Category: X-Men

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New Mutants: The Demon Bear Saga


By Chris Claremont & Bill Sienkiewicz (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-673-4

New Mutants was the first regular X-Men spin-off series (unless the you count the brief but brilliant saga of The Beast in Amazing Adventures #11-17 (all six-and-a-half tales are reprinted in Essential Classic X-Men volume 3) and the return to grass roots of powerful alienated kids in training offered many opportunities for slightly different tales that resonated with teen-aged readers.

The team – or perhaps class – gradually expanded as scripter Claremont explored his twin pet themes of alienation and female empowerment and by the time of this collection (reprinting issues #18-21, August-November 1984) his original kid cast – Scottish lupine metamorph Rahne (Wolfsbane) Sinclair, Brazilian solar powerhouse Roberto (Sunspot)DaCosta, human Cannonball Sam Guthrie and projecting psionic Dani (Psyche) Moonstar – had been joined by two new pupils whilst the older Vietnamese Xi’an Coy Manh AKA Karma had been sidelined in the ensuing months.

New additions included Amara Aquilla, a living volcano codenamed Magma who hailed from a lost colony of the Roman Empire and Ilyana (Magik) Rasputin, little sister of Russian X-Man Colossus and recently returned after ten years trapped in a sorcerous, timeless nether-dimension…

With #18, iconoclastic artist Bill Sienkiewicz began a stellar and controversial run pushing the illustrative narrative envelope with his expressionistic, multi-disciplinary range of styles: a perfect place to begin a new kind of adventure for the mutant Next Generation…

‘Death-Hunt’ begins with a fearsome flash forward of horrors to come before Psyche reveals her own precognitive talents have been warning her of the approach of a legendary animal spirit inimical to her tribe. However, whilst training in the Danger Room she gains her first inkling that the threat might be more than myth…

Meanwhile in deep space, a young alien mutant technological organism is fleeing from a catastrophic threat… his own murderous paranoid father.

With Professor X absent and a blizzard hitting, Dani roams the snowy grounds of the school when an impossible ursine monster attacks…

The action switches to the local hospital for ‘Siege’ as Moonstar’s broken body is rushed into emergency surgery. Her personal bogeyman is terrifyingly real and not of this Earth; a magical foe of her people determined to invade this plane and convert Earth into a realm of dark spirits.

In space the alien fugitive flees unheedingly towards Earth, disastrously encountering the swashbuckling Starjammers, before plunging onward. In the hospital, doctors struggle to save Dani, and Magik gleans some useful information with her mystic powers. The Bear needs to destroy Psyche because she holds the secret of defeating it and preventing the poisoning of our world with its malign influence.

With her classmates desperately guarding her dying body during the operation, the Bear’s next attack transports the entire medical centre to its mystical dimension, the metaphysical ‘Badlands’…

On its home turf it is unstoppable, warping a cop and nurse into Native American archetypes to attack the kids whilst slowly tainting the soul of the planet with its evil. Fighting back with all they have, the valiant kids stumble onto a last-ditch plan of attack to defeat the Bear and when returned to Earth they discover a shocking secret about the permanently transformed nurse and policeman…

The book ends with the extra-long ‘Slumber Party’ as the girls of Xavier’s School indulge in a relatively normal part of growing up. With the boys – including new recruit Doug Ramsey – banished for the night, a group of girls from Salem Centre stay over for the time-honoured festivities, but when dying techno-organic parasite Warlock crashes the party – fleeing from his homicidally destructive sire The Magus – the frolics dissolve into planet-threatening horror…

With the introduction of the weirdly warped Warlock and down-to-Earth Doug, the New Mutants cast was relatively complete and an era of superb storytelling and sublime experimentation began…

Fast-paced, evocative, thought-provoking, funny and scary, this book epitomises the very best of Marvel’s second renaissance and these compelling tales are amongst the most impressive and enjoyable of the vast Mutant canon.
© 1984, 1990 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The New Mutants – Marvel Graphic Novel #4


By Chris Claremont & Bob McLeod (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-93976-620-8   1994 edition 0-939766-20-5

Midway through an extended X-Men storyline wherein the maligned mutants were lost in space and Professor X was infected with a telepathic parasite which urged him to gather similarly super-powered, potential hosts for parasitic aliens The Brood, Marvel launched a spin-off X-series which returned thematically to the core concept of heroes-in-training.

This fresh yet retro venture was dubbed The New Mutants and to fully capitalise on the landmark undertaking the junior class debuted in the company’s hot new format as a Marvel Graphic Novel.

At that time Marvel led the field of high-quality original graphic novels: offering big event tales set in the tight continuity of the Marvel Universe, series launches, creator-owned properties, movie adaptations and licensed assets in lavishly expansive packages based on the well-established European Album format with bigger, almost square pages (285x220mm rather than the customary 258x168mm) which felt and looked instantly superior to the gaudily standard flimsy comicbook pamphlets – irrespective of how good, bad or incomprehensible the contents proved to be.

After the immensely successful in-House epic ‘The Death of Captain Marvel’, two licensed properties ‘Elric: the Dreaming City’ and ‘Dreadstar’ set the seal on Marvel’s dedication to experimentation. The New Mutants then proved the growing power of the burgeoning Comicbook Direct Sales Market as this introductory graphic novel (only available in those still-few emporia) led directly into a nationally distributed new monthly series. Some fans had to jump through incredible hoops to pick up that all-important initial adventure…

Entitled ‘Renewal’ the school days saga finds sometime X-Men doctor Moira MacTaggert in the Scottish Highlands saving lupine metamorph schoolgirl Rahne Sinclair from a lynch mob led by a pious religious demagogue. The action then switches to Brazil where millionaire’s son and sporting golden boy Roberto DaCosta transforms into an eerie ebony monster in the middle of a soccer match. With the massed spectators appalled and terrified, only Bobby’s girlfriend Juliana Sandoval rushes to his aid…

In Kentucky, 16 year old Sam Guthrie trudges toward the coalmine. With his father recently dead, the boy now has to forget dreams of higher education and provide for his brothers and sisters. However when a cave-in buries him and his crew Sam unexpectedly blasts his way out in an explosive burst of power…

Meanwhile in the Medicine Bow Mountains of Colorado, reclusive Cheyenne maiden Danielle Moonstar is appalled to hear that her beloved grandfather is about send her to live with a white man named Xavier. Old Black Eagle fears her uncanny psychic abilities will overwhelm her and menace everybody around her…

None of these widely scattered waifs is aware that a manic mutant-hater has made them targets of his obsessive hatred. Dani is the first to suffer as her grandfather is murdered by armoured warriors…

Meanwhile in Westchester, Charles Xavier is examining Rahne and another young mutant. Xi’an Coy Manh is a Vietnamese refugee whose ability to possess people led her into conflict with her crime-lord uncle and the Amazing Spider-Man under the soubriquet Karma. When news of Black Eagle’s death arrives, Xavier rushes to Colorado with the two girls in tow, arriving in time to help Moonstar drive off more armoured assassins.

Discerning that Hellfire Club villain Donald Pierce is behind the murders and attempted abduction, the group then travels to Rio de Janeiro but arrives too late to save Roberto and Juliana from being kidnapped by Pierce’s agents…

Juliana dies saving DaCosta during a botched rescue mission and the grieving boy swears to have his full measure of vengeance…

Pierce has not been idle: he has already deceived and recruited gullible, desperate Sam Guthrie and sent the superhuman Cannonball to capture Xavier, leaving only the mutant kids, codenamed Wolfsbane, Mirage, Sunspot and Karma, to save him and thwart Pierce’s mad schemes. In this they are helped in no small part by the conflicted but rapidly reconsidering Guthrie…

Beautifully illustrated by Bob McLeod this fast-paced rollercoaster of drama and action was the first step in the inexorable expansion of the X-Universe franchise and still reads amazingly well – especially for new fans – even after that Homo Superior bubble has long burst…

A slightly re-proportioned and reformatted edition was released in 1994, reduced in size to approximate standard comicbook proportions and the tales has also been reprinted, albeit in proportionally much-reduced standard format as the first chapter of New Mutants Classic Volume 1 TPB (from 2006) which also includes the comicbooks New Mutants #1-7 and Uncanny X-Men #167 within its 240 pages.
© 1982, 1994 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Uncanny X-Men: From the Ashes


By Chris Claremont, Paul Smith, Walt Simonson, John Romita Jr. & Bob Wiacek (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-6155

In 1963 X-Men #1 introduced Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants dubbed Homo Superior. After years of eccentric and spectacular adventures the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 during a sustained downturn in costumed hero comics as supernatural mystery once more gripped the world’s entertainment fields.

Although their title was revived at the end of the year as a cheap reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel universe and the Beast was made over into a monster until Len Wein, Chris Claremont & Dave Cockrum revived and reordered the Mutant mystique with a brand new team in Giant Size X-Men #1 in 1975.

To old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire was added a one-shot Hulk villain dubbed Wolverine, and all-original creations Kurt Wagner, a demonic German teleporter codenamed Nightcrawler, African weather “goddess” Ororo Monroe AKA Storm, Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin, who transformed at will into a living steel Colossus and bitter, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who was cajoled into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird.

The revision was an unstoppable hit and soon grew to become the company’s most popular and high quality title. In time Cockrum was succeeded by John Byrne and, as the team roster shifted and changed, the series rose to even greater heights, culminating in the landmark “Dark Phoenix” storyline which saw the death of (arguably) the series’ most beloved and groundbreaking character.

In the aftermath, team leader Cyclops left and a naive teenaged girl named Kitty Pryde signed up just as Cockrum returned for another spectacular sequence of outrageous adventures.

The franchise inexorably expanded and in 1982 a fresh generation of students enrolled in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters…

Released in 1990, as Marvel was tentatively coming to grips with the growing trend for “trade paperback” collections, this sturdy 228 page full-colour compendium collects a supremely impressive run of issues of the Uncanny X-Men (#168-172, from April-December 1983) which perfectly encapsulated everything that made the outrageous outcasts such an unalloyed triumph and touchstone of youthful alienation.

The action opens as Kitty Pryde reacts badly to the news that she is being transferred to the student team of New Mutants… or as she calls them, “X-Babies”…

‘Professor Xavier is a Jerk!’, by Chris Claremont, new star art-find Paul Smith and inker Bob Wiacek, related the battled-hardened Pryde’s reaction to the arbitrary declaration as the team enjoyed a little downtime following a stupendous battle in space against the ghastly alien body-stealers The Brood. The sulking quickly escalated into a cataclysmic life-or-death struggle as Pryde and her little space-dragon Lockheed accidentally uncovered an infestation of alien predators which had remained undiscovered in the depths of the X-Mansion for months…

Meanwhile, original X-Man Cyclops had left the team again to catch up with rebound girlfriend Lee Forrester but discovered a new woman who was the exact duplicate of his dead one-and-only Jean Grey…

‘Catacombs’ plunged head-on into a new crisis as the team are called in when the Angel is abducted by a hitherto undiscovered enclave of outcast mutants dwelling beneath the streets of New York. With Kitty as part of the rescue team the X-Men descended into the tunnels and battled the horrific Morlocks and their charismatic leader Callisto.

Easily outmatched and overpowered the heroes were helpless until Storm took a radical, irreversible step: defeating Callisto in a death-duel and becoming the new ruler and protector of the subterranean deviants in ‘Dancin’ in the Dark’. Above their heads in the halls of the wealthy and powerful, the Hellfire Club was under sustained attack by a telepath of incredible power and spiteful intensity whilst in Alaska Scott Summers had fallen deeply in love with disturbing doppelganger Madelyne Pryor despite fearing she might be some new aspect of the immortal cosmic Phoenix…

Pencilled by Walt Simonson, issue 171 saw a major new player join the misunderstood mutants when ‘Rogue’ – a powers and memory leeching teen who had nearly murdered Carol Danvers – knocked on the mansion door begging for sanctuary and medical help.

It seemed her uncontrollable ability was afflicting her with stolen personalities and slowly driving her crazy. When the former Ms. Marvel, now a cosmic powered entity dubbed Binary, saw the girl who had stolen her life become a guest of the X-Men, sparks and fists inevitably flew…

Wolverine had been absent for weeks on a personal quest to Japan (see Marvel Platinum – the Definitive Wolverine or any number of collected editions of the first Wolvie miniseries by Claremont & Frank Miller), which culminated with the announcement of his impending marriage to Japanese aristocrat Mariko Yashida.

‘Scarlet in Glory’ found the rest of the team in Japan for the impending nuptials and poisoned by vengeful villains leaving Logan and Rogue – whom he deeply distrusted – to seek out an antidote. At the same time the transformation of Storm from nature goddess to grim-and-gritty bad-ass was completed by the mercenary maniac Yukio as the last X-Men raced their fast-approaching toxic deadline…

The result was sheer carnage as the feral Wolverine went wild. With desperate-to-please Rogue in tow Wolverine carved 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 were eventually triumphant, the victory came at great cost. Wolverine returned to America alone and unwed… and all the while, the long-hidden presence manipulating events had jockeyed for position, pushing the globally scattered heroes to one inescapable conclusion…

‘Romances’ opened with Binary choosing to leave Earth with the swashbuckling Starjammers and ended with Scott returning to the X-Men to announce his own imminent marriage to Madelyne. This calm before the storm led into the spectacular issue #175 with the revelation that one of the X-Men’s oldest enemies had returned to unleash the ultimate destructive force, culminating in the end of the world and the seeming ultimate revenge of ‘Phoenix!’ (with additional art from John Romita Jr.).

The issue also saw Scott and Madelyne tie the knot before slipping away for a honeymoon from hell in the concluding episode ‘Decisions’.

Setting the scene for upcoming epics, there was a final meeting between Logan and Mariko, the US Government sought new and permanent ways to curb mutant power and Callisto returned to the Morlocks but the main focus was the newlyweds’ crash-landing in monster-plagued seas…

These character driven tales proved conclusively that the X-Men phenomenon was bigger than any single creator and that the series was capable of infinitely renewing itself. The stories here opened up a whole sub-universe of action and adventure that fuelled more than a decade of expansion and are still some of the best comics of that distant decade.

Compelling, effective, moving and oh, so pretty, From the Ashes is a book no Fights ‘n’ Tights fan can do without.
© 1983, 1990 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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The Aladdin Effect – Marvel Graphic Novel #16


By James Shooter, David Michelinie, Greg LaRoque & Vince Colletta (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-081-7

Marvel don’t generally publish original material graphic novel anymore but once they were market leader in the field with a range of “big stories” told on larger pages emulating the long-established European Album (285 x 220mm rather than the standard 258 x 168mm of today’s books) featuring not only proprietary characters in out-of-the-ordinary adventures but also licensed assets like Conan, creator-owned properties like Alien Legion and new character debuts.

This extended experiment with big-ticket storytelling in the 1980s and 1990s produced many exciting results that the company has never come close to repeating since. Most of the stories still stand out today – or would if they were still in print.

Released in 1985, The Aladdin Effect was an attempt to capitalise on the company’s growing stable of female characters and – I’m guessing – target the notoriously scarce and fickle maturing female readership with something more exclusively to their tastes and aspirations. This conventional but highly enjoyable Fights ‘n’ Tights thriller was conceived and concocted by Editor Jim Shooter, scripted by David Michelinie and illustrated by Greg LaRoque & Vince Colletta.

Joe Ember is a good man, loving husband and father: sheriff of the isolated community of Venture Ridge, Wyoming but someone looking the end of the world in the face…

Two months ago the little town lost all hope and has been sliding into decadence, anarchy and ruin. Sixty days ago, without explanation the rural community was surrounded by an invisible, impenetrable forcefield and trapped like bugs under glass.

Cut off from the world, with food and power dwindling, the people have begun to go mad…

Little Holly-Ann isn’t worried: the little girl knows her daddy will keep everyone safe even if so many old friends and neighbours are acting strange and scary. The little girl is a dreamer and fan of New York’s superheroes. She especially adores the women like Storm, She-Hulk, Tigra and the Wasp and wishes that she could be like them…

When Joe, crumbling under pressure, destroys her scrapbook Holly-Ann goes to sleep extremely upset and really, really wishes…

Next morning an amnesiac stranger is seen on the streets: a striking black woman with white hair and blue eyes. When the mob attacks her the stranger easily cows them all and Holly-Ann knows it is the mutant X-Man Storm.

At last an answer begins to form when a mysterious being called Timekeeper reveals himself and demands that the incomprehensible power-source hiding in the city reveals itself – or the city will be destroyed within 24 hours…

When Storm tries and fails to shatter the forcefield, the She-Hulk appears, also with muddled memories but just as determined to help little Holly-Ann. Soon after both the Wasp and Tigra are discovered and the sinister secret technologists of AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) are discovered as the true cause of all the town’s problems.

When She-Hulk tackles them she is almost beaten to death by the army of super scientific soldiers…

With only hours remaining before the deadline, the battered community and diminished super-women prepare for the overwhelming onslaught to come…

Terrified and outmatched Joe Ember is ready to surrender all hope but his valiant daughter shows him another way and, regaining his sense of purpose, he galvanises the ordinary folk and leads them in a last ditch battle for their town, their lives and their souls…

A stirring mix of childhood fantasy and mature B-movie thriller, all wrapped up in Marvel madness and with loving overtones of the Magnificent Seven, this extremely uncompromising and occasionally explicit tale delivers action, tension and soul-searching drama for both the faithful readership and even the newest kid on the block looking for a different kind of story….
© 1985 Marvel Comics Group/Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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X-Men: Schism


By Jason Aaron, Kieron Gillen, Carlos Pacheco, Frank Cho, Daniel Acuña, Alan Davis, Adam Kubert, Tim Seeley, Billy Tan & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-502-4

Radical change – or at least the appearance of such – is a cornerstone of 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.

A case in point is this rather impressive restating of the Mutant paradigm from Marvel wherein the latest status quo gets the boot and a new beginning equates with a return to the old days…

Most people who read comics have a passing familiarity with Marvel’s ever-changing X-Men franchise and newcomers or occasional consumers won’t have too much trouble following the backstory so let’s plunge in as the hostile world once more kicks sand in the faces of the planet’s most dangerous and reviled minority…

This utterly engrossing tome (collecting X-Men Schism #1-5, Generation Hope #10-11 and X-Men ReGenesis) finds the world’s mutant population reduced to a couple of hundred desperate souls living in self-imposed exile on an island dubbed “Utopia” located in San Francisco Bay.

Although generally welcomed by most of the easygoing residents of the city, tensions are high and with X-Men team-leader Cyclops running the colony in an increasingly draconian manner, his relationship with war-weary second-in-command Wolverine is slowly, inexorably deteriorating…

Matters come to head when Logan refuses to train the latest batch of kids in combat techniques, concerned that these newest mutants are being cheated of their childhoods, after which Quentin Quire, a 16-year old anarchist telepath provokes an frantic armed response from human world leaders at an arms limitation conference intended to convince humanity to abandon their “defensive” anti-mutant weapons; which generally equates to giant robotic Sentinels of various vintages…

With the world once again on alert against “Homo Superior” attacks, every nation is frantically rearming, but the robots have all degenerated into rampaging menaces attacking their owners – if they work at all – and the assembled mutants and assorted superheroes are kept busy saving humans from their own bellicose paranoid folly…

Meanwhile a bunch of very human rich kids make a move of their own. The greedy, remorseless and ambitious scions of munitions millionaires, human traffickers and deranged scientists have waited long enough for what’s theirs and, after murdering their parents and guardians, take over the Hellfire Club to initiate their scheme of ruling the Earth before they hit puberty…

As their cynical, vicious plan unfolds, the embattled Utopians become the unwitting target of increasingly bloody attacks and Cyclops and Wolverine catastrophically clash over the role of the super-powered children in their care, almost oblivious of the launch of the new super-Sentinel devised by the impatient new Hellfire kids…

Although Utopia is saved in the nick of time, the policy-split leads to a sundering of the Mutants as Wolverine leads many of the youngest kids and some of Cyclops’ oldest, but most disappointed and disaffected, friends to a place where they can attempt a different way of living, leaving the island as a highly visible fortress against and target of human aggression; populated by warriors and militaristic genocide-survivors ready to take the Race – or perhaps more correctly, Species – War to their oppressors…

The core miniseries was scripted by Jason Aaron and illustrated by Carlos Pacheco, Frank Cho, Daniel Acuña, Alan Davis, Adam Kubert, Cam Smith, Mark Farmer & Mark Roslan with Kieron Gillen writing the intersecting chapters from Generation Hope and the epilogue X-Men ReGenesis drawn by Tim Seeley and Billy Tan, respectively.

If you crave fast, furious and fulfilling Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction this is a nearly perfect one-shop stop for your edification and delectation.

X-Men Schism is scheduled for release on January 19th 2012.

™ & © 2012 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. Italy. A British Edition by Panini UK Ltd. ™ and © 2012 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. A British edition released by Panini UK Ltd.

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Spider-Man and the Uncanny X-Men


By Roy Thomas, Bill Mantlo, Louise Simonson, J.M. de Matteis, Sal Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0785102007

Intrinsic to superhero comics is the “team-up” wherein costumed heroes join forces to tackle a greater than usual threat; a sales generating tactic taken to its logical extreme at Marvel wherein most early encounters between masked mystery men were generally prompted by jurisdictional disputes resulting in usually spectacular punch-ups before the heroes finally got on with allying to confront the real menace…

This torrid tome from 1996 collected a number of historical encounters between the company’s two best-selling properties, re-presenting a portion of Uncanny X-Men #27 and the entirety of #35, Amazing Spider-Man #92, Marvel Team-Up Annual #1, Marvel Team-Up #150 and Spectacular Spider-Man #197-199.

The frantic Fights ‘n’ Tights fun begins with page 12 of X-Men #27 (December 1966, by Roy Thomas, Werner Roth & Dick Ayers) wherein Iceman and the Beast, on a recruitment drive and about to battle the Mimic, offered the Amazing Arachnid membership in their mutant team (and you can catch the full story in Essential Classic X-Men volume 2 among other places), whilst issue #36 (August 1967, inked by Dan Adkins) found the full team in search of the abducted Professor Xavier in ‘Along Came A Spider…’ with everybody’s favourite wall-crawler mistaken for a flunky of insidious secret organisation Factor Three by the increasingly desperate X-Men. The Webbed Wonder had to battle hard for his very life until the truth finally came out…

Incredible to believe now but the X-Men were one of Marvel’s poorest selling titles in the 1960s and their comicbook was cancelled and reduced to a cheap reprint outlet for years.

Although gone however, the mutants were far from forgotten.

The standard policy at that time for reviving characters that had fallen was to pile on the guest-shots and reprints. X-Men #67 (December 1970) saw them return in early classics and with Amazing Spider-Man #92 (January 1971) individually and collectively the Merry Mutants began their comeback tour.

‘When Iceman Attacks’ (Stan Lee, Gil Kane & John Romita Sr.) concluded the Wondrous Wall-crawler’s battle against corrupt political boss Sam Bullit, wherein the ambitious demagogue convinced the youngest X-Man that Spider-Man had kidnapped Gwen Stacy. Despite being a concluding chapter, this all-out action extravaganza efficiently recaps itself and is perfectly comprehensible to readers, with the added bonus of featuring some of the best action art of the decade by two of the industry’s greatest names.

This is followed by an epic length adventure from Marvel Team-Up Annual #1 (1976, by Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito from a plot by Mantlo, Chris Claremont & Bonnie Wilford).

‘The Lords of Light and Darkness!’ featured Spider-Man and the newly minted and revived X-team Banshee, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, Phoenix and Cyclops battling a pantheon of scientists who had been accidentally mutated and elevated to the ranks of gods. Like most deities, the puissant ones believed they knew what was best for humanity…

‘Tis Better to Give!’ by Louise Simonson, Greg LaRoque & Esposito was a double-length epic which ended the first volume of Marvel Team-Up (#150 February 1985) and pitted Spidey and the current mutant mob (Colossus, Rogue, Nightcrawler and the second Phoenix) against the Juggernaut and his only friend Black Tom, who had been transformed against his will into a rampaging engine of brutal destruction and was taking out his frustrations on New York City…

This intriguing collection concludes with a three-part tale from Spectacular Spider-Man #197-199 (February-April 1993) crafted by J.M. de Matteis & Sal Buscema, which saw original X-Men Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Beast and Marvel Girl reunited as X-Factor to join the Web-spinner in tackling an obsessive super-psionic dubbed Professor Power who had returned from the grave to destroy the heroes and reshape the world in his own twisted image…

With a cracking cover gallery and commentaries from the creators involved, this splendidly straightforward and satisfying action-romp (also available as a British edition published by Boxtree) is a perfect primer for new fans and a delightful way to pass the time until the next Marvel movie moment…
© 1996 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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X-Men: Days of Future Past


By Chris Claremont, John Byrne, & Terry Austin (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-582-5

Here’s one more slight yet elegant lost treasure from the early days of graphic novel compilations that might amuse and will certainly delight all-out aficionado and neophyte X-fans alike – and perhaps intrigue the odd collector-completist also.

Released in 1989, as Marvel was tentatively coming to grips with the burgeoning phenomena of “trade paperback” collections, this full-colour 48 page compendium collects two supremely impressive issues of Uncanny X-Men (#141-142 from January and February 1980) which perfectly encapsulated everything that made the outrageous outcasts such an unalloyed triumph and touchstone of youthful alienation.

In 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants dubbed Homo Superior. After years of eccentric and spectacular adventures the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 during a sustained downturn in costumed hero comics as supernatural mystery once more gripped the world’s entertainment fields.

Although their title was revived at the end of the year as a cheap reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel universe and the Beast was made over into a monster until Len Wein, Chris Claremont & Dave Cockrum revived and reordered the Mutant mystique with a brand new team in Giant Size X-Men #1 in 1975.

To old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire was added a one-shot Hulk villain dubbed Wolverine, and all-original creations Kurt Wagner, a demonic German teleporter codenamed Nightcrawler, African weather “goddess” Ororo Monroe AKA Storm, Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin, who transformed at will into a living steel Colossus and bitter, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who was cajoled into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird.

The revision was an unstoppable hit and soon grew to become the company’s most popular – and high quality – title. In time Cockrum was succeeded by John Byrne and as the team roster shifted and changed the series rose to even greater heights, culminating in the landmark “Dark Phoenix” storyline which saw the death of arguably the book’s most beloved and imaginative character.

In the aftermath team leader Cyclops left and a naive teenaged girl named Kitty Pryde signed up…

In the eponymous ‘Days of Future Past’ Claremont, Byrne & Terry Austin depicted an imminently approaching dystopian apocalypse wherein mutants, paranormals and superheroes have been eradicated by Federally-controlled Sentinel robots, who now rule a shattered world on the edge of utter annihilation. New York is a charnel pit with most surviving mutants kept in concentration camps and only a precious few free to fight a losing war of resistance.

The middle-aged Kitty is the lynchpin of a desperate plan to unmake history. With the aid of telepath named Rachel (eventually to escape that time-line and become the new Phoenix) Pryde swaps consciousness with her younger self in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the pivotal event which created the bleak, black tomorrow where all her remaining friends and comrades are being pitilessly exterminated one by valiant one…

‘Mind Out of Time’ sees the mature Pryde in our era, inhabiting her juvenile body and leading her disbelieving X-Men team-mates on a frantic mission to foil the assassination of US senator David Kelly on prime-time TV by the sinister Brotherhood of Evil Mutants – super-powered terrorists determined to make a very public example of the human politician attacking the cause of Mutant Rights…

Fast-paced, action-packed, spectacularly multi-layered, bitterly tragic and tensely inconclusive – as all such time-travel tales should be – this cunning, compact yarn is indubitably one of the best individual stories of the Claremont/Byrne era and set the mood, tone and agenda for the next decade of mutant mayhem…

An extended edition containing Uncanny X-Men #138-143 and X-Men Annual #4 was released in 2006, but for sheer, swift stripped-down impact this slim 48-page tome is still one of the best slices of X-treme X-citement any fan could possibly crave…
© 1980, 1989 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks volume 7: X-Men 11-21


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Werner Roth, Dick Ayers & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-482-9
In 1963 things really took off for the budding Marvel Comics as Stan Lee & Jack Kirby expanded their diminutive line of action titles, putting a bunch of relatively new super-heroes together as the Avengers, launching a decidedly different war comic in Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos and creating a group of alienated but valiant teenagers who were called together to fight a rather specific threat to humanity.

After spectacular starts on all those titles, Kirby’s increasing workload compelled him to cut back to simply laying out these lesser lights as Thor and Fantastic Four evolved into perfect playgrounds and full-time monthly preoccupations for his burgeoning imagination. The last series he surrendered was the still-bimonthly X-Men wherein outcast tribe of mutants Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Beast and Marvel Girl – very special students of wheelchair-bound telepath Professor Charles Xavier -worked diligently and clandestinely to foster peace and integration between the unwary masses of humanity and the gradually emergent race Homo Superior.

This second lavish deluxe edition covers issues #11-21 (May 1965 to June 1966) and features two key transitional moments as first Kirby and then Stan Lee handed the series over to fresh new talent…

A major turning point signalled The King’s departure in #11 with ‘The Triumph of Magneto!’ as our heroes and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants both searched for a fantastically powered being called The Stranger. None were aware of his true identity, nature or purpose, but when the Master of Magnetism found him first it spelt the end of the war with the X-Men…

With Magneto gone and the Brotherhood broken, Kirby relinquished the pencilling to other hands, providing loose layouts and design only. Alex Toth & Vince Colletta proved an uncomfortable mix for #12′s tense drama ‘The Origin of Professor X!’ – the start of a two-part saga which introduced Xavier’s half brother Cain Marko and revealed that simple lout’s mystic transformation into an unstoppable human engine of destruction.

The story concluded with ‘Where Walks the Juggernaut’, a compelling tension-drenched tale guest-starring the Human Torch, but most notable for the introduction of penciller Werner Roth (using the name Jay Gavin) who would be associated with the mutants for the next half decade. His inker for this first outing was the infallible Joe Sinnott.

Roth was an unsung veteran of the industry, working for the company in the 1950s on such star features as Apache Kid and the inexplicably durable Kid Colt, Outlaw, as well as Mandrake the Magician for King Features Comics and Man from U.N.C.L.E. for Gold Key. As with many pseudonymous creators it was his DC commitments (mostly romance stories) which forced him to disguise his moonlighting until Marvel grew big enough to offer him full-time work.

‘Among us Stalk the Sentinels!’ from issue #14 (inked by Colletta), celebrated the team’s inevitable elevation to monthly publication with the first chapter of a three-chapter epic introducing anthropologist Bolivar Trask, whose solution to the threat of Mutant Domination was super-robots that would protect humanity at all costs. Sadly their definition of “protect” varied wildly from the expected, but what can you expect when a social scientist dabbles in high-energy physics and engineering?

The X-Men took the battle to the Sentinels secret base and became ‘Prisoners of the Mysterious Master Mold!’ before wrapping up their ferrous foes with ‘The Supreme Sacrifice!’ Veteran Dick Ayers joined as inker from #15, his clean line blending perfectly with Roth’s clean, classicist pencils. They remained a team for years, adding vital continuity to this quirky but never top-selling series.

X-Men #17 dealt with the aftermath of the battle – probably the last time the US Army and government openly approved of the team’s efforts – and the sedate but brooding nature of ‘…And None Shall Survive!’ enabled the story to generate a genuine air of apprehension as the Xavier Mansion was taken over by an old foe who picked them off one by one until only the youngest was left to battle alone in the climactic conclusion ‘If Iceman Should Fail..!’

‘Lo! Now Shall Appear… The Mimic!’ in #19 was Lee’s last script, a pithy tale of a troubled teen with the ability to copy the skills, powers and abilities of anyone in close proximity, after which the writing reins were turned over to Roy Thomas in #20, who promptly jumped in guns blazing with ‘I, Lucifer…’ an alien invasion yarn that starred Xavier’s arch-nemesis as well as Unus the Untouchable and the Blob, revealing in passing how Professor X lost the use of his legs.

With the canny concluding part ‘From Whence Comes Dominus?’, Thomas & Roth completely made the series their own, blending juvenile high spirits, classy superhero action and torrid soap opera with beautiful drawing and stirring adventure.

At this time Marvel Comics had a vast and growing following among older teens and college kids, and the youthful Thomas spoke and wrote as they did. Coupled with his easy delight in large casts this would increasingly make X-Men a very welcoming read for we adolescents…

These quirky tales are a million miles removed from the angst-ridden, breast-beating, cripplingly convoluted X-brand of today’s Marvel and, in many ways are all the better for it. Well drawn, highly readable adventures are never unwelcome or out of favour, and it should be remembered that everything here informs so very much of the mutant monolith. These are stories for the dedicated fan and newest convert, and never better packaged than in this fabulously stylish full-colour tome. Everyone should have this book.
© 1965, 1966, 1988 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Hulk volume 4: Hulk Vs. X-Force


By Jeph Loeb, Ian Churchill, Whilce Portacio & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4053-5

Bruce Banner was a military scientist who was accidentally caught in a gamma bomb blast of his own devising. As a result stress and other factors caused him to transform into a giant green monster of unstoppable strength and fury. As both occasional hero and mindless monster he rampaged across the Marvel Universe for decades, finally finding his size 700 feet and a format that worked, swiftly becoming one of young Marvel’s most popular features.

An incredibly popular character both in comics and more global media beyond, he has often undergone radical changes in scope and format to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling…

In recent years the number of Gamma-mutated monsters rampaging across the Marvel landscape has proliferated to inconceivable proportions. The days of Bruce Banner getting angry and going Green are long gone, so anybody taking their cues from the TV or movie incarnations will be wise to assume a level of unavoidable confusion. There are now numerous assorted Hulks, She-Hulks, Abominations and all kinds of ancillary atomic berserkers roaming the planet, so be prepared to experience a little confusion if you’re coming to this particular character told. Nevertheless these always epic stories are generally worth the effort so persist if you can.

Even if you are familiar with Hulk history ancient and modern, you might be forgiven for foundering on the odd point of narrative, so this book, collecting a more-or-less self-contained episode of gamma-generated chaos and calamity (originally published in the latter part of 2009 as ‘Code Red’ in Hulk #14-18) provides a cathartic dose of destructive diversion with a minimum of head-hurting continuity conundrums.

What you need to know: a new, intelligent, ruthless and awesomely efficient Red Hulk has been operating in America, clearly not Banner but nevertheless quite to able to hold his own against such powerhouses as The Abomination and even Thor. His origins and intentions are unknown and he guards his human identity with terrifying ferocity…

This is all part of an overlong, ongoing plot by the world’s wickedest brain trust to conquer everything (as would be later seen in the epic Fall of the Hulks) but here the action is immediate and starts in ‘Eyewitness’ (by Loeb, Ian Churchill & Mark Farmer) when mutant bounty hunter Domino accidentally sees the Red Hulk transform and flees for her life, knowing the Crimson Colossus will stop at nothing to protect his secret…

The Bloody Behemoth, who has unspecified shady links to Gamma-endowed metahuman psychiatrist Doctor Leonard Samson and professional Hulk-hunter General “Thunderbolt” Ross, gives chase, but soon loses the luck-warping mutant and so recruits a team of ruthless trackers comprising Deadpool, the Punisher, Crimson Dynamo, Thundra and Elektra with orders to silence her at all costs…

However Domino has friends of her own and in ‘Collision’ seeks help from Wolverine’s ultra-covert mutant wet-works squad which includes X-23, Archangel and Warpath: a lethal X-Force prepared to do whatever’s necessary to protect one of their own…

After a blockbusting battle the mutants seem to be gaining the upper hand until a new wild card emerges… a brutal Red She-Hulk who changes the game and demands the death of erstwhile ally Elektra in return…

‘She’ reveals plots within ploys inside schemes as the Scarlet Juggernaut betrays both sides for her hidden masters, culminating with all-out carnage in the concluding episode ‘Man in the Mirror’ as a few apparent coincidences are revealed as part of a engrossing master-plan…

With his complicity exposed Doc Samson takes centre-stage for the epilogue ‘Delilah’ (illustrated by Whilce Portacio & Danny Miki): a fascinating psycho-drama revealing the origins, motivations and hidden edges to the shrink all the heroes once trusted with their darkest, deepest secrets…

This bracing, bombastic battlebook also includes a 17 page cover gallery by Churchill, Farmer, Peter Steigerwald, Ed McGuiness, Dexter Vines, Chris Sotomayor, Dave Stewart and Jason Keith plus sketchbook/interview features with Churchill and Portacio with lots of pencil art and comedy strip bonus features ‘Hulk Gym’, ‘Hulk Movie’, ‘Hulk Date’, ‘Hulk Tonsils’ and ‘Hulk Dentist’ by Audrey Loeb, Carlos Silva & Dario Brizuela.

Whenever staggering, monumental Fights ‘n’ Tights turmoil is your fancy, the Hulk is always going to be at the top of every thrill-seekers hit list…

© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Ultimate X: Origins


By Jeph Loeb, Arthur Adams & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-464-5

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

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

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

This collection, re-presenting the long-delayed and much awaited Ultimate Comics: Ultimate X: Origins five part miniseries opens with the story of sixteen year-old wild-boy Jimmy Hudson, who terrifyingly discovers his true origins when he inexplicably survives a street-racing car-crash and is visited by a mysterious girl named Kitty Pride. She comes bearing a hologram message from the dead mutant-hero Wolverine which explains the boy’s incredible healing ability and the bony claws that keep inconveniently popping out of Jimmy’s knuckles…

“Karen Grant” finds all her carefully completed precautions to stay anonymously under the radar are for nought when her wannabe-boyfriend posts her picture on the internet, drawing the attention Tsunami-survivor Jean Grey was desperately trying to avoid…

When evil mutants Mystique and Sabretooth confront her in the mall where she works the result is spectacular destruction. Karen flees again, only to be found by Jimmy Hudson…

In Chicago winged vigilante Derek Morgan can’t escape his troubled past or hard-ass cop brother who wants to turn him in to the Mutant regulators. Fortunately that’s when jimmy and super-psionic Karen Grant show up…

In California Liz Allen thinks she’s sacrificed enough. Leaving New York, discovering she’s a mutant and having to put up with a half-brother dubbed “Tubby Teddy” who’s the spitting image of their deadbeat dad Fred Dukes – better known as the monstrous Blob – should be enough grief for any girl, but when Teddy’s only friend brings a gun to school and starts using it the siblings’ secret powers are exposed all over the TV News. Moreover his invulnerability is nothing compared to the fiery conflagration her own abilities spark off…

Before long the Allens are separated forever when she joins Karen’s runaways and Teddy trudges off to join the revenge-obsessed Quicksilver’s Brotherhood of Mutants…

The volume concludes as Karen’s “X” gang is forced to recruit some heavy-hitting power after Sabretooth almost kills Jimmy. Her solution is overwhelming overkill and she gets Bruce Banner to deliver a Hulk-sized lesson in punitive retribution, spurns Quicksilver’s offer to join forces against humanity and instead allies with one of the most powerful and Machiavellian men in the world…

Originally designed to form part of the post-Ultimatum stable of titles, X suffered perennial delays (five issues between February 2010 and July 2011) and the story instead became a prelude to a new Ultimate X-Men series, none of which is germane to the enjoyment of this classy “gathering of heroes” tale by the always impressive Jeph Loeb and the phenomenally impressive Arthur Adams (augmented by the digital inks of Aspen MLT’s Mark Roslan and colourist Peter Steigerwalt).

Even though far more upbeat and exuberant that the usual Ultimate fare, the trademark post-modernity and cynical, dark action is still here to deliver the grim ‘n’ gritty punch fans insist on, so this is a pretty good book for anybody thinking on jumping on to decidedly different world of Wonder: one which will resonate with older readers who love the darkest side of superheroes and casual readers who know the company’s movies better than the comic-books.
™ & © 2011 Marvel Entertainment LLC and its subsidiaries. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.