot. Tales aimed at youngsters generated their own sleuthing stars: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and more

As comic strips developed, they also spawned detective champions like Hawkshaw, Dick Tracy, Charlie Chan, Kerry Drake ad infinitum: all contributing to a tidal wave of pulp fiction crimebusters that inspired true literary legends – Philip Marlow, Sam Spade, Simon Templar, Mike Hammer and so on…

Detective Comics #1 had a March 1937 cover-date and was the third and final anthology title devised by luckless pioneer Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. In 1935, the entrepreneur had seen the potential in Max Gaines’ new invention – the comic book – and reacted quickly, conceiving and releasing packages of all-new strips in New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine and its follow-up New Fun/New Adventure (which ultimately became Adventure Comics) under the banner of National Allied Publications.

These publications differed from similar prototype comics magazines which simply reprinted edited collations of established newspaper strips. However, these vanguard titles were as varied and undirected in content as any newspaper funnies page.

Detective Comics was different. Specialising solely in tales of crime and crimebusters, the initial roster included (amongst others) adventurer Speed Saunders, Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise, Gumshoe Gus and two series by a couple of kids from Cleveland named Siegel & Shuster: espionage agent Bart Regan and two-fisted shamus Slam Bradley…

Within two years the commercially unseasoned Wheeler-Nicholson had been forced out by his more adept business partners, and eventually his company grew into monolithic DC (for Detective Comics) Comics. Surviving a myriad of changes and temporary shifts of identity and aims, it’s still with us – albeit primarily as a vehicle for the breakthrough character who debuted in #27 (May 1939)…

Celebrating that quintessential connection and affiliation to the form, this slim tome gathers an unconventional array of sleuths and problem solvers, many not native to the parent title, but all offering a heady taste of what made the title great. Re-presenting material from Adventure Comics #51; Batman #441; Detective Comics #2, 329 & 572; Lois Lane #1-2; Secret Origins #40 and The Question #8 it spans August 1937 to November 1989: an epic package chronologically sampling the company’s connection and debt to the genre that truly started their ball rolling…’’

Sans preamble, we dive straight into action with early star Slam Bradley in his second ever case. ‘Skyscrapers of Death’ originated in the April 1937 cover-dated Detective Comics #2, (by Jerry – back when he still called himself “Jerome” – Siegel & Joe Shuster). It reveals how the abrasive, two-fisted gumshoe is framed for murder by a crooked Union boss. Slam and his assistant Shorty were a big draw in those early days: revelling in all the raw action and spectacle that would fire up his younger cousin Superman. The Bradley strip ran until October 1949, finally closing shop in Detective Comics #152.

Next up is quintessential pulp sleuth The Sandman who premiered in either Adventure Comics #40 July 1939 (two months after Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27) or two weeks earlier than that in New York World’s Fair Comics 1939, depending on which distribution records you choose to believe.

He was created and originally illustrated and scripted by multi-talented all-rounder Bert Christman, with assistance from Gardner F. Fox. Head utterly obscured by a gas-mask and slouch hat; caped, business-suited millionaire adventurer Wesley Dodds is a rugged playboy scientist cut from the radio drama/prose periodical mystery-men mould of The Shadow, Phantom Detective, Green Hornet, Lone Ranger, Spider, Avenger and so many more: all household names of early mass-entertainment.

Wielding a sleeping-gas gun and haunting the night hunting killers, thieves and spies, he was soon joined by plucky paramour Dian Belmont, before gradually losing readers’ interest and slipping from cover-spot to last feature in Adventure, just as the shadowy, morally ambiguous avengers he emulated also slipped from popularity in favour of gaudily clad glory-boys…

Alternately titled ‘The Pawn Broker’ in previous reprints, ‘The Van Leew Emeralds’ comes from Adventure Comics #51 (June 1940 by Fox & Creig Flessel): a fascinating mystery romp for the romantically-inclined crimebusters to solve in fine style and double-quick time…

In 1963 Julius Schwartz took editorial control of Batman and Detective Comics and finally found a home for a character who had been lying mostly fallow ever since his debut as a walk-on in The Flash #112 (April/May 1960). The Elongated Man was Ralph Dibny: a circus-performer who discovered an additive in soft drink Gingold which granted certain people increased muscular flexibility. Intrigued, he refined the chemical until he had a serum bestowing ability to stretch, bend and compress his body to an incredible degree. Then Ralph had to decide how to use his new powers…

Designed as a modern take on Jack Cole’s immensely popular Golden Age star Plastic Man, Dibny became a regular guest star/colleague for the Scarlet Speedster. He married vivacious debutante Sue Dibny and joined Flash’s battles against aliens and supervillains, but when the back-up spot opened in Detective Comics (previously held by Martian Manhunter since 1955 and only vacated because J’onn J’onzz was promoted to lead position in House of Mystery) Schwartz had Dibny slightly reconfigured as a flamboyant, fame-hungry, attention-seeking, brilliantly canny globe-trotting private eye solving mysteries for the sheer fun of it.

Aided by his equally smart but thoroughly grounded wife, the short tales were patterned on classic Thin Man filmic adventures of Nick and Norah Charles: blending clever, apparently impossible crimes and events with slick sleuthing, all garnished with the outré permutations and frantic physical antics first perfected by Cole…

Drenched in fanciful charm and sly dry wit, the complex yet uncomplicated sorties began in Detective #327 (May 1964) running until #371 (cover-dated January 1968). Crafted by Fox & Infantino – who inked himself in early episodes – this third outing has them heading for cowboy country to unravel the ‘Puzzle of the Purple Pony!’ (Detective Comics #329) by inadvertently playing cupid for a young couple hunting a gold mine before capturing a gang of murderous bandits with money and murder in mind.

Next up is a rare, completely serious outing for the oldest female lead in superhero comics. Although her role varied from patsy to comedy stooge, from jester to romantic ideal to eye-candy as the situation warranted, Lois Lane was always an investigative whirlwind.

Here in the dying moments of the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, scripter Mindy Newell & artist Gray Morrow found their 4-issue miniseries scrunched into two double-length issues (August-September 1986,with that notorious “Superman’s Girl Friend…” strap line thankfully dropped) as Lois Lane #1-2, scrupulously, meticulously, obsessively, and ultimately unsuccessfully tried to bring a national crisis in missing children to the public’s attention in ‘When it Rains, God is Crying’.

Devoid of superhero involvement, the regular Superman cast are drawn into a polemical story exposing the extent of child abduction, the repercussions of recovering victims – dead or otherwise – and official responses in ‘Ignorance Was Bliss’, ‘Dark Realities’, ‘Quicksand’ and ‘Bless the Child’ after Lois becomes increasingly driven to solve the mystery of an unidentified child found dead in Metropolis. Refusing to accept the horrific toll of disappearances she uncovers, the traumatised reporter puts her life and career on the line to find answers nobody seems willing to hear…

From painful reality we fold back into fantastic fantasy as anniversary issue Detective Comics #572 (March 1987) unites Batman, second Robin Jason Todd, Elongated Man, Slam Bradley and Sherlock Holmes in a hunt for ‘The Doomsday Book’, courtesy of scripter by Mike W, Barr, Alan Davis & Paul Neary, Terry Beatty & Dick Giordano, Infantino & Al Vey & ER Cruz.

The story begins with the descendent of infamous Professor Moriarty enacting a century old scheme, countered by each hero in a solo turn before all leads connect them to a certain British castle and a manic climactic confrontation…

In the gritty post-Crisis reality, Denny O’Neil, Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar retooled Steve Ditko’s ultimate lone agent of justice into a philosophical force of nature, relentless in his pursuit of answers.

An ordinary man pushed to the edge by his obsessions, Vic Sage used his fists and a mask that makes him look faceless to secure truth and justice whenever normal journalistic methods failed. Here the remorseless Question prowls Hub City hunting the ‘Mikado’ (The Question #8, September 1987): a good man driven by the daily horrors of the city to take action, against villains and hypocrites, making his punishments fit the crime…

In the years when superheroes were in retreat and considered too foolish for readers. DC launched Rex the Wonder Dog, who solved crimes, fought dinosaurs and saved the world. In issue 4 (July/August 1952), a back-up feature launched. Written by John Broome, Bobo was Detective Chimp: a Florida-based stalwart who was assistant and deputy to the local sheriff. He cracked many cases and was extremely popular among certain types of fan. He remains so and in Secret Origins #40 (May 1989) finally enjoyed ‘The Origin of Detective Chimp’ thanks to Mark Badger Andy Helfer & Rusty Wells. Madcap and hilarious, it’s a wild ride but has been superseded in later years by other, more quasi rational tales. Nevertheless, an ape solving crimes is a sure-fire winner as many other hirsute DC gumshoes could attest…

This eclectic selection closes with the middle chapter of a landmark crossover tale. Crafted by Marv Wolfman, Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo, ‘Parallel Line’ comes from Batman #441 (November 1989) the third chapter of the Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying arc introducing third Robin Tim Drake.

After original Robin Dick Grayson’s departure, the Dark Knight worked solo until he caught a streetwise urchin stealing the Batmobile’s tires. This lost boy was Jason Todd, whose short but stellar career as the Boy Wonder was fatally tainted by his impetuosity, tragic links to one of the hero’s most unpredictable foes and shocking death. The trauma of losing his comrade forced Batman to re-examine his own origins and methods, becoming darker still..

After a period of increasingly undisciplined encounters Batman was on the edge of losing not just his focus but also his ethics and life: seemingly suicidal on frequent forays into the night. Interventions from his few friends and associates had proved ineffectual. Something drastic had to happen if the Dark Knight was to be salvaged.

Luckily there was an opening for a sidekick…

The crossover tale originally appeared in Batman #440-442 and New Teen Titans #60-61 (all plotted by Wolfman & George Pérez) and a new character entered the lives of the extended Batman Family; a remarkable child who would reshape the DC Universe.

‘Parallel Lines’ unravels the enigma of Tim Drake, who as a toddler was in the audience the night the Flying Graysons were murdered. Tim was an infant prodigy, and when, some months later he saw new hero Robin perform the same acrobatic stunts as Dick Grayson, he instantly deduced who the Boy Wonder was – and by extrapolation, the identity of Batman.

A passionate fan, Drake followed the Dynamic Duo’s exploits for a decade: noting every case and detail. He knew when Jason became Robin and was moved to act when his death triggered Batman’s increasing instability. Taking it upon himself to fix his broken heroes, Tim tried to convince the “retired” Grayson to became Robin once more – but fate had other plans…

Eccentrically engaging, these tales are the merest hint of the wonders locked in DC’s vaults of fun and wonder. Hopefully, it’s also simply the start of a long and vibrant caseload of recovered mysteries
© 1937, 1940, 1964, 1986, 1987, 1989, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Cyclops volume 1: Starstruck


By Greg Rucka, Russell Dauterman, Carmen Carnero, Terry Pallot & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9075-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

When mutant genius Henry McCoy learned he was dying, he used time-travel tech in a last-ditch attempt to give his life meaning. Seeking to prevent an inter-species war, he brought the young, naive X-Men of his own youth into the future to reason with his radicalised former comrade Scott Summers, praying the still idealistic and hopeful teens could divert Mutant Enemy Terrorist No. 1 from his path of doctrinaire madness…

The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than shocking modern day Cyclops back to his senses, the confrontation hardened the renegade’s heart and strengthened his resolve. Moreover, after McCoy the younger somehow cured his older self, he and the rest of the X-Kids were trapped in their own future and began gradually defecting to the fundamentalist team…

Eventually, the temporally misplaced First Class all ended up living with the elder Cyclops’ crew, but everything changed after Gladiator of the Shi’ar realised that Jean Grey AKA Marvel Girl – and future host of the cosmic force known as the Phoenix – was back. The alien overlord rashly attempted to abduct and execute her for the crimes of her older self…

The insane pre-emptive punishment plan was foiled by an assembly of X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy and intergalactic buccaneers Hepzibah, Ch’od,  Raza Longknife and insectoid medical wizard Sikorsky – collectively known as The Starjammers.

During that cosmic conflict, 16-year-old Scott met his believed-dead dad Christopher Summers, now called Corsair and undisputed leader of the cosmic privateers. When the mutant heroes returned to Earth, Scott chose to remain in space with the father he had spent most of his brief life assuming killed in a plane crash…

Scripted by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Russell Dauterman, Carmen Carnero & Terry Pallot, stellar saga Starstruck collects issues #1-5 of Cyclops: (July-November 2014), following the chronal castaway to the ends of the universe and even further into uncharted emotional territory…

The story begins as the still shell-shocked teen spends some time in hard vacuum with his dad’s exotic paramour Hepzibah. Together they are testing his new spacesuit, which allows him to fire his fearsome optic blasts safely through his helmet. That and reminiscing about how he got here and revelling in the sheer majesty of the intergalactic firmament, of course…

For most of his career Scott Summers has been capable and competent but also dour, grim, despondent and simply no fun at all. Here, however, we get to see the true hero he always was, whilst also following a nervous, unsure kid hungry for affirmation and still capable of ingenuous wide-eyed wonder.

That’s never more ably demonstrated than when his attempts to write a letter to Jean (the girl everybody in the future tells him he will marry and lose) are interrupted by an attack on the ship. The Starjammers are wanted by almost every empire and ruling authority in the universe, but this ambush by the scurrilous Brotherhood of Badoon is easily repulsed and only results in the freebooters capturing their attackers’ vessel primarily intact…

Not so easily handled is the growing gulf between Scott and Corsair. The boy simply cannot accept why his father would allow him – and indeed his future self – to believe he was dead for decades…

The grizzled star-pirate thinks he has a solution. Giving Scott a sword liberated from the vessel (apparently a crucial piece of kit for any space-farer regularly indulging in close combat) Corsair suggests a father-and-son vacation: a few months tooling around the galaxies in their newest prize, just getting to know each other…

At first the grand tour is all mind-bending exploration and eye-popping alien encounters, but eventually Scott starts seeing a disturbing pattern to Corsair’s actions and arrives at a ghastly conclusion. His dad is a drug addict and their numerous stopovers in quirky cosmic bazaars and seamy sidereal marketplaces are just opportunities to restock his personal pharmacopoeia…

One such jaunt introduces the kid to unlikely barkeeper/crimelord Baroque and leads Scott into a potentially life-changing VR encounter with a svelte and sexy alien temptress named Vass. Sadly, anything he might have learned is promptly forgotten when a merciless multi-species band of bounty hunters corners the father-&-son team.

These wily thief-takers are utterly unprepared for Cyclops’ optic blasts, however, and the humans get away relatively unscathed… except for Corsair’s latest “stash”…

The next crisis occurs soon after as the Badoon ship catastrophically malfunctions, stranding them on an isolated planetoid. Painfully scouring through crash wreckage later, Scott discovers a tracking device – now destroyed – and finally confronts his father about his addiction.

He is doubly appalled when Corsair shamefully reveals that rather than buying narcotics, he’s been visiting every criminal dive in creation to score universally-proscribed nanite tech: the only thing currently keeping him alive…

Stranded on a primitive mudball filled with predators becoming increasingly less cautious and more hungrily curious, Scott at last learns of his unsuspected brother Vulcan: a mutant who seized control of the Shi’ar Empire, sparked intergalactic wars and killed their father…

Of course, his devoted comrades refused to leave Corsair dead, and petitioned enigmatic cult the Shrouded to restore him. The cloaked wonders succeeded, but their cure required constant and illicit maintenance…

Days pass and the last dregs of the contraband chemicals are used, whilst fading father and estranged son grow closer: to the point where they unite to deal with the voracious bird-things stalking them. As Corsair impatiently strives to teach his son everything he’ll need to survive the decades he might be alone on the planetoid, the boy enacts a desperate scheme to save them both. The first step is repairing that fractured tracking device and luring the bounty hunters to their current location…

Everything goes according to plan and the hunters become the hunted, but at a critical moment Scott, seemingly swayed by the blandishments of the mercenaries’ female slave, sells his own dad out.

What happens next proves the boy hero’s astonishing tactical genius and saves everyone’s lives – if not necessarily their honour…

Heart-warming, thrilling, funny and astoundingly action-packed, Cyclops: Starstruck combines cosmic intrigue and dashing derring-do with solid characterisation and wild blue yonder wonderment, and will delight any fan of cosmically light-hearted Marvel Movies like Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor: Ragnarok.

What more could any wide-eyed, entertainment-starved child of the wondering stars want?
© 2014 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Superman vs Zod


By Robert Bernstein, Cary Bates, Steve Gerber, Geoff Johns, Richard Donner, George Papp, Curt Swan, Alex Saviuk, Rick Veitch, Rags Morales & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3849-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

Superman is comics’ champion crusader: the hero who heralded a whole genre. In the decades since his spectacular launch in April 1938 (cover-dated June), one who has survived every kind of menace imaginable. With this in mind it’s tempting and very rewarding to gather up whole swathes of his prodigious back-catalogue and re-present them in specifically-themed collections, such as this fun but far from comprehensive chronicling of someone who’s become his latter-day Kryptonian antithesis: a monstrous militaristic madman with the same abilities but far more sinister values and motivations.

For fans and comics creators alike, continuity can be a harsh mistress. These days, when maintaining a faux-historical cloak of rational integrity for the made-up worlds we inhabit is paramount, the greatest casualty of the semi-regular sweeping changes, rationalisations and reboots is those terrific tales which suddenly “never happened”.

The most painful example of this – for me at least – was the wholesale loss of the entire charm-drenched mythology that had evolved around Superman’s birthworld in the wonder years between 1948 and 1986. Happily, DC post Future State and Infinite Frontier is far more inclusive and all-encompassing…

Silver Age readers buying Superman, Action Comics, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, World’s Finest Comics and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (not forgetting Superboy and Adventure Comics) would delight every time some fascinating snippet of information was revealed. We spent our rainy days filling in the incredible blanks about the lost world through the delightful and thrilling tales from those halcyon publications.

Thankfully DC was never as slavishly wedded to continuity as its readership and understood that a good story is worth cherishing. This captivating compilation gathers material from Adventure Comics #283, Action Comics #473, 548-549, DC Comics Presents #97 and Action Comics Annual #10; spanning 1961-2007), re-presenting appearances both landmark and rare, current and notionally non-canonical featuring Kryptonian warlord and arch-nemesis General Dru-Zod, crafted by so many brilliant writers and artists who have contributed to the mythology of the Man of Tomorrow over the years.

Naturally this terrific tome begins with the first appearance – brief and incidental though it was – of the warrior who tried to conquer Krypton with an army of Bizarro-like clonal “inorganisms”. ‘The Phantom Superboy’ – by Robert Bernstein & George Papp – was lead feature in Adventure Comics #283 (cover-dated April 1961), describing how a mysterious alien vault smashes to Earth and the Smallville Sensation finds sealed within three incredible super-weapons built by his long-dead dad Jor-El.

There’s a disintegrator gun, a monster-making de-evolutioniser and a strange projector that opens a window into an eerie, timelessly dolorous dimension of stultifying intangibility. However, as Superboy reads the history of the projector – used to incarcerate Krypton’s criminals such as Dr. Xadu and the traitorous General – an implausible accident traps him inside the Phantom Zone and only by the greatest exercise of his mighty intellect does he narrowly escape…

Although there were plenty more appearances of the Red Sun Rebel, we jump here to ‘The Great Phantom Peril’ from Action Comics #473 (July 1977, by Cary Bates, Curt Swan & Tex Blaisdell) for the concluding chapter in a 3-issue tale introducing sadistic psycho-killer Faora Hu-Ul.

In this instalment, the male-hating escapee engineers freedom for all her ghostly companions, leaving criminal Kryptonians running riot on Earth. Thankfully, foresighted Superman has contrived to place all humanity in the Phantom Zone even as the prisoners explosively exited it…

Again no more than a bit-player, Zod was left to shout empty threats and wreck property until the ingenious Man of Steel turned the tables on his foes and banished them all back behind intangible bars once again…

He played a far more important role in the next epic. ‘Escape from the Phantom Zone!’ (Action Comics #548 October 1983) was the first part of a 2-issue yarn by Bates, Alex Saviuk, Vince Colletta & Pablo Marcos: an engaging if improbable saga of cosmic vengeance as a race of primordial plunderers discovered the dead remains of Argo City, hurled intact into space when the planet exploded and birthplace of Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El AKA Supergirl. The starfarers gleefully realised that there was at least one Kryptonian left in the cosmos and started searching…

The alien marauders were Vrangs, savage slavers who had conquered Krypton in eons past and brutally used the primitive populace to mine minerals too toxic for the aliens to handle. Krypton’s greatest hero was Val-Lor, who died instigating the rebellion which drove off the Vrangs and prompted the rise of a super-scientific civilisation.

All Kryptonians developed an inbred hatred of Vrangs, and when Phantom Zone prisoners Jax-Ur, Professor Va-Kox, Faora and General Dru-Zod observe their ancestral oppressors from the stark and silent realm of nullity that had been their drearily, unchanging, timeless jail since before Krypton perished, they swore to destroy them. If their holy mission also allowed the Kryptonian outcasts to kill the hated son of the discoverer of the eerie dimension of stultifying intangibility, then so much the better…

Using the psycho-active properties of Jewel Kryptonite – a post-cataclysm isotope of the very element poisonous to Vrangs – a quartet of Zoners break-out and head to Earth for vengeance… but upon whom?

Soon after, Clark Kent, still blithely unaware of his peril, investigates a citizens’ defence group that has sprung up in Metropolis in response to a city-wide rash of petty crimes. ‘Superman Meets the Zod Squad’ (Action Comics #549) as Zod, Faora, Tyb-Ol and Murkk infiltrate human society and bide their time, while the Man of Steel and Lois Lane are most concerned with how these “White Wildcats” can afford to police neighbourhoods with jet-packs and martial arts skills unknown on Earth…

Uncovering militarist maniac Zod behind the scheme, Superman is astounded when the Kryptonians surrender, offering a truce until their ancient mutual enemies are defeated.

…And that’s when the Vrangs teleport the Man of Steel into their ship, exultant that they now possess the mightiest slave in existence.

Moreover, there are four more potentially priceless victims hurtling up to attack them, utterly unaware in their blind rage and hatred that the Vrangs have a weapon even Kryptonians cannot survive…

This clever, compulsive thriller of cross, double and even triple-cross is a fabulously intoxicating, tension-drenched treat blending human foibles with varying notions of honour, and shows that even the most reprehensible villains may understand the value of sacrifice and the principle of something worth dying for…

In 1986 DC celebrated its 50th year with the groundbreaking, Earth-shattering Crisis on Infinite Earths by radically overhauling its convoluted multiversal continuity and starting afresh. All the Superman titles were cancelled or suspended pending this back-to-basics reboot courtesy of John Byrne, allowing the opportunity for a number of very special farewells to the old mythology.

One of the most intriguing and challenging came in the last issue of team-up title DC Comics Presents: specifically #97 (September 1986) wherein ‘Phantom Zone: the Final Chapter’ – by Steve Gerber, Rick Veitch & Bob Smith – offered a creepy adieu to a number of Superman’s greatest foes and concepts…

Tracing Jor-El’s discovery of the Phantom Zone through to the impending eradication of the multiverse, this tale reveals that the dread region of nullity was in fact sentient and had always regarded the creatures deposited within as intruders.

Now as cosmic chaos ensues the entity Aethyr, served by Kryptonian mage Thul-Kar, causes the destruction of the Bizarro World and deification/corruption of Fifth Dimensional pest Mr. Mxyzptlk as well as the subsequent crashing of green-glowing Argo City on Metropolis.

As a result Zod and his fellow immaterial inmates are freed to wreak havoc upon Earth until the now-crystalline pocket dimension merges with and absorbs the felons, before implausibly abandoning Superman to face his uncertain future as the very Last Son of Krypton…

This compilation concludes with a thoroughly modern reinterpretation of General Zod from Geoff Johns, Richard Donner, Rags Morales & Mark Farmer from Action Comics Annual #10 in 2007.

Blending elements of the 1978 filmic Superman franchise (and starring Zod, Ursa and Non as seen in Superman: the Movie and Superman II),‘The Criminals of Krypton’ reveal that their lost world was no utopian paradise in its final days and how its ruling Science Council silenced Jor-El’s mentor and kept word of the impending planetary explosion quiet by operating on Non’s brain…

Although pacifistic Jor-El chose to argue his position from within the strictures of the Council, his impatient converts Zod and Ursa tried to seize control of the government to save the unwary citizens, forcing the head of the House of El to exile (or perhaps save?) them from the cataclysm to come…

Superman has proven to be all things to all fans over his decades of existence, and with the character again undergoing another radical overhaul, these timeless tales of charm and joy and wholesome wit (accompanied by classic covers from Papp, Swan, Neal Adams, Gil Kane, Veitch & Smith) are more necessary than ever: not just as a reminder of great tales of the past but as an all-ages primer of wonders still to come…
© 1961, 1977, 1983, 1986, 2007, 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Turok Son of Stone Archives volume 1


By Gaylord DuBois Ray Bailey, Bob Correa, Jack Abel, Vince Alascia & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-155-3 (HB)

By simply never signing up to the draconian overreaction of the bowdlerizing Comics Code Authority, in the late 1950s Dell became the company for life and death thrills, especially in the arena of traditional adventure stories. If you were a kid in search of a proper body count instead of flesh wounds, you went for Tarzan, Roy Rogers, Tom Corbett and their ilk. That’s not to claim that the West Coast outfit were gory, exploitative sensationalists – far from it – but just that the writers and editors knew that fiction – especially kid’s fiction – needs a frisson of danger to make it work.

That was never more aptly displayed than in the long-running cross-genre saga of two Native Americans trapped in a world of sabretooth tigers, cavemen and dinosaurs…

Printing giant Whitman Publishing had been producing their own books and comics for decades through their Dell and Gold Key imprints, rivalling and often surpassing DC and Timely/Marvel at the height of their powers. Famously, they never capitulated to the wave of anti-comics hysteria which resulted in the crippling self-censorship of the 1950s and Dell Comics never displayed the Comics Code Authority symbol on their covers or sought the organization’s nanny-like approval.

They never needed to: their canny blend of media and entertainment licensed titles were always produced with a family market in mind and their comics’ creative staff took their editorial stance from the mores of the filmic Hayes Code and burgeoning television industry.

Like the big and little screen, they enticed but never shocked: keeping contentious social issues implicit instead of tacit. It was a proven case of “violence and murder are fine, but never, ever titillate.”

Moreover, the majority of their adventure comics covers were high quality photographs or paintings – adding a stunning degree of authenticity and realism to even the most outlandish of concepts for us wide-eyed waifs in need of awesome entertainment.

Dell hit the thrill jackpot as the censorship debacle hit its peak, by combining a flavour of westerns with monster lizards: after all what 1950s kid could resist “Red Indians” vs Dinosaurs?

Debuting in Four-Color Comics #596 (October/November 1954) Turok, Son of Stone told of two plains warriors hunting in the wilderness North of the Rio Grande when they became lost in a huge cave-system. They eventually emerged into a lost valley of wild men and antediluvian beasts and would spend the next 26 years (a total of 125 issues) wandering there, seeing sights and doing things kids of all ages would happily die for.

Despite solid claims from historian Matthew H. Murphy and comics legend Paul S. Newman (who definitely scripted the series from #9 onwards) Son of Stone was almost certainly created and first written by Dell’s editorial supremo Gaylord DuBois, and this magnificent hardcover collection gathers both Four Color try-outs (the second originally appearing in #656, October/November 1955) and thereafter issues #3-6 of an eponymous solo title.

Dell had one of the most convoluted numbering systems in comics collecting, and successive appearances in the try-out title usually – but not always – corresponded to eventual early issues of a solo series. Therefore FC #596 is Turok #1, FC #646 became #2 and the series proper began with #3. It isn’t always that simple though: after 30-odd Donald Duck Four Colors, Donald Duck proper launched his own adventures with #26!

Go figure… but just not now…

Set sometime in the days before Columbus stumbled upon America, Turok is a full brave mentoring a novice lad named Andar (apparently the original concept called for two teens, with the mature warrior originally a boy called Young Hawk). In ‘The World Below’ (limned by Rex Maxon), the hunters become lost while exploring Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico (DuBois was a frequent visitor to that fabulous subterranean site) and after days lost and wandering, they emerge into a vast, enclosed valley where they are menaced by huge creatures they never dreamed could exist.

In ‘The Terrible Ones’ they encounter beast-like cavemen and discover a way to make their puny arrows potent against the colossal cats, wolves and lizards that make human life spans so brief in this incredible world. In return they teach the ape-men the miracle of archery…

One year later, Four Color #656 opened on the morning after in ‘The Mystery of the Mountain’ as caveman Lanok helps Turok and Andar solve a grisly disappearance before the newcomers become lost once more in the great caverns. Eventually emerging at a far distant point of the lush valley, they are befriended by another tribe; one composed only of women and children. The technologically advanced modern visitors helped the primitives recover their men-folk in ‘The Missing Hunters’ and come tantalizingly close to escaping the sunken world forever before their hopes are cruelly dashed…

The format was set and successful. With Turok, Son of Stone #3 (March-May 1956) the pair began decades of constant wandering, seeking escape from the valley, encountering a fantastic array of monsters and lost tribes to help or fight, and illustrated by a succession of artist which included Ray Bailey, Bob Correa, Jack Abel & Vince Alascia.

‘The Exiled Cave Men’ saw them find their way back to Lanok, whose tribe had lately been driven from their home by a gigantic tyrannosaur. As well as helping them find new digs, Andar and Turok give them a further short and profitable lesson in cutting edge weaponry.

Of course the natives didn’t call it a tyrannosaur. The absolute best thing about this glorious series is the imaginative names for monsters. Moreover, although cavemen might have called T. Rexes “Runners”, Allosaurs “Hoppers” and Pterosaurs “Flyers”, whilst generally referring to giant lizards as “Honkers”, us kids knew all the proper names for these scaly terrors and felt pretty darn smug about it…

Relocated to an island in a great lake, Lanok’s tribe marvelled at the coracles and canoes Turok builds to explore its tributaries as ‘Strange Waters’ follows the homesick braves to another section of the valley with even stranger creatures.

Issue #4 opened with ‘The Bridge to Freedom’, finding Turok and Andar escaping the valley, only to turn back and help Lanok, whilst ‘The Smilodon’ pits the reunited trio against the mightiest hunter of all time as a sabretooth tiger takes an unrelentingly obsessive interest in how they might taste…

‘The River of Fire’ opened #5 as geological turbulence disrupted the valley, causing beasts to rampage and forcing Lanok’s tribe to flee from volcanic doom, whilst ‘The Secret Place’ sees Turok and Andar suffer from the jealous rage of the tribe’s slighted shaman. Of course, the witch-doctor turns out to be his own worst enemy…

Issue #6 (December 1956-February 1957) began with an inevitable but fabulously rewarding and cathartic clash as the wanderers face ‘The Giant Ape’; a King Kong-inspired romp with a bittersweet sting before Turok’s initial collected outing ends with ‘The Stick Thrower’ wherein a monkey-like newcomer introduces the lost boys to the magic of boomerangs and the pernicious wilfulness of mastodons…

But that’s not all! For sundry commercial reasons comic books were compelled to include at least three features per issue at this period, so this selection concludes with recovered text vignette ‘Aknet Becomes a Man’ and, just to be safe, ‘Lotor’: a natural history strip starring a wily raccoon looking to feed his brood, despite the best efforts of giant bullfrogs and hungry allosaurs…

With a rapturous introduction from artistic superstar/dino-buff William Stout, plus assorted fact-features that graced the original issues (‘The Dinosauria’, ‘The Ichthyosaurs’, ‘The Smilodon’, ‘The Mastodon’, ‘Turok’s Lost Valley’ and ‘Prehistoric Men’), this is a splendid all-ages adventure treat that will enrapture and enthral everybody who ever wanted to walk with dinosaurs… and Mammoths and Moas and…

Now, if we can only convince the current rights-holders to sanction a fresh release of this and its companion volumes – either physically and/or digitally – we could all travel back and get lost again in the primal Garden of action/adventure Eden…
™ & © 2009 Random House, Inc. Under license to Classic Media, Inc., an Entertainment Rights Company. All rights reserved.

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Spider-Man: Blue


By Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale with lettering by Richard Starkings & Comicraft’s Wes Abbot and colours by Steve Buccellato & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0785134466 (HB/Digital edition)

The creative team of Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale have tackled many iconic characters in a number of landmark expansions/reworkings. In Spider-Man: Blue Loeb & Sale set their nostalgia-soaked sights on the beginnings of Peter Parker’s tragically brief romance with Gwen Stacy and ever-maturing relationship with eventual wife Mary Jane Watson. It encompasses that transitional period when Steve Ditko’s creepy, plucky outsider grew into a wholesome, straight-shooting, hard-luck hero as re-designed by John Romita Senior – who also provides the Introduction (first seen in the 2004 release) for this 2019 remastered collected edition. Also included are a full cover gallery by Sale and many of his preparatory sketches, plus a sketchbook section at the book’s end, featuring commentary from writer and artist revealing their process, in crafting ‘Cover Concepts’, ‘The Girls’, ‘French Posters’ (focussing on European editions) and a prodigious ‘Sketch Gallery’.

Part of a colour-themed project based on Marvel Super-hero beginnings, Spider-Man: Blue gathers the 6-issue miniseries from 2002: a slight but extremely readable tale reconstituted from and built upon pertinent snippets from Amazing Spider-Man #39-49 – plus a smidgeon of #63.

It opens on one gloomy February 14th, as happily married but momentarily melancholy Peter records a message to a former girlfriend he hasn’t really gotten over…

Successive tapes to murdered Gwen follow issue by issue, taking the form of a reminiscence of the days when he first emerged from his solitary shell. Parker recalls how he found – and lost – a few friends while inadvertently growing closer to MJ, all whilst pursuing a pure, innocent and unlikely love for a seemingly unattainable dream girl.

‘My Funny Valentine’ begins in modern days of muted blue, before memories of Parker’s first showdown with Green Goblin Norman Osborn erupt in vibrant full colour, with the epochal moments concluding as – whilst visiting the now amnesiac villain in hospital – “Gorgeous Gwen” first notices something special about staid, standoffish Peter…

‘Let’s Fall in Love’ sees that relationship grow whilst adding a major complication with the long-anticipated, oft-delayed first meeting with flirtatious Mary Jane, before ‘Anything Goes’ sees her “wild-child” vivacity steering our shy boy’s social life, making him almost popular with fellow students and even more intriguing to Gwen even as MJ (innocently?) aids and abets his secret life and career…

‘Autumn in New York’ follows Parker leaving Aunt May’s home to share an apartment with Harry Osborn (troubled son of the Goblin, and his eventual successor) with MJ inviting herself along as Harry’s official girlfriend, after which ‘If I Had You’ sees Parker’s youthful associates growing up a bit before concluding reverie ‘All of Me’ shows how a climactic clash with a lurking stalker on another St. Valentine’s night led to the birth of a love for the ages…

Along the way – and as formerly depicted in the Lee & Romita classics – Spider-Man fights a formidable array of super-foes, including The Rhino, Lizard, two separate Vultures and ultimately Kraven the Hunter (rather uncomfortably and implausibly re-imagined here as the kind of sinisterly patient, brooding mastermind that he simply could never have been). Loeb & Sale in-fill, expand and often radically rework those battles with the advantage of revelations culled from stories by others over the intervening decades.

Regrettably but crucially, the end result is clever and pretty but offers no real sense of tension, because even the newest readers already know the inevitable romantic outcomes whilst the attempt to weave a number of isolated super-baddie clashes into a vast master-plan over and above what Lee & Romita envisioned feels clumsy and ill-considered. Don’t take my word for it: the original tales are readily available for your perusal and delectation in numerous collections as assorted Marvel Masterworks and Epic Collections, should you feel the need to contrast and compare…

Loeb & Sale rightly enjoy a prodigious track record for retrofitting, rationalising and restating pivotal moments of comic book icons: especially distilling turning points of iconic characters and careers into material palatable to modern readers, but here it’s simply a waste of their time and talents. The originals are simply still better than the rehashing here. This is not one of their better efforts, and often comes perilously close to being maudlin far too often for comfort.

Although Sale’s art is always a joy to behold, and Loeb’s gift for dialogue is undiminished, Spider-Man: Blue falls short of their best. A solid, casual affair but, sadly, not a patch on the real thing …
© 2019 MARVEL.

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Crisis on Multiple Earths Book 1: Crossing Over


By Gardner Fox, Dennis O’Neil, Mike Sekowsky, Dick Dillin, Bernard Sachs, Sid Greene, Joe Giella & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-0753-2 (TPB/Digital)

As I’ve frequently mentioned before, I was one of the “Baby Boomer” crowd which grew up with Julie Schwartz, Gardner Fox and John Broome’s tantalisingly slow reintroduction of Golden Age superheroes during the halcyon, eternally summery days of the early 1960s. To me those fascinating counterpart crusaders from Earth-Two weren’t vague and distant memories rubber-stamped by parents or older brothers – they were cool, fascinating and enigmatically new.

…And for some reason the “proper” heroes of Earth-One held them in high regard and treated them with obvious deference…

The transcendent wonderment began, naturally enough, in The Flash; pioneering trendsetter of the Silver Age Revolution. After successfully ushering in the triumphant return of the superhero concept, the Scarlet Speedster – with Fox & Broome at the writing reins – set an unbelievably high standard for costumed adventure in sharp, witty tales of science and imagination, always illustrated with captivating style and clean simplicity by Carmine Infantino.

The epochal epic that literally changed the scope of American comics forever was Fox’s ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ (Flash #123 September 1961, reprinted in many places, but not here): introducing to an emerging continuity the concept of alternate Earths and, by extension, the multiversal structure of the future DCU as well as all the succeeding cosmos-shaking yearly “Crisis” sagas that grew from it.

Moreover, where DC led, others followed…

Received with tumultuous acclaim, the concept was revisited months later in Flash #129 which also teasingly reintroduced evergreen stalwarts – Wonder Woman, the Atom, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Doctor Mid-Nite and Black Canary: venerable members of the fabled Justice Society of America. Clearly Editor Schwartz had something in mind…

That tale directly led into the veteran team’s first meeting with the Justice League of America and the start of an annual tradition. When ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ brought us the notion of Infinite Earths and multiple iterations of costumed crusaders, fan pressure had begun almost instantly to agitate for the return of the Greats of the “Golden Age”. Editorial powers-that-be were hesitant, fearing too many heroes would be silly and unmanageable, or worse yet, put readers off. If they could see us now…

These innovative adventures generated an avalanche of popular and critical approval (big sales figures, too) so inevitably the trans-dimensional tests led to the ultimate team-up in the summer of 1963.

This gloriously enthralling volume is the first in a sequence of collections celebrating Infinite Diversity in Infinite Costumes, gathering the first eight summer double-header JLA/JSA convocations (Justice League of America #21-22, 29-30, 37-38, 46-47, 55-56, 64-65, 73-74, and 82-83) plus pertinent excerpts from other places: stunning superhero wonderments which never fail to astound and delight. Also on offer are a context-conveying Introduction ‘1 & 2 – Crisis’ by wonder-scribe Mark Waid detailing even more cool facts behind the phenomenon and Martin Pasko’s erudite Foreword ‘Crisis Behind the Scenes’, revealing how the loss of stalwart originators Gardner Fox & Mike Sekowsky led to a new way of telling stories, offsetting in many respects the genuine dilemma of readers’ changing tastes…

The comic book catharsis commences with the landmark ‘Crisis on Earth-One’ and ‘Crisis on Earth-Two’ (from Justice League of America #21-22, August & September 1963) combining to form one of the most important stories in DC history and arguably one of the most crucial tales in American literature: at least the stuff with pictures in it.

Written by Fox and illustrated by Mike Sekowsky & Bernard Sachs, the yarn finds a coalition of assorted villains from each Earth plundering at will, meeting and defeating the mighty Justice League before impertinently imprisoning them in their own secret mountain HQ…

Temporarily helpless, “our” heroes contrive a desperate plan to combine forces with the champions of another Earth to save the world – both of it – and the result is pure Fights ‘n’ Tights majesty.

It’s impossible for me to be totally objective about this saga. I was a drooling kid in short trousers when I first read it and the thrills haven’t diminished with this umpty-first re-reading.

This is what superhero comics are all about!

The buying public clearly agreed. One year later ‘Crisis on Earth-Three’ and ‘The Most Dangerous Earth of All!’ (JLA #29-30) reprised the team-up after super-beings of a third alternate Earth discover the secret of trans-universal travel.

Unfortunately, Ultraman, Owlman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick and Power Ring are villains on a world without heroes who see costumed crimebusters like the JLA and JSA as living practise dummies to sharpen their evil skills upon.

With this cracking thriller the annual summer get-together became solidly entrenched in heroic lore, giving fans endless entertainment for years to come and making the approaching end of school holidays less gloomy than they could have been.

The third annual event was a touch different; a largely forgotten experimental tale wherein the educationally-challenged and extremely larcenous Johnny Thunder of Earth-1 wrests control of the genie-like Thunderbolt from his otherworld counterpart: employing its magical powers to change the events which created of all Earth-1’s superheroes. Catastrophically altered, in #37 it became ‘Earth – Without a Justice League’, and it was up to the JSA to save the day in a gripping battle of wits and power before Reality was re-established in #38’s concluding chapter ‘Crisis on Earth-A!’.

Veteran inker Bernard Sachs retired before the fourth team-up, leaving the amazing Sid Greene to embellish a gloriously whacky saga: one springing out of the global “Batmania” craze engendered by the first Batman television show…

A wise-cracking campy tone was fully in play, acknowledging the changing audience profile and this time the stakes are raised to encompass the destruction of both planets in ‘Crisis Between Earth-One and Earth-Two’ and ‘The Bridge Between Earths’ (Justice League of America #46-47, August & September 1966).

Here a bold continuum-warping experiment drags the twin sidereal worlds towards an inexorable hyper-space collision. Making matters worse, an awesome anti-matter being uses the opportunity to break into and explore our positive-matter universe whilst the heroes of both worlds are distracted by the destructive rampages of monster-men Blockbuster and Solomon Grundy.

Peppered with wisecracks and “hip” dialogue, it’s sometimes difficult to discern what a cracking yarn this actually is, but if you’re able to forgive or swallow dated patter, it is one of the very best plotted and illustrated stories in the entire JLA/JSA canon. Furthermore, the vastly talented Greene’s expressive subtlety, beguiling textures and whimsical humour add unheard-of depth to Sekowsky’s pencils and the light and frothy comedic scripts of Fox.

The same can be said of the next year’s outing as the wise-cracking campy tone was still fully in play for ‘The Super-Crisis that Struck Earth-Two’ and ‘The Negative-Crisis on Earths One-Two!’ (JLA #55-56; August and September 1967).

Opening on Earth Two, it boasted a radical change as the JSA now included an adult Robin instead of Batman, although Hourman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Wildcat, Johnny Thunder and Mr. Terrific still needed the help of Earth One’s Superman, Flash, Green Lantern and Green Arrow to cope with an invasion of superpower-creating black spheres bestowing upon mere mortals uncanny abilities enabling them to satisfy their darkest desires.

Things went from bad to worse after the harried heroes used the ebony invaders to augment their own abilities and turn half the combined team evil too…

By 1968 the second superhero boom looked to be dying just as its predecessor had at the end of the 1940s. Sales were down generally in the comics industry and costs were beginning to spiral. More importantly, “free” entertainment, in the form of television, was by now ensconced in even the poorest household. If you were a kid in the sixties, think on just how many brilliant cartoon shows were created in that decade, when artists like Alex Toth and Doug Wildey were working in West Coast animation studios.

Moreover, comic book stars were appearing on the small screen. Superman, Aquaman, Batman, the Marvel heroes and even the JLA were there every Saturday in your own living room…

It was a time of great political and social upheaval. Change was everywhere and unrest even reached the corridors of DC. When a number of creators agitated for increased work-benefits the request was not looked upon kindly. Many left the company for other outfits. Some quit the business altogether.

Fox ended his magnificent run on the Justice League with a stunning annual team-up extravaganza. Creative and perfectly professional to the very end, his last story was yet another of the Golden-Age revivals which had resurrected the superhero genre.

JLA #64 and 65 (August- September 1968) featured the ‘Stormy Return of the Red Tornado’ and ‘T.O. Morrow Kills the Justice League – Today!’, with a cyclonic super-android taking on the mantle of a 1940s spoof “Mystery Man” who appeared in the very first JSA adventure (if you’re interested, the original Red Tornado was a brawny washerwoman named Ma Hunkle who escaped comedy feature Scribbly by Sheldon Mayer and became our earliest crossdressing masked marvel…).

The plot here involved a cagy time-plundering thief creating an artificial hero to help him defeat both JLA and JSA, before realising too late he had built better than he knew…

Fox’s departing thriller was also the series’ artistic debut for former Blackhawk artist Dick Dillin: a prolific draughtsman who would draw every JLA issue for the next twelve years, as well as many other adventures of DC’s top characters. He was inked by Greene, a pairing that seemed vibrant and darkly realistic after the eccentrically stylish, nigh-abstract Sekowsky.

Next up from August and September 1969 is Denny O’Neil’s first shot at the yearly cross-dimensional crisis as #73 and 74 offered ‘Star Light, Star Bright… Death Star I See Tonight!’ and ‘Where Death Fears to Tread!’

The tense, brooding tale introduced Aquarius; a sentient but insane star, who magically destroys Earth Two until Earth One’s heroes (with their surviving Golden Age counterparts) manage to restore it, but not without some personal tragedy. Black Canary loses her husband and opts to emigrate to our world, handily becoming the JLA’s resident Girl Superhero and picking up a new if somewhat unreliable power in the process.

This splendid exercise in fantastic nostalgia ends with another grand get-together as perfidious property speculators from space seek to raze both Earths in ‘Peril of the Paired Planets’ (#82 August 1970 by O’Neil, Dillin & Joe Giella) and only the ultimate sacrifice by a true hero averts trans-dimensional disaster in concluding chapter ‘Where Valor Fails… Will Magic Triumph?’

This volume also includes a few beguiling extras: covers by Sekowsky, Sachs, Greene, Murphy Anderson, Jack Abel, Dillin, Joe Kubert and Neal Adams, the front and back covers of Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-46 (by Neal Adams from August/September 1976); a double-page pin-up of the JSA by Anderson from Justice League of America #76 (October 1969) and previous collection covers by Alex Ross and Jerry Ordway…

These tales won’t suit everybody, and I’m as aware as any that in terms of the “super-powered” genre the work here can be boiled down to two bunches of heroes formulaically getting together to deal with extra-extraordinary problems. In mature hindsight, it’s obviously also about sales and the attempted revival of more sellable characters during a period of intense rivalry between DC Comics and Marvel.

But I don’t have to be mature in my off-hours and for those who love costume heroes, who crave these cunningly constructed modern mythologies and actually care about fun, this is simply a grand parade of straightforward action, great causes and momentous victories.

…And since I wouldn’t have it any other way, why should you?
© 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1976, 2002, 2003, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Thor God of Thunder by Jason Aaron volume 1


By Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic, Butch Guice, Tom Palmer & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0785191131 (HB/Digital edition)

In the wake of the game-changing Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, the company’s entire continuity was reconfigured. From that point on, the proud banner MarvelNOW! indicated a radical repositioning and recasting of all the characters in an undertaking designed to keep the more than 50-year old universe interesting to readers old and new alike.

This involved a varying degree of drastic rethink for beloved icons, concepts and brands, always, I’m sure, with one wary eye on how the material would look on a movie screen…

Well the fourth Thor feature film is upon us and this collection will offer the print origins of its major villain, so buckle up for a rocky rowdy ride…

Collecting Thor, God of Thunder #1-11 (cover-dated January-October 2013), this big, bold blockbuster saga simultaneously unfolds over three separate eras, offering a spectacular clash as the bellicose Lord of Lightning faces his ultimate adversary…

It begins in 893AD where a young god revels amongst his Viking worshippers in Iceland, slaying monsters and bedding mortal maids in the days before he proved worthy enough to wield mystic mallet Mjolnir.

During his revels a dismembered corpse washes up, terrifying the valiant Norsemen. They have never seen the like, but Thor recognises it as a god from another pantheon, slaughtered and dismembered like meat…

In the now, Thor is summoned into deep space and the parched planet Indigarr. The Storm Lord has mystically heard the desperate prayer of a little girl and on his arrival brings rain and salvation to her dying world. Celebrated as a saviour, the Thunderer wonders aloud why the people did not pray to their own gods – across the entire universe, all civilisations and peoples have deities – and learns they are dead.

Investigating further, he locates Indigarr’s god-palace and discovers the entire pantheon was tortured to death eons ago and as a monstrous black beast ambushes him, he remembers a horrific experience more than a millennium past and knows fear…

In the furthest future, an aged Thor sits in a shattered Great Hall of Asgard. He has only one arm and one eye and is the last god – perhaps the last being – in existence …except for the uncountable hordes of savage black beasts that surround him…

The cosmic conundrum continues in ‘A World without Gods’ as, in Iceland, Thor leads a bold band of worshipful reivers on a quest into what will one day be Russia and encounters a being who has killed all the gods of the Slavs.

Appropriating one of the perished pantheon’s flying horses, Thor soars aloft to challenge the mysterious God Butcher and, amidst a welter of ‘Blood in the Clouds’, eventually defeats the maniacal alien Gorr…

In the present, an enraged Thunder God, having honourably disposed of the celestial corpses, sets off to discover the truth of the situation…

Arriving at the pan-cosmic metropolis of Omnipotence City, where gods of every world and time have met since the universe began, the Thunderer discovers that, over the ages many divinities have gradually ceased visiting.

After consulting the infinitude of scrolls in ‘The Hall of the Lost’, Thor journeys to many of the worlds and finds the same thing over and again: dismembered, desecrated corpses and planets bereft of godly life. Each of them does however, harbour a brutal black beast…

In ancient Russia, the Thunder godling recovers after seven days in a coma, tended by his faithful Vikings. Seeking to confirm his victory, Thor subsequently searches the icy wastes and finds the last of the Slavic Celestials, left as a swiftly expiring signpost to a rematch with the diabolical divinity-slayer…

In our time Thor and Avenger ally Iron Man visit the same region, scouting the cave where Thor remembers ending the menace of Gorr, the God Butcher in the 9th century. After all he has seen in space, however, the Thunderer is questioning his memory and conclusions. Wiser and warier than his youthful incarnation, the Prince of Asgard dispatches the Golden Avenger to warn Earth’s other pantheons of their imminent peril before entering the cave he’d last visited more than a thousand years ago…

At the very end of days the dotard Thunder God continues to slay black beasts, hungry for the honourable death they will not allow him…

And in the 21st century, the Lord of Storms finds not his foe, but a pathetically broken alien god the Butcher has left with a personal message – “It’s all your fault, Thor…”

At the end of time, ‘The Last God in Asgard’ is left to fight again but never die, whilst in the now, Thor and broken alien deity Shadrak return to Omnipotence City following a slipped reference to something called “Chronux” and stumble upon a raid by the beast creatures determined to erase all reference to it from the infinite library of the eternal Omnopolis.

In 893AD, the awful truth of what occurred in Gorr’s cavern is revealed, as present-day Thor follows a faint hope to the planet of the Time Gods and learns the impossibly grandiose, history-shredding scheme of the Butcher.

Gorr meanwhile has uncovered the true origin-story of universal life and invades the corridors of time to achieve his ‘Dream of a Godless Age’…

The Celestial Slaughterman is even more elated when his 21st century nemesis is catapulted to Asgard at the end of eternity. Now the chronal marauder has two Thors to play with – for as long as he wishes…

The saga pauses for a brief digression as ‘What the Gods Have Wrought’ (illustrated by Butch Guice & Tom Palmer) reveals the brutal ancient origins of the primitive Gorr on a hellish world where all his children died long, slow deaths. Discarding the gods who had abandoned him, the enraged apostate stumbled into a duel between two cosmic beings and killed them both after the battle left them spent and helpless.

One of the celestial beings had employed a black energy force, and that eerie weapon transferred its power and allegiance to Gorr. Revelling in revenge achieved, the barbarian reshaped the dark force into armour before flying into space, seeking more gods to kill. By time’s end he had eradicated almost all of them – apart from a captive population he kept to torture and fuel his ultimate weapon…

Ribic returns to illustrate 5-part epic ‘Godbomb’ which opens ‘Where Gods Go to Die’. In the final future, the mature and ancient Thors gird themselves for battle as, in 893AD, young Thor is attacked by Gorr’s minions and becomes the latest captive of the God Butcher’s slaughter camp…

In the now at the Library of Omnipotence City, Shadrak reveals his hidden nature and what Gorr made him build. The Librarian is appalled at what the “God of Bombs and Explosions” has wrought…

Brought forward to be broken at the end of eternity, the juvenile Thunderer meets the last deities in creation – including his own eventual granddaughters Atli, Ellisiv and Frigg – before learning the meaning of sacrifice and humility as a ‘God in Chains’. His unending torment is only leavened by meeting the son of Gorr – a kind and decent boy who worships his own red-handed sire as divine…

The ultimate bomb is fed by the deaths of gods and when ready it will detonate, sending killing energies throughout time to destroy all gods everywhere. The captive deities are intent on sabotaging it, but before they can find a volunteer, Atli realises her boy-grandfather has already gone…

The attempt fails completely, leaving the Godbomb utterly unscathed. There is no sign of young Thor. Unknown to all, the boy has been blasted into space to be fortuitously rescued by a flying dragon boat carrying two older versions of himself. Set on war, ready to die and uniquely sharing ‘Thunder in the Blood’, the Boy, Man and Dotard turn towards what will be a fateful Final Battle…

From here on the story becomes a magnificent spectacle of heroic sacrifice and glorious action as the trinity of Thors defeats the ultimate enemy, setting Reality to rights in a tale of blistering action and exultant adventure that cleverly capitalises on the Thunder God’s key conceptual strengths, producing a saga to shake the heavens and delight fans of both the comics and the movies.

Also included is a cover-and-variants gallery by Ribic, Gabriele Dell’Otto, Julian Totino Tedesco, Skottie Young, Daniel Acuña, Joe Quesada, Olivier Coipel & Rajko Milosevic Guera, and an Esad Ribic Sketchbook section sharing character designs and 20 uncoloured pencil pages.
© 2019 MARVEL

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Captain America: Man Out of Time


By Mark Waid, Jorge Molina, Karl Kesel & Scott Hanna (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5128-9 (HB/Digital edition) 978-1-84653-487-4 (UK TPB)

One of the pivotal moments in Marvel Comics history occurred when the Mighty Avengers recovered a tattered body floating in a block of ice (#4, March 1964) and resurrected World War II hero Captain America. This act followed the return of the Sub-Mariner in Fantastic Four #4 and completed a bridge back to the years of Timely and Atlas Comics. With it, newly-minted Marvel Comics Group confirmed and consolidated a solid, concrete, potential-packed history: evoking an enticing sense of mythic continuance for the fledgling company and instantly granting it the same cachet and enduring grandeur of market leader National/DC.

In 2010, after years of conflicting continuity (and with a movie coming) Marvel tasked fan-favourite writer Mark Waid with updating those pivotal events and early future-shocked days for the contemporary world. Of course, that modern milieu was the year 2000, not 1964…

This captivating re-interpretation and updating collects 5 issue miniseries Captain America: Man Out of Time (November 2010-April 2011) and opens in the dying days of the war as Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are officially removed from the European frontline. Their destination is England and an appointment with doom-laden destiny…

After the world goes fiery red and then black, the Sentinel of Liberty is stunned to awaken in tomorrow’s world before reacting automatically and uncompromisingly to meeting this World’s Mightiest Heroes…
Waid, perfectly complimented by artists Jorge Molina, Karl Kesel & Scott Hanna, wisely leaves the classic adventures largely unchanged, to concentrate on the missing, contemplative moments and personal crises confronting the uncomprehending Steve Rogers, which means readers completely unaware of the character’s comic book history and exploits could experience some confusion in places. However, the narrative, although superficially disjointed, is clear-cut enough to counter this and those interested in the fuller picture can easily fill in the gaps by perusing one of so many available reprint collections to cover the entire period featured here…

In chapter 2, the reeling hero meets former Hulk sidekick Rick Jones (an absurdly close double for the departed Bucky), gets a rapid reality check on his new home and finally accepts that there’s no way home for this Old Soldier.

Except, that’s not strictly true…
Among the many technological miracles his new allies introduce him to the embryonic science of time-travel, and even while battling threats like the Lava Men and Masters of Evil, the unhappy warrior only thinks of returning to his proper place and saving his best friend…

The old adage “be careful what you wish for” never proves more true than when time-reiver Kang the Conqueror attacks: utterly overwhelming the 21st century heroes and casually dispatching Captain America back to 1945. However, the Sentinel of Liberty’s sense of duty, threat to his new allies and the unpalatable things he had forgotten about “the Good Old Days” prompt Cap into brilliantly escaping his honeyed time-trap and returning to the place and moment where he is most needed to once again save the day…

Resolute and resolved to tackle his Brave New World, Captain America is now ready to carve out a whole new legend…
I’m generally less than sanguine about updates and reboots of classic comics material, but I will admit that such things are a necessary evil as years go by, so when the deed is done with sensitivity and imagination (not to mention dynamic, bravura flamboyance) I can only applaud and commend the effort.

Balancing the reinterpretation is the classic inspiration as the book ends with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & George Roussos’ reprinted epic ‘Captain America joins… The Avengers!’ cover-dated March 1964, and proving magic can be retooled but never replaced…

Thrilling, superbly entertaining, compelling and genuinely moving, Captain America: Man out of Time is a wonderful confection to delight and enthral old aficionados, impress new readers and should serve to make many fresh fans for the immortal Star-Spangled Avenger.
© 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.