Category: X-Men

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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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Uncanny X-Men: Revolution


By Brian Michael Bendis, Chris Bachalo, Fraser Irving, Jaime Mendoza, Tim Townsend, Al Vey & Victor Olazaba (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-548-2

Following all the poor choices and horrendous paths taken by assorted mutant heroes over the last few years, and spinning off from the events of Avengers versus X-Men, MarvelNOW! reshaped the entire continuity, taking the various factors of X-iterations in truly bizarre directions.

At the dawn of the Marvel Age, a very special bunch of kids were singled out by wheelchair-bound telepath Charles Xavier. Gloomy Scott Summers, ebullient Bobby Drake, wealthy golden boy Warren Worthington III, insular Jean Grey and simian genius Henry McCoy were gathered up by the enigmatic Professor X – a driven man dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between massed humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants, ominously dubbed Homo Superior.

To achieve his dream he educated and trained the five youngsters – codenamed Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and The Beast – for unique roles as heroes, ambassadors and symbols in an effort to counter the growing tide of human prejudice and fear.

Over years the struggle to integrate mutants into society resulted in constant conflict, compromise and tragedy, including Jean’s death, Warren’s mutilation, Hank’s further mutation and eventually Cyclops’ radicalisation.

The formerly idealistic, steadfast and trustworthy team-leader Cyclops was even forced to kill Xavier before eventually joining with old (demon-possessed) ally Magik and former foes Magneto and “White Queen” Emma Frost in a hard-line alliance devoted to preserving mutant lives at the cost, whenever necessary, of human ones.

Abandoning Scott, his surviving team-mates and newer X-Men such as Wolverine, Storm and Kitty Pryde stayed true to Xavier’s dream, opting to protect and train the next X-generation of kids at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning…

Furthermore when McCoy realised he was dying, he became obsessed with the notion that the still starry-eyed First Class of X-Men could bring the Mutant Enemy terrorist No. 1 back from his current path of doctrinaire madness and ideological race war insanity.

To that end the dying Beast used time-travel technology in a last-ditch attempt to avoid a species war: risking the entire space/time continuum by bringing the valiant youngsters back to the future to reason with the debased and possibly deranged Cyclops.

The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than restoring noble, dedicated Scott Summers to reason, the confrontation simply hardened the renegade’s heart and strengthened his resolve.

Moreover, even though McCoy’s younger self impossibly cured his older iteration, young Henry and the rest of the X-Kids refused to go home until “bad” Cyclops was stopped…

All that occurred in All-New X-Men: Here Comes Yesterday but here Revolution offers the other side of the coin in a slim seductive tome collecting Uncanny X-Men volume 3, #1-5 from February-April 2013; a dark and angst-drenched chronicle of desperate freedom fighters’ war to save their endangered species…

Scripted by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by Chris Bachalo (with Jaime Mendoza, Tim Townsend, Al Vey & Victor Olazaba), this suspenseful reboot opens with ‘The New Revolution’ as an impenetrable bastion of global security is broached with ease by a mutant outlaw with a personal agenda. The wanted warrior is offering to betray Cyclops and his “Extinction Team”, and S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill and her trusted advisors simply cannot afford to dismiss the intel or waste an opportunity…

The world is changing rapidly. New mutants are appearing in increasing numbers and all with more impressive talents than ever before. Worse still, by carefully avoiding unprovoked acts of violence, Cyclops’ crew are gaining the trust and respect of many oppressed sectors of humanity: the young, the poor, the disenfranchised and rebellious…

Summers and his allies are busy too: saving recently triggered student Fabio Medina from his own powers and police over-reaction in San Diego. The youthful and extremely telegenic Extinction Squad’s argument is all but made for them when a flight of hunter/killer Sentinels attack, utterly disregarding the safety of the humans watching in their programmed frenzy to destroy all mutants…

Following their possession by the Phoenix force in Avengers versus X-Men, the powers of Cyclops, Magik, Magneto and Frost are no longer reliable, flaring from overload to ineffectuality without warning and ‘Poink is the New Bamf’ finds the former White Queen agonising over the apparent loss of her telepathic gifts and recent break-up with Cyclops.

Magneto, meanwhile, is occupied with the often odious task of teaching obnoxious, frightened kids how to use their powers and survive in a state of perpetual combat readiness in the underground bunker dubbed the New Charles Xavier School for Mutants.

After a few terrifying sessions, raw recruits Fabio, metamorphic chameleon Benjamin Deeds and healer Christopher Muse – AKA Triage – welcome the prospect of a field trip, accompanying the grown-ups on a reluctant visit to the mother of time-bending Eva “Tempus” Bell in Australia…

However when the kids and their mentors teleport in, thanks to the mutant traitor, America’s greatest heroes are waiting for them…

‘Avengers vs. Uncanny X-Men Go!’ presents something totally unexpected as furious battle does not immediately break out and Captain America instead engages Cyclops in impassioned debate in front of the waiting media’s cameras.

The two sides are philosophically diametrically opposed, however, and with hotheads like Hawkeye and the Hulk itching for a fight inevitably negotiations break down. It’s no contest though as Eva instantly freezes all the Avengers in a static time bubble. After making another subversive, politically charged statement the Uncanny X-Men wink out; victorious without a blow being struck…

In the untitled 4th issue the repercussions begin. With the authorities going ballistic at the ease with which the Extinction team defeated the World’s Mightiest heroes and terrified by the terrorists’ successful wooing of discontented humans globally, the internecine ideological mutant conflict heats up after Cyclops, Emma, Magik and Magneto turn up at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning with a chilling proposition.

Convinced of coming mutant extinction at human hands, Scott has come with an open invitation to any student who might wish to join his own academy: one dedicated to training Homo Superior to fight and survive rather than wait for humanity to turn on them…

At first disquieted by confronting his younger, stupid self and his naive childhood friends, the elder Cyclops is gratified when the psychically conjoined, socially-challenged Stepford Sisters Celeste, Mindee and Phoebe agree to switch, and stunned when the teenaged Warren Worthington also agrees to ditch his former classmates…

Unfortunately even as Emma’s trio of telepotent protégés take a cruel opportunity to test and torment their “psi-blind” former tutor, back in the bunker the unsupervised new mutants have stumbled into the Danger Room and pushed some buttons they really shouldn’t have…

The adults and transfer students arrive in time to save the kids but then Magik explodes in an agonised paroxysm of demonic flame…

Fraser Irving illustrates the final chapter in this compelling compilation as an arcane spotlight falls on llyana Nikolievna Rasputina. The teleporting mutant is wielder of the puissant Soulsword and mortal host to a supernal, infernal entity known as the Darkchylde and her teleporting discs work by instantaneously shunting subjects through the hellish realm of Limbo, but now her jaunts are fraught with peril and pain.

On investigating she finds the Limbo dimension that is her true home has been annexed by dark god Dread Dormammu and she is forced to show the ghastly invader the extreme error of his ways by letting loose the very worst part of herself…

Addictive, enthralling and utterly compelling, this alternative X-outing mixes blistering action, paranoiac suspense and slowly-mounting tension with the signature themes of alienation and personal freedom to deliver a frighteningly direct continuation of the nihilistic end of the once directionless mutant franchise.

Nevertheless, there’s still room for humour and this book offers a perfect jumping-on point for new and retired fans alike – as long as you also read the companion All-New X-Men volumes…

Revolution also includes a beautiful cover-and-variants gallery by Bachalo, Irving, Joe Quesada, Gabrielle Dell’ Otto, Skott Young, Francesco Francavilla, Stuart Immonen, Phil Noto, Kris Anka & Ed McGuiness, and the now standard 21st century add-on 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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Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Wolverine Reloaded


By Chris Claremont, Larry Hama, Daniel Way, Marc Guggenheim, Rick Remender, Paul Smith, Alan Davis, John Buscema, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Steve Dillon, Howard Chaykin, Phil Noto & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-537-6

Wolverine debuted as a throwaway foe for the Incredible Hulk in a tantalising teaser-glimpse at the end of issue #180 (October 1974) before indulging in a full-on scrap with the Green Goliath in the next issue, and then vanished until the launch of the All-New, All Different X-Men.

The semi-feral Canadian mutant with fearsome claws and killer attitude rode – or perhaps caused – the meteoric rise of the reconstructed and rebooted outcast hero team before gaining his own series, super-star status and silver screen immortality.

He hasn’t looked back since, although over the years many untold tales of the aged agent (it was revealed in Origin: the True Story of Wolverine that he had been born in the 19th century) have explored his missing exploits in ever-increasing intensity and torturous detail.

Thus Wolverine’s secret origin(s) and stream of revelatory disclosures regarding his extended, self-obscured life have gradually seeped out. Cursed with recurring and periodic bouts of amnesia, and mind-wiped ad nauseum by sinister or even well-meaning friends and foes, the Chaotic Canucklehead has packed a lot of adventurous living into his centuries of existence – but frequently doesn’t remember much of it.

This permanently unploughed field has conveniently resulted in a crop of dramatically mysterious, undisclosed back-histories, some of which are contained within this intriguing but frequently contradictory action extravaganza produced under the always rewarding Marvel Platinum Definitive Editions umbrella.

This latest treasury of titanic tales gathers some more impressive – if less obvious landmarks – from the Savage Stalker’s extensive canon and cannily focuses on the character’s Asian connections and even a struggle with sinister mastermind (and movie menace) the Mandarin.

Contained herein are alien encounters, high-tech hi-jinks and samurai slaughter-fests from Uncanny X-Men #172-173 and 256-258, Uncanny X-Men Annual #11, Wolverine volume 2 #s 10 and 57, Wolverine Origins #5, Wolverine volume 3 #61 and Uncanny X-Force #34, spanning August 1983 to January 2013, offering a fair representation of what is quite frankly an over-abundance of riches to pick from…

The carnage begins with a sleekly impressive turn from scripter Chris Claremont and illustrators Paul Smith & Bob Wiacek from Uncanny X-Men #172 (August 1983) as ‘Scarlet in Glory’ sees Logan announcing his impending wedding to Mariko, daughter of old enemy Shingen Harada, lord of Yakuza Clan Yashida…

When the rest of the team arrive in Japan for the impending nuptials they are all poisoned, leaving Logan and Rogue – whom he deeply distrusts – to seek out an antidote. Meanwhile staid maternal Storm is transformed from placid nature goddess to grim-and-gritty bad-ass by mercenary maniac and devoted Logan-lover Yukio even as the last X-Man races a ticking toxic clock to a literal deadline…

The result is sheer carnage as the feral mutant goes wild. With desperate-to-please probationary X-Man Rogue in tow Wolverine carves a bloody trail to Yakuza mercenary (and Mariko’s rival for the rule of Clan Yashida) Silver Samurai and psychopathic mastermind Viper in ‘To Have and Have Not’…

Although the bold champions are eventually triumphant, the victory comes at great cost. Logan returns to America alone and unwed after Mariko inexplicably calls off the nuptials…

Depressed, heartbroken and far off the rails, Logan is dragged to another reality in ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ – by Claremont, Alan Davis & Paul Neary from Uncanny X-Men Annual #11 – when duplicitous super-mutant Horde compels the team (Storm, Rogue, Dazzler, Longshot, Psylocke and Havok plus guests Captain Britain and Meggan) to obtain the cosmic Crystal of Ultimate Vision for him. None are aware that the fate of all Mankind is at stake and that Wolverine’s bestial instincts are the key to humanity’s ultimate salvation…

Wolverine volume 2 #10 (from August 1989 by Claremont, John Buscema & Bill Sienkiewicz) then counted down ’24 Hours’ as the mutant’s solitary birthday drink in modern day Madripoor stirs horrific memories of ancient, distant tragedy. On the same day years ago Sabretooth had slaughtered Logan’s woman Silver Fawn and Wolverine’s attempts to gain justice and vengeance proved ineffectual and humiliating…

Moreover those agonised reminiscences keep getting interrupted by gun-toting idiots and even with the aid of Spider-Woman Jessica Drew the incognito hero – who goes by the nom-de-guerre “Patch” in the Asiatic sin city can’t catch the sinister stranger pulling the strings…

Uncanny X-Men #256-258 (December 1989-January 1990) highlight the artistic gifts of Jim Lee & Scott Williams in a dramatic but rather bewildering 3-part thriller that originally featured as part of Marvel’s “Acts of Vengeance” crossover event.

Wolverine hardly features at all in ‘The Key That Breaks the Lock’ which finds telepath Betsy Braddock AKA Psylocke captured by ninja cabal the Hand. The brainwashing and mystic body-swapping engineered by Hand boss Matsuo Tsurayaba turns the English Rose into a sexy Chinese assassin/siren and the perfect gift for the undisputed Overlord of the Orient who employs her as his ‘Lady Mandarin’ in #257 to attack the X-Men…

Just as a physically depleted and delusional Logan – with new sidekick Jubilee in tow – are captured by the Hand, their heroic comrades are targeted by the Mandarin attempting to honour his part of a super-villain pact to switch arch-enemies by destroying the misunderstood mutants…

The tale devolves into a hi-octane, turbulent and overblown battle and the chaotic clash concludes in ‘Broken Chains’ with loads of semi-naked, exotic women, ninjas, big guns, mutants and even ghosts shouting and hitting everything – just what every fan at the end of the 1980s demanded.

Wolverine volume 2 #57 follows with ‘Death in the Family!’ (by Larry Hama, Marc Silvestri, Dan Green, Al Milgrom & Joe Rubinstein from July 1992) as the long-running Clan Yashida storyline was brought to a tragic climax when Wolverine, Silver Samurai and X-Man Gambit came to Mariko’s aid in her struggle to restore the honour of her family, even as Jubilee and Yukio battle for their lives against the Hand and cyborg psycho-killer Cylla. There was no happy ending here…

Since his earliest glory days with the X-Men, the mutant berserker known variously as Wolverine, Logan, Patch and latterly (originally) James Howlett had been a fan-favourite who appealed to the suppressed, put-upon, catharsis-craving comic fan by perpetually promising to cut loose and give bad guys the kind of final punishment we all know they truly deserve. But he also seemed to be a loner within the team.

Always walking the line between and blurring the definitions of indomitable hero and maniac murderer, he soldiered on; a tragic, brutal, misunderstood figure cloaked in mysteries and contradictions until society changed and, as with ethically-challenged colleague the Punisher, final sanction and quick dispatch became acceptable and even preferred options for costumed crusaders.

Inevitably Wolverine grew bigger than his team and increasingly worked alone, or with other groups and heroes.

When Wolverine Origins launched, the title was intended to fill in historical gaps and blanks, using an extended plot which revealed that over course of the 20th century Howlett had been repeatedly manipulated and tortured by a madman, who had moved invisibly in and out of his life, exerting complete mental dominance over the wandering warrior.

When Logan realised this he set all his prodigious instincts and skills to the task of finding the mysterious sadistic phantom known only as Romulus…

He discovered his quarry was the force behind numerous programs such as Weapon X (which first agonisingly bonded miracle metal Adamantium to Wolverine’s skeleton) and was dedicated to manufacturing and augmenting appalling human killing machines such as tortured US super-soldier Nuke, old associates like Wildchild and foes Sabretooth, Cyber and Omega Red…

From issue #5, ‘Born in Blood: Conclusion’ by Daniel Way & Steve Dillon ends the first leg of that monolithic hunt and sees Wolverine infiltrating the White House. It’s a trap and a magic Muramasa sword infects the obsessed mutant with a killing rage. The blood-crazed hero is barely held at bay by Captain America, Cyclops, Emma Frost and New Mutant Hellion and his fury is further stoked by the shocking new memory that decades ago Romulus had killed Logan’s wife Itsu and stolen the son the X-Man never knew existed…

The outré revelations continue in Wolverine volume 3 #61 as ‘Logan Dies: the Conclusion – Soul Survivor’ (January 2006, by Marc Guggenheim & Howard Chaykin) discloses that the true reason Howlett is still alive is that an Angel of Death named Lazear (née Azrael) spiritually battles him at every moment of death – and has since 1914.

Now Lazear, in alliance with enigmatic Hand mystic Phaedra, intends to finish the arcane arrangement, having already excised portions of Howlett’s soul. However the wily Wolverine has a plan to turn his weakness into triumphant strength…

The comics portion of this catalogue of death comes from Uncanny X-Force #34, January 2013. ‘From the Cradle to the Grave: Final Execution’ by Rick Remender & Phil Noto sees the final fate of Wolverine’s ultra-covert mutant wet-work squad as his fully grown and sadistically psychotic son Daken caps a lifetime of monstrous deeds by convening a new brotherhood of Evil, murders Wolverine’s ally Fantomex, turns an innocent child into the new Apocalypse and battles the father he never knew to the death…

With covers and pin-ups by Steven Segovia, Paul Smith, Dougie Braithwaite, Alan Davis & Paul Neary, Bill Sienkiewicz, Jim Lee & Scott Williams, Marc Silvestri & Dan Green, Joe Quesada, Arthur Suydam and Julian Totino Tedesco, this spectacular splatterfest also includes 10 pages of background and biographies of Wolverine’s foes Azrael/Lazear, Daken, Muramasa, Lord Shingen, Phaedra, Silver Fox, Sabretooth and Viper.

Stuffed with non-stop tension and blockbuster action, this another well-tailored on-target tool to turn curious movie-goers into fans of the comic incarnation and another solid sampling to entice the newcomers and charm even the most jaded slice ‘n’ dice fanatic.
© 2013 Marvel. 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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All-New X-Men: Here to Stay


By Brian Michael Bendis, David Marquez, Stuart Immonen & Wade Von Grawbadger (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-547-5

Surely everybody wonders what might result if they could meet their older selves one day, and as scripter Brian Michael Bendis continues his intriguing regeneration and restating of the Mutant Question, the answers here increasingly indicate it might all be a very bad idea indeed…

Following all the poor choices and horrendous paths taken by assorted Homo Superior heroes over the last few years, and in the aftermath of the blockbuster Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, MarvelNOW! reformed the entire continuity, taking the outcast champions in truly bizarre old/new directions.

At the beginning of the Marvel Age, a very special bunch of kids were singled out by wheelchair-bound telepath Charles Xavier. Gloomy Scott Summers, ebullient Bobby Drake, wealthy golden boy Warren Worthington III, insular Jean Grey and animalistic genius Henry McCoy were gathered up by “Professor X” – a driven man dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between massed humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants, ominously dubbed Homo Superior.

To achieve his dream he educated and trained the five youngsters – codenamed Cyclops, Iceman, the Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast – for unique roles as heroes, ambassadors and symbols in an effort to counter the growing tide of human prejudice and fear.

Over the intervening years the struggle to integrate mutants into society resulted in many tragedies and compromises, including Jean’s death, Warren’s mutilation, Hank’s further mutation and eventually Cyclops’ radicalisation. The steadfast and trustworthy team-leader eventually joined with former foes Magneto and Emma Frost in a hard-line alliance devoted to preserving mutant lives at the cost, whenever necessary, of human ones.

His former team-mates and newer X-Men such as Wolverine, Storm and Kitty Pryde stayed true to Xavier’s ideal, abandoning Scott to protect and train the next X-generation of mutant kids at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning…

When Hank McCoy realised he was fatally mutating, he became obsessed with the notion that the early idealistic First Class of X-Men – especially Scott– could bring the mutant terrorist Cyclops back from his current path of doctrinaire madness and ideological race war insanity.

To that end he utilised time-travel technology in a last-ditch attempt to avoid inevitable mutant civil war: risking the entire space/time continuum by bringing not only his old friend but also the rest of the valiant young team back to the future to reason with the fallen Cyclops.

The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways: rather than restoring noble, dedicated Scott Summers to the man he used to be, the confrontation simply hardened the maverick’s heart and strengthened his resolve.

Moreover, even though McCoy’s younger self impossibly cured his older iteration, young Henry and the rest of the X-Kids refused to go home until “Evil” Cyclops was stopped…

Collecting All-New X-Men #6-10, cover-dated March-June 2013, this time-warping reboot finds the displaced teens adapting to a scary world (in a 3-part tale illustrated by David Marquez) as previously diffident wallflower Jean Grey suddenly takes charge of her future-shocked classmates.

At first overwhelmed by the instant onset of vast telepathic powers to augment her established telekinesis, Jean is given useful tips and hints on mental control by Kitty Pryde who resigns as headmistress to devote all her energies to training the chronally-displaced quintet.

Young Scott is especially traumatised. He just can’t believe the man he’s become and will not allow his later self to continue betraying his life’s purpose. Stealing Wolverine’s motorbike he flees the school where the First Class have been forcibly sequestered and heads out into the real world with the feral mutant hard on his heels…

Even as Warren at last meets his impossibly alien older self, Scott is learning far more than he ever wanted to about the 21st century, unaware that he has been discovered by one of the X-dynasty’s most cunning and ruthless enemies…

Teen Scott has made it to Manhattan and finagled his way into the bank where his older self has kept a safety- deposit box. The financial time-capsule contains one more big shock: a souvenir from his wedding to Jean and another impossible pill to swallow…

However before he can digest the fact, Wolverine catches him and convinces him to come quietly.

There’s another surprise though when the obnoxious Canadian turns into a quiet alley and transforms into a blue-skinned woman. Although he doesn’t know it, Scott is in the manipulative clutches of Raven Darkholme, a merciless mutant criminal known as Mystique. The innocent hours she spends talking to the still-naïve champion will affect his life forever…

When the real Wolverine finally tracks down the truant, he has no idea what Mystique has wrought as he drags the confused kid back to the WestchesterSchool, and when Scott shows Jean the retrieved wedding memento she too is speechless…

Young Warren cannot understand the changes time and circumstance have wrought upon his older self, and the ebullient flighty creature seems unable or unwilling to confide in him. However, as the two Angels soar through the heavens together they become aware of an attack on distant AvengersTower. Instantly back in battle mode the pair rout a deadly Hydra task force, but when the World’s Mightiest Superheroes meet, them Captain America is understandably aghast at the potentially continuum-rending consequences of five time-displaced teens running loose in their own future…

No sooner have the Avengers been temporarily placated than Cap’s fears are justified when young Warren, appalled at the things he’s seen and learned, attempts to commandeer the time-machine and return to his rightful time and place.

Shockingly, Jean seizes control of his mind and reprograms him so that he wants to stay…

Stuart Immonen returns to illustrate the final two chapters (with the assistance of Wade Von Grawbadger) as Kitty begins to accelerate the kids’ X-training and Scott lets slip that he’s met Mystique. As Kitty goes into damage control mode, in New York the subject of her fears is advancing her latest scheme.

With ravening psycho-killer Sabretooth she is raiding maximum security penitentiary The Raft to liberate mutant super-illusionist Lady Mastermind. Their new, shared ambition is lethally simple: use their powers to steal so much money that nobody will ever be able to touch them…

Meanwhile the ideological mutant conflict heats up when the elder Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magik and Magneto arrive at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning with a chilling proposition. Convinced of coming mutant extinction at human hands, the renegade terrorist Scott Summers has come with an open invitation: any students who wish may join his own academy – dedicated to training Homo Superior to fight and survive rather than co-exist with humanity…

With horror, X-Men young and old realise that the outrageous appeal has been accepted by some of the ungrateful students in their care…

Even as the faculty and temporal-fugitives ponder that shock, word arrives that the situation has worsened. A gang of mutants have slaughtered dozens of humans in a raid that netted millions of dollars and human/mutant relations have never been shakier…

To Be Continued…

Addictive, enthralling and utterly compelling, this second All-New X-outing mixes blistering action, sharp humour and slowly-mounting tension with the signature themes of alienation and personal freedom to deliver a refreshingly direct drive to the once water-treading mutant franchise and offers a perfect jumping-on point for new and retired fans alike as long as you also read the previous volume (All-New X-Men: Here Comes Yesterday)…

This book also includes a beautiful cover-and-variants gallery by Immonen, Chris Bachalo, Nick Bradshaw & Greg Horn and the now standard 21st century add-on 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: Manifest Destiny


By Jason Aaron, James Asmus, Mike Carey, Frank Tieri, Steven Segovia, Jorge Molina, Ardian Syaf, Michael Ryan, Chris Burnham, Takeshi Miyazawa, Ben Oliver & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3951-5

Most people who read comics have a passing familiarity with Marvel’s fluidly fluctuating X-Men franchise and even newcomers or occasional consumers won’t have too much trouble following this particular jumping-on tome, so let’s just plunge in as our hostile world once more kicks sand in the faces of the planet’s most dangerous and reviled minority…

At this particularly juncture, the evolutionary offshoot portentously dubbed Homo Superior is at its lowest ebb. This follows the catastrophic House of M and Decimation storylines, wherein former Avenger Wanda Maximoff AKA the Scarlet Witch – ravaged by madness and her own chaos-fuelled reality-warping power – reduced the world’s entire mutant population to a couple of hundred individuals.

Most of these genetic outsiders have accepted a generous and earnest offer to establish an enclave on an island dubbed “Utopia” in San Francisco Bay, and this utterly engrossing tome re-presents Wolverine: Manifest Destiny #1-4, X-Men Manifest Destiny: Nightcrawler plus the lead strip and selected short stories from the anthology X-Men Manifest Destiny #1-5 and covers the period October 2008 – April 2009: one of a number of collections cataloguing various mutant heroes’ and villains’ responses to the offer.

This account of some who answered the call to “Go West, Young Mutant” opens with the 4-issue miniseries Wolverine: Manifest Destiny (by scripter Jason Aaron and artists Stephen Segovia, Paco Diaz Luque & Noah Salonga) wherein the long-lived wanderer known as Logan is plagued by some freshly-returned memories as he wanders the streets of Chinatown, painfully aware that, at least in this part of San Francisco, he is not welcome…

The bestial, nigh-indestructible mutant was born at the end of the 19th century, but over the decades his mind and memories have been constantly tampered with by friends and foes alike. Recently. however, a steady procession of revelatory disclosures regarding his extended, over-brainwashed life has gradually seeped out.

He recalls a breach of trust and broken promise made to the citizens of Chinatown fifty years previously and is determined to make amends and restitution, beginning with an unhappy confrontation in ‘Enter the Wolverine’…

The hero is reviled by the old men who remember him, and subsequently attacked by an army of triad gangsters and kung fu warriors determined to eradicate the shame he had heaped upon their forefathers…

Outmatched and beaten near to death by the massed Tong fighters, the barely resisting Wolverine is further-imperilled when his old girlfriend Lin turns up in ‘Black Dragon Death Squad to the Edge of Panic’ – a septuagenarian crime-boss still furious that he abandoned her half a century past and ready to avenge the insult by setting her mystic martial arts warriors on him…

Suffering the worst beating of his impossibly long and fractious life, Logan barely escapes into the sewers as the long-suffering San Francisco cops arrive only to be greeted with stony silence. As usual the close-knit community refuses to have anything to do with such unworthy interfering outsiders…

Chinatown has always been policed by the Black Dragon: a supreme criminal boss who takes tribute from civilian and Tong societies alike, and in return always ensures peace and a healthy business environment. Now, far below the incensed citizenry, the slowly recuperating Logan recalls how ‘Once Upon a Time in Chinatown’ he breezed into the thriving ghetto just as current chief Lo Shang Cho began overstepping traditional boundaries and acting like an old world tyrant.

Naturally he had to intervene, but after killing the bullying despot and routing his ruthless thugs, the cocky mutant shirked his responsibility, refusing to become the new Black Dragon and insulting the entire community by leaving.

His brief paramour Lin was compelled to take his place to maintain order, but over the decades she became as cruelly corrupt and debased as her predecessor …and now the “man” who ruined her life has returned, seemingly not one day older or wiser…

Whilst recovering, the deeply penitent Wolverine has been tutored by Master Po, the kung fu sensei who first tried to teach him to fight like a man and not an animal. It didn’t work then but this time the Black Dragon commands unbeatable magical warriors Rock of the Buddha, Fist of Fire, Storm Sword and Soulstriker and the mutant just cannot win with his usual unthinking berserker methods…

Covertly trying to rally support and drive out the “bad criminals” forever Logan, attempts to recruit some of the area’s martial arts Schools and Dojos to his cause in the blistering finale but as usual, events get away from him and fists and feet too soon start furiously flying in ‘The Way of the Black Dragon’, leading to a triumph of sorts and a whole new role for the transplanted, redeemed Canadian…

This spectacular and bombastic homage to Hong Kong action cinema and comics perfectly blends East and West wonderment in a beautiful, intoxicating manner and also includes a glorious guest-shot from vintage 1970s stalwarts Lin Sun, Abe Brown and Bob Diamond, the legendary Sons of the Tiger (and one of the US industry’s first martial arts series, from issues #1-19 issues of the mature-readers magazine Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, April 1974-December 1975).

The one-shot X-Men Manifest Destiny: Nightcrawler follows as ‘Quitting Time’ (by James Asmus, Jorge Molina, Ardian Syaf, Victor Olazaba & Vicente Cifuentes) focuses on the swashbuckler-turned-priest as he seeks for higher meaning in the eradication of mutants and his own place in the X-Men.

An answer is perhaps forthcoming in a request to visit a museum dedicated to him in the German village where he was almost killed by pitchfork-wielding bigots who believed he was a demon…

At that time Professor Charles Xavier saved him and invited him to join the mutant hero team, setting him on the path of the hero. However, all these years later as he meets his former persecutors, the troubled cleric still feels like an unclean outsider and realises he has been brought to his homeland under false pretences. Another “demon” is plaguing Winzeldorf and, with a child missing, the villagers are expecting one monster to catch the other.

Of course there is far more going on than meets the eye, and inevitable tragedy leads to a confrontation with a genuine devil when the satanic Mephisto appears, hungry for despoiled and tarnished souls…

‘Kill or Cure’ by Mike Carey, Michael Ryan & Victor Olazaba was the lead strip in the miniseries X-Men: Manifest Destiny and followed radical changes in the life of founding X-Man Robert Drake. As Iceman, the hero had been fighting for most of his adult life but when maniacal mutant shapeshifter Mystique poisoned him with a genetically keyed neural inhibitor, his powers began to run amok and he imagined his end was near.

Embarking on a trip to Utopia and the medical ministrations of best friend Hank “The Beast” McCoy, Drake was dogged and sabotaged every step of the way by Mystique who apparently wanted him dead but seemed reluctant or unable to finish him off, despite his weakened condition and wildly fluctuating powers…

Surviving her many assaults, Iceman realised an exponential leap in his abilities but their final confrontation on the Bay Bridge proved that his understanding of her incomprehensible motives and actions was far from complete…

The short story section opens with a comedic clash between matter-detonating mutant ‘Boom-Boom’ and cheesy Homo Superior shoplifter Kuwa in a broadly slapstick tale of slapstick broads by Asmus, Chris Burnham & Nathan Fairbairn, after which Nightcrawler returns in a pretty but downbeat psycho-drama.

As the teleporting hero faces old foes in a Danger Room simulation, he is forced to confront his deep doubts and true feelings for a lost comrade in the bittersweet ‘Work it Out’ (Asmus & Takeshi Miyazawa) before ‘Nick’s’ by Frank Tieri, Ben Oliver & Frank D’Armata ends things on a moodily oppressive note after Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler pay a disturbingly heavy-handed visit to a former Evil Mutant with the intention of keeping the already-reformed character on the straight and narrow…

This stirring and excessively entertaining tome comes with a selection of cover reproductions from Dave Wilkins, Brandon Peterson, Humberto Ramos & Brian Reber and Michael Turner and pages of stunning designs, roughs and colour studies by Segovia featuring assorted kung fu warriors and the Sons of the Tiger.
© 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters In. All rights reserved.

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Uncanny Avengers: The Red Shadow


By Rick Remender, John Cassaday, Olivier Coipel & Mark Morales (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-528-4

In the aftermath of the blockbuster Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, the company-wide reboot MarvelNOW! began repositioning and recasting the entire continuity in the ongoing never-ending battle to keep old readers interested and pick up new ones.

Sadly this isn’t a merely Marvel problem but a malaise affecting the entire global comics industry, but that struggle for survival does occasionally produce some truly stellar reading results as in this impressive fusion of two grand old franchises, allowing writer Rick Remender and artists John Cassaday, Olivier Coipel & Mark Morales to take the latest brigade of the “World’s Mightiest Superheroes” in a fascinating old new direction.

Collecting Uncanny Avengers #1-5 (cover-dated December 2012-May 2013), this astounding reaffirmation of the magic of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction opens with the eponymous 4-part thriller depicting the creation of a new, politically correct and provocatively inclusive team combining human and mutant heroes, tasked with proving that mutant visionary Charles Xavier‘s dream of lasting cooperation and mutual amity between Home Sapiens and Superior was not impossible…

What You Need to Know: Once upon a time the mutant Avenger Wanda Maximoff – daughter of arch-villain Magneto and known to the world as the Scarlet Witch – married the android hero Vision and they had (through the agency of magic and her unsuspected chaos-energy fuelled ability to reshape reality) twin boys. Over the course of time it was revealed that her sons were not real and they subsequently vanished (for further details see Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Avengers).

As the years passed their loss slowly, imperceptibly drove Wanda mad and when she at long last slipped completely over the edge and destroyed a number of her Avenger team-mates, the effects of her power and actions affected and reshaped the entire Marvel Universe, resulting in a dramatic reboot event known as Avengers Disassembled.

No sooner had the team recovered from that catastrophe than reality was overwritten again when she had another breakdown and altered Earth history such that Magneto’s mutants ruled over a society where normal humans (“sapiens”) were an acknowledged evolutionary dead-end living out their lives and destined for extinction within two generations.

It took every hero on Earth and a great deal of luck to put that genie back in a bottle (in another colossal company crossover dubbed House of M), and in the aftermath less than 200 mutants were left on Earth…

The Witch was partially rehabilitated and began her redemption during Avengers versus X-Men wherein the World’s Mightiest Heroes strove against the remaining mutant outcasts for control of young Hope Summers: a girl predestined to become mortal host to the implacable force of cosmic destruction and creation known as The Phoenix.

However the primal phenomenon instead possessed a quintet of X-Men, corrupting them whilst empowering their dream of turning the planet into a paradise for besieged, beleaguered Homo Superior.

In the ensuing conflict humanity was briefly enslaved before inevitably the rapacious, selfish destructive hunger of the Phoenix Force caused those possessed to turn upon each other. Soon its transcendent energy transformed the unifying, rallying figure of head freedom-fighter Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, into another seemingly unstoppable and insatiable “Dark Phoenix”.

At that crossroads moment his beloved mentor Xavier, founder of the X-Men and formulator of the policy of peaceful mutant/human co-existence returned, only to be killed by his most trusted, devoted disciple…

Professor X’s death forced X-Men and Avengers to unite against the true threat but, in the days that followed the expulsion of the Phoenix Force, progress and reconciliation stalled. The mostly human world festered with resentment even as new mutants began to appear, and liberated humanity again fell into its old habits of species intolerance and violent, bigoted vigilante outrage…

After disturbing scenes of brain surgery, our story now begins in ‘New Union’ as Wolverine leads the bereaved Homo Superior students of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning in services for their fallen inspirational Moses (or perhaps more accurately Martin Luther King). Meanwhile in a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. detention centre an unrepentant Cyclops is paid a visit by his brother.

Also known as the government-sanctioned mutant agent Havok, Alex Summers is appalled at the unflinching hard-line attitude of his apparently irredeemably radicalised sibling who seems oblivious to the damage his crusade has done to Xavier’s Dream. On exiting the facility, Alex is met by Captain America and Thor who have an enticing yet frightening proposal for the shaken former head of America’s X-Factor mutant task-force…

The Sentinel of Liberty is painfully aware that America’s mutant minority has been poorly served – if not actively institutionally discriminated against – and is hungry to make amends by making real Xavier’s vision. To that end he wants to create a new high-profile, affirmatively-active Avengers Unity Division, comprising humans and mutant heroes working together.

He also wants Havok to lead the team…

Even as Alex and the Avenger elder statesmen discuss the deeply contentious and heavy-handed proposal, an old, vile threat has resurfaced. Mutant terrorist Avalanche launches a devastating assault, slaughtering hundreds of New Yorkers, before killing himself when Thor, Captain America and Havok intervene. The atrocity has no apparent motive but the killer seems to have undergone recent cranial surgery…

Elsewhere the desperately repentant Scarlet Witch tries to pay her condolences at Xavier’s shrine but is attacked by furiously indignant X-Man Rogue before they are both ambushed and captured by a squad of metahumans faithful to a monster claiming to be the true Red Skull.

The Nazi hate-monger has plans to eradicate the sub-human mutant race forever, and now that he has stolen the deceased Professor X’s brain – and telepathic powers – nothing can stop him…

The horror grows in ‘Skulduggery’ as Wolverine joins the heroes at the scene of Avalanche’s holocaust/suicide, confirming that the mass-mover had fully reformed and this disaster must have a hidden architect. Although dubious of Cap’s “positive PR” solution, the feral mutant is also convinced that someone is trying to foment genocide and agrees with Thor that they need to be stopped… permanently…

Answers come when the Red Skull pre-empts television broadcasts, urging humanity to rise up and destroy the mutants who are the cause of all America’s woes. It’s the same vile message as espoused in Depression-era Germany seven decades ago, but this time enforced on believers and resisters alike by Xavier’s irresistible psychic powers.

Soon, brainwashed mortals are slaughtering anybody deemed different. The message is backed up and subtly reinforced by the Fascist’s deadly deputy Honest John, the Living Propaganda, even as the Skull’s other S-Men – Goat-Faced Girl, Dancing Water, The Insect, Mzee and Living Wind – tend to their master’s mutant captives…

Soon however Rogue and Wanda have escaped, but their flight through the monster’s hidden fortress is abruptly halted when they discover the appalling remains of Xavier, allowing the Nazi madman to make them his mindless slaves.

The Worst Fiend in History has big plans: if he can bend Wanda to his will, perhaps she can be made to rewrite reality again to the deranged Nazi’s debaseded design…

‘Skull & Bones’ sees the madman and his puppets begin their eradication campaign in Manhattan as the Crimson Hatemonger seizes direct control of ordinary humans and orders them to slaughter all mutants in an orgy of destruction with only Cap, Havok, Thor and Wolverine to battle the rampage of rampant unchecked hatred and fear in ‘Thunder’.

With so many mystical mindbenders on his team, it’s not long before Teutonic deity Thor is also seduced and beguiled by the Skull and set upon his erstwhile mutant comrades; but sadly for the briefly triumphant S-Men their leader’s iron hold on the Scarlet Witch has subsequently slipped…

Against all odds, the mismatched Politically Correct Paladins score an unlikely victory and drive off the Skull, forcing the still-unconvinced Havok to admit that his proposed new team might actually help remould the nation’s fears and opinions…

This initial collection concludes with a tantalising glimpse of things to come in an untitled fill-in from Remender, Coipel & Morales which publicly launches the Avengers Unity Division amidst a flurry of time-bending hints and portents.

Interspersed with pithy glimpses of old adversaries Immortus, Kang the Conqueror and Onslaught as well as the advent of ancient, portentous devil-babies the Apocalypse Twins (all murderously jockeying for position), the first Press Conference of the official team – Havok, Captain America, Thor, Wolverine, Scarlet Witch, Rogue, Wonder Man, the Wasp and Sunfire – goes horribly wrong when implacable undead enemy the Grim Reaper attacks, resulting in a shocking death which looks set to undermine all that hard-won pro-mutant progress in one bloody instant…

To Be Continued…

Engaging, exciting and extremely entertaining; blending spectacular adventure with wry suspense, this new look at an old concept is magnificent fun and promises even greater thrills and chills to come.

This book also includes a vast, sublime and expansive cover-and-variants gallery by Cassaday, Mark Brooks, Sara Pichelli, Neal (not, as attributed, Arthur) Adams, Coipel, Skotti Young, Ryan Stegman, Adi Granov, Mark Texeira, J. Scott Campbell, Simone Bianchi and Milo Manara and a selection of now obligatory 21st century extra content for tech-savvy consumers in the form of AR icon sections.

These Marvel Augmented Reality App pages give access to story bonuses once you download the little dickens – 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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All-New X-Men: Here Comes Yesterday


By Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger & Craig Yeung (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-532-1

Radical perpetual change – or the appearance of such – is a driving force in modern comics. There must be a constant changing of the guard, a shifting of scene and milieu and, in latter times, a regular diet of death, resurrection and rebirth – all grounded in relatively contemporary terms and situations.

With a property as valuable as the X-Men such incessant remodelling is a necessarily good thing, even if you sometimes need a scorecard to keep up, and over the decades the franchise has repeatedly reinterpreted, refashioned and updated the formative early epics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas and Werner Roth and others to give a solid underpinning to all the thoroughly modern Mutant mayhem.

Now following all the bad choices and horrendous paths taken by the mutant mavericks over the last few years, and in the aftermath of the blockbuster Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, latest company-wide reboot MarvelNOW! recasts the entire continuity and allows writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Stuart Immonen (with the assistance of Wade Von Grawbadger & Craig Yeung) to take the franchise in a truly bizarre old new direction.

Collecting All-New X-Men #1-5 from November 2012 – March 2013, this dark yet breezy reboot finds mutant Moses Charles Xavier dead, murdered by his favourite son who has also splintered his chosen people into polarised if not actually warring factions.

Way back in 1963, The X-Men #1 introduced gloomy, serious Scott Summers/Cyclops, ebullient Bobby Drake/Iceman, wealthy golden boy Warren Worthington III/the Angel, standoffish Jean Grey/Marvel Girl and erudite, brutish genius Henry McCoy/the Beast. These very special youngsters were selected to be students by the wheelchair-bound telepath Xavier: a man dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between the sprawling masses of humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants with extra abilities, ominously dubbed Homo Superior.

After years of eccentric, quirky adventures, the masked misfits faded away in early 1970. When they eventually made their comeback they weren’t kids any more…

Over the intervening years the struggle to integrate Homo Superior with baseline humanity has produced many tragedies and compromises, resulting in the death of Jean Grey and Cyclops allying with former foes Magneto and Emma Frost in a hard-line alliance devoted to preserving mutant lives at the cost, if necessary, of human ones. His former team-mates and newer X-Men such as Wolverine, Storm and Kitty Pryde have stayed on Xavier’s path, abandoning Scott to protect and train the next X-generation at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning…

The five part ‘What Happens Now?’ opens at the school as Hank McCoy realises he is dying.

The team’s resident super-genius was the first to strike out on his own and paid a high price for it, but now those days have come back to haunt him one last time…

Premiering in Amazing Adventures #11 (March 1972) ‘The Beast!’ told how the brilliant student had left Xavier’s school and taken a research position at the Brand Corporation. Using private sector resources to research the causes of genetic mutation, McCoy became embroiled in industrial skulduggery and to hide his identity used his discoveries to “upgrade” his natural animalistic abilities – temporarily turning himself into a fearsome furry anthropoid creature with startling new abilities. At least it was supposed to be temporary…

Now, after years as a big blue Beast, McCoy is uncontrollably mutating further and realises he will not survive the agonising process. As Cyclops and his new team of freedom fighters begin a very public crusade, rescuing the latest mutants to manifest from their own power and the hostility of humankind, Hank and fellow tutors Pryde, Storm, and oldest friend Iceman discuss how far their friend has fallen.

Drake then muses on the team’s earliest days and remarks that if the Scott Summers from back then could see himself now, he’d slap some sense into himself…

With no time left, staring a prospective mutant civil war in the face and determined to leave a lasting, meaningful legacy, McCoy risks the entire continuum by bringing not only Cyclops but the rest of the original team back to the future in a desperate attempt to heal and restore the noble, dedicated Scott Summers he used to implicitly trust with his life and the future of mutantkind…

Back in our present, Marvel Girl suddenly gains the telepathic powers which originally took her years to develop as the shocked innocent kids become aware of the catalogue of horrors they will endure whilst defending Xavier’s dream. Young, idealistic Scott especially cannot believe… and will not allow his later self to continue betraying his/their life’s purpose…

However as Wolverine and the others become dramatically aware of what McCoy has done, the elder Beast collapses. Realising their moral compass is dying, the 21st century X-Men lock up and isolate the newly-arrive, future-shocked kids to prevent further problems.

They have however completely underestimated the squad who where regularly saving the world years before they could vote or buy beer…

Breaking out and stealing a jet, the juvenile first team take off to confront the terrorist Cyclops and his allies, but discussion quickly devolves into brutal battle and the elders choose escape over further risky conflict…

Shaken but resolved the kids return and, whilst the time-twisted McCoy boys find a way to save the dying Beast, the original X-Men come to a fateful decision. They won’t go home until they have stopped the wayward modern Cyclops. Moreover Jean, having learned of her own dark destiny, is set on ensuring it will never happen…

Engaging, exciting and extremely entertaining; blending spectacular adventure with the signature themes of alienation and personal freedom but finally finding room for much-missed humour, warmth and affection, this utterly beguiling, enticingly  unpredictable yarn promises a genuinely fresh approach to the moribund, dead-ended, water-treading mutant franchise and offers a perfect jumping-on point for new and retired fans alike.

This book also includes a stunning cover-and-variants gallery by Immonen, Joe Quesada, J. Scott Campbell, Salvador Larroca, Pablo Manuel Rivera, Skott Young, Pasqual Ferry, Ed McGuiness, Jim Cheung and Olivier Coipel, and also the now nigh-compulsory 21st century add-on for all those tech-savvy consumers in the form of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the little dickens – for free – from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet thingy.

™ & © 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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Marvel Masterworks volume 12: The X-Men 101-110


By Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-628-7

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

After years of eccentric and spectacular adventures, the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 (issue #66 cover-dated March) during a sustained decline in costumed hero comics, when mystery and all things supernatural once more gripped the world’s entertainment fields.

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

This superb second deluxe hardcover compendium recaptures the stellar excitement of those exuberant days through X-Men #101-110 of the decidedly “All-New, All-Different” X-Men (from October 1976 to April 1978) when the merry mutants were still young, fresh and delightfully under-exposed and only beginning their inexorable rise to mega-stardom. Moreover scripter Chris Claremont & artist Dave Cockrum were on the on the verge of utterly overturning the accepted status quo of women in comics forever…

What You Need to Know: The team now consisted of old acquaintance and former foe Sean “Banshee” Cassidy, Hulk villain Wolverine, and new creations Kurt Wagner, a demonic German teleporter codenamed Nightcrawler, African weather “goddess” Ororo Monroe AKA Storm and Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin, who could transform into a living steel Colossus and joined field-commander Scott (Cyclops) Summers and Jean Grey – still labouring under the nom-de guerre Marvel Girl…

But not for much longer…

For months a long-running, blockbuster-widescreen plotline had been building. Xavier, plagued by visions of interstellar wars and alien mind-mates, was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Not coincidentally, former students Havok and Polaris had attacked the new team, apparently willing allies of a mysterious madman disguised as Cyclops’ old alias Eric the Red.

That devastating conflict then segued into a spectacular battle as remorseless robotic Sentinels returned under the hate-filled auspices of rogue Federal Agent Steven Lang and his mysterious backers of Project Armageddon. Coordinated attacks successfully snared the semi-retired Jean, Wolverine, Banshee and Xavier himself, compelling Cyclops to co-opt a space-shuttle and, with the remaining team, storm an orbiting space-station to rescue them.

Although the new X-Men were victorious, their cataclysmic clash wrecked their only means of escape and, as an immense solar flare threatened to eradicate the complex, their only chance of survival meant certain death for one X-Man…

Bracketed by a brace of team pin-ups (by Paul Ryan and Javier Saltares respectively and both inked by Al Williamson), the ten tales of stunning power and imagination contained herein begin with the debut of a landmark character in ‘Like a Phoenix from the Ashes’ (by Claremont, Cockrum & inker Frank Chiaramonte) as the shuttle spectacularly crashes back to Earth.

The X-Men had travelled in a specially shielded chamber but Marvel Girl had been compelled to pilot the vehicle unprotected through the lethal radiation storm.

As the mutants escaped the craft slowly sinking in JamaicaBay, a fantastic explosion propelled the impossibly alive Jean into the air, clad in a strange gold and green uniform and screaming that she was “Fire and Life Incarnate… Phoenix!”

Immediately collapsing, the critically injured girl was rushed to hospital and a grim wait began.

Unable to explain her survival and too preoccupied to spare time to teach, Xavier then packs Banshee, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Storm and Colossus off to the Irish mutant’s home in County Mayo for a vacation, blissfully unaware that Cassidy Keep has become a deadly trap for his new students…

Within the ancestral pile, Sean Cassidy’s mutant cousin Black Tom has usurped control of the manor and its incredible secrets and at Eric the Red’s behest has contrived an inescapable ambush, assisted by an old X-Men enemy.

‘Who Will Stop the Juggernaut?’ (inked by Sam Grainger) sees the neophyte heroes in well over their heads and fighting for their lives, but finds room to tell the origin of weather-witch Storm and provide an explanation for her crippling claustrophobia, before ‘The Fall of the Tower’ shockingly concludes the tale as the heroes and the Keep’s Leprechauns (no, really) unite to expel the murderous invaders.

Although bi-monthly at the time, the epic kicked into strident top gear with ‘The Gentleman’s Name is Magneto’ as the weary heroes then divert to Scotland and check up on their gun-toting biologist/housekeeper Moira MacTaggert‘s island lab: a previously secret facility containing many of the mutant menaces the X-Men have defeated.

It’s a bad move as the ever-active Eric has restored the dormant master of magnetism to full power. He’d been turned into a baby – a strangely common fate for villains in those faraway days – but was all grown up again now – and very angry…

Arriving from America, MacTaggert and Cyclops are only just in time to lead a desperate, humiliating retreat from the exultant, triumphant Magneto. Cyclops doesn’t care: he realises the entire affair has been a feint to draw the heroes away from Xavier and Jean…

He needn’t have worried. Although in ‘Phoenix Unleashed’ (inks from Bob Layton) Eric orchestrated an attack by Firelord – a cosmic flamethrower who had been a herald of Galactus much like the Silver Surfer – Jean was now fully evolved into a being of unimaginable power who readily held the fiery marauder at bay…

In the interim a long-standing mystery was solved as the vision which had haunted Xavier was revealed as a fugitive princess from a distant alien empire.

Lilandra of the Shi’ar had rebelled against her imperial brother and whilst fleeing had somehow telepathically locked onto her inter-cosmic soul-mate Xavier. As she made her circuitous way to Earth, embedded Shi’ar spy Shakari had assumed the role of Eric the Red and attempted to remove Lilandra’s potential champion long before she arrived…

During the blistering battle that followed the X-Men’s arrival, Shakari snatched up Lilandra and dragged her through a stargate to another galaxy, but now, aware that the fate of entire universe is at stake, Xavier urges his team to follow.

All Jean has to do is re-open a wormhole to the other side of creation…

A slight digression followed as overstretched artist Cockrum was given a breather by a fill-in “untold” tale of the new team featuring an attack by psychic clones of the original X-men in ‘Dark Shroud of the Past’(by Bill Mantlo, Bob Brown & Tom Sutton, but with a framing sequence from Cockrum).

The regular story resumes in a wry tribute to Star Trek as ‘Where No X-Man Has Gone Before!’ (by Claremont, Cockrum & Dan Green) finds the heroes stranded in another galaxy where they meet and are defeated by The Shi’ar Imperial Guard (an in-joke version of DC’s Legion of Super Heroes), until bold interstellar freebooters The Starjammers arrive to turn the tables and uncover a mad scheme to unmake the fabric of space-time.

Lilandra’s brother Emperor D’Ken is a certified maniac and wants to activate a cosmic artefact known alternatively as the M’Kraan Crystal and “the End of All that Is” in his quest for ultimate power. He’s also spent time on Earth in the past and has played a major role in the life of one of the X-Men …

This tale (from issue #107) was the last drawn by Cockrum for many years. He would eventually return to replace the man who replaced him.

As X-Men and Starjammers battle the Crystal’s impossibly deadly automated guardians, this final chapter sees the newly puissant Phoenix literally save all of reality in a mind-blowing display of power and skill, all whilst trapped in a truly staggering other realm before taking the heroes home, appalled and enthralled by the intoxicating, addictive nature of her own might.

The conclusion of this ambitious extended saga was drawn by John Byrne (with inks from Terry Austin) and his efforts were to become an industry bench-mark as the X-Men grew in popularity and complexity. However, even though the bravura high-octane thrills of “Armageddon Now” seemed an unrepeatable high-point, Claremont & Byrne had only started. The best was still to come…

In ‘Home Are the Heroes’ Wolverine finally began to develop a back-history and some depth of character as technological wonder Weapon Alpha attacked the recuperating team in an attempt to force Logan to rejoin the Canadian Secret Service. Renamed Vindicator he would later return with Alpha Flight – a Canadian super-team which would eventually graduate to their own eccentric high-profile series.

This splendid compilation ends rather limply with another hasty fill-in as ‘The “X”-Sanction’ (illustrated by Tony DeZuniga & Cockrum), finds hired cyborg-assassin Warhawk infiltrating the mansion in search of “intel” for a mysterious, unspecified master before getting his shiny silver head handed to him…

The immortal epics compiled here are available in numerous formats (including softcover editions of the luxurious and enticing hardback under review here), but for a selection that will survive the continual re-readings of the serious, incurable fan there’s nothing to beat the sturdy and substantial full-colour feel of these sturdily Marvellous Masterwork editions.
© 1976, 1977, 1978, 1990 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc/Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Wolverine Origins: Romulus


By Daniel Way, Scot Eaton & Andrew Hennessy (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3539-5

Ever since his glory days in the All–New, All Different X-Men, the mutant berserker known variously as Wolverine, Logan, Patch and latterly James Howlett has been a fan-favourite who appealed to the suppressed, put-upon, catharsis-craving comic fan by perpetually promising to cut loose and give bad guys the kind of final punishment we all know they truly deserve.

Always skirting the line between and blurring the definitions of indomitable hero and maniac murderer, Wolverine soldiered on, a tragic, brutal, misunderstood hero cloaked in mysteries and contradictions until society changed and, as with ethically-challenged colleague the Punisher, final sanction and quick dispatch became acceptable and even preferred options for costumed crusaders.

Debuting as a foe for the Incredible Hulk in a tantalising teaser-glimpse at the end of issue #180 (October 1974) before indulging in a full-on scrap with the Green Goliath in the next issue, the semi-feral Canadian mutant with fearsome claws and killer attitude rode – and maybe even caused – the meteoric rise of the reconstructed and rebooted X-Men before gaining his own series, super-star status and silver screen immortality.

He hasn’t looked back since, although over the years many untold tales of the aged agent (since the original miniseries Origins revealed the hero had been born at the end of the 19th century) have explored his missing exploits in ever-increasing intensity and torturous detail.

Thus Wolverine’s secret origin(s) and increasingly revelatory disclosures regarding in his extended, conveniently much-brainwashed life have gradually seeped out. Cursed with recurring and periodic bouts of amnesia and mind-wiped ad nauseum by sinister or even well-meaning friends and foes, the Chaotic Canucklehead has packed a lot of adventurous living into his centuries of existence – but doesn’t remember most of it.

This permanently unploughed field has conveniently resulted in a crop of dramatically mysterious, undisclosed back-histories, so from June 2006 to July 2010 supplementary series Wolverine Origins, for a 50-issue run, began revealing certain discrete pockets of that rich but occluded seam of comicbook gold.

Short and feisty, Logan has always threatened and promised an explosion of visceral, vicarious ultra-violence and grim, gritty justice at every moment and in this slim, savage collection (gathering issues #37-40 of Wolverine Origins from), the panting comicbook public once again gets what it’s never stopped clamouring for…

Wolverine is the ultimate tracker and for months has been hunting for his own past. His search has revealed one inescapable, horrific fact: for most of his life the mutant has been repeatedly manipulated and tortured by a madman. Over decades a mysterious mastermind has been invisibly moving in and out of his life: even exerting complete mental dominance over the wandering warrior.

Only recently has Logan realised this and by setting all his prodigious instincts and tracking skills to the task, is at last closing in on the sadistic phantom he only knows as Romulus…

The infinitely patient phantom is the force behind numerous programs such as Weapon X (which first agonisingly bonded miracle metal Adamantium to Wolverine’s skeleton) and is dedicated to manufacturing and augmenting appalling human killing machines.

Of late Logan has been confronted by many of Romulus’ greatest successes, overcoming walking tragedies and monstrous atrocities such as tortured US super-soldier Nuke, old associates Wildchild and Sabretooth, foes Cyber and Omega Red and even his own, now-adult, psychotic son Daken.

Crisscrossing the globe, the implacable stalker has gradually come closer to finding his ancient tormentor, discovering ever-more chilling details about his shadowy opponent. Now he is ready for a final showdown…

The eponymous 4-part ‘Romulus’ opens with Wolverine in Russia following the mastermind’s trusted factotum Victor Hudson to the brutal Vutluga Prison, where a modern pestilence is plaguing hope-starved, desperate inmates and warders alike. As the infuriated mutant moves in for the long-deferred confrontation he’s been hungering for he realises he’s been set up in another stupid test… just as the life-leeching Omega Red ambushes him…

The staggeringly brutal battle goes to Wolverine – but only just – and as the exhausted victor staggers outside he falls prey to fellow feral mutant Wildchild.

Dragging the battered hero to a steel mill and a doom even Wolverine’s legendary healing factor can’t overcome, the boastful brat reveals a shocking truth.

Inhuman Romulus is apparently thousands of years old and considers himself the planet’s absolute apex predator. Logan’s quarry has spent centuries creating, shaping and honing his own successor. To this extent he has bred, if not actually farmed, Wolverine’s bloodline – among others – for generations: constantly improving human killers through technology and the crucibles of torment and combat, even killing Logan’s first wife Itsu and stealing the son the X-Man never knew existed…

Moreover, although Logan was the preferred option to succeed him, Romulus has always had other prospects in play and is content to stand well back and let the very best killer win…

Wildchild’s plan comes undone when the seemingly unstoppable Omega Red intervenes, resulting in one more cutthroat clash as another of Romulus’ frontrunners falls. Soon after, with the aid of Russian super-spy The Black Widow, Wolverine’s last rival falls and the master manipulator finally reveals himself for the climactic last battle…

It doesn’t end in the way you’d expect…

With covers by Doug Braithwaite & Art Lyon, variants from Mike Mayhew, Herb Trimpe and Simone Bianchi, fact-files on Omega Red and Logan and a comprehensive bibliography in ‘Wolverine: the Reading Chronology’, this plot-light, carnage-driven collection of gory delights is a vicarious thrill for the devoted but might well be hard to follow for new or returning readers.
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.