Marvel Comics Presents – Stoker’s Dracula


By Bram Stoker, adapted by Roy Thomas & Dick Giordano with Joe Rosen, & VC’s Chris Eliopoulos, Cory Petit, Randy Gentiles & Rus Wooton (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4905-7 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-0-7851-1477-2 (2005 HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Moody Masterpiece …8/10

At the end of the 1960s American comic books were in turmoil, much like the youth of the nation they targeted. Superheroes had dominated for much of the decade; peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Older genres such as horror, westerns and science fiction returned, fed by bold trends in movie-making and on TV, which now supplied the bulk of young adult entertainment needs for those kids who had grown up with Marvel.

Inspiration isn’t everything. In fact as Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in the wake of the losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties. The only real exception to this was a resurrection of horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in super-hero sales – a move vastly aided expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

The switch to supernatural stars had many benefits. Crucially, it brought a new readership to House of Ideas, one attuned to the global revival in spiritualism, Satanism and all things sinisterly spooky. Almost as important, it gave the reprint-savvy company an opportunity to finally recycle old 1950s horror stories that had been rendered unprintable and useless since the code’s inception in 1954. A scant 15 years later the CCA prohibition against horror was hastily rewritten – amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics – and scary comics came back in a big way with a new crop of supernatural heroes and monsters popping up on the newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving mystery men titles.

In fact lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an en masse creation of horror titles (both new characters and reprints from the massive boom of the early 1950s) that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to (temporarily, at least) bite the dust. Almost overnight nasty monsters (and narcotics – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare on four-colour pages and whilst a parade of pre-code reprints made sound business sense, the creative aspect of the contemporary buzz for bizarre themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always in entertainment, the watch-world was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible. One of Marvel’s earliest hits was an annexation of much of the lore around Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. With the secrets of that comic book success being held in abeyance here due to specific reviews of those tales imminently forthcoming, today we’re focusing on and recommending a lost gem of graphic narrative that grew out of the short lived phenomenon…

As far better explained by Roy Thomas in this compilation’s fact-packed Introduction ‘Dracula Lives – Again!’, the Tomb of Dracula newsstand periodical swiftly begat a non-code, anthological magazine spin-off – Dracula Lives – which, by various processes and endeavours further detailed by illustrator Dick Giordano in his Afterword ‘More than thirty years ago…’, spawned a full and thorough, serialised adaptation of the Stoker source material. More details of its production, and how the sudden downturn in horror themed fare caused the adaptation to stall and the magazines that carried it to fold are fully discussed in both essays and form part of the copious treasure trove of ‘Extras’ that close this tome of terror.

A work of astounding, respectful authenticity, and completely compelling at all stages despite a 30-year pause, this haunting beautiful adaptation is a triumph of that comics subdimension concerning adaptations of found literary material. As such, it compiles the chapters from Dracula Lives #5-8, 10-11 (spanning cover-dates March 1974 – March 1975) plus the completed but homeless seventh chapter which found a home in Marvel Preview #8 (AKA Legion of Monsters #1, September 1975) before the project stalled. After much long protracted wishing, and dalliances with other companies, the project was finally revived and the full finished saga was commissioned by Marvel three decades after the fact. The result was initially released as 4-issue miniseries Stoker’s Dracula (October 2004 to May 2005) before transferring for Halloween 2005 to its more apposite graphic novel incarnation.

A few more things to point out. Thomas and Giordano were deeply invested in the project and pulled out all the innovative stops to make the serial something special. Thomas designated specific lettering for each character’s narration – one of the earliest incidences of the technique, and Giordano – in an era long before graphic novels were possible in America – designed each instalment with drop-away caption boxes, on the hope that if one day the US gathered material in albums like Europe, individual chapter titles and “coming next issue!” captions could just be excised… like in a “real” novel…

However, as we’re all accursed with completism in comics, all those pages, plus miniseries front and back covers, Dracula Lives covers, paste up recap pages (11 in all) are included in the aforementioned Extras section, as well as 15 pages of sketches and 8 more showing the art process from rough pencils to inks and grey-tone wash finishes, before ending with the Giordano cover of Alter Ego #53 which highlighted the completion of the book of many ages…

As for the story, we all know it to some degree, but this one is guaranteed the closest ever to helping kids with their book reports without inflicting the modern bane of AI plagiarism on already despondent English teachers…

In an unbroken flow of gothic wonderment, the monochrome glory begins with a significant opening line quote, as on May 3rd 1897, English lawyer Jonathan Harker is lured to the wilds of Transylvania and horror beyond imagining when an ancient bloodsucking horror prepares to relocate to the pulsing heart of the modern world. As seen in ‘Into the Spider’s Web’, ‘The Female of the Species’, and ‘And in that Sleep…!’ English man of business Harker becomes an enforced guest, left to the tender mercies of his vampiric harem, and narrowly escapes even as their dark master Dracula travels by schooner to England, slaughtering every seaman aboard the S.S. Demeter in ‘Ship of Death’ before quietly unleashing a reign of terror on the sedate and complacent British countryside.

In the seat of Empire, Harker’s fiancée Mina Murray finds her flighty friend Lucy Westenra fading due to troublesome dreams and an uncanny lethargy none of her determined suitors – Dr. Jack Seward, Texan Quincy P. Morris and Arthur Holmwood (the next Lord Godalming) – can dispel. As Harker struggles to survive in the Carpathians, in Britain, Seward’s deranged patient Renfield claims horrifying visions and becomes greatly agitated…

Dracula, although only freshly arrived in England, is already causing chaos and disaster, and constantly returns to swiftly declining Lucy. His bestial bloodletting prompts her three beaux to summon famed Dutch physician Abraham Van Helsing to save her life and cure her increasing mania. As seen in ‘If Madness be Thy Master…!’, ‘Death Be Thou Proud!’, ‘Hour of the Wolf!’ and ‘Tell Truth, and Shame the Devil’ Harker survives his Transylvanian ordeal, and when nuns notify Mina, she rushes to Romania and marries him in a hasty ceremony to save his health and wits…

In London – and ‘For in that Sleep of Death…’ , ‘If Blood be the Price…’ , ‘For the Blood is the Life…’ and ‘The Demon in his Lair’ – Dracula renews his assaults and Lucy dies, and is reborn as a predatory, child-killing monster. After dispatching her to eternal rest, Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward and Morris – joined by recently returned, much-altered Harker and his bride – vow to hunt down and destroy the ancient evil in their midst, after a chance encounter in a London street between the newlyweds and an astoundingly rejuvenated Count.

Dracula has incredible forces and centuries of experience on his side. Having tainted Mina with his blood-drinking curse, he flees back to his ancestral lands. Frantically, giving the mortal champions give chase in ‘Pursuit’ and ‘Jaws of the Dragon’, battling the elements, the monster’s enslaved “gypsy army” and horrific eldritch power in a race against time lest Mina finally succumb forever to his unholy influence. Thankfully, but at great cost, Dracula’s efforts are all foiled and ‘Sunset’ sees his final death, with the survivors seen enjoying a fresh new dawn in ‘Epilogue’

This breathtaking, oft-retold yarn delivers moody mystery, epic action, moving melodrama and astounding adventure all mantled in grim gothic horror, delivering beguilingly beautiful images and stunning thrills and chills in a most satisfactory traditional manner. Well worth the incredible wait, this is a comics classic every fan should hunt down.
© 2021 MARVEL.

The A-Z of Marvel Monsters


By Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0863-8 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Fan Smash! … 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

To dyed-in-the-wool comic book fanboys there’s a much beloved period in history when a frankly daft and woefully formulaic trend produced utter, joyous magic. We look back on it now and see only the magnificent art, or talk with loving derision of the crazy (and frequently onomatopoeic) names, but deep down we can’t shake the exuberant thrill inside or the frisson of emotion that occurs when we see or even think of them.

Before Jack Kirby & Stan Lee brought superheroes back to Marvel Comics, the company was on its last legs. Locked into a woefully disadvantageous distribution deal, the company’s output was limited to some sixteen genre titles. But there was hope…

The outside, mainstream, world was currently gripped in an atomic B-movie monster craze, so Lee, Kirby and Steve Ditko dutifully capitalised on it in their anthology mystery titles Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense. In an unending procession of brief inspirational novelettes, dauntless or canny or just plain outsider humans outsmarted a succession of bizarre aliens, mad scientists, an occasional ghost or sorcerer (this was, after all, the heyday of the Comics Code Authority when any depiction of the supernatural was BAD) and a horde of outrageous beasties in a torrent of wonders best described by the catchphrase “monsters-in-underpants.”

Simplistic, moralistic, visually experimental yet reassuringly predictable in narrative, these Outer Limits-style yarns were – and still are – the epitome of sheer unrelenting fun with no redeeming social context required. Marvel have increasingly celebrated that fact in recent years (even folding most of the yarns into their modern multiversal continuity) and – over the course of one month – commissioned a line of 26 “Kirby Monster” variant covers for their periodical releases, all lovingly crafted by a number of top names to highlight the treasured contribution of beasties, things and what-nots…

This volume gathers those images in a handy hardcover primer (and eBook edition) whilst gloriously gilding the lily with a splendid selection of a few of the original mini-epics as created from those pre-Marvel Age masterpieces. The short sharp surprise is suitably augmented by ‘Jack Kirby, Atlas Comics & Monsters!’: a 1994 Introduction from the King himself.

The next bit’s another shopping-list moment, so if you want to skip ahead a little, I shouldn’t be at all surprised…

Augmented by the original cover of each diabolical debut, the worshipful A to Z art-section opens with Erica Henderson’s reinterpretation of ‘The Awesome Android!’ (as first seen in Fantastic Four #15) and rapidly follows up ‘The Blip!’ by Simon Bisley, and ‘The Crawling Creature!’, delineated by Maguerite Sauvage. An extreme late entry in the Kirby-Kritter Circus, ‘Devil Dinosaur!’ launched in his own title in 1978 and his moody reprise from Matthew Wilson is followed by Jeff Lemire’s take on ‘Elektro!’ and ‘Fin Fang Foom!’ – first seen in Strange Tales #89, and rendered here by Walter Simonson & Laura Martin.

Michael & Laura Allred depict latter-day cellulose celluloid star ‘Groot!’ (originating in Tales to Astonish #13), before Francesco Francavilla highlights ‘The Hypno-Creature!’, Paolo Rivera revisits Fantastic Four #24’s weird menace ‘The Infant Terrible!’ and Glenn Fabry regales us with an Asgardian god battling ‘The Jinni Devil!’ in a scene that didn’t make it into 1967’s Thor #137…

Dave Johnson details a key point in the life of ‘Kraa the Unhuman!’ before John Cassaday & Matthew Wilson illuminate the depredations of ‘Lo-Karr, Bringer of Doom!’, after which Geof Darrow whisks us back to Thor #154 to meet again amalgamated atrocity ‘Mangog!’

Kirby’s astounding 1976 Eternals series produced many incredible images, with Paul Pope & Shay Plummer selecting 2,000 feet tall Space God ‘Nezarr the Calculator!’ to set the pulses racing, whilst Mike del Mundo plumps for Strange Tales #90’s ‘Orrgo!’ and James Stokoe recalls Strange Tales of the Unusual #1 (December 1956)’s forgotten fiend ‘Poker Face!’

Recurring FF foe ‘The Quonian!’ first appeared in Fantastic Four #97 and wows again here thanks to Christian Ward, after which Eric Powell previews ‘Rommbu!’ and Tradd Moore pits Ant-Man against Tales to Astonish #39 terror ‘The Scarlet Beetle!’ before Chris Bachalo & Tim Townsend show us the power of ‘Thorr!’ Chris Samnee & Wilson expose the fervent ferocity of Journey into Mystery #63’s undersea goliath ‘Ulvar!’ and Arthur Adams & Chris Sotomayor hark back to Tales to Astonish #17 to focus on ‘Vandoom’s Monster’ after which one last FF antagonist features as Cliff Chiang reveals ‘The Wrecker’s Robot!’ as seen in Fantastic Four #12.

Wrapping up this astounding alphabet are Dan Brereton’s rendition of ‘Xemnu!’ and Phil Noto’s depiction of ‘The Yeti!’ who battled Kirby’s Black Panther in #5 before Tony Moore & John Rauch hilariously conclude the countdown with alien outlaw ‘Zetora’.

Okay. Maybe a few of those spooky stalwarts might have been from a later era and star in superhero sagas, but the influence and intent was clearly seen throughout and just sets the tone for the Kirby-crafted fearsome fantasy-fest that follow…

The family-friendly monster mash – featuring scripts by Lee and Larry Lieber with Dick Ayers inking – opens with ‘I Learned the Dread Secret of The Blip!’ (Tales to Astonish #15, January 1961) wherein an openminded radar operator attempts to assist a stranded alien energy being. ‘I Dared to Battle the Crawling Creature!’ comes from TtA #22 (August 1961) as a scrawny High School nerd travels into the bowels of the Earth to face a primitive predator, whilst an aging electronicist creates and eventually counters would-be computerised conqueror ‘Elektro! He Held the World in his Iron Grip!’ (Tales of Suspense #19, January 1961).

The hideous Hypno-Creature harried a very human hero in extra-dimensional invasion epic ‘I Entered the Dimension of Doom!’ (ToS #23, November 1961) whilst facing hulking atomic victim ‘Kraa the Unhuman!’ (ToS #18, June 1961) proves the making of a timid American teacher…

A sunken stone head on a Pacific Island proved to be big trouble when explorers awakened ancient alien invaders in ‘Here Comes… Thorr the Unbelievable’ (Tales to Astonish #16, February 1961) and the origins of Defenders villain Xemnu the Titan are exposed in ‘I Was a Slave of the Living Hulk!’ (Journey into Mystery #62, November 1960) whilst one hapless human proves to be the perfect hideout for extraterrestrial fugitive Zetora in ‘The Martian Who Stole My Body!’, as seen in JiM #57 (March 1960).

Foolish, fabulous, thrill-packed, utterly intoxicating and unforgettable, these are fun-filled tales no puny human could possibly resist.
© 1956-1961, 2017 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

Marvel Masterworks: Werewolf by Night volume 2


By Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich, Gerry Conway, Tony Isabella, Doug Moench, Mike Ploog, Don Perlin, Tom Sutton, Gil Kane, Gerry Conway, Pat Broderick, Frank Chiaramonte, Mike Royer, Vince Colletta, Tom Palmer& various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4948-8 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Magical unrealism… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in 1970, in the wake of losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators – Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby – they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties.

The only real exception to this was a mass release of horror titles rapidly devised in response to an industry-wide down-turn in superhero sales. The move was handily expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (plus narcotics and bent coppers – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare within four-colour pages and whilst a parade of 1950s pre-code reprints made sound business sense (so they repackaged a bunch of those too) the creative aspect of the contemporary fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always, the watch-word was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible…

When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of scary stars – beginning with a werewolf and traditional vampire – before chancing something new via a haunted biker who could tap into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the supernatural zeitgeist.

With its title cribbed from a classic short thriller from pre-Code horror anthology Marvel Tales #116 (July 1953), Werewolf By Night debuted in Marvel Spotlight #2. It had been preceded by masked western hero Red Wolf in #1, and was followed by the afore-hinted Ghost Rider, but this hairy hero was destined to stick around for a while.

This chillingly crackers compendium compiles more moody misadventures of a good-hearted young West Coast lycanthrope who briefly shone as an unlikely star for the entire length of a trading trend, as proved here by the reprinted full-colour contents of Werewolf By Night volume 1 #9-21, Giant-Size Creatures #1, and Tomb of Dracula #18, plus some enticing extracts from Monsters Unleashed #6 & 7: collectively spanning September 1973 to September 1974.

Jack Russell is a teenager with a rare but very disturbing condition. On her deathbed, his mother revealed unsuspected Transylvanian origins to her beloved boy: relating a family curse which would turn him into a raging beast on every night with a full moon… as soon as he reached his 18th birthday.

And so it began…

After many months of misunderstanding as Jack tried to cope alone with his periodic wild side, Jack’s stepfather Philip Russell expanded the story, revealing how the Russoff line was cursed by the taint of Lycanthropy: every child doomed to become a wolf-thing under the full-moon from the moment they reached adulthood. Moreover, the feral blight would do the same to his little sister Lissa when she reached her own majority…

As Jack tried and repeatedly failed to balance a normal life with his monthly cycle of uncontrollable ferocity, he met eventual mentor and confidante Buck Cowan, an aging writer who became Jack’s best friend after the pair began to jointly investigate the wolf-boy’s past. Their incessant search for a cure was made more urgent by little Lissa’s ever-encroaching birthday. In the course of their researches they crossed swords with many monsters – human and otherwise – including off-the-rails cop Lou Hackett, who had been going increasingly crazy in his off-the-books investigation/hunt for a werewolf nobody believed in. This time we will meet a fellow horror hairball who has found a shocking remedy to their condition…

Following fond and effusive recollections from novelist/comics scribe Duane Swierczynski in his Introduction ‘My Favorite Fur Baby’, the saga resumes as Jack heads back to LA after meeting Spider-Man, only to find ‘Terror Beneath the Earth!’ Here, Conway, Tom Sutton & George Roussos delve into an impending and thoroughly nefarious scheme by business cartel The Committee. These out-of-the-box commercial gurus somehow possess a full dossier on Jack Russell’s night-life and hire a maniac sewer-dwelling sound engineer to execute their radical plan to use monsters and derelicts to boost sales in a down-turned economy.

Sadly, the bold sales scheme to frighten folk into spending more ends before it begins as the werewolf proves to be far from a team-player in wrap up ‘The Sinister Secret of Sarnak!’

Werewolf by Night #11 revelled in irony as Marv Wolfman signed on as writer for ‘Comes the Hangman’ – illustrated by the incredible Gil Kane & Sutton – in which we learn something interesting about Philip Russell and The Committee, whilst Jack’s attention is distracted by a new apartment, a very odd neighbour and a serial kidnapper abducting young women to keep them “safe from corruption.” When the self-deluded hooded hero snatches Lissa, he finds himself hunted by a monster beyond his wildest dreams…

Concluding chapter ‘Cry Werewolf!’ brings in the criminally underappreciated Don Perlin as inker. In a few short months he would become the strip’s penciller for the rest of the run, but before that original illustrator Mike Ploog (with Frank Chiaramonte) pops back for another stunning session, introducing a manic mystic and a new love-interest (not the same person) in WBN #13’s ‘His Name is Taboo’. An aged sorcerer coveting the werewolf’s energies for his own arcane purposes, the magician is stunned when his adopted daughter Topaz finds her loyalties divided and her psionic gifts more help than hindrance to the ravening moon-beast.

‘Lo, the Monster Strikes!’ pits the wolf against Taboo’s undead – but getting better – son and sees revelation and reconciliation between Philip and Jack Russell. As a result, the young man and new girlfriend Topaz set off for Transylvania, the ancestral Russoff estate and a crossover confrontation with the Lord of Vampires…

Tomb of Dracula #18 (March 1974) commences the clash in ‘Enter: Werewolf by Night’ (Wolfman, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer) as Jack & Topaz investigate a potential cure for lycanthropy, only to be ambushed by Dracula. Driven off by the strange girl’s psychic powers, the cunning Count realises the threat she poses to him and resolves to slay her…

It concludes courtesy of Wolfman, Ploog & Chiaramonte in Werewolf by Night #15 and the ‘Death of a Monster!’ as the battle of beasts resolves into a messy stalemate, but only after Jack learns of his family’s long connection to Dracula…

The suspense builds as Jack & Topaz reach Paris. After failing to find a cure in his Balkan homeland, and clashing with a vampire they were forced to endure a tiresome – and crucially untimely – forced stopover in the City of Lights. Quel dommage!

This leads to an impromptu clash with a modern-day Hunchback of Notre Dame (he doesn’t sing and he’s not very gentle here) and ends with ‘Death in the Cathedral!’. Scripted by Mike Friedrich and inked by Chiaramonte, this bombastic battle was co-originator Ploog’s farewell performance as artist in residence.

WBN #17 was by Friedrich & Don Perlin, with Jack & Topaz escaping Paris only to fall into The Committee’s latest scheme, as blustering Baron Thunder and his favourite monster ‘The Behemoth!’ try to make the werewolf their plaything again. The plot concluded in ‘Murder by Moonlight!’ (Perlin inked by Mike Royer) as the secret of Jack’s mystery neighbour is exposed when Thunder attacks again, aided by witch-queen Ma Mayhem. However, it’s all a feint for The Committee to kidnap Lissa who will, one day soon, become a werewolf too… and hopefully a far more manageable one…

A potent pin-up carries us onwards before – whilst searching for Lissa – Jack finds out some of the secrets of nasty neighbour Raymond Coker before falling foul of two undead film-stars haunting the Hollywood backlots in #19’s ‘Vampires on the Moon’ (Friedrich, Perlin & Vince Colletta).

Armed with the knowledge that for a werewolf to lift his curse, he/she must kill another one, it’s a swift lope to  Giant-Size Creatures #1, where Tony Isabella, Perlin & Colletta moodily re-imagine a failed costumed crusader and introduce a new creepy champion in ‘Tigra the Were-Woman!’ Greer Nelson – one-time feminist avenger The Cat – is “assassinated” by Hydra agents, revived by ancient hidden race the Cat-People and becomes an unwilling object of temporary affection for feral and frisky moonwalker Jack Russell…

Following text piece ‘Waiter, there’s a Werewolf in my Soup!’ – also from Giant-Size Creatures and explaining the genesis of Marvel’s horror line – WBN #20 debuts writer Doug Moench to wrap up all the disparate plot threads in ‘Eye of the Wolf!’: a rushed but satisfactory conclusion offering a whole pack of werewolves, Baron Thunder, Ma Mayhem and lots and lots of action.

With the decks cleared, Moench began making the series uniquely his own, beginning with #21’s ‘One Wolf’s Cure… Another’s Poison!’, wherein he starts playing up the ever-encroaching 18th birthday of little Lissa, before deftly engineering the final reckoning with rogue cop Hackett…

With the stage set for some truly outrageous yarn-spinning we abruptly divert to a brace of sidebar shorts taken from Monsters Unleashed #6 and 7. Here Gerry Conway’s prose yarn ‘Panic by Moonlight’ and concluding instalment ‘Madness Under a Mid-Summer Moon’ (with spot illustrations by Ploog, Pat Broderick & Klaus Janson) detail how a gang of bikers pick the wrong night to home-invade the flashy singles complex Jack Russell lives in…

Kicking off the bonus section is an Introduction by Ralph Macchio first seen in 2017’s Werewolf By Night: The Complete Collection volume 1, contemporary house ads and – complementing the cover gallery by Sutton, Kane, John Romita, Ernie Chan, Ploog, Palmer, Frank Giacoia, Ron Wilson, Klaus Janson – a selection of original art by Kane, Ploog, Perlin & Chiaramonte.

A moody masterpiece of macabre menace and all-out animal action, this compilation comprises some of the most under-appreciated magic moments in Marvel history: tense, suspenseful and solidly compelling. If you must have a mixed bag of lycanthropes, bloodsuckers and moody young magical misses, this is a far more entertaining mix than many modern movies, books or miscellaneous matter…
© 2023 MARVEL.

Invincible Iron Man Marvel Masterworks volume 12


By Bill Mantlo, Gerry Conway, George Tuska, Keith Pollard, Carmine Infantino, Don Perlin, Jack Abel, Mike Esposito, Fred Kida, Pablo Marcos, Bob Wiacek, Alfredo Alcala & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1716-6 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Arch-technocrat and supreme survivor Tony Stark has changed profile many times since his debut in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963) when, whilst a VIP visitor in Vietnam observing the efficacy of the munitions he had designed, the inventor was critically wounded and captured by sinister, savage Communists.

Put to work building weapons with the dubious promise of medical assistance on completion, Stark instead created the first of many technologically augmented suits to keep himself alive and deliver him from his oppressors. From there it was a simple – transistor-powered – jump to full time superheroics as a modern Knight in Shining Armour…

Conceived in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis at a time when Western economies were booming and “Commie-bashing” was an American obsession, the emergence of a new young Thomas Edison, employing Yankee ingenuity, wealth and invention to safeguard the Land of the Free and better the World, seemed an obvious development. Combining then-sacrosanct faith that technology and business in unison could solve any problem, with the universal imagery of noble knights battling evil, Stark – the Invincible Iron Man – seemed an infallibly successful proposition.

Of course, whilst he was the acceptable face of 1960s Capitalism – a glamorous millionaire industrialist/scientist and a benevolent all-conquering hero when clad in the super-scientific armour of his alter-ego – the turbulent tone of the 1970s soon relegated his suave, “can-do” image to the dustbin of history. With ecological disaster and social catastrophe from the myriad abuses of big business the new zeitgeists of the young, the Golden Avenger and Stark International were soon confronting some tricky questions from an increasingly politically savvy readership.

With glamour, money and fancy gadgetry not quite so cool anymore the questing voices of a new generation of writers began posing uncomfortable questions in the pages of a series that was once the bastion of militarised America. This twelfth chronological compendium completes that transitional period, reprinting Iron Man #95 – 112 (February 1977 to July 1978) as Bill Mantlo’s passionate writing triggers a minor renaissance in the Steel Sentinel’s chrome-plated chronicles that will result in some of the best stories of the Eighties era and return Iron Ma to the top-rank of Marvel stars. If you’re a fan thanks to the movie interpretation, that iteration starts right here, right now…

Aided and abetted by Kurt Busiek’s informative, insightful Introduction offering historical overview and behind-the-scenes revelations, the climb to reclaimed pole position resumes with veteran Iron Man artist George Tuska joining plotter Gerry Conway, scripter Mantlo and inker Don Perlin in unleashing giant android ‘Ultimo!’ (IM #95, cover-dated February 1977) against Washington DC.

Clad in newly-updated armour and in the Capitol to answer congressional questions about his company, Stark is targeted by a vengeful hidden nemesis who activates the mountainous monster for a classic B-Movie sci fi rampage in the streets, with the Golden Avenger supplementing hard pressed Army and National Guard units… before falling in ignominious defeat due to sabotage…

Mantlo, Tuska & Jack Abel prove you can’t keep a good Iron Man down as the embattled hero rallies and retaliates in ‘Only a Friend Can Save Him’ when former close ally and dutiful S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jasper Sitwell joins the counterattack. Meanwhile a long-simmering plotline advanced as NYPD detective Michael O’Brien – who holds Stark responsible and accountable for the death of his brother Kevin (see Iron Man Masterworks volume 11) – finally allows his obsession with a cover-up to pull him across the legal line and into collusion with shady PI Harry Key, whose latest client also has nasty plans for the playboy inventor…

Thanks to ingenuity and sheer guts, Stillwell and Iron Man seemingly destroy Ultimo deep below DC, but their triumph is short lived as a return to Stark’s Long Island factory provokes a ‘Showdown with the Guardsman!’ (Conway, Mantlo, Tuska & Perlin). When Mike takes PA Krissy Longfellow hostage, steals the armour suit that drove his brother insane and ambushes the Golden Avenger wearing it, the clash is swift and brutal, but thankfully this time, blockbusting battle ends before another good man dies…

Whilst subsequently treating O’Brian, another distraction comes when an old frenemy attacks the facility and American interventionist economic practises. ‘Sunfire Strikes Again!’ sees the Japanese ultra-nationalist mutant warrior again seek to derail progress, unaware that he is a pawn of the lurking presence gunning for Stark, but the harried hero’s problems start with the fact his greatest weapon is offline and he’s fighting in borrowed Guardsman armour. When the conflict frees imprisoned Michael O’Brian, the cop seeks to make amends by joining the battle in an obsolete Iron Man outfit, but – even with Mike Esposito inking – the new allies rapidly find themselves ‘At the Mercy of the Mandarin!’

During the melee, Key tries his luck in the Stark vaults once too often and encounters an unexpected problem thanks to another insidious infiltrator planted by a different plotting mastermind. However, having freed himself, Tony is too now busy rushing to a far-distant, potentially world-ending final battle in anniversary issue #100. Invading China, Iron Man faces horrors, homunculi Death Squads, nuclear armageddon and his most obsessive enemy whose ‘Ten Rings to Rule the World!’ ultimately prove insufficient to the task…

With the tyrant’s countless plots to discredit Stark all exposed, our hero starts a long journey home even as in Long Island, Harry Key, Jasper Sitwell and one of the traitors in Stark’s midst begin a cautious espionage dance…

Iron Man’s trip stalls when he is shot down over Yugoslavia (just google it) and wakens in a creepy old castle filled with freaks and outcasts safeguarded by a familiar – to dedicated Marvelites at least – huge and daunting figure. Recovering in ‘Then Came the Monster!’ our weary voyager views Castle Frankenstein and panics: clashing with the gentle “Modern Prometheus” before the real menace emerges. Inked by Esposito & Pablo Marcos, ‘Dreadknight and the Daughter of Creation!’ channels old Marvel horror tales as a brutal and brutalised escaped experiment of Doctor Doom’s laboratories seeks to compel the great granddaughter of Victor Frankenstein to share with him the secrets of creating life…

This ruthless high-tech paladin’s sadistic efforts are eventually thwarted by Iron Man and the original good Monster, after which the Steel Shod Sentinel at last arrives home in #103’s ‘Run for the Money!’ by Mantlo, Tuska & Esposito. Sadly, it’s just in time for the next domestic crisis as Sitwell exposes the traitor only to be captured by revolting corporate villain Midas, who – patience exhausted – launches a hostile takeover using tanks, mercenaries, lawyers and the Stock Market…

He is temporarily checked by itinerant junior hero/innocent bystander Jack of Hearts who – as per standard Marvel protocol – is attacked by the weary, late arriving Iron Man who has misconstrued events and attacked the well-meaning stranger. Shock follows shock as Midas’ legal chicanery forces Iron Man’s surrender, ceding control of Stark International to his enemy, even as the villain’s agent Madame Masque quits to ally herself with the defeated hero and his ousted, outmanoeuvred alter ego Tony Stark. In the aftermath, repercussions of the takeover ripple outwards. With Stark no longer paying her bill, deeply disturbed super-telepath (and former Stark inamorata) Marianne Rodgers is kicked out of the sanatorium that has been keeping her psionic deadly tendencies in check…

The fightback begins in ‘Triad!’ (Mantlo, Tuska & Esposito) after Stark initially refuses the help of Masque. Thus she instead allies with former lover/patsy Sitwell whilst elsewhere, interested parties Michael O’Brian and Jack of Hearts also seek to stop Midas converting Stark’s purloined resources into a world-conquering armed force. Also heading slowly towards a showdown, Marianne graduates towards Long Island, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake…

With ‘Every Hand Against Him!’ and despite the stakes being so high, Tony has quit forever, preferring to hide in his father’s old house with Madame Masque. Less sanguine over the crisis and threat to National Security, many of Iron Man’s allies join a volunteer force recruited by psychic superhero The Wraith and eventually consisting of Police Captain Jean de Wolf, former Iron Man Eddie March, The Guardsman and Jack of Hearts, covertly backed up by Sitwell and (the first) Nick Fury

Still short of power, they co-opt through blackmail, Masque’s lethal skills and Tony’s last remaining armour suit to take down Midas. ‘Then There Came a War!’ (#106) sees the desperate squad invade SI and face a legion of automated Iron Men. At the height of battle Marianne Rodgers – in a fugue state – finally reaches her destination. As Keith Pollard & Fred Kida step in to illustrate the catastrophic conclusion, ‘And, in the End…’ sees her power tip the scales, uncovering even more treachery in Tony’s inner circle and inspiring the despondent hero to take back his heritage, his company and his honour…

With most of his allies apparently dead, Iron Man calls in Avenging ally Yellowjacket (AKA original Ant-Man Henry Pym) to help whip up a miracle cure in #108 (Mantlo, Carmine Infantino & Bob Wiacek). This incurs some ‘Growing Pains!’ and a palate-cleansing action-filled monster-bash as the clear-up somehow reactivates Kang the Conqueror’s devastating Growing Man android to add to the wreckage and rubble…

Once the fighting is finished, the rebuilding of Stark International begins, with Mantlo, Infantino & Kida dictating the pace prior to another crisis after Jack of Hearts traces the Growing Man’s programming orders as emanating from Luna. Thus Iron Man and his superhero apprentice board a Quinjet and experiences a very painful ‘Moonrise!’ when their mission intersects a secret sortie by Soviet Super-soldiers Darkstar, Vanguard and Crimson Dynamo. The Communist cosmonauts are only investigating a bizarre alien artefact, but entrenched political and personal animosities spark a savage fight. Both sides are preoccupied when the silver egg activates, transporting those closest to it – the Americans – to somewhere far, far away…

Mantlo, Pollard & Kida stretch their fantasy muscles for an astral epic as the heroes materialise aboard a vast ship bearing Colonizers of Rigel to their next conquest. Sadly, these ‘Sojourners Through Space!’ have targeted Wundagore II – used by animal-enhancing manmade deity the High Evolutionary to store former experiments – and are soon caught up in a battle against formidable space Knights of Wundagore and two devastating late-arriving, quickly escaping human captives within their colossal Commandship…

When an alliance of humans and hyper-evolved Earth beasts proves too costly, the Rigellian venture is called off in ‘The Man, the Metal, and the Mayhem!’ but in turn leads to renegade Colonizer subcommander Arcturus spitefully targeting Earth with a robot stolen from Galactus (the original Punisher from Fantastic Four #48-50). Upon its despatch, closing inclusion ‘Moon Wars!’ (Iron Man #112,  July 1978 by Mantlo, Pollard & Alfredo Alcala) sees a swift, unauthorised Colonizer strike lead to a desperate dash back to Luna and shattering descent to Detroit, Earth, for Iron Man, resulting in blistering battle with the cosmic weapon of chastisement and a whole new definition of the word “invincible” for the triumphant Golden Avenger…

To Be Continued…

With covers throughout by Jack Kirby, Al Milgrom, Abel, Ron Wilson, Dan Adkins, Gil Kane, Dave Cockrum, Sal Buscema, Jim Starlin, Val Mayerik, George Pérez, Terry Austin, Frank Giacoia, Joe Sinnott, Joe Rubinstein, John Byrne, Wiacek & Pollard, the extras include cartoon fan letter ‘Printed Circuits’ (by Fred Hembeck from #112) and original art consisting of covers, plus splash and story pages by Milgrom, Abel, Starlin, Mayerik, Cockrum, Tuska & Esposito.

These epic yarns are the bread & butter of superhero comic storytelling, combining action, spectacle, intrigue, drama and even soap opera elements to keep readers coming back issue after issue. These as much as every cosmic landmark and style breakthrough are what keep comics companies alive and deserve your full attention. Suit up and read on…
© 2019 MARVEL.

Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch Epic Collection volume 1 – Vengeance Reborn (1990-1991)


By Howard Mackie, Roy Thomas & Dann Thomas, Javier Saltares, Mark Texeira. Mark Bagley, Larry Stroman, Chris Marrinan, Jimmy Palmiotti, Harry Candelario, Tom Palmer, Mark McKenna & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5405-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

In the early 1970’s, following a downturn in superhero comics sales Marvel shifted focus from traditional clean-cut costumed crusaders to supernatural and horror characters. One of the most enduring was a flaming-skulled vigilante dubbed The Ghost Rider.

Carnival stunt-cyclist Johnny Blaze had sold his soul to the devil in an attempt to save his foster-father from cancer. As is always the way of such things Satan (or arch-liar Mephisto as he actually was) followed the letter, but not spirit, of the contract and Crash Simpson died anyway.

When the Demon Lord came for Blaze only the love of an innocent saved the bad-boy biker from eternal pain and damnation. Temporarily thwarted, Johnny was punished: afflicted with a body that burned with all the fires of Hell every time the sun went down. He became the unwilling host for outcast and exiled demon Zarathos – the Spirit of Vengeance. After years of travail and turmoil Blaze was liberated from the demon’s curse and seemingly retired from the hero’s life. The origin has been tweaked constantly since then, but for this time and tome, this is what the reboot stemmed from…

As Blaze briefly escaped a preordained doom, a tragic boy named Danny Ketch assumed the role of Zarathos’ host and prison by a route most circuitous and tragic…

From that dubious period of fashionably “Grim ‘n’ Gritty” superheroics in the early 1990s comes an engagingly fast-paced and action-oriented horror-hero re-imagining, courtesy of writer Howard Mackie and artists Javier Saltares & Mark Texeira, which rapidly secured the newest Ghost Rider status as one of the hottest hits of the period.

This premiere Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch Epic Collection volume gathers #1-12 of the revitalised series plus crossover incidents from Marc Spector: Moon Knight #25, Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #28 and material from Marvel Comics Presents #64-71: cumulatively covering cover-dates May 1990 to April 1991, and opens sans introduction with Howard Mackie, Javier Saltares & Mark Texiera’s bonanza-sized introductory tale ‘Life’s Blood’

Here teenager Danny and his photographer sister Barbara are looking for Houdini’s tomb in Brooklyn’s vast Cypress Hills Cemetery on the eve of Halloween. Tragically, they stumble into a bloody criminal confrontation over a mysterious briefcase with ninjas and gangsters lashing out indiscriminately. Discovered, the siblings flee but Barb is hit by an arrow, with the case itself snatched by a juvenile gang who haunt the wooded necropolis. One of them makes tracks with the prize as the ninjas and macabre leader Deathwatch finish the firefight that follows. Now they are hunting for their hard-won prize… and the witnesses…

In an adjacent junkyard Danny is helplessly watching Barb bleed out when his attention is caught by a glowing pair of eyes. Closer inspection reveals them to be an arcane design on the gas-cap of an abandoned motorbike. The ninjas, having caught the girl who stole the briefcase, are closing in on the Ketch kids when Danny, hands soaked in his sister’s blood, touches the glowing bike symbol and is inexplicably transformed into a spectral horror, burning with fury and indignation. He has become a Spirit of Vengeance hungry to assuage the pain of innocent blood spilled, brimming with inhuman vitality, toting an infinitely adaptable bike chain and employing a mystic “Penance Stare” which subjects the guilty to unimaginable psychic pain and guilt…

The Blazing Biker makes short work of the ninjas, but when the police arrive and find him standing over dying Barbara, they naturally jump to the wrong conclusion…

Ghost Rider flees on a bike with wheels of fire, causing spectacular amounts of collateral carnage, as Barb is rushed to hospital, where a re-transfigured, bruised, bleeding and totally confused Danny finds her next morning…

In the richest part of Manhattan, Wall Street shark/psionic monster Deathwatch makes a ghastly example of the man who lost his briefcase – twice! – even as his competitor for it, criminal overlord Wilson Fisk, similarly chastises his own minions for failure. The contents of the case are not only hotly disputed, but utterly lethal and both factions will tear Brooklyn apart to get them. Meanwhile the teen thieves known as the Cyprus Pool Jokers find three canisters in the purloined case and hide them all over the vast cemetery, unaware that both Deathwatch’s ninjas and the Kingpin’s hoods are hunting for them.

At Barbara’s bedside Danny is wracked with guilt and plagued by anger. Unable to help his comatose sister, he decides to investigate what happened to him. When he regained consciousness, the blazing bike had returned to a normal configuration which Danny climbs aboard to heads back to Cyprus Hills and seek answers… just as competing packs of killers are turning the streets into a free-fire zone.

Riding right into the bloodbath, Danny sees his bike gas-cap glowing again and, almost against his will, slams his palm onto it to unleash his skeletal passenger once again…

Devastating assembled mobsters and murderers, the Ghost Rider takes wounded Cyprus Pool Jokers Ralphie and Paulie to hospital and another pointless confrontation with the authorities…

Second issue ‘Do Be Afraid of the Dark!’ depicts open war between Deathwatch and Kingpin’s forces for canisters neither side possesses, with Ghost Rider roaming the night tackling increasingly savage hunters on both sides. Paulie admits she has no idea where two of the containers might be, since the Jokers split up to hide them and she’s now the last of them…

The urban horror escalates when Deathwatch’s metahuman enforcer Blackout joins the hunt: a sadistic manmade vampire with the ability to manipulate fields of complete darkness. This psychotic mass-murderer targets entire families and starts his search by “questioning” the cops who attended the initial battle in the graveyard…

Danny is on the verge of a breakdown, snapping viciously at his mother and girlfriend Stacy: utterly unable to share the horror his life has become. Between days at Barb’s bedside and nights enslaved to a primal force obsessed with blood and punishment, Ketch is drowning…

When Blackout tracks down recuperating Ralphie, Ghost Rider is too late to save the young felon’s parents and barely manages to drive the vampire away before the boy also succumbs, leading to the inevitable final clash in ‘Deathwatch’ as the Wall Street dilettante’s forces find the canisters before being overwhelmed by the Kingpin. Painfully pragmatic, the ninja-master simply surrenders, but wildly unpredictable Blackout refuses to submit, slipping into a deadly berserker rage before escaping with the containers and terrified hostage Paulie.

The albino maniac knows his prize is a toxin able to eradicate New York’s population and harbours an plan to use it to kick-start an atomic war. The subsequent nuclear winter would ensure an Earth he would inevitably rule. However, his delusional dreams are ended when the Ghost Rider appears and engages the vampire in blistering battle.

Incensed beyond endurance, Blackout savagely bites the blazing biker, but instead of blood sucks down raw, coruscating hellfire that leaves his face a melted, agonising ruin whilst burning the canisters to harmless slag…

GR #4 finds Danny – unable to resist the constant call to become the Flaming Apparition – locking the cursed motorcycle beyond the reach of temptation in distant Manhattan. Sadly, it has other ideas when a clash between bikers and an old Thor villain trap Ketch and a car full innocent bystanders in a subterranean parking garage. ‘You Can Run, but You Can’t Hyde!’ teaches the troubled young man that the Rider is a cruel necessity in a bad world: an argument confirmed by the beginning of an extended subplot wherein children start vanishing from Brooklyn’s streets.

The very epitome of Grim ‘n’ Gritty stops by for a two issue guest-shot in #5-6 as ‘Getting Paid!’ and Do or Die!’ reveal a mysterious figure distributing free guns to children, drawing the attention of not just the night-stalking Spirit of Vengeance but also merciless, militaristic vigilante Frank Castle, known to criminals and cops alike as The Punisher.

The weapons are turning the city into a slaughterhouse, but cops and unscrupulous TV reporter Linda Wei seem more concerned with stopping Ghost Rider’s campaign against the youthful killers than ending the bloodshed. Danny investigates in mortal form and quickly finds himself in over his head, but for some reason the magic medallion won’t transform him. He is completely unaware how close he is to becoming the Punisher’s latest statistic…

The situation changes that night and the flame-skulled zealot initially clashes with Castle before they unite to tackle the true mastermind: rabid anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist terrorist Flag-Smasher. With the insane demagogue determined to unleash a blizzard of death on Wall Street, the driven antiheroes briefly unite to end the scheme and save the “bad” kids and the system that created them…

Illustrated solely by Texeira, ‘Obsession in #7 sees the return of contortionist/animal trainer The Scarecrow – who barely troubled Iron Man, The X-Men or Captain America in his early days – reinventing himself after slipping into morbid thanophilia. Now a remorseless, death-preoccupied deviant, he presents a truly different threat to the mystic agent of retribution…

A far greater menace is seen – or rather, not seen – as Blackout resurfaces: silently stalking Ketch and savagely slaughtering everybody who knows him. Not even the police guards at Barbara’s hospital bedside can stop the fiend with half-a-face…

Through dreams Danny debates his cursed existence with the Spirit of Vengeance in Mackie, Saltares & Texeira’s ‘Living Nightmare’ with Danny bemoaning his fate but seemingly unable to affect the implacable, terrifying being he can’t stop becoming. Adding to his fevered nights are visions of Deathwatch, Barbara and vile psycho-killer Blackout…

As the vampire continues killing anybody coming into contact with Danny – who seems paralysed by his dilemma – Stacy completes her training to be a cop, whilst her dad increases patrols to catch the blazing Biker. Impatient and scared, the Cypress Hills Community Action Group takes controversial steps to safeguard their streets: hiring maverick private security company H.E.A.R.T. (Humans Engaging All Racial Terrorism – truly one of the naffest and most inappropriate acronyms in comics history) who promptly assess Ghost Rider as the cause of all the chaos and go after him with high-tech military hardware including a helicopter gunship…

The Spirit of Vengeance is already occupied, having found Blackout attacking another girl, but their showdown is interrupted when the fiery skeleton is attacked by a colossal Morlock (feral mutants who live in tunnels beneath New York) mistaking saviour for assailant…

GR #9 guest-stars X-Factor (a reconstituted X-Men team comprising Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman and The Beast) who solve the mystery of the missing children in ‘Pursuit’ (with additional inks by Jimmy Palmiotti) after following Ghost Rider and Morlocks under the city.

Tragically, Blackout too is on the Blazing Biker’s trail and finds in the concrete depths even more victims to torture Danny Ketch’s breaking heart and blistered soul before their climactic last clash…

Here we pause for social networking 90s style as a serial in fortnightly anthology showcase Marvel Comics Presents (issues #64-710) sees the spectral biker participate in ‘Acts of Vengeance.’ Concocted by Mackie, Texiera & Harry Candelario the 8-part serial finds the Rider, Wolverine and debutante hero Brass battle Deathwatch, ninjas, Triads and host of other then-ubiquitous oriental-themed foes in a rushed, non-stop excuse for a fight detailed in ‘Ghosts of the Past!’, ‘Claw & Chain’, ‘Dancing in the Dark’, ‘Uneasy Alliance’, ‘Mutants, Nijas & Demons’, ‘Brass Tactics’, ‘Confession is Good for the Soulless’ and ‘The End’, prior to the Rider roaring into double-length and out-of-chronology Marc Spector: Moon Knight #25 April 1991).

Here Mackie, Mark Bagley & Tom Palmer detail how the Fist of Khonshu fights fanatical and fatalistic religious zealots The Knights of the Moon before grudgingly accepting vengeful spiritual support to prevent a wave of New York bombings… and worse…

Returning to Ghost Rider #10 (February 1991 by Mackie, Saltares & Texiera) ‘Stars of Blood’ sees Danny reconciled to his burden and beginning a new phase of life. When a series of horrific murders are attributed to a publicity-seeking serial killer named Zodiak, Ketch investigates the deaths and discovers the haunted gas-cap is again inactive, although it does transform him later when he stumbles over a couple of kids fighting. Arcanely active again, Ghost Rider follows a convenient tip to the astrological assassin and discovers a far more prosaic reason for the string of slayings before an inclusive and unsatisfying battle with the insufferable, elusive Zodiak.

Meanwhile elsewhere, the humiliated H.E.A.R.T. honchos accept Deathwatch’s commission to destroy the Spirit of Vengeance, whilst in the western USA a previous victim of the curse of Zarathos is riding his motorcycle hard, determined to get to New York and destroy the new Ghost Rider as soon as possible…

Pencilled by Larry Stroman, ‘Through a Nightmare Revealed…’ finds Danny repeatedly targeted by the dream demon who once controlled Zarathos – and who is determined to do so again. In the physical world Zodiak, returns with anew scheme and the previous Biker from Hell closes in on Danny, all before Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme pops in moments too late to prevent Ketch and the Spirit of Vengeance taking their relationship to the next level…

This volume ends on a thematic cliffhanger with GR #12 (April 1991 by Mackie, Saltares & Texiera) sharing some Stephen ‘Strange Tales’ as Earth’s magical monitor and aides Topaz and Rintrah arrive at a wrong conclusion about the new Ghost Rider and take unnecessarily hostile action.

Incapable of relinquishing his mission to save the innocent, the Rider hits back and heads off, leading the mistaken heroes to the real monsters and the true victims in time for a shocking demon-infested conclusion in Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #28’s ‘Strange Tales, Part II’ (Roy Thomas & Dann Thomas, Chris Marrinan & Mark McKenna) with infernal old foes and new threats all failing to flay humanity…

To Be Continued…

This expanded re-issue of 1991’s Ghost Rider Resurrected trade paperback also includes the Texiera cover and articles by John A. Wilcox from Marvel Age #87 (April 1990) as well as Marvel Trivia Quiz, Fred Hembeck’s Li’l Blazer cartoon spoof and a text piece and spoof ads from Marvel 1990 – The Year in Review.

Also on show are Texiera’s cover and Mackie’s introduction from that 1991 collection and the Ghost Rider/Wolverine: Acts of Vengeance TPB; Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch – Marvel Tales by Logan Lubera & Chris Sotomayor; Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch Classic by Saltares & John Kalisz and Marvel Comics Presents Wolverine volume 4 by Rob Liefeld & Tom Chu, plus pin-ups from Texiera, Palmiotti & Saltares. There’s a full cover gallery and variants by Saltares, Texiera, Jim Lee, Bagley, Stroman, Mike Thomas & Klaus Janson, David Ross, Jim Valentino & Joe Rosas, Paul Gulacy, Sandy Plunkett & Alan Weiss, Liefeld, John Byrne and Mike Golden, and also original art by Lee.

Despite being markedly short on plot and utterly devoid of humour, this reboot delivered the maximum amount of uncomplicated thrills, spills and chills for action-starved fight fans – and still does. If you occasionally feel subtlety isn’t everything and yearn for a vicarious dose of plain-&-simple wickedness-whomping, this might well be the book you’re looking for.
© 2023 MARVEL.

Iron Man Epic Collection volume 6: The War of the Super Villains 1974 – 1976


By Mike Friedrich, Barry Alfonso, Tom Orzechowski, Bill Mantlo, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, Roger Slifer, Jim Shooter, Steve Gerber, Gerry Conway, George Tuska, Herb Trimpe, Arvell Jones, Keith Pollard, Chic Stone, Tuska, Sal Buscema, Marie Severin & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1302948801 (TPB/Digital edition)

Arch-technocrat and supreme survivor Tony Stark has changed his profile many times since his debut in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963) when, whilst a VIP visitor in Vietnam observing the efficacy of the munitions he had designed, the inventor was critically wounded and captured by sinister, savage Communists.

Put to work building weapons with the dubious promise of medical assistance on completion, Stark instead created the first of many technologically augmented suits to keep himself alive and deliver him from his oppressors. From there it was a simple – transistor-powered – jump to full time superheroics as a modern Knight in Shining Armour…

First conceived in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis at a time when Western economies were booming and “Commie-bashing” was an American national obsession, the emergence of a new and shining young Thomas Edison, using Yankee ingenuity, wealth and invention to safeguard the Land of the Free and better the World, seemed an obvious development. Combining the then-sacrosanct faith that technology and business in unison could solve any problem, with the universal imagery of noble knights battling evil, Stark –The Invincible Iron Man – seemed an infallibly successful proposition.

Of course, whilst he was the acceptable face of 1960s Capitalism – a glamorous millionaire industrialist/scientist and a benevolent all-conquering hero when clad in the super-scientific armour of his alter-ego – the turbulent tone of the 1970s soon relegated his suave, “can-do” image to the dustbin of history. With ecological disaster and social catastrophe from the myriad abuses of big business the new zeitgeists of the young, the Golden Avenger and Stark International were soon confronting a few tricky questions from the increasingly politically savvy readership.

As glamour, money and fancy gadgetry lost its chic and grew evermore tarnished, questing voices of a new generation of writers began posing uncomfortable questions in the pages of a series that was once the bastion of militarised America

This chronological compendium concludes that transitional period: reprinting Iron Man #68-91 and Annual #3 (June 1974 – October 1976) and opens without fanfare on an ambitious action epic. IM #68-71 comprised the opening sortie in a multi-part epic which saw mystic menace The Black Lama foment a covert clash amongst the world’s greatest villains, with ultimate power, inner peace and a magical Golden Globe as the promised prizes.

Written by Mike Friedrich and illustrated by George Tuska & Mike Esposito, it begins in Vietnam on the ‘Night of the Rising Sun!’ where The Mandarin struggles to free his consciousness – currently locked within the dying body of Russian super-villain The Unicorn. This is probably the ideal moment to remind potential new readers that these stories were crafted in far less accepting times with racial and gender stereotypes used as narrative shorthand and occasionally so on the nose that they could make a caveman chuck up. If you can’t look past that historically accurate accounting it might be best to seek your fun elsewhere…

Stark’s ardently pacifist love interest Roxie Gilbert had dragged the inventor to the recently “liberated” People’s Republic in search of (part-time Iron Man) Eddie March’s lost brother. Marty March was a POW missing since the last days of the war. Before long, however, the Americans are separated after Japanese ultra-nationalist, ambulatory atomic inferno and occasional X-Man Sunfire is tricked into attacking the intrusive Yankee Imperialists…

The assault abruptly ends once Mandarin shanghaies the Solar Samurai and uses his mutant energies to power a mind-transfer back into his own body. Reinstated to his original form, the Chinese Conqueror-in-waiting commences his own campaign of combat in earnest, eager to regain his castle from rival oriental overlord The Yellow Claw.

First though, he must crush Iron Man – who has tracked him down and freed Sunfire in ‘Confrontation!’ That bombastic battle ends when the Golden Avenger is rendered unconscious and thrown into space…

‘Who Shall Stop… Ultimo?’ finds the revived giant robot-monster targeting Mandarin’s castle (claimed by the Claw in a previous battle) as the sinister Celestial duels the ancient enemy to the death, with both Iron Man and Sunfire arriving too late and forced to mop up the sole survivor of the contest in ‘Battle: Tooth and Yellow Claw! (Confrontation Part 3)’. After all that Eastern Armageddon, a change of pace is called for, so Stark takes in the San Diego Comicon in #72’s ‘Convention of Fear!’ (by Friedrich, Tuska & Vince Colletta, from a plot by Barry Alfonso), only to find himself ambushed by fellow incognito attendees Whiplash, Man-Bull and The Melter – who are made an offer they should have refused by the ubiquitous and iniquitous Black Lama…

Next issue the Super-Villain War kicks into high gear with ‘Turnabout: A Most Foul Play!’ (illustrated by Arvell Jones, Keith Pollard & Jim Mooney and derived from a premise by letterer Tom Orzechowski). After secret-sharing confidantes Pepper Potts-Hogan and her husband Happy settle a long-festering squabble with Tony at Stark International’s Manila plant, Iron Man returns to Vietnam and dives into a deadly clash with Crimson Dynamo in a hidden, high-tech jungle city subsequently razed to the ground by their explosive combat.

Inked by Dick Ayers, Iron Man #74’s ‘The M.O.D.O.K. Machine!’ brings Black Lama’s contest to the fore as The Mad Thinker electronically overrides the Avenger’s armour, setting helpless passenger Stark upon the malevolent, mutated master of Advanced Idea Mechanics…

Without autonomy, the Golden Gladiator is easily overwhelmed and ‘Slave to the Power Imperious!’ (Chic Stone inks) sees the hero dragged back to The Thinker’s lair and laid low by a strange psychic hallucination, even as M.O.D.O.K. finishes his cognitive co-combatant and apparently turns the still-enslaved steel-shod hero on his next opponent: Yellow Claw.

As this is happening, elsewhere radical terrorist Firebrand is somehow sharing Stark’s Black Lama-inspired “psycho-feedback” episodes…

The tale wraps on a twisty cliffhanger as the Claw destroys M.O.D.O.K.  and his clockwork puppet Avenger, only to discover that the Thinker is not only still alive but still holds the real Iron Man captive. That’s quite unfortunate as issue #76 blew its deadline and instead reprinted Iron Man #9 (represented here by its cover) before Friedrich, Jones & Stone’s ‘I Cry: Revenge!’ finds the fighting-mad hero breaking free of the Thinker’s control, just as Black Lama teleports the Claw in to finish his final felonious opponent…

Still extremely ticked off, the Armoured Avenger takes on all comers before being ambushed by late-arriving Firebrand who has been psionically drawn into the melee. As Shellhead goes down, the Lama declares non-contestant Firebrand ultimate victor, gratuitously explaining how he has voyaged from an alternate universe before duping the unstable and uncaring flaming rabble-rouser into re-crossing the dimensional void with him. Although a certifiable loon and cold-blooded killer, Firebrand is Roxie Gilbert’s brother and groggily reviving Iron Man feels honour-bound to follow him through the rapidly closing portal to elsewhere…

Deadline problems persisted however, and the next two issues are both fill-in tales, beginning with #78’s ‘Long Time Gone’ Crafted by Bill Mantlo, Tuska & Vince Colletta it harks back to the Avenger’s early days and a mission during the Vietnam war which first brought home the cost in blood and misery Stark’s munitions building had caused. IM #79 then shares a ‘Midnite on Murder Mountain!’ (Friedrich, Tuska & Colletta) wherein our hero emphatically ends scientific abominations wrought by deranged geneticist/mind-swapper Professor Kurakill…

At last, Iron Man #80 sees Friedrich, Stone & Colletta return to the ongoing inter-dimensional operations as Mission into Madness!’ follows the multiversal voyagers to a very different America where warring kingdoms and principalities jostle for prestige, position and power. Here the Lama is revealed as King Jerald of Grand Rapid: a ruler under threat from outside invaders and insidious usurpers within. He’d come to Earth looking for powerful allies but had not realised travel to other realms drives non-indigenous residents completely crazy…

With the mind-warp effect already destabilising Iron Man and Firebrand, it’s fortunate treacherous Baroness Rockler makes her move to kill the returned Jerald immediately, and the Earthlings are quickly embroiled in a cataclysmic ‘War of the Mind-Dragons!’ before turning on each other and fleeing the devastated kingdom for the less psychologically hazardous environs of their homeworld…

With an extended epic spanning the world and alternate dimensions completed, long-term writer Mike Friedrich moved on, and Iron Man #82 began a new era and tone as Len Wein, Herb Trimpe, Marie Severin & Jack Abel revamped the armour just in time for the Red Ghost and his super simians to kidnap super genius Stark in ‘Plunder of the Apes!’ Debuting in that tale was NYPD detective Michael O’Brien, who holds Stark responsible and accountable for the tragic death of his brother Kevin. The deceased researcher had been Stark’s confidante until his mind snapped. He had died running amok wearing a prototype suit of Guardsman armour. Here and now, Mike smells a corporate cover-up…

Inked by Marie Severin, IM #83 exhibits ‘The Rage of the Red Ghost!’ as the rogue Russian forces Stark to cure his gradual dispersal into unconnected atoms, only to realise, following a bombastic battle, that the inventor has outwitted him once again, after which Wein, Roger Slifer, Trimpe & John Tartaglione detail how the infamous never fully tested Enervator ray again turns grievously injured Happy Hogan into a mindless monster. This time, the medical miracle machine saturates him with so much Cobalt radiation that he becomes a ticking inhuman nuke on the ‘Night of the Walking Bomb!’

The tense tick-tock to doom is narrowly and spectacularly halted in ‘…And the Freak Shall Inherit the Earth!’ (Slifer, Wein, Trimpe & Severin) after which Mantlo, Tuska & Vince Colletta revive and revamp one of the Golden Avenger’s oldest and least-remembered rogues when disgraced thermal technologist Gregor Shapanka sheds his loser status as Jack Frost to attack Stark International in a deadly new guise.

In # 86 we learn ‘The Gentleman’s Name is Blizzard!’ but despite his improved image, the sub-zero zealot can’t quite close ‘The Icy Hand of Death!’ in the next instalment, leading to mid-year spectacular Iron Man Annual #3 (June 1976) which unveils ‘More or Less… the Return of the Molecule Man!’ courtesy of Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema & Abel.

When Tony Stark looks into redeveloping some soggy Florida real estate, a little girl finds a strange wand and is possessed and transformed by the consciousness of one of the most powerful creatures in existence. Although Iron Man is helpless to combat the reality-warping attacks of the combination petulant girl/narcissistic maniac, luckily for the universe, the shambling elemental shocker dubbed Man-Thing had no mind to mess with or conscience to trouble…

Iron Man #88 signalled the too-brief reunion of veteran scribe Archie Goodwin with Tuska as ‘Fear Wears Two Faces!’ finds the Armoured Avenger battling escaped aliens The Blood Brothers after the vicious space thugs are psychically summoned to a mystery rendezvous by another old enemy of Iron Man. Inked by Colletta, the tale concludes in ‘Brute Fury!’ as Daredevil deals himself in to the cataclysmic clash and just barely tips the scales before the hidden manipulator is exposed in #90 ‘When Calls the Controller!’ (Jim Shooter, Tuska & Abel). The life-force thief seeks to escape months of entombment by enslaving and feeding off hapless down-&-outs, but his rapid defeat is only a prelude to greater catastrophe as Gerry Conway scripts and Bob Layton inks #91’s ‘Breakout!’ as the fiend tries too hard, too fast and again fades into helpless captivity…

Closing the covers on this stellar compilation are Gil Kane’s stellar front to all-reprint Giant-Size Iron Man #1 (1975 and including the original artwork prior to edits), House ads and an 8-page gallery of original art covers and pages by Kane, Jones, Esposito, Ed Hannigan, Frank Giacoia, Jim Starlin, Sal Buscema & Pollard.

From our distant vantage point the polemical energy and impact might be dissipated, but the sheer quality of the comics and cool thrill of the eternal aspiration of man in partnership with magic metal remains. These Fights ‘n’ Tights classics are amongst the most underrated tales of the period and are well worth your time, consideration and cold cash…
© 2023 MARVEL.

Doctor Strange Masterworks volume 4


By Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, Gardner Fox, Barry Windsor-Smith, Archie Goodwin, Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe, Don Heck, Sam Kweskin, Frank Brunner, P. Craig Russell, Jim Starlin & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3495-4 (HB/Digital Edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Arcane Anniversary Astonishment… 9/10

When the budding House of Ideas introduced a warrior wizard to their burgeoning pantheon in the summer of 1963, it was a bold and curious move. Anthologically, bizarre adventures and menacing aliens were still incredibly popular, but most dramatic mentions of magic or the supernatural (especially vampires, werewolves and their equally eldritch ilk) were harshly proscribed by a censorship panel which dictated almost all aspects of story content – the self-inflicted Comics Code Authority.

That eldritch embargo probably explains writer/editor Stan Lee’s low key introduction of Steve Ditko’s mystic adventurer: an exotic, twilight troubleshooter inhabiting the shadowy outer fringes of society.

Within a year of Fantastic Four #1, long-lived monster-mystery anthology Strange Tales became home for the blazing boy-hero Human Torch (from #101, cover-dated October 1962), launching Johnny Storm on a creatively productive but commercially unsuccessful solo career.

In 1963, Tales of Suspense #41 saw new sensation Iron Man battle a crazed scientific wizard dubbed Doctor Strange, and with the name in copyrightable print (a long-established Lee technique: Thorr, The Thing, Magneto, The Hulk and more had been disposable Atlas “furry underpants monsters” long before they became in-continuity Marvel characters), preparations began for a truly different kind of hero.

The company had already devised a quasi-mystic troubleshooter for a short run in Amazing Adventures (volume 1 #1-4 & #6, spanning June-November 1961). The precursor was balding, trench-coated savant Doctor Droom – retooled in the 1970s as Doctor Druid when his exploits were reprinted. Psychiatrist, sage and paranormal investigator, he tackled everything from alien invaders to Atlanteans (albeit not the ones Sub-Mariner ruled). He was subsequently retro-written into Marvel continuity as an alternative candidate for Stephen Strange’s ultimate role as Sorcerer Supreme.

The man we know debuted in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963). After a shaky start, the Master of the Mystic Arts became an unmissable icon of cool counter-culture kids who saw in Ditko’s increasingly psychedelic art, echoes and overtones of their own trippy explorations of other worlds. That might not have been the authors’ intention but it certainly helped keep the mage at the forefront of Lee’s efforts to break comics out of the “kids-stuff” ghetto.

After Ditko abruptly left the company at the height of his fame and success in early 1967, the feature went through a string of creators before Marvel’s 1968 expansion allowed a measure of creative stability as the mystic master won his own monthly solo title in a neat moment of sleight of hand by assuming the numbering of Strange Tales. Thus, this enchanting full colour compilation gathers Doctor Strange #180-183 (May-November 1969) whereupon he became one of the earliest casualties of a superhero implosion heralding the end of the Silver Age. Also included are guest appearances in Sub-Mariner #22 and Incredible Hulk #126 (both 1970), prior to the sorcerer’s return in Marvel Feature #1 (December 1971) and a second bite of the cherry as star of Marvel Premiere #3-8 (July 1972 through May 1973).

Those complex, convoluted, confusing times are better explained in Roy Thomas’ Introduction before the drama resumes with #180’s ‘Eternity, Eternity!’

Previously, Dr. Stephen Strange had joined Black Night Dane Whitman and assorted Avengers in saving Earth from doom by Asgardian demons Surtur and Ymir and here – thanks to Thomas, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer – suffers nightmares and dire premonitions on New Year’s Eve before learning that the guiding spirit of creation has been enslaved by sadistic dream demon Nightmare

After a Colan pin-up of the good doctor and his closest associates, ‘If a World Should Die Before I Wake…’ follows the mage into the dreamlands and beyond to rescue the lynchpin of reality where he is defeated and despatched to uncharted regions. In the miasma he makes an unlikely ally as concluding episode ‘And Juggernaut Makes Three!’ sees Eternity liberated, Nightmare defeated and Stephen Strange rewarded by the reality-warping over-god by being unmade and recreated in a new identity. In the minds of humanity, Dr. Stephen Sanders is nothing to do with recently outed, publicly vilified masked mystic Dr. Strange…

The radical reset was too little too late and Dr. Strange #183 (November 1969) was the final issue. In ‘They Walk by Night!’, Thomas, Colan & Palmer introduced a deadly threat in the Undying Ones, an elder race of devils hungry to reconquer the Earth.

The story went nowhere until Sub-Mariner #22 (February 1970 by Thomas, Marie Severin & Johnny Craig) as ‘The Monarch and the Mystic!’ brought the Prince of Atlantis into play, as told in a sterling tale of sacrifice wherein the Master of the Mystic Arts seemingly dies holding the gates of Hell shut with the Undying Ones pent behind them.

The extended saga then concluded on an upbeat note with The Incredible Hulk #126 (April 1970) ‘Where Stalks the Night-Crawler!’ by Thomas & Herb Trimpe, wherein a New England cult dispatches helpless Bruce Banner to the nether realms in an attempt to undo Strange’s sacrifice.

Luckily cultist Barbara Norris has last minute second thoughts and her sacrifice frees the mystic, seemingly ending the threat of the Undying Ones forever. At the end of the issue Strange retired, forsaking magic, although he changed his mind before too long as the fates – and changing reading tastes – called him back to duty.

Cover dated December 1971, Marvel Feature #1 bombastically introduced the trio of antiheroes united as The Defenders, and just how Strange resumed his mystic arts mantle was tucked into a heady 10-page thriller at the end, proving that not all good things come in large packages. Crafted by Thomas, Don Heck & Frank Giacoia, ‘The Return’ finds medical consultant Stephen Sanders back in Greenwich Village where his old Sanctum Sanctorum is home to an incredible impostor posing as his former self. It takes the intervention of his sagacious mentor The Ancient One to restore his forsaken skills before the conundrum is solved and a villain unmasked…

Back in arcane action, Dr. Strange took up residence in Marvel Premiere, beginning with #3 (July 1972) as Stan Lee, Barry Windsor-Smith & Dan Adkins employ cunning, misdirection and an ancient enemy to attack the mage in ‘While the World Spins Mad!’

That visual tour de force segued into an epic Lovecraftian homage/pastiche beginning in MP#4 when Archie Goodwin, Smith & Frank Brunner detail how Strange’s attempt to aid embattled Ethan Stoddard remove a ghastly malefic contagion from his New England hometown of Starkesboro goes awry. Shamelessly plundering Lovecraft’s literary lore for a graphic gothic masterpiece attempt leads to a severely weakened Master of the Mystic Arts ambushed by the victims he helped and offered as a sacrifice in ‘The Spawn of Sligguth!’

Written by Gardner F. Fox with art by Sam Kweskin (as Irv Wesley) & Don Perlin, and incorporating themes inspired by Robert E. Howard, the dark tale unfolds as Strange breaks free and learns that ‘The Lurker in the Labyrinth!’ is merely a herald for a greater primordial evil about to reawaken before facing another of its vanguard in #6’s ‘The Shambler from the Sea!’ (Fox, Brunner & Sal Buscema). With faithful allies Wong and Clea drawn into the weird war against now-exposed malignant mega-manipulator Shuma-Gorath, Strange’s latest triumph/close shave directs the secret heroes to Stonehenge…

Marvel Premiere #7 highlights ‘The Shadows of the Starstone!’ courtesy of Fox, P. Craig Russell, Mike Esposito Giacoia & Dave Hunt, as new players Henry Gordon and enigmatic medium Blondine join the human resistance just in time to combat latest horror Dagoth, but quickly enough to save Strange from a thaumaturgical boobytrap…

The serialised shocks pause with #8 (May 1973, by Fox, Jim Starlin, Giacoia & Hunt) as animated mansion Witch House assaults the assembled humans until Strange puts an end to the matter. Resolved to work alone he heads back to Stonehenge and employs ancient forces to defeat an army of devils and follow their trail to another world. However, even after destroying their lord he is marooned there by ‘The Doom that Bloomed on Kathulos!’

To Be Continued…

Although the comics spellbinding ends here, there are still treats and surprises in store, beginning with the first cover to Doctor Strange #180 by Colan & Palmer. It had been lost in the post for years and required fast action to be replaced back in 1968. Also on offer are production art proofs and pre-editorial changes: a fascinating glimpse at the tricks behind the comics wonderment, and maybe the biggest Biographies section you’ve ever seen…

The Wizard of Greenwich Village has always been an acquired taste for superhero fans, but the pioneering graphic bravura of these tales and the ones to come in the next volume left an indelible mark on the Marvel Universe and readily fall into the sublime category of works done “ahead of their time”. Many of us prefer to believe Doctor Strange has always been the coolest of outsiders and most accessible fringe star of the Marvel firmament (and now we have mega-blockbuster movies to back us up, so Yar Boo Sucks to them naysayers!). This glorious grimoire is a miraculous means for fans to enter his world once more and the perfect introduction for recent acolytes or converts created by the movie iteration.
© 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Solomon Kane volume 1: The Castle of the Devil


By Scott Allie, Mario Guevara, Dave Stewart & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-282-6 (TPB)

Although Marvel have resumed control of Robert E. Howard’s star turns, they haven’t yet re-issued all the prior efforts of the previous licensee yet. That’s a shame as this particular tome has Halloween written all over it. Until they do, why not scour shoppes and online sites for a copy. The exercise will probably do you good and who knows what else you might find?

Following on from their revitalisation – if not actual creation – of the comic book Sword and Sorcery genre in the early 1970s (with their magnificent adaptation of pulp superstar Conan the Barbarian), Marvel Comics quite naturally looked for more of the same. They found ample material in Robert Ervin Howard’s other warrior heroes such as King Kull, Bran Mac Morn and dour Puritan Avenger Solomon Kane.

The fantasy genre had undergone a global prose revival in the paperback marketplace since the release of soft-cover editions of Lord of the Rings (first published in 1954), and the 1960s resurgence of two-fisted action extravaganzas by such pioneer writers as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline and Fritz Lieber. This led to a generation of modern writers like Michael Moorcock and Lin Carter kick-starting their careers with contemporary interpretations of man, monster and mage. Without doubt, though, nobody did it better than the tragic Texan whose other red-handed stalwarts and tough guys such as El Borak, Steve Costigan, Dark Agnes and Red Sonya of Rogatino excelled in a host of associated genres and like milieus.

Solomon Kane debuted in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales in a gripping tale of vengeance entitled “Red Shadows”. He made seven more appearances before vanishing in 1932 as his creator concentrated on far more successful Conan. Three further tales, some epic poems and a few unfinished ideas and passages remained unpublished until 1968, when renewed interest in the author’s work prompted publishers to disinter and complete the yarns.

Apart from two noteworthy 4-colour exceptions, during the 1970s and 1980s, Marvel was content to leave Solomon Kane to monochrome adaptations of canonical Howard stories (in Dracula Lives, Savage Sword of Conan, Monsters Unleashed and other older-reader magazines), but with his transfer to the Dark Horse stable the Holy Terror flourished in broader, lavishly-hued interpretations of the unfinished snippets left when the prolific Howard took his life in 1936.

Beginning in 2008 and released as a succession of miniseries, these nearly-new adventures offer modern fans a far darker, more moody glimpse at the driven, doom-laden wanderer.

Kane is a disenfranchised English soldier of fortune in the 17th century on a self-appointed mission to roam the Earth doing God’s Work: punishing the wicked and destroying devils and monsters. With no seeming plan, the devout Puritan lets fate guide his footsteps ever towards trouble…

Expanded upon and scripted by Scott Allie from tantalisingly unfinished fragment The Castle of the Devil, this initial volume collects a 5-issue story-arc from September 2008-February 2009 and also includes a short piece which originally featured online in the digital MySpace Dark Horse Presents site in June 2008.

The drama opens as the surly pilgrim bloodily encounters bandits and an horrific wolf-beast in Germany’s Black Forest, losing his horse in the attack. Proceeding on foot he finds a boy hanging from a gibbet and cuts the near-dead body down. Soon after, he meets mercenary John Silent, another Englishman in search of fortune…

From his new companion, Kane learns local lord, Baron von Staler, has an evil reputation and will not be happy to have his affairs meddled with. The puritan doesn’t care: he wants harsh words with the kind of man who would execute children…

Despite genuine misgivings, the insufferably jolly Silent insists on accompanying his clearly suicidal countryman. Soon the pair are admitted to a bleak and terrifying Schloss built on the remains of an old abbey…

Von Staler is not the mad tyrant they had been warned of. The gracious, pious old warrior with devoted servants and a beautiful young Moorish wife welcomes them in, offering the hospitality of his hearth and charming them with his easy manner. The lord is appalled by the tale of the hanged boy, denying any knowledge of the atrocity and swears to bring the culprits to justice.

Over supper he and his bride Mahasti explain that their ill-repute is unjustly earned. The simple peasants have unfairly conflated him with the manse’s previous accursed inhabitants: a chapter of monks who murdered their own Prior two centuries past.

Vater Stuttman had been a holy man until he sold himself to Satan. His desperate brethren had been forced to entomb and starve him to contain his evil. With the church determinedly ignoring their plight, the chapter faded from the sight of Man and eventually Staler’s family had purchased the lands, building their ancestral seat upon the ruins.

The peasants however, still called it “the Church of the Devil”…

Gratified to find a man as devoted to God as himself, Kane relaxes for the first time in months, thankful to spend a night in a warm bed with people as devout as he. The truth begins to out at ‘The Dead of Night’ as Silent goes prowling within the castle and kills one of the Baron’s retainers, even as Kane’s rest is disturbed by shameless Mahasti offering herself to him…

Spurning her advances, the furious puritan leaves the citadel to wander the forest, and again encounters the colossal wolf thing. Back in his bed Silent, nursing a deep wound, dreams of beleaguered old monks and their apostate Prior…

In ‘Offerings’ the truth slowly begins to dawn on the melancholy wanderer after discourse with the strangely ill-tempered Silent. Something is badly amiss in the household, but when Kane and the Baron ride out that morning, all suspicions are stayed by the discovery of another gibbet and another boy. This one, however, is nothing but ragged scraps for the crows that festoon his corpse, and Kane’s rage is dwarfed by the ghastly uncomprehending shock and disbelief of the Baron…

The servants are not so flustered and something about their muted conversations with the master sits poorly with the morose Englishman. In the castle, Mahasti finds Silent a far more amenable prospect, happy to listen to the secrets she wants to share…

‘Sound Reasons and Evil Dictates’ offer more insights into the incredible truth about von Staler, as Kane takes his countryman into his full confidence before Silent and Mahasti ride out into the wild woods, meeting a ghost who reveals the terrifying truth about Vater Stuttman and the appalling thing the monks uncovered two hundred years past…

The demonic cadaver whispered unknowable secrets to one of that long-gone congregation and has continued for all the days and years since. Now the man who was Father Albrecht is ready to welcome it and its appalling kin back to full, ravening life in these benighted grounds…

Von Staler and Kane are arguing and, as accusations become blows, the secret of ‘The Wolf’ is at last revealed, even as faithful retainers capture Mahasti and Silent, leaving them on the gibbets as fodder for a quartet of horrors returning for their fleshly tribute in ‘His Angels of the Four Winds’. Savagely battling his way free of the castle, Kane is only in time to save one of the monsters’ victims, but more than ready to avenge centuries of slaughter and blasphemy in ‘The Chapel of the Devil’: grimly cleansing the tainted lands in the ‘Epilogue: Wanderers on the Face of the Earth’

The art is beguiling, emphatically evocative with Mario Guevara’s pencils astonishingly augmented by a painted palette courtesy of colourist Dave Stewart, and the book is packed with artistic extras and behind-the-scenes bonuses. These include a gallery of covers and variants and ‘The Art of Solomon Kane’ with sketches and designs by the penciller, architectural shaper Guy Davis and illustrators John Cassaday, Stewart, Laura Martin & Joe Kubert. The tome terminates with that aforementioned digital vignette wherein Kane applies his own savage wisdom of Solomon to a troubled village of ghost-bedevilled souls in ‘The Nightcomers’

Powerful, engaging and satisfactorily spooky, this fantasy fear-fest will delight both fans of the original canon and lovers of darkly dreaming, ghost-busting thrillers.
© 2009 Solomon Kane Inc. (SKI). Solomon Kane and all related characters, names and logos are ™ © and ® SKI.

Werewolf by Night Marvel Masterworks volume 1


By Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Roy & Jean Thomas, Mike Ploog, Werner Roth, Ross Andru, & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3346-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Now a star of page and screen, Werewolf by Night could be described as the true start of the Marvel Age of Horror. Now technically supplanted by modern Hopi/Latino lycanthrope Jake Gomez – who’s shared the designation since 2020 – these trials of a turbulent teen wolf opened the floodgates to a stream of Marvel monster stars and horror antiheroes.

Inspiration isn’t everything. In 1970, as Marvel consolidated its new position of market dominance – even after losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby – they did so employing a wave of new young talent, but less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties. The only real exception to this was a mass-move into horror titles (or more accurately “monster titles” – the CCA still vetoed “horror”): a response to an industry down-turn in superhero sales, and a move expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

Almost overnight scary monsters became again acceptable fare on four-colour pages and whilst a parade of 1950s pre-code reprints made sound business sense (so they repackaged a bunch of those too), the creative aspect of the revived fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always, the watchword was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics would be incorporated into the print mix and shared universe mix as readily as possible. When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel launched a line of sinister superstars – beginning with a werewolf and a vampire…

Werewolf by Night debuted in Marvel Spotlight #2 (preceded by western-era hero Red Wolf in #1, and followed by Ghost Rider). In actuality, the series title, if not the actual character, was recycled from a classic pre-Comics Code short suspense-thriller from Marvel Tales #116, July 1953. Marvel always favoured using old (presumably already copyrighted) names and titles when creating new series and characters. The Hulk, Thor, Magneto, Doctor Strange and many others all got nominal starts as hairy underpants monsters or throwaways in some anthology or other.

Accompanied by an introductory reminiscence from Roy Thomas, this copious compendium collects the early adventures of a young West Coast wild one by re-presenting the contents of Marvel Spotlight #2-4, Werewolf by Night volume 1 #1-8 and a guest-shot from Marvel Team-Up #12 cumulatively covering February 1972 to August 1973.

The moonlit madness begins with that landmark first appearance, introducing teenager Jack Russell, who is suffering some sleepless nights…

Cover-dated February 1972 and on sale as 1971 closed, ‘Werewolf by Night!’ (Marvel Spotlight #2) was written by Gerry Conway and moodily, magnificently illustrated by Mike Ploog in the manner of his old mentor Will Eisner. The character concept came from an outline by Roy & Jeanie Thomas, describing the worst day of Jack’s life – his 18th birthday – which began with nightmares and ends in something far worse.

Jack’s mother and little sister Lissa are everything a fatherless boy could hope for, but new stepdad Philip and creepy chauffeur Grant are another matter. Try as he might, Jack can’t help but see them as self-serving and with hidden agendas…

At his party that evening, Jack has an agonising seizure and flees into the Malibu night, transforming for the first time into a ravening vulpine man-beast. At dawn, he awakes wasted on a beach to learn his mother has been gravely injured in a car crash. Something had happened to her brakes…

Sneaking into her hospital room, the distraught teen hears her relate the story of his birth-father: an Eastern European noble who loved her deeply, but locked himself away three nights every month…

The Russoff line is cursed by the taint of Lycanthropy: every child doomed to become a wolf-thing under the full-moon from the moment they reach 18 years of age. Jack is horrified on realising how soon his sister will reach her own majority…

With her dying breath Laura Russell makes her son promise never to harm his stepfather, no matter what…

Scenario set, with the traumatised wolf-boy uncontrollably transforming three nights every month, the weird, wild wonderment begins in earnest with the beast attacking the creepy chauffeur – who had doctored those car-brakes – but refraining – even in vulpine form – from attacking Philip Russell…

The second chapter sees the reluctant nocturnal predator rescue Lissa from a rowdy biker gang (they were everywhere back then) and narrowly escape the cops, only to be abducted by a sinister dowager seeking knowledge of a magical tome dubbed the Darkhold. This legendary spell-book is the apparent basis of the Russoff curse, but when Jack can’t produce the goods, he’s left to the mercies of ‘The Thing in the Cellar!’

Surviving more by luck than power, Jack’s third try-out issue fetches him up on an ‘Island of the Damned!’: introducing aging Hollywood screenwriter Buck Cowan, who will become Jack’s best friend and affirming father-figure as they jointly investigate the wolf-boy’s evil stepdad.

Russell had apparently sold off Jack’s inheritance, leaving the kid nothing but an old book. Following a paper trail to find proof Philip had Laura Russell killed leads them to an offshore fortress, a dungeon full of horrors and a ruthless mutant seductress…

The episode ended on a cliffhanger, presumably as an added incentive to buy Werewolf by Night #1 (cover-dated September 1972), wherein Frank Chiaramonte assumed inking duties with ‘Eye of the Beholder!…

Merciless biological freak Marlene Blackgar and her monstrous posse abduct the entire Russell family whilst looking for the Book of Sins, until – once more – a fearsome force of supernature awakes to accidentally save the day as night falls…

With ‘The Hunter… and the Hunted!’ Jack and Buck deposit the trouble-magnet grimoire with Father Joquez, a Christian monk and scholar of ancient texts, but are still hunted because of it. Jack quits the rural wastes of Malibu for a new home in Los Angeles, trading forests and surf for concrete canyons but life is no easier.

In #2, dying scientist Cephalos seeks to harness Jack’s feral life-force to extend his own existence, living just long enough to regret it. Meanwhile, Joquez successfully translates the Darkhold: an accomplishment allowing an ancient horror to possess him in WbN #3, in ‘The Mystery of the Mad Monk!’

Whilst the werewolf is saddened to end such a noble life, he feels far happier dealing with millionaire sportsman Joshua Kane, who craves a truly unique head mounted on the wall of his den in the Franke Bolle inked ‘The Danger Game’. Half-naked, exhausted and soaked to his now hairless skin, Jack must then deal with Kane’s deranged brother, who wants the werewolf for his pet assassin in ‘A Life for a Death!’ (by Len Wein & Ploog) after which ‘Carnival of Fear!’ (Bolle inks again) finds the beast – and Jack, once the sun rises – a pitiful captive of seedy mystic Swami Calliope and his deadly circus of freaks.

The wolf was now the subject of an obsessive police detective too. “Old-school cop” Lou Hackett is an old buddy of trophy-hunter Joshua Kane – and every bit as cruelly savage – but his off-the-books investigation hardly begins before the Swami’s plans fall apart in concluding part ‘Ritual of Blood!’ (inked by Jim Mooney).

The beast is safely(?) roaming loose in the backwoods for #8’s quirky and penultimate monster-mash when an ancient demon possesses a cute little bunny in Wein, Werner Roth & Paul Reinman’s ‘The Lurker Behind the Door!’, after we which we pause for now with a slight but stirring engagement in Marvel Team-Up #12, where Wein, Conway, Ross Andru & Don Perlin expose a ‘Wolf at Bay!’

As webspinning wallcrawler meets wily werewolf, they initially battle each other – and ultimately malevolent mage Moondark – in foggy, fearful San Francisco before Jack heads back to LA for more feral fury in a future issue…

With covers by Neal Adams& Tom Palmer, Ploog, Gil Kane and John Romita, this collection is supplemented with an unused Ploog cover for Marvel Spotlight#4; a gallery of original Ploog art pages and a previous collection cover by Arthur Adams & Jason Keith. A moody masterpiece of macabre menace and all-out animal action, this tome shares some of the most under-appreciated magic moments in Marvel history: tense, suspenseful and solidly compelling chillers to delight any fear fan or drama addict. If you crave a few fun frightmares, go get your paws on this.
© 2022 MARVEL.

Marvel Visionaries: John Romita, Sr.


By John Romita Sr., with Stan Lee, Roger Stern & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1806-4 (TPB/Digital edition)

We lost one of last giants of the industry this week when John Romita died on Monday. He was 93 and his work is inextricably woven into the Marvel canon: permeating and supporting the entire company’s output from top to tail and from the Sixties to right now… and even before the beginning of the House of Ideas actually began. 

One of the industry’s most polished stylists and a true cornerstone of the Marvel Comics phenomenon, the elder John Romita began his comics career in the late 1940s (ghosting for other artists) before striking out under his own colours. eventually illustrating horror and other anthology tales for Stan Lee at Timely/Atlas.

John Victor Romita was born and bred in Brooklyn, entering the world on January 24th 1930. From Brooklyn Junior High School he moved to the famed Manhattan School of Industrial Art, graduating in 1947. After spending six months creating a medical exhibit for Manhattan General Hospital he moved into comics, in 1949, with work for Famous Funnies. A “day job” working with Forbes Lithograph was abandoned when a friend found him inking and ghosting assignments, until he was drafted in 1951. Showing his portfolio to a US army art director, after boot camp at Fort Dix New Jersey, Romita was promoted to corporal, stationed on Governors Island in New York Bay doing recruitment posters and allowed to live off-base… in Brooklyn. During that period he started doing the rounds and struck up a freelancing acquaintance with Stan Lee at Atlas Comics…

He illustrated horror, science fiction, war stories, westerns, Waku, Prince of the Bantu (in Jungle Tales), a fine run of cowboy adventures starring The Western Kid and 1954’s abortive revival of Captain America, and more, before an industry implosion derailed his – and many other – budding careers. Romita eventually found himself trapped in DC’s romance comics division – a job he hated – before making the reluctant jump again to the resurgent House of Ideas in 1965. As well as steering the career of the wallcrawler and so many other Marvel stars, his greatest influence was felt when he became Art Director in 197. He had a definitive hand in creating or shaping many key characters, such as Mary Jane Watson, Peggy Carter, The Kingpin, The Punisher, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Satana ad infinitum.

This celebratory volume from 2019 re-presents Amazing Spider-Man #39, 40, 42, 50, 108, 109, 365; Captain America & The Falcon #138; Daredevil #16-17; Fantastic Four #105-106; Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #-1; Vampire Tales #2; and material from Strange Tales #4; Menace #6, #11; Young Men #24, 26; Western Kid 12; Tales To Astonish #77; Tales Of Suspense #77 spanning cover-dates December 1951 to July 1997. It opens with a loving Introduction from John Romita Jr., sharing the golden days and anecdotal insights on the “family business”. Not only the second son but also his mother Virginia Romita were key Marvel employees: she was the highly efficient and utterly adored company Traffic Manager for decades.

A chronological cavalcade of wonders begins with official first Marvel masterwork ‘It!’. Possibly scripted by Lee and taken from Strange Tales #4 (December 1951), we share a moment of sheer terror as an alien presence tales over the newest member of a typical suburban family…

Next is verifiable Lee & Romita shocker ‘Flying Saucer!’ (Menace #6, August 1953) and a sneaky invasion attack preceding the first Romita superhero saga as seen in Young Men #24, December 1953.

In the mid-1950s Atlas tried to revive their Timely-era “Big Three” (and super-hero comics in general) on the back of a putative Sub-Mariner television series intended to cash in on the success of The Adventures of Superman show. This led to some impressively creative comics, but no appreciable results or rival in costumed dramas.

Eschewing here the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner segments – and with additional art from Mort Lawrence – ‘Captain America: Back From the Dead’ features a communist Red Skull attacking the UN, with school teacher Steve Rogers and top student Bucky coming out of retirement to tackle the crisis. The Star-Spangled Avenger gets another bite of the cherry in ‘Captain America Turns Traitor(Young Men Comics #26, March 1954) with guest shots for Subby and the Torch as the Sentinel of Liberty apparently goes from True Blue to a deadly shade of Red…

Latterly reimagined as one of the modern Agents of Atlas, ‘I, the Robot!’ began as a deadly threat to humanity in Menace #11, and is followed here by a yarn from Romita’s first residency as the wandering hero Tex Dawson and his dauntless dog Lightning and super steed Whirlwind survive sudden stampedes and tackle vile horse butchering killers in a tale from his own eponymous title (Western Kid #12, October 1956)…

Atlas collapsed soon after, due to market conditions when a disastrous distribution decision resulted in their output being reduced to 16 titles per month, distributed by arch rival National Comics/DC. Under those harsh conditions the Marvel revolution started small but soon snowballed, drawing Romita back from ad work and drawing romances for DC.

Romita’s return began with inking and a few short pencilling jobs for the little powerhouse publisher’s split books. Tales To Astonish #77 revealed ‘Bruce Banner is the Hulk!’ (March 1966, written by Lee, laid out by Jack Kirby and finished by the returning prodigal) with the gamma goliath trapped in the future and battling the Asgardian Executioner, whilst in his home era, Rick Jones is pressured into revealing his awful secret…

The Captain America story for May 1966’s Tales of Suspense # 77 added inker Frank Giacoia/Frank Ray to the creative mix for ‘If a Hostage Should Die!’: recounting a moment from the hero’s wartime exploits with a woman he loved and lost. These days we know her as Captain Peggy Carter

After a brief stint in his preferred role as inker, Romita took over illustrating Daredevil with #12, following a stunning run by Wally Wood & Bob Powell. Initially Kirby provided page layouts to help Romita assimilate the style and pacing of Marvel tales, but soon “Jazzy Johnny” was in full control of his pages. He drew DD until #19, by which time he had been handed the assignment of a lifetime… The Amazing Spider-Man!

A backdoor pilot for that jump came in Daredevil #16-17 (May and June 1996) with ‘Enter… Spider-Man’ wherein criminal mastermind Masked Marauder manipulates the amazing arachnid into attacking the Man Without Fear. The schemer had big plans, the first of which was having DD and the wallcrawler kill each other, but after Spidey almost exposes Matt Murdock’s secret in ‘None are so Blind!’ they mend fences and go after the real foe…

By 1966 Stan Lee and Steve Ditko could no longer work together on their greatest creation. After increasingly fraught months Ditko resigned, leaving Marvel’s second best-selling title without an illustrator. Nervous new guy Romita was handed the ball and told to run. ‘How Green Was My Goblin!’ and ‘Spidey Saves the Day!’ – “Featuring the End of the Green Goblin!” – as it so dubiously proclaimed) was the climactic battle fans had been clamouring for since the viridian villain’s debut. It didn’t disappoint – and still doesn’t today.

Reprinted from issues #39 and 40 (August & September 1966 and inked by old DC colleague Mike Esposito as “Mickey Demeo”), this remains one of the best Spider-Man yarns ever, and heralded a run of classic sagas from the Lee/Romita team that actually saw sales rise, even after the departure of the seemingly irreplaceable Ditko. If you need further convincing, it sees the villain learn Peter Parker’s identity, capture and torture our hero and share his own origins before falling in the first of many final clashes…

Amazing Spider-Man #42 heralded ‘The Birth of a Super-Hero!, with John Jameson (Jonah’s astronaut son) mutated by space-spores and going on a Manhattan rampage. It’s a solid, entertaining yarn that is only really remembered for the last panel of the final page.

Mary Jane Watson had been a running gag in the series for years: a prospective blind-date arranged by Aunt May who Peter had avoided – and Ditko skilfully never depicted – for the duration of time that our hero had been involved with Betty Brant, Liz Allen, and latterly Gwen Stacy.

Now, in that last frame the gobsmacked young man finally realises that for years he’s been ducking the “hottest chick in New York”! I’m sure we all know how MJ has built her place in the Marvel Universe…

Issue #50 (July 1967) featured the debut of one of Marvel’s greatest villains in the first chapter of a 3-part yarn that saw the first stirrings of romance between Parker and Gwen, the death of a cast regular, and re-established the webslinger’s war on cheap thugs and common criminals. Here it all begins with a crisis of conscience that compels him to quit in ‘Spider-Man No More!

Romita was clearly considered a safe pair of hands and “go-to-guy” by Stan Lee. When Jack Kirby left to create his incredible Fourth World for DC, Romita was handed the company’s other flagship title – in the middle of an on-going storyline. Here we focus on Fantastic Four #105-106 (December 1970 and January 1971 and both inked with angular, brittle brilliance by John Verpoorten). and ‘The Monster’s Secret’.

Scripted by Lee, they comprise a low-key yet extremely effective suspense thriller played against a resuming subplot of Johnny Storm’s failing romance. When his Inhuman girlfriend Crystal is taken ill – preparatory to writing her out of the series – Reed Richards’ diligent examination reveals a potential method of curing the misshapen Thing of his rocky curse.

Tragically, as Ben Grimm is prepped for the radical process in ‘The Monster in the Streets!’ a mysterious energy-beast begins tearing up Manhattan. By the time ‘The Monster’s Secret!is exposed, the team strongman is almost dead and Crystal is gone… seemingly forever.

Romita briefly and regularly returned to the Star-Spangled Avenger in the 1970s and June 1971’s Captain America & The Falcon #138 reveals how ‘It Happens in Harlem!’ sporting a full art job by Romita, Lee’s tale sees new hero The Falcon foolishly try to prove himself by capturing the outlaw Spider-Man, only to be himself kidnapped by gang lord Stoneface. Cue a spectacular three-way team up and just desserts all round…

The Amazing Spider-Man was never far from Romita’s drawing board and in #108 the secret of high school bully Flash Thompson – freshly returned from the ongoing war in Indochina – finally unfolds ‘Vengeance from Vietnam!’ With Romita inking his own pencils, it details how our troubled war hero was connected to an American war atrocity that left a peaceful village devastated and a benign wise man comatose and near-dead. The events consequently set a vengeful cult upon the saddened soldier’s guilt-ridden heels, which all the Arachnid’s best efforts could not deflect or deter.

The campaign of terror is only concluded in #109 as ‘Enter: Dr. Strange!sees the Master of the Mystic Arts divine the truth and set things right… but only after an extraordinary amount of unnecessary violence…

Marvel was expanding and experimenting as always and a horror boom saw them move into mature reader monochrome magazines. In Vampire Tales #2 (October 1973), Roy Thomas scripted a short vignette of a woman apparently imperilled who turned out to be anything but. Delivered in moody line and wash, Devil’s Daughter Satana began her predations via Romita before joining the Macabre Marvel Universe. Her debut is supplanted by a house ad…

Commemorating the hero’s 30th anniversary, Amazing Spider-Man 365 (August 1992) carried a bunch of extras including sentimental reverie ‘I Remember Gwen’ (Tom DeFalco, Lee & Romita) before we close with a wild ride from Roger Stern, inked by Al Milgrom.

‘There’s a Man Who Leads a Life of Danger’ comes from July 1997’s Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #minus 1: an adventure of Peter Parker’s parents and part of the Flashback publishing event. It pits the married secret agents against deadly Baroness Adelicia von Krupp and guest-stars a pre-Weapon-X Logan/Wolverine in a delightful spy-romp.

Added extras here include Romita’s unused splash page from Young Men Comics #24, character designs for Robbie Robertson, Mary Jane, Captain Stacy and his daughter Gwen, John Jameson, The Prowler, Wolverine and The Punisher; Fan sketches and doodles; an Amazing Spider-Man poster (painted); the covers of Spectacular Spider-Man Magazine #1 & 2 (ditto) plus original proposal art for the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip. There are also covers for F.O.O.M. #18, Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (1987), New Avengers #8 and Mighty Marvel Heroes & Villains (with Alex Ross) and a vintage self-portrait.

This is absolutely one of the most cohesive and satisfactory career compilations available and one no fan should miss.
© 2019 MARVEL.

For a slightly different selection, I’d advise also tracking down Marvel Masters: The art of John Romita Sr (ISBN: 978-1-84653-403-4), although that’s not available in digital formats.