Category: Wolverine

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Savage Wolverine volume 2: Hands on a Dead Body


By Zeb Wells, Joe Madureira & Jock (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-557-4

Company kick-start initiative Marvel NOW! having reinvigorated the entire continuity, assorted varieties of X-stars generally began life anew and this sharp, scintillating compilation – gathering issues #6-11 of Savage Wolverine (published between August 2013 and January 2014) – captures two of the feral fury’s most savage sagas in a volume reaffirming the character’s breadth and versatility.

In the first triptych, scripted by Zeb Wells with art by Joe Madureira, the Canadian Crusader is feeling his hard-won humanity slipping away again as he languishes in guilt over all the people he’s killed.

Even fellow Avenger and naive ray of sunshine Spider-Man is unable to lift his spirits, and things take an ever darker turn when svelte and sullen assassin Elektra turns up, looking for a favour…

Ninja organisation The Hand – currently led by Wilson Fisk, the American crimelord known as The Kingpin – have stolen the corpse of former hitman Bullseye and, having been killed by the dead man before being resurrected by ninja magic herself, she is determined to stop the criminal cult from offering the same unique service to her murderer…

In need of a like-minded ally she wants Wolverine to join her in raiding Fisk’s New York fortress, leaving him unaware that Kingpin is undergoing a crisis of management and has previously reached out to Elektra…

Fisk’s grip of the Hand is not uncontested and a troublesome faction has called in the cult’s Arbiters to test the colossal Gaijin’s worthiness. A highly formalised challenge having been issued, the big boss is expecting a revived killer-corpse to come after him and has therefore resorted to recruiting former foes to his cause…

The increasingly incensed berserker mutant of yesteryear slowly resurfaces as Wolverine and Elektra wade through an army of ninjas – and the sinister supernatural forces of the Arbiters themselves – but are still too late to stop the resurrection ritual.

Tragically for Fisk and the rebel faction alike, the Arbiters have their own agenda and what comes hunting for the Kingpin is a far crueller weapon than a mere zombie assassin…

The second tale in this collection couldn’t be further from the seedy, double-dealing international crime scenario.

Written and illustrated by the ever-entertaining Jock, the untitled 3-part tale is a moodily enigmatic mystery which begins with Wolverine’s sudden and extremely painful arrival on an alien world.

The transplanted tracker has no idea how he was taken or where off Earth he is, but nonetheless brutally tackles bug-beasts and marauding monsters in his solemn, stoic struggle to stay alive.

His abductors have another surprise in store and release a small boy to hunt the mutant, but Logan soon turns the tables and befriends – or more accurately “tames” – the wild child whom he names Kouen…

The boy shares all his mutant abilities and even has retractable metal claws…

Their odyssey of survival on an unforgiving world is cut short when the mysterious technicians running the experiment try to reclaim their guinea pigs… and make the mistake of letting Wolverine find their secret lab….

They make an even bigger one when they let him see the ranked canisters – each with a small pitiful copy of Kouen in it…

With covers-and-variants by Madureira, Jock, Mike Perkins, Walt Simonson & Francesco Francavilla, Savage Wolverine: Hands on a Dead Body returns the mutant megastar to realms and milieus generally ignored in his recent mainstream appearances, and certainly lives up to its name here with this brace of fast, furious and blisteringly bombastic visceral yarns: a stirring reminder of days past and mysteries still to be resolved…
™ & © 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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The Arms of the Octopus


By Mike Costa, Chris Cosentino, Kris Anka, Jake Wyatt, Michael Dialynas & Dalibor Talajić (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-577-2

Here’s a welcome return to those (relatively) uncomplicated Good Old Days, when you could pick up a comic or book without Ph.D. level preparation and just read for the sheer fun of it.

Collecting the linked serial from 2013’s All-New X-Men Special #1, Indestructible Hulk Special and Superior Spider-Man Team-Up Special (and incongruously including the Wolverine: In the Flesh One-Shot), The Arms of the Octopus offers just such a jolly “Blast from the Past” in a gripping tale of time-banditry, courtesy of writer Mike Costa.

Illustrated by Kris Anka All-New X-Men Special #1starts the ball rolling with ‘Elegy in the Classroom’ as time-displaced mutant teenagers Hank (the Beast) Pym, Bobby (Iceman) Drake, Scott (Cyclops) Summers and Jean (Marvel Girl) Grey spend their first vacation day on a trip to Manhattan and get a full-on face-full of 21st century future shock.

Escaping the bleeping sound and blinding visual fury of the telecommunications era, the kids head for Central Park where young Hank is smitten by a poetry-reading college girl. After catching a mugger, the Beast expects her to run screaming, but she’s actually so intrigued at meeting a mutant she invites him back to see her lab.

Hank knows it well: before he and the teen X-Men were brought into their own future he studied there under Gamma-medicine radiation research pioneer David Jude. Decades later the genius is still in residence, but now his field of endeavour is Temporal Displacement…

Dr. Jude is remarkably sanguine about meeting his young-looking old student, but before any questions can be asked the lab is brutally attacked by Doctor Octopus, also oddly youthful and emitting huge amounts of Gamma rays.

As the rest of the X-Men join the bombastic battle the clash inevitably draws the attention of the Superior Spider-Man…

The Wallcrawler is astounded and furious. What the kids – or anybody else for that matter – don’t realise is that for months now the mind of Otto Octavius has inhabited the Amazing Arachnid’s frame and to see his earlier self running wild in 2013 drives the cerebral bodysnatcher into a state of unthinking outrage…

After fractiously cooperating with the mutant kids, Spider-Man defeats Doc Ock and drags him back to Jude’s time-lab, where examination of the Gamma-drenched mystery maniac leads to only one conclusion: some form of time travel…

The X-kids are living proof of concept and with some reluctance the arrogant Arachnid admits that he needs to consult with an expert…

‘For a Friend Whose Work has Come to Triumph’ (illustrated by Jake Wyatt in (Indestructible Hulk Special #1) picks up the tale as S.H.I.EL.D. Specialist Bruce Banner is helicoptered in and, after getting over his astonishment at meeting genuine time travellers, gets stuck into unravelling the enigma of the radioactive rogue.

Before too long however another distraction hits the campus: a blockbusting assault by old Hulk foe the Abomination. The Gamma-irradiated gargoyle is one of Banner’s oldest enemies, and he’s been dead for years…

As the physicist gets green and mean to tackle the threat, the theory of a temporal anomaly caused by the displaced X-teens seems confirmed. Thus the mutants take Spider-Man and Dr. Jude back to their school to check out the time machine which brought them back to the future just as the Hulk makes a shocking discovery defeating his rampaging opponent.

…And in the copter speeding to Westchester, Jude realises he’s been rumbled and makes his move…

The chronal conundrum concludes in ‘With Mercy for the Greedy’ (Superior Spider-Man Team-Up Special #1, with art by Michael Dialynas) as the Machiavellian scientist (Jude, not Ock-in-Spidey for a change) uses previously concealed gamma radiation powers to blow up the transport before heading after the coveted time machine, leaving the assorted heroes in lethal freefall…

Following a suitably spectacular cooperative save, the X-kids and Spider-Man set off on the villain’s trail whilst Banner and Pym frantically work on a method of containing the real radioactive menace. Eventually everything ends up in a ferocious fight before a measure of order is restored and grudging respect is meted out all round…

Blending sinister suspense with riotous action and devilishly clever scenes of outright hilarity, this is a marvellously accessible romp no fan of clear-cut Costumed Dramas should miss and is followed by a rather strange – and unconnected – outing for the world’s favourite mutant.

Illustrated by Dalibor Talajić, Wolverine: In the Flesh is written by – and implausibly co-stars – celebrity chef Chris Cosentino; detailing the hunt for cannibal killer the Bay Area Butcher.

The satanic serial killer’s reign of terror can only be ended after the Canadian mutant recruits his old culinary chum to offer insights into the haute cuisine methodology of cutting meat and invaluably intimate knowledge of San Francisco’s Food Truck culture.

Little do either know that their prey is fed up “serving Man” and needs just one little ingredient for his pièce de résistance: a suitably trussed, tied and marinated mutant…

Light, quirky and mordantly piquant, this one won’t be to everyone’s taste…

With covers by Alexander Lozano and Tim Seeley, The Arms of the Octopus offers casual readers and faithful fans alike a smart break from cosmic epics and should certainly whet the appetite for all the monumental Marvel madness heading our way in the months to come.
™ & © 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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The New Avengers volume 1: Breakout


By Brian Michael Bendis, David Finch & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1479-6

During the Marvel rebirth in the early 1960’s Stan Lee & Jack Kirby aped a tactic which had recently paid big dividends for DC Comics, but with initially mixed results.

Although Julie Schwartz had achieved incredible success with revised and modernised versions of the company’s Golden Age greats, the natural gambit of trying the same revivification process on characters that had dominated Timely/Atlas in those halcyon days didn’t go quite so well.

The Justice League of America-inspired Fantastic Four featured a new Human Torch but his subsequent solo series began to founder almost as soon as Kirby stopped drawing it. Sub-Mariner was back too, but as a villain, as yet incapable of carrying his own title…

So the costumed character procession continued: Lee, Kirby and Steve Ditko churning out numerous inventive and inspired “super-characters”. Not all caught on: Hulk lost his title after six issues and even Spider-Man would have failed if writer/editor Lee hadn’t really, really pushed his uncle, the publisher…

Thus, after nearly 18 months during which the fledgling House of Ideas had created a small stable of leading men (but only a sidekick woman), Lee & Kirby settled on combining their meagre stock of individual stars into a group – which had made the JLA a commercial winner – and assembled a handful of them into a force for justice and even higher sales…

Cover-dated September 1963, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion package which also included Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Men…

Despite a few rocky patches, the series soon grew into one of the company’s perennial top sellers, but times and tastes always change and after four decades, in September to December 2004, the “World’s Mightiest Heroes” were shut down and rebooted in a highly publicised event known as Avengers Disassembled.

Of course it was only to replace them with both The New and The Young Avengers. Affiliated comic-books Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Spectacular Spider-Man also ran parallel but not necessarily interconnected story-arcs to accompany the Big Show.

Said Show consisted of the worst day in the team’s history as the Scarlet Witch was revealed to have gone crazy, betraying the team who had been her family and causing the destruction of everything they held dear and the death of several members. That all happened in issues #500-503, plus the one-shot Avengers Finale.

The most important major change from that epic ending was The New Avengers, and this slim tome collects the first six issues from that celebrated revamp (covering January to June 2005) as Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch – with inking assistance from Danny Miki, Mark Morales, Allen Martinez & Victor Olazaba – redefined the nature of group heroics for a darker, more complex age.

The six-chapter saga ‘Breakout’ begins six months after the day Tony Stark shut down the Avengers and withdrew all funds, backing and support…

Somewhere in the city a shadowy client hires super-villain Electro to facilitate the escape of a certain individual from the metahuman super High Security prison The Raft.

The lock-up is located on an island in New York City Harbour: a high-tech exemplar of space-age confinement, keeping hundreds of super-thugs and deadly monsters safely away from decent folks, all efficiently operated and maintained by superspy peacekeeping agency S.H.I.E.L.D.

One particular day, lawyers Foggy Nelson and his partner Matt (Daredevil) Murdock are visiting a mystery prisoner at the behest of Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four. In accordance with security protocols they are accompanied by S.H.I.E.L.D. super-agent Jessica Drew – formerly costumed crusader Spider-Woman – but have also brought their own metahuman bodyguard in the formidable form of Luke Cage AKA Power Man.

They picked the worst possible day. As a city-wide sudden power blackout disables the technologies suppressing the powers of the inmates, Electro’s attack shatters the walls and, having secured his target, the mega-volt mercenary opens all the cells and tells the exultant escapees to have fun whilst he flees…

At the first sign of trouble Peter Parker switched to Spider-Man and headed for The Raft, snagging a ride on an official helicopter. When it is shot down, he is pulled from the freezing waters by Captain America who had diverted the chopper to get to the endangered island…

Far below the surface level, Agent Drew has shepherded her charges to relative safety, leaving Foggy in the cell of the man they’d come to interview. Bob Reynolds, a superhero known as Sentry, is the most powerful being on Earth and has allowed himself to be incarcerated for the murder of his own wife…

As Nelson tries to break through to the shell-shocked, nigh-comatose superhuman, Drew, Cage and Daredevil are engaging in a brutal holding action against an army of enraged psychos, whilst at the surface level Spidey and Cap are fighting for their lives.

Things go bad when the web-spinner’s arm is broken, whilst down in Sentry’s cell the sadistic metamorph Carnage finds a way to reach the cowering Foggy…

The inevitable bloodbath rouses Sentry from his stupor and the Golden Gladiator explodes out of the Raft, carrying Carnage to his doom in deep space, whilst on the surface level Iron Man’s blockbusting arrival begins to turn the tide against the army of maniacs…

The third chapter opens with Stark and Steve Rogers discussing the recently pacified penitentiary and the obvious need for the Avengers to reform. Captain America’s urgent belief that it was fate calling a new team together nearly sways the arch-rationalist – as does the fact that forty-two of the worst malefactors managed to get away in the chaos – but Iron Man remains uncommitted until Cap can get some – or any – of the staunch loners they fought beside to join the proposed New Avengers team…

Always undaunted, the Star-Spangled Avenger starts talking and soon Spider-Woman, Cage and Spider-Man are aboard. Daredevil again declines to join any group and the enigmatic Sentry just goes back to his cell…

Captain America even convinces S.H.I.E.L.D. to rehire the immediately cashiered Jessica as liaison between the agency and Avengers – although current Director Maria Hill is hostile to both her and the formation of a new team. Little do any of them know that Spider-Woman’s loyalties divide not two ways, but three…

The first order of business is to find Electro and discover who he was specifically after. The trail leads to Boston, another blistering battle but no joy, forcing Drew to try radical tactics on the remaining, re-incarcerated super-freaks in an attempt to divine the identity of the cause of all their problems.

Soon the rag-tag band are rocketing to the Savage Land – a sub-surface wonderland of cavemen, dinosaurs and other strange creatures left in splendid isolation as a UN Protectorate – to recapture Karl Lykos, a man who feeds on mutant energy to become the reptilian monster Sauron…

The excursion is a disaster: they are marooned, attacked by giant lizards and captured by mega-genius Brainchild and his band of Mutates. Lykos’ escape had been engineered by the ruthless experimenter, who still considers humans as guinea pigs and seems intent on eradicating mankind, but the proto-Avengers’ biggest problem is a former ally.

Wolverine has also tracked the fugitive to the Antarctic paradise and intends to end the threat of Sauron forever… no matter who gets in the way…

He is just too late and the great reptile is reborn. However, during the subsequent battle the heroes uncover an even greater horror. Global good guys S.H.I.E.L.D. have apparently enslaved the indigenous people of the region and are using them to mine alien wonder element Vibranium.

Unfortunately, the secret is guarded by ultra-operative Yelena Belova, the new Black Widow and she is quite prepared to destroy them – and the entire installation – to preserve the secret…

In the appalling aftermath the astounded Avengers make more ghastly discoveries. The Raft breakout also exposed the fact that many of the criminals held there had been reported dead for years and the new team – which now includes Wolverine – have to face the prospect that the Free World’s greatest peacekeeping force may be partly (or wholly) corrupt: stockpiling deadly elements, super-weapons and even metahumans for what cannot possibly be any good reason…

Shaken and betrayed, The New Avengers resolve to find out why, whatever the cost…

Smart, bombastic and laced with tension and brilliant hilarity, this was – and remains – a superb moment of innovation and bold thinking that truly revitalised a moribund concept, With covers-&-variants by Finch, Miki & Frank D’Armata, Steve McNiven, Joe Quesada,. Trevor Hairsine, Olivier Coipel, Jim Cheung, Richard Isanove, Adi Granov and Bryan Hitch, this is a grand jumping-on point for readers who love Fights ‘n’ Tights Fiction and fans familiar with either the TV animation series or movie blockbuster iterations of the World’s Greatest Superheroes.
© 2004 and 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Adventures Avengers volume 9: The Times They Are A’Changin’


By Paul Tobin, Matteo Lolli, Ig Guara, Casey Jones, Christian Vecchia & Sandro Ribeiro (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3832-7

Since its earliest days Marvel has always courted young comicbook audiences. Whether through animation 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 Calvin, the House of Ideas always understood the necessity of cultivating the next generation of readers.

These days, however, accessible child-friendly titles are in decline and with Marvel’s proprietary characters all over screens large and small, the company generally prefers to create adulterated 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 subsequently merged it with remnants of its failed manga-based Tsunami imprint, which was also intended for a junior demographic.

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-original yarns. Additional titles included Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes, Power Pack, Hulk and The Avengers, which ran until 2010 when they were cancelled and replaced by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man.

This particularly light-hearted digest-sized collection re-presents issues #32-35 of Marvel Adventures Avengers (from 2009) and offers a succession of stand-alone yarns that will delight fans with a sense of humour and iota of wit…

What You Need To Know: this incarnation of the World’s Mightiest Superheroes operates an “open-door” policy where almost every metahuman marvel might turn up for duty. However – presumably because of their TV cartoon popularity – the Wondrous Wallcrawler and Jade Juggernaut are on scene in almost every episode…

Written throughout by Paul Tobin, the fast-paced fun begins with ‘The Big Payoff’ illustrated by Matteo Lolli & Christian Vecchia, wherein the team gets a most unpleasant visit from Special Agent Clark Harvey of the Internal Revenue Service.

This weaselling civil servant is ostensibly there to collect the individual Avengers’ taxes, but it’s all a ploy to blackmail the team into forcing a bunch of defaulting villains into paying up…

Smart and deviously hilarious, the clashes between Giant-Girl, Spider-Man and Luke Cage against Whirlwind, the Web-spinner and erudite philosophical monster/political activist Oog or Man-Bull versus Iron Man are entertainment enough, but Iron Man and Giant-Girl overmatched against the Absorbing Man and the childlike Hulk convincing assassin Bullsesye to do his patriotic duty are literally priceless…

When jungle king Ka-Zar visits from the Antarctic lost world all he can think about is learning how to use a car. Sadly Wolverine, Storm, Giant-Girl, Hulk and Spidey all feel safer battling an invasion of super-Saurians unleashed by Stegron the Dinosaur Man than sitting in the same vehicle as the Lord of the Savage Land in ‘You’re Driving Me Crazy’ (art by Ig Guara & Sandro Ribeiro)…

When ancient Egyptian magicians turn time into an out of control merry-go-round, ‘Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos!’ (Lolli & Vecchia) are caught up in the assorted eras of chaos, with Ant-Man, Giant-Girl, Tigra, Storm, the Wallcrawler and Hulk frantically fighting just to keep up…

This titanic tiny tome then concludes on a romantic note in ‘Lovers Leaper’, rendered by Casey Jones, when all the female Avengers head off for a vacation break. They foolishly thought Captain America, Cage, Spider-Man, Hawkeye and Wolverine could handle things for awhile, but boys will be slobs and soon the HQ is a ghastly mess of “man-cave” madness…

Moreover, since Hawkeye now needs a date for the Annual Archer Awards, he tries an on-line dating service and manages to upload not just his but all his buddies’ information onto the site…

With seemingly every eligible lady – super-powered and not – in New York City subscribing to the Lovers Leap site, the unsuspecting heroes are soon being bombarded by an army of annoyed women who think they’ve been stood up by the utterly oblivious Avengers.

…And when they try to get the owner to remove their details, the heroes discover former French bad-guy Batroc the Leaper is in charge and unwilling to do them any favours…

Smart and fun on a number of levels, bright and breezy with lots of light-hearted action and many solid laughs, this book really offers a fabulous alternative to the regular Marvel Universe angst and agony.

Even with the violence toned down and “cartooned-up” the stories are superbly thrilling and beautifully depicted: a perfect introduction for kids and adults alike to the vast realm of adventure we all love…

In 2012 the Marvel Adventures line was superseded by specific comicbook titles tied to Disney XD TV shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories are still an intriguing and perhaps more culturally accessible means of introducing character and concepts to kids born often two generations or more away from those far-distant 1960s originating events.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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X-Men: Alterniverse Visions


By Anne Nocenti, Simon Furman, Mariano Nicieza, Kurt Busiek & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0194-9

Although now commonplace in regular fiction media, once upon a time parallel worlds and alternate Earths were almost unilaterally the province of comicbooks, offering tantalising glimpses of intriguingly different yet profoundly familiar characters.

DC pretty much owned the shtick in the early 1960s but kept it separate from their other exploratory narrative strand “Imaginary Stories”, but over at up-and-coming Marvel Comics, Roy Thomas in particular had a notion to marry the twain…

To be clear: Alternate Earths are part of the overarching shared continuity and Imaginary Stories are just that – fanciful riffs and chimeras using established characters and scenarios, but never part of the nuts-&-bolts universe.

Thus, despite such surrogate Earthers as Thundra, Arkon, Mahkizmo, Gaard and the Squadron Supreme cropping up in regular Fantastic Four and Avengers issues, the House of Ideas followed their competitor’s lead until the launch of What If?

This was an anthological series wherein cosmic voyeur The Watcher offered peeks into a myriad of other universes where key “real” continuity stories were replayed with vastly different outcomes – the same basic idea as Imaginary Stories but with a back-handed acknowledgement that somewhere these epics were “real”…

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

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

In case you’re wondering, those gritty Ultimate Marvel sagas all occur on Earth-1610, the Age of Apocalypse happened on Earth-295, everybody got eaten in the Zombieverse of Earth-2149, the Squadron Supreme originally hailed from Earth-712 and mainstream Marvel tales take place on Earth-616, whilst we readers all dwell on the dull, dreary Earth-1218…

Keep calm then, but never forget that Reality is just a plethora of differing dimensions, and if things go awry in one it can have a cumulative and ultimately catastrophic effect on all of them…

Soon after designating this publishing idiom an Alterniverse, a selection of relatively recent What If? (all from volume 2) yarns starring a selection of X-Men were collected into a trade paperback which, despite then being closely dependent on familiarity with Marvel mainstream, might now – in the wake of all those various movies – be a little more accessible to a general readership…

The extra-dimensional dramas kick off with ‘What If… Wolverine Led Alpha Flight?’ (originally published in #59, March 1994, as ‘What If Wolverine Had Remained a Captive of Alpha Flight?’) by Simon Furman, Bryan Hitch & Joe Rubenstein, wherein the Feral Mutant was imprisoned by the Canadian Government after events in X-Men #119-120.

Once the X-Men are killed trying to get him back and depressed former berserker is left to lead a Canadian team against the Hellfire Club and their Dark Phoenix…

Next up is ‘What If… Storm Had Remained a Thief?’, courtesy of #40, August 1992 and first seen as ‘What if Storm of the X-Men Had Remained a Thief?’

This is a lovely and rare happily-ending tale by Anne Nocenti and Kirkwood Studios – AKA Steve Carr, Deryl Skelton & Rubenstein – which describes how instead of becoming a pickpocket in Cairo and weather goddess in equatorial Africa, the orphan Ororo Munroe is taken under the wing of benign grifter Herman Hassel. Years later when she meets the X-Men it is not as a friend…

‘What If… Rogue Possessed the Power of Thor?’ (#66, August 1994, by Furman, John Royle & Bambos Georgiou) takes a sharp left from a critical point in Avengers Annual #10 wherein the power-leeching mutant battled the team and Spider-Woman.

This time/space, however, Rogue doesn’t let go until the Thunder God is dead and drained and soon finds herself cursed with his might but still a pawn in a cosmic war between eternal Asgard and Loki‘s forces of Ragnarok…

From #69 (January 1995, by Mariano Nicieza, J.R. Justiniano & Roy Richardson) ‘What If… Stryfe Killed the X-Men?’ does what it promises and shows the catastrophic outcome after Professor X dies and his hapless students are left to face the homicidal future-clone of Cable as well as the mutant leveller Apocalypse, after which these walks on the wild side end with a visceral, dark thriller from Kurt Busiek, Ron Randall & Art Nichols who ask ‘What If… Wolverine Battled Weapon-X?’

From #62, June 1994, the grim chronicle details how the rogue Canadian science team that inflicted an Adamantium skeleton and experimental behaviour modification on secret agent Logan missed their mark in this universe and had to settle for a second-best human lab rat.

When their Weapon-X escaped to carve a swathe of slaughter through the country and wiped out neophyte superteam Alpha Flight, the grizzled veteran knew what he had to do, and to whom…

Action-packed, cathartic and just plain fun, these different strokes offer old-fashioned fun in vast amounts, and now that a wider world is filmically conversant with a (if not “the ”) Marvel Universe, perhaps it’s time to raid the vaults again and release similar collections starring Spider-Man, Thor, The Hulk, Fantastic Four, Iron Man and/or the Avengers…

© 1995Marvel Entertainment Group. All rights reserved.
A British edition by published by Boxtree is also available.

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Wolverine: Hunting Season


By Paul Cornell, Alan Davis, Mirco Pierfederici, Mark Farmer, Zach Fischer, Karl Kesel & Tom Palmer (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-541-3

Following all the desperate and life-altering debacles of recent years, the emergent race dubbed Homo Sapiens Superior has, after the epochal events of Avengers versus X-Men, won something of a fresh start and clean slate for most mutants, especially the perennially punching-above-his-weight feral fury Wolverine.

The company initiative MarvelNOW!, having reinvigorated the entire continuity, the various flavours of X-champion are generally starting life anew and this collection, gathering issues #1-6 of Wolverine volume 5 (cover-dated May-September 2013), proffers a compellingly attractive and decidedly different side of the Canadian Crusader which – like companion series Savage Wolverine – explores the man beyond the blood-blind berserker of yesteryear…

Scripted by Paul Cornell and illustrated initially by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer and then Mirco Pierfederici, Zach Fischer, Karl Kesel & Tom Palmer, the all-out action and sinister subversion begins with the eponymous 4-part ‘Hunting Season’ right in the middle of the mayhem as our horrified hero desperately tries to talk down a spree-killer in the midst of a body-strewn hostage situation in a Mall. Partially disintegrated, Wolverine can only attempt to reason with the man until his arms and legs grow back…

Mild-mannered Robert Gregson is acting really weird and has an impossibly powerful supergun. He’s calm, rational and displays diffident concern to his young son Alex as he systematically vaporises all the shoppers in the arcade. By the time he turns the raygun on the boy, Wolverine is just healed enough to stop the complacent killer. Amidst charred bones and human ashes the cops burst in and Logan sees old friend and NYPD Detective Chieko Tomomatsu in the lead.

In the blistered aftermath nobody realises that the odd odour which permeated Gregson now emanates from Alex, until the kid attacks them all and flees with the gun. As he utilises the hand cannon to ravage the city, Wolverine is in close pursuit. Refusing to eviscerate a 10-year old, he tries to Alex keeps talking but the boy sounds like a dispassionate boffin absentmindedly taking notes…

Across town a trio of cops intercepts a gang of drug-dealers and they too suddenly acquire a strange smell and completely detached attitude. In unison, they turn on and dispatch the guy who turned up late…

Repeatedly dodging instant incineration, the Clawful Canuck corners Alex high up on a construction site and confirms that something has possessed the lad. Desperately trying to establish contact with the controlling force – which refers to itself in the plural – Wolverine is horrified as the kid jumps to his doom and the gun finds another triggerman before the slaughter continues…

When the new Nick Fury (long story short: the son of the original and looks like the African American S.H.I.E.L.D. Director from the assorted movies – see Battle Scars for further details) arrives and downs the shooter, the gun flies off before anyone can stop it…

As Wolverine brings the superspy up to speed, he has a bizarre vision and the cosmic observer known as The Watcher appears – only to the mutant’s enhanced senses – thus indicating that whatever is going on it’s a danger to the entire universe…

Oddly enough, the first stop in sorting the problem is a bar. Guernica on West Fourth is a superhero hostelry and a very unique think-tank meets there. As well as a comicbook writer, there’s an odds-maker on superhero battles, a professional powers cataloguer and the current CEO of repair conglomerate Damage Control, but what the fast-healing hero needs is the services of talented and unflappable surgeon Victoria Frankenstein (she pronounces it “Fronken-schteen”), possibly the only sawbones capable of removing the smart-bullet Alex embedded in the mutant’s shoulder.

The last in line of such a fateful dynasty is necessary since Logan’s flesh knits back together faster than most scalpels can cleave it. The brainstorming/field surgery session also leads to one inescapable conclusion: whoever or whatever is possessing people acts like an airborne virus…

The gun meanwhile has found those co-opted cops and robbers. Fury and Wolverine are right behind them and subsequently uncover a plot to explode a bomb full of those pesky microbe invaders over Yankee Stadium during the biggest game of the season…

Logan of course spectacularly foils the plot but since he can still see The Watcher, the confused champion knows things aren’t quite over yet…

‘Drowning Logan’, illustrated by Mirco Pierfederici, Mark Farmer, Zach Fischer, Karl Kesel & Tom Palmer, takes up the story as the insidious organisms, now evolved to deceive Wolverine’s sense of smell, possess an entire S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier crew – Fury Jr. included – and then capture the one being able to resist their mind-bending infection.

Trapped with a trio of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents also (temporarily) immune to the takeover terrors and a fading phone-link to the Guernica group, the Feral Fury must defeat an army of friends and colleagues housing an unstoppable invasion force before it’s judgement day for our universe. Thankfully a clue to the microbial possessors’ incredible origins lead to a fantastic counter-attack and their eventual repulsion – but not without shocking personal cost to the formerly fast-healing hero…

To Be Continued…

Hunting Season also includes a beautiful gallery of 16 covers and variants by Davis & Farmer, Jason Keith, Olivier Coipel, Salvador Larroca, Skottie Young, Humberto Ramos, Mike Deodato Jr., Ed McGuiness & Pascal Campion, and comes with the now-standard added extras provided by of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the code – for free – from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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X-Men: Curse of the Mutants – Mutants vs. Vampires


By Chuck Kim, Simon Spurrier, Duane Swierczynski, Chris Claremont, Bill Sienkiewicz & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5229-3

All major comics publishing events have satellite specials these days and the X-Men: Curse of the Mutants – which ran from July 2010 to May 2011 in selected Marvel titles – was no exception. Thus, this supplementary volume, gathering the One-shots Storm & Gambit, Smoke & Blood and Blade, plus the contents of the anthologized miniseries X-Men: Curse of the Mutants – Mutants vs. Vampires, makes for a handy and beguiling adjunct to the main feature.

The sinister suspense begins with X-Men: Curse of the Mutants – Storm & Gambit (by Chuck Kim, Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend, Jaime Mendoza, Wayne Faucher, Al Vey, Victor Olazaba & Mark Irwin) as the mutant’s professional thieves are dispatched to the Mediterranean to steal Dracula’s headless corpse from an island infested with vampires.

When the stealthy duo are detected and their craft shot down, Storm quickly realises that they have an unseen ally on the island of blood. This proves crucial as they battle through legions of lychs to ultimate success – but the price of his aid might well be her soul…

Simon Spurrier & Gabriel Hernandez Walta then focus on the frustrations of super-genius Doctor Nemesis (and his X-Club associates Kavita Rao and Madison Jeffries) in X-Men: Curse of the Mutants – Smoke & Blood.

Refusing to acknowledge something as stupid and primitive as the supernatural, Nemesis and his team furiously experiment on a captured vampire warrior, also seeking a cure for the infected victims slowly turning into evil blood-suckers in the drastically overstretched laboratories.

His efforts are constantly, inexplicably frustrated until the monster breaks free and the entire research station goes into lethal lockdown – with the doctor and his colleagues on the wrong side of the hermetically sealed walls…

Men: Curse of the Mutants – Blade follows as writer Duane Swierczynski and artist Tim Green provide a revelatory prequel. ‘The Light at the End’ finds the demi-human hero uncovering a covert campaign to eradicate all vampire hunters and drawn into a trap where day-walking undead slaughter all his allies. Barely escaping the net of Xarus, the badly rattled sole survivor heads towards San Francisco and an unlikely alliance…

The two issues of X-Men: Curse of the Mutants – Mutants vs. Vampires comprise a selection of short yarns starring many of the huge mutant cast in solo action, opening with ‘From Husk Til Dawn’ by James Asmus & Tom Raney, wherein the hard-body shapeshifter sets herself up as a walking honey – or is that blood? – trap to take vampires off the streets of San Francisco, one fanger at a time.

Christopher Sequeira & Sana Takeda then go all disco nostalgic as Dazzler meets a band of vampires who have all been grooving and chilling since they died during the glitter-balled, star-spangled Seventies in ‘I’m Gonna Stake You, Sucka’…

Peter David & Mick Bertilorenzi continue in darkly comedic vein with ‘Rue Blood’ as Rogue confronts a somehow familiar bloodsucker and experiences an unsuspected karmic connection with the tragic, beautiful blood-beast, after which Rob Williams & Doug Braithwaite reveal a grim secret and lost comrade from Magneto’s past in ‘Survivors’…

From issue #2 ‘Flesh, Fangs and Burnt Rubber’ by Mike Benson & Mark Texeira pits Gambit against a marauding gang of undead biker chicks from Hell, whilst in ‘Call Me Santo’ by Spurrier & Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Rockslide and Armor face the largest vampire ever turned whilst transporting food and supplies to Utopia.

Next Howard Chaykin goes ‘Skin Deep’ to reveal how Vietnamese mutant Karma uncovers a cunning fanged predator who had discovered how to hunt safely and with her victims’ tacit consent…

The last story, by Mike W. Barr & Agustin Padilla, stars The Angel in ‘Voices’ wherein the winged wonder hunts down a once-human beast who satisfies his drive to kill by only consuming murderers. As Angel constantly struggles against the dark desires programmed into him by the mutant horror Apocalypse, he can only wonder just who is the greatest monster here?

Following pencilled pages, sketches and roughs from Mico Suayan and Bachalo, plus character designs by Hernandez Walta, the story portion concludes with ‘Night Screams!’ by Chris Claremont, Bill Sienkiewicz & Bob Wiacek (from Uncanny X-Men #159, July 1982) relating the mutant heroes’ first encounter with the lord of vampires.

After Dracula ambushes Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Kitty Pryde and Wolverine must race the dawn to confront her assailant and effect a cure before the Windrider becomes undead forever…

With covers and variants by Suayan, Bachalo, Townsend, Christina Strain, Clayton Crain, Dave Wilkins, Nick Bradshaw, Jim Charalampidis and Sienkiewicz, this is a splendidly dark selection of Costumed Dramas which will delight both dedicated fans and casual readers alike. Just finish it before the sun sets…
© 1982, 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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X-Men: Curse of the Mutants


By Victor Gischler, Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4847-0

With a property as vast and valuable as the X-Men, change is a necessarily good thing, even if you sometimes need a scorecard to keep up. This thoroughly entertaining read (collecting X-Men volume 2 #1-6 and text features from X-Men: Curse of the Mutants Saga and X-Men: Curse of the Mutants Spotlight from July 2010 to May 2011) keeps the baggage to a sustainable minimum for non-addicts and concentrates on delivering a tense and action-packed thriller heavy on conflict and light on extended sub-plots.

Sweetening the pot is a veritable feast of superb covers and variants by Medina, Vlasco, Adi Granov, Olivier Coipel, Mark Morales, Laura Martin, John Romita Jr., Dean White, Marte Gracia, Marko Djurdjevic and Mike Mayhew.

As the story opens most of the World’s remaining mutants are residing on an island in San FranciscoBay dubbed “Utopia” with X-Men team-leader Cyclops running the enclave like a kingdom…

The bizarre freaks are generally welcomed by the easygoing human population.

In other news: the planet’s assorted vampire clans have been recently united after centuries of internecine struggle by Xarus, second son of Dracula, who executed his formidable father to succeed to the supreme position of Lord of Vampires. The horrific heir is a meticulous planner and has even secured technology and magics which allow the undead to walk safely in sunlight…

When a nosferatu suicide-bomber explodes himself in a crowded San Francisco plaza his fiendishly re-engineered blood taints and compromises the shocked, stunned bystanders with a virus that inexorably infects and overwhelms everybody exposed to it. The recently united night-hunters have declared all-out war on their food-supply, bolstering their ranks without risking being hunted… and one of the first to succumb is veteran X-warrior Jubilee…

As the contagion spreads, Wolverine leads a scouting mission into the increasingly overrun city and discovers that the campaign is meticulously organised and extremely far advanced. Moreover the new vampire lord has planned carefully and ambitiously: a key tactic is to “turn” every mutant in Utopia, providing the would-be conqueror with a compliant army of super-powered, blood-sucking storm-troopers. Jubilee has already joined them…

Always genned-up on undead affairs, half-vampire, all-Hunter Blade joins the party and brings the embattled mutants up to speed, making them realise that they face impossible odds. With new vampires springing up everywhere Cyclops makes the seemingly suicidal decision to revive Dracula, over Blade’s strenuous objections.

…And then Wolverine finally succumbs to the manufactured virus and switches sides…

When the Children of the Night make their final assault against the assembled mutant heroes all seems lost… but Cyclops has a cunning plan…

The bonus features section begins with material from X-Men: Curse of the Mutants Saga; specifically ‘X-Men a Go-Go!’ wherein John Rhett Thomas, assisted by Michael Kronenberg, interviews event main scripter Victor Gischler, after which ‘We are The X-Men’ pictorially introduces the major players – mutant and otherwise – in a spectacular spread.

Then from X-Men: Curse of the Mutants Spotlight, Chris Arrant and Gischler discuss the aftermath of the event in ‘X-Men: Lifting the Curse’, Paco Medina pictorially reveals all in ‘Drawing Blood’, and ‘Blade: Curse of the Vampires!’ details the history and possible future of Marvel’s most famous night-stalker…

This is an exhilarating, exemplary romp that pushes all the right buttons, engagingly written by Gischler and entrancingly illustrated by Medina & Juan Vlasco. If you want fast, furious, grim ‘n’ gritty Fights ‘n’ Tights magic this is a perfect one-shop stop for your edification and delectation.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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X-Men: X-Termination


By Greg Pak, David Lapham, Marjorie Liu, Matteo Buffagni, André Araújo, David López & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-549-9

Since the 1960s comics fans have been totally au fait with the concept and complexities of alternate universes and the bewildering potentialities of an infinity of Earths. Offering irresistible temptations to writers and fans alike, the hallowed plot device offers the opportunity to creatively meddle and play at will and still back-pedal if readers get too stroppy or upset or – worse yet – bored and confused…

Marvel has a highly structured multiverse and every alternate realm comes with its own “Official Reality Number” – the regular mainstream continuity is set to Earth-616 and the Ultimates Universe is designated Earth-1610 for example.

Of course, once introduced, each and every new iteration is somebody’s favourite and consequently characters regularly traverse the cosmic void between continua barely distinguishable or wildly variant.

There have been many miniseries such as Avengers: United They Stand or Blink and even regular series set on or between these divergent planes such as Exiles, Age of Apocalypse and others…

It generally takes a clear head and true devotion to follow and wallow in the minutia of the enterprise. Consider that your only warning…

Collecting Age of Apocalypse #13-14, X-Treme X-Men #12-13, X-Termination #1-2 and Astonishing X-Men volume 3, #60-61 this hugely enjoyable but woefully continuity-entangled cosmic rumble attempts to bring a little clarity and clear some very crowded decks with a bombastic brouhaha that first appeared between March and April 2013.

The mini-event appeared in selected mutant titles beginning with Age of Apocalypse #13 which offered an ‘X-Termination Prologue’ by David Lapham, Renato Arlem & Valentine De Landro set on the alternate dubbed Earth-295, where the early death of Charles Xavier led to an appalling Reality in which the self-appointed mutant god of natural selection Apocalypse almost eradicated humanity before a coterie of radically different heroes and villains stopped him.

In the wake of the 1995 “Age of Apocalypse” event, many of this Earth-295’s inhabitants escaped to “our” world and generated a tidal wave of plots and story-arcs. One such was tragic widower Kurt Wagner, a teleporting sword-wielding X-warrior determined to hunt down a band of genocidal Apocalypse minions including Sugar Man, the Blob and evil twisted versions of Iceman and the Beast.

However, whilst he pursued vengeance in our world, on his own Earth the last survivors were losing a battle against the legacies of the defeated Apocalypse: a shattered eco-system, insuperable differences between the equally devastated human and mutant populations and even cosmic meddling by cosmic interlopers…

Led by Jean Grey , her lover Graydon “Horror Show” Creed and a mysterious strategist dubbed Prophet, a disparate band (including cyborg Donald “Goodnight” Pierce, Deadeye and Fiend) have spent more than a decade fighting Apocalypse’s self-appointed successor Weapon Omega and hunting a cosmic artefact dubbed a “Life Seed” hidden millennia past by one of the pan-dimensional star gods called Celestials.

Now their apparently futile battles are nearing an end, whilst on Earth-616 their old comrade Nightcrawler – currently working with Wolverine’s covert black ops team X-Force – having captured his major objective Henry (Dark Beast) McCoy, prepares to abandon his new friends and return to his broken home world…

Simultaneously in X-Treme X-Men #12 – another ‘X-Termination Prologue’ by Greg Pak & André Araújo – Alison Blair, the Dazzler of Earth-616, is leading a team of heroes from a plethora of Realities in a crusade against a league of malign Charles Xaviers. These terrifying telepotents have pooled their formidable psychic resources in a scheme to conquer the entire multiverse and Alison is determined to stop them

Even with an appalling attrition rate her squad – psionic super-computer Sage, Grecian man-god Hercules and strange versions of her old X-Men comrades Wolverine (Howlett), Scott Summers and a very young Nightcrawler Kurt Waggoner – are barely holding their own against the Evil Xaviers.

Now, on a predominantly Egyptian Earth, the rogue telepaths have opened an inter-dimensional rift and begun feeding on the energies released by sacrificing hundreds of humans. In a frantic assault the X-Treme team rescue and apparently redeem an enslaved Xavier (or rather a self-sustaining Professor X head in a jar), but the sinister psychic savants’ meddling has opened a hole to a far greater realm and deadlier threat…

The saga properly begins in X-Termination #1 (by Marjorie Liu, Pak, David López & Allen Martinez) with the origin of the multiverse – a deliberate construction of massive and ancient cosmic intellects designed to imprison their greatest mistake in the void between Realities, trapped for eternity between infinite layers of Creation.

Recently, however, the incessant crossings and transfers between supposed inviolate Realities has weakened those walls ands now the portal manufactured by the Xaviers has breached it completely, allowing something intolerable to break out…

On Earth-616 Wolverine’s X-Force team – Gambit, Iceman, Northstar and Karma – are hunting their treacherous former ally Nightcrawler (of Earth-295, remember?) whose actions have led to the death of team mate Fantomex, and brought him into an insane alliance with the Dark Beast.

The inter-dimensional fugitives are in San Francisco attempting to manipulate the power of a dormant Space God known as the “Dreaming Celestial” when X-Force arrives, but the Beast is able to use the giant’s power to open a gateway to 295 through which the pair escape.

However, as Nightcrawler hands the war-criminal McCoy over to Jean and Prophet, it becomes clear that something is wrong. The portal isn’t closing, only spewing out a torrent of vile detritus from who knows where…

Only when in short order both X-Force and then Dazzler’s X-Treme team emerge from the spitting, arcing rent in reality does Nightcrawler begin to realise the potential catastrophe his rash actions have triggered – a fear confirmed when a trio of monstrous unstoppable humanoids emerge and begin absorbing all this Earth’s energy and life-force. They have already consumed the Egyptian Earth to get here and within seconds the amassed, amazed army of heroes suffers its first fatality…

The saga continues in Astonishing X-Men volume 3, #60 (Liu, Matteo Buffagni & Arlem) as the assembled warriors redouble their efforts but are easily repulsed. The only successes come when Karma’s psionic talent provides the embattled heroes with the secret origin of the deadly devourers and Iceman’s powers provide a defence the creatures cannot absorb…

The elation is short-lived as the beings split up and one uses the still-open portal to voyage to Earth-616 and another irresistible, immovable feast…

Panicked and galvanised, the 616 heroes prepare to follow but Prophet bids them stop and think. He has a notion that the Celestial Life Seed lost somewhere on Earth-295 might be the only weapon capable of stopping the inter-dimensional ravagers. However as the heroes separate into teams to tackle the threat to multiple Earths and seek out the seed, Dark Beast McCoy makes his own plans to profit from the heroes’ sacrifices…

Lapham, Araújo & Arlem extend the epic in Age of Apocalypse #14 as Wolverine, Howlett, Hercules and Northstar join Prophet, Gambit, Deadeye, young Kurt Waggoner and Sage in San Francisco on 616 and find the devourer absorbing the inestimable energy of the Dreaming Celestial.

On 295 a team of X-champions and a battalion of robotic Sentinels fight a futile holding action as McCoy, Nightcrawler, Scott Summers, Dazzler and Jean hunt deep under the Earth for the Seed, painfully aware that the ancient artefact created Apocalypse and threatens to transform whoever uses it into something as bad, if not worse…

However when Jean and Nightcrawler secure the “Apocalypse pod” and abandon their former comrades, they are in turn ambushed by McCoy who steals the vital, yet horrific device for his own purposes…

On Earth 616 another hero dies as the antediluvian invader absorbs the forces within the Dreaming Celestial and grows to monumental proportions. Moreover as the X-fighters regroup in X-Treme X-Men #13 (Pak, Lapham, Liu, Guillermo Mogorron, Raul Valdés, Edgar Tadeo, Carlos Cuevas, Don Ho & Walden Wong) they discover an even more ghastly threat.

The trio are merely a vanguard for an infinite army of energy eaters and all the power being consumed will be used to free the horde to absorb and end each and every iota of creation…

With multiversal Armageddon imminent, Astonishing X-Men volume 3, #61 (Liu, Arlem, Jose Kleber de Moura Jr. Buffagni & Raul Valdés) sees more heroes fall, one self-despising villain redeemed and a valiant sacrifice to the Apocalypse Seed at last result in an effective weapon against the devourers. Also unleashed is the true secret origin of Reality, revealed before it all spectacularly wraps up in X-Termination #2 (Lapham, López, Mogorron, Valdés, Cuevas & Martinez) with the end of one universe and the migration of the last of the heroes to another.

No prizes for guessing which one…

Taught, fraught, beautifully rendered by many talented hands and unarguably spectacular, if a little hard to follow in places, X-Termination also includes a beautiful cover-and-variants gallery by Greg Land, Salvador Larroca, Kalman Andrasofszky, Ed McGuiness, Morry Hollowell, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cam Smith, Rain Beredo, Mike Deodato and Philip Noto – but no digital add-ons or extras this time.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Savage Wolverine: Kill Island


By Frank Cho, coloured by Jason Keith (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-539-0

It must be summer now, since here’s a popular entertainment featuring mutants and dinosaurs all garnished with heavy helpings of aliens, explosions and hot chicks in skimpy fur bikinis…

Following all the desperate and life-altering debacles of recent years, the emergent race dubbed Homo Sapiens Superior has, after the epochal events of Avengers versus X-Men, won something of a fresh start and clean slate.

The company initiative MarvelNOW! having reshaped the entire continuity, the various factors of X-champions are generally starting life anew and this collection, gathering issues #1-5 of Savage Wolverine (spanning March-July 2013), proffers a deliciously rare and oddly appetising aspect of the feral fury.

One word seldom applied to the exploits of the Clawful Canadian is “Fun” but that’s exactly what this sharp, explosive mystery adventure offers as 21st century heroic everyman Wolverine literally falls into an exotic, frantic, deadly dangerous and darkly hilarious romp in the antediluvian wonder world known as the Savage Land.

It all began eight months ago as jungle queen Shanna, the She-Devil led a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists and cartographers on a research trip to the most desolate and unmapped section of the vast Antarctic subterranean dinosaur preserve.

The voyage ended in disaster as their aircraft was disabled by a technological damping field enveloping an enigmatic island in an inland sea. The vehicle plunged to Earth and no more was heard from the explorers…

Now, following an explosion of light that turns night to day, Wolverine groggily regains consciousness and his super-senses inform him that somehow he has been transported to the Savage Land – split seconds before a velociraptor tries to make him supper.

After dispatching the hungry beast the amazed mutant spots a native war-party carrying a wounded S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and leaps to the rescue.

Slaughtering the primitives, he learns from the dying Mike McSwiggin where the ship went down and, locating the wreckage, also finds Shanna who mistakes him for an attacking native and almost kills him…

The She-Devil tells a grim tale of slow attrition that saw her entire team, deprived of their electronic arsenal, fall one by one as they repeatedly tried to escape the monsters and savages. Mike had reasoned that the damping device was hidden within a fantastic monster-shaped mountain at the centre of the isle and built a bomb to destroy it. Now the only survivor Shanna convinces Wolverine they must carry out Mike’s plan if they have any hope of returning to civilisation…

And then a flight of pteranodons attack, coordinated as if they had human intellects…

At the caveman camp, another flash of light has resulted in the unexplained arrival of abrasive teenaged super-genius Amadeus Cho.

With his advanced personal tech and universal translator he soon has the ape-men believing that he is a god and, despite being rather distracted by some of the more nubile offerings (teenage boy, right?), quickly ascertains the true history of the Island…

Wolverine has meanwhile been rescued by Shanna, and the pair – squabbling like an old married couple – set to battling their way through a horde of natives and beasts, intent on climbing the monster-faced mountain and destroying the tech-disruption gadget.

Amadeus has found something interesting in his discussions with the village head-man. The chief speaker has an elixir which can instantaneously heal wounds and perhaps even revive the dead. The story the chief tells is incredible and terrifying…

Uncounted eons past a star crashed to earth. When the dust settled it was revealed to be a colossal giant battling a horrific alien beast. Subduing the monstrous “Dark Walker” the giant (deduced by Cho to be one of the multiverse-spanning space gods known as “Celestials”) then imprisoned the thing inside a mountain with a Great Machine to keep it dormant.

To protect the device the Celestial, with a wave of its hand, casually evolved the primitive hominids who observed the spectacle into humans to forever guard the prison and prevent tampering. He even granted them uncanny powers, which was lucky as periodically humans from elsewhere would materialise, baffled but always intent on making trouble…

The latest such interloper is having second thoughts, but when a war party tentatively offers a truce, Shanna accidentally spooks them and the result is yet another appalling bloodbath that results in her death…

Pushed off a cliff, Wolverine of course survives but determines to destroy the machine whatever it takes, unaware that Cho has convince the chief to use his life-elixir to resurrect the She-Devil. When she revives she is no longer the same person…

The fluid connects the reawakened to the island and imparts immense power and greater intelligence, as the morose mutant finds when he is attacked by the mountain’s last defenders – a pack of super gorillas…

Cho, meanwhile, has uncovered another impossible mystery, one somehow connected to a monster thought tragically unique, but has no time to ponder upon it as Shanna – now onside – reveals that Wolverine has a bomb and will be more determined than ever to blow up the machine. With the terrifying realisation that it is the only thing containing a creature even Celestials could not kill, the assembled heroes and jungle guardians rush to the mountain just in time to meet the latest outsider teleported in… the rampaging, incredible Hulk…

And in the resulting chaotic melee the ancient alien sleeper awakes…

Blisteringly bombastic, lavishly beautiful and staggeringly visceral, this blockbuster book is enthralling and utterly compelling, with portents and warning of even greater epics to come, but nevertheless reserves plenty of room for humour and even baldly slapstick comedy – another perfect jumping-on point for new and retired fans alike…

Kill Island also includes a beautiful cover-and-variants gallery by Cho, Joe Quesada, J. Scott Campbell, Gabrielle Dell’ Otto, Skott Young, Milo Manara, Leinil Francis Yu, Adi Granov & David Johnson, and comes with the now-standard added extras provided by of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the code – for free – from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.