Category: Marvel Superheroes

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The Monster of Frankenstein


By Gary Friedrich, Doug Moench, Bill Mantlo, Gerry Conway, Mike Ploog, John Buscema, Bob Brown, Val Mayerik, Don Perlin, Sal Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9906-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

Whereas DC Comics capitalised on the early 1970s global boom in all things supernatural and mystic by creating a plethora of short-story anthologies and the occasional spooky star, Marvel Comics took the trend in another direction and created a small army of horror-heroes to headline their own series.

This particular collection reprints the House of Ideas’ interpretation of the Mary Shelley classic from a time when the censorious Comics Code Authority first loosened some of its strictures banning horror material from the pages of comics. That translates here to 18 issues of the colour comicbook; Giant-Sized Werewolf #2, Marvel Team-Up #36-37 and all the pertinent strips from adult-oriented Marvel magazines Monsters Unleashed #2, 4-7, 9-10 and one-shot Legion of Monsters (spanning January 1973-September 1975), all awaiting your rapt attentions.

Some comic artists work best in black-&-white. Such is certainly the case with Mike Ploog. A young find who had previously worked with Will Eisner, Ploog illustrated Gary Friedrich’s pithy adaptation of the original novel before moving on to groundbreaking new ventures as the strip graduated to in-house originated material. This monumental tome is presented mostly in colour, but if you are of a similar opinion you could try to lay your hands on the 2004 monochrome Essential Monster of Frankenstein edition…

Cover-dated January 1973, ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein!’ introduced Robert Walton IV, great grandson of the sea-captain who had rescued scientist Victor Frankenstein from the polar ice and who was subsequently regaled with the incredible tale of “the Modern Prometheus”.

Now, in 1898 and leading a band of rogues, cutthroats and sullen Inuit, Walton finds the fabled monster interred in a frozen slab and brings it aboard his ice-breaker. He then recounts the story to his fascinated cabin-boy, unaware of the fear and discontent simmering below decks…

A bloody mutiny during a terrible gale opens the second issue as the burning ship founders. Meanwhile the flashbacked saga of tragic Victor reaches the terrible moment when the monster demanded a mate. The guilt-plagued scientist complied only to baulk at the last and destroy his second creation. ‘Bride of the Monster!’ concludes with the creature’s fearsome vengeance on his creator, paralleling the grim fate of the storm-tossed ship…

In The Monster of Frankenstein #3, ‘The Monster’s Revenge!’ has the reawakened creature freed from its ice-block to overhear the continuation of his life-story from Walton’s lips, even as the last survivors struggle to find safety in the Arctic wastes.

Thereafter ‘Death of the Monster!’ – with inker John Verpoorten taking some of the deadline pressure off hard-pressed Ploog – turns the tables as the monster reveals what happened after the polar showdown with his creator, leading to a new beginning as Walton reveals that not all the Frankensteins were eradicated by the Monster’s campaign of vengeance. Their warped blood-line lives on…

A new direction began with issue #5 in ‘The Monster Walks Among Us!’. Making his way south, the tragic creature arrives in a Scandinavian village in time to save a young woman from being burned at the stake on a blazing longboat, only to rediscover that when villagers pick up pitchforks and torches to go a-screamin’ and a-hollerin’ for blood, they generally have a good reason…

With issue #6 the comic book renamed itself The Frankenstein Monster as the undying creature reaches the village of Ingolstadt a century after he first wreaked bloody vengeance on his creator’s loved ones.

‘…In Search of the Last Frankenstein!’ is a mini-classic of vintage horrors scripted as usual by Friedrich but plotted, pencilled & inked by Ploog, who was reaching an early peak in his artistic career. It was also his last issue.

Ploog was followed by John Buscema & Bob Brown before Val Mayerik settled as regular artist whilst Friedrich gave way to Doug Moench, a writer once synonymous with Marvel’s horror line.

Issues #7, 8 and 9 bowed to the inevitable, pitting the Monster against Marvel’s top horror star (albeit 75-ish years prior to his contemporary adventures). Beginning with ‘The Fury of a Fiend!’ continuing in ‘My Name is… Dracula!’ and concluding with ‘The Vampire Killers!’, this is an extremely classy tribute to the old Universal movies and then-current Hammer Films in equal measure, wherein the misunderstood misanthrope battled an undying evil for ungrateful humanity, consequently losing the power of speech; and becoming more monstrous in the process.

Produced by Friedrich, Buscema and Verpoorten, this trilogy lacks the atmosphere of Ploog’s tenure, but the action is very much in the company’s house-style. With #10 (inked by Frank Giacoia and Mike Esposito) the creature finally found ‘The Last Frankenstein!’ …much to his regret.

With number #11’s ‘…And in the End…!?’ – illustrated by Brown & Vince Colletta – and #12’s ‘A Cold and Lasting Tomb’ (Moench, Mayerik and Colletta), the Monster wrapped up his historical adventures by falling into a glacial sea. Frozen once again into another block of ice he was revived, Captain America-style, in modern times: i.e. the swinging 1970s…

The epic account then switches to monochrome as more mature episodes from Monsters Unleashed begin, starting with #2 and ‘Frankenstein 1973’ by Friedrich, Buscema & Syd Shores. Here we see how an obsessive young man finds the Monster preserved as a carnival exhibit, only to see his jealous girlfriend revive it whilst trying to burn down the sideshow. The story continued in #4 as ‘Frankenstein 1973: Chapter Two – The Classic Monster’ (Friedrich, Buscema & Win Mortimer), with a literal mad scientist actually putting his own brain in the monster’s skull. Happily, the unnatural order is restored in ‘Once a Monster…’

Monsters Unleashed #6 introduced new creative team Doug Moench & Val Mayerik who completed the introduction to modern times with a good old-fashioned monster hunt in ‘…Always a Monster!’

This leads directly to #7’s ‘A Tale of Two Monsters!’: a dark, socially relevant tale of the modern underclass and man-made horrors carried over into ‘Frankenstein 1974: Fever in the Freak House’ before concluding in #9’s ‘The Conscience of the Creature’.

The horror boom was fading by this time and Monsters Unleashed #10 was the Monster’s last outing there: a superbly dark and sardonic Christmas offering complete with elves, snow, terrorists and a Presidential assassination attempt.

One final monochrome tale from Moench, Mayerik, Dan Adkins & Pablo Marcos (accompanied by a chilling frontispiece by Marcos) appeared in 1975 one-shot The Legion of Monsters. ‘The Monster and the Masque’ was a bittersweet morality play seeing the creature accidentally accepted at a fancy dress party, which is ruined when a different sort of monster gets carried away…

Switching back to full-colour comics, next up is a rather tame team-up/clash from Giant-Size Werewolf #2 wherein ‘The Frankenstein Monster Meets Werewolf by Night’ (Moench, Don Perlin & Colletta) to collaterally combine and quash a band of run-of-the-mill West Coast Satanists.

Resuming his own series, The Frankenstein Monster #13 displays ‘All Pieces of Fear!’ (Moench, Mayerik & Jack Abel) as, shoe-horned into mid-1970s America, the Monster is drawn into a tale heavy with irony as men act like beasts and an obsessive father ignores his family whilst building his own abominations through the nascent science of cloning.

With a hip young teenager as sidekick/spokesperson, ‘Fury of the Night-Creature’ (Dan Green inks) extends the saga by introducing I.C.O.N. (International Crime Organizations Nexus): yet another secret organisation intent on conquest by merging corporate business practices with traditional gangsterism.

Issue #15’s ‘Tactics of Death’ (Klaus Janson inks) briefly concludes the acronym-agenda as the Monster and companion Ralph mop up the men in suits only to be shanghaied to Switzerland to meet the latest Last-of-the-Frankensteins in ‘Code-name: Berserker!’ (inked by Bob McLeod – who managed to handle the next issue too).

Veronica Frankenstein was still absorbed in the family business, but claimed to be fixing her ancestors’ mistakes when I.C.O.N. creeps showed up, demanding her biological techniques in ‘A Phoenix Beserk!’. Beautifully inked by Mayerik and Adkins, the last colour issue ended on a never-to-be completed cliffhanger (although scripter Bill Mantlo covered elements of the story in Iron Man some years later) as the Monster and his new friend met ‘The Lady of the House’ – the utterly bonkers creature-crafter dubbed Victoria Von Frankenstein…

Perhaps the abrupt cancellation was a mercy-killing after all…

Rounding off the narrative wonderment is a 2-part tale from Gerry Conway, Sal Buscema & Colletta first seen in Marvel Team-Up #36-37 wherein Spider-Man is kidnapped and shipped off to Switzerland by the assuredly insane Baron Ludwig Von Shtupf, who proudly proclaims himself The Monster Maker…

In ‘Once Upon a Time, in a Castle…’ the bonkers biologist wants to pick-&-mix creature traits – having already secured the Frankenstein Monster to practise on… After the webslinger busts them both out, they stumble upon sexy SHIELD Agent Klemmer, but a rapid counterattack goes badly wrong when Von Shtupf unleashes his other captive – the furiously feral Man-Wolf – and only big Frankie can prevent a wave of ‘Snow Death!’

This codex of comic creepiness concludes with a mammoth bonus section offering art lovers and funnybook historians additional treats such as Ploog’s very first design sketch of the monster from 1972, original art, illustrations and (finished but pre-editorial addition) painted covers by Boris Vallejo.

Also on show are assorted frontispieces, pencils, inks and previous collected editions, covers and original art by Tom Sutton, Gray Morrow, Vince Evans, Mayerik, Bernie Wrightson & Arthur Adams, making this compendium a perfect treat for fantasy fans and dedicated horrorists: one that should be a first choice for introducing scare-loving civilians to the world of comics.
© 1973, 1974, 1975, 2015 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Mighty Avengers: No Single Hero


By Al Ewing, Greg Land, Jay Leisten & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0785188742 (TPB/Digital edition)

Following blockbuster Avengers Versus X-Men publishing event, company-wide reboot MarvelNOW! reformed the entire overarching continuity: a drastic reshuffle and rethink of characters, concepts and brands with an eye to winning new readers and feeding the company’s burgeoning movie blockbuster machine…

Moreover, many disparate story strands were congealing to kick off the always-imminent Next Big Thing, with the cosmically expanded Avengers titles forming the spine of an encroaching mega-epic. The colossal Infinity storyline detailed a grandiose advance into Armageddon as an intergalactic Hammer of Doom fell with an all-out attack by impossibly ancient race The Builders. They claim to have sparked universal life, but now seek to rectify their mistake on Earth – and woe betide any species or intergalactic civilisation in their way.

When The Avengers mobilised most of their assemblage off-planet to tackle the threat before it reached them, Thanos of Titan took advantage of the dearth of metahuman defenders to invade, leaving the remaining superheroes with an almost impossible task…

Written by Al Ewing and illustrated by Greg Land & Jay Leisten, Mighty Avengers volume 2 #1-5 (November 2013 – March 2014) describes how those left behind unite as a resistance force and stayed together as a decidedly different kind of crusading team… one primarily comprising heroes of colour, not the usual bunch of white guys and ones who looked at problems beyond a self-appointed cosmic jurisdiction…

The action opens as Thanos hits Earth, where blithely unaware ex-Avenger Luke Cage is pitting his Heroes for Hire apprentices White Tiger and a new, teenaged Power Man against seasoned super-thief The Plunderer. Their efforts are interrupted and derided by the Superior Spider-Man who orders them to quit before insultingly offering Cage’s kids a real job.

Everybody sees that the wallcrawler has become insufferable since he technologically upgraded his act and hired a paramilitary gang as his deputies. Many of his oldest friends even think he might be going crazy. What no one knows is that the mind inside the arachnid hero’s head is actually archvillain Otto Octavius AKA Doctor Octopus who – despite a passionate initial desire to reform – is slowly reverting to his true manner and bad habits…

The webspinner’s derision spurs White Tiger into quitting, but only fuels her male teammates into trying harder to prove Spider-Man wrong…

Elsewhere ex-Avenger Monica Rambeau (formerly Captain Marvel and Photon, but now calling herself Spectrum) is getting back into the crime-busting game after a bout of retirement. She’s sorting out her costume and talking over old times with an enigmatic fellow champion when the first wave of the Titan’s invasion force smashes into New York.

Donning a store-bought comedy costume, the stranger – also black – joins Monica as a generic “Spider Hero” and converges on the landing site where Cage and the still-enraged Superior Spider-Man are battling the Titan’s ferocious warlord Proxima Midnight…

Elsewhere, Mystic Master Doctor Strange has been possessed and corrupted by the Ebony Maw – the most personally ambitious of Thanos’ lieutenants – whilst at the bottom of the sea  Dr. Adam Brashear receives a cosmic visitor. A forgotten African American superhero forbidden by Presidential mandate from operating during the Civil Rights era, The Blue Marvel is thus stirred from a lengthy self-imposed exile and grudgingly agrees to return to the world which shunned and sidelined him…

In New York, ‘The Assembly’ give battle, but the Amazing Arachnid seems more concerned with suing his “copyright infringer” than defeating the invaders, and Spectrum is gravely wounded by Midnight. As Cage tackles Proxima, ordinary citizens are emboldened to join the struggle, compelling ever-watching Thanos to order a retreat.

It’s not over though, as the ravaged metropolis is then assaulted by an overwhelming aspect of voracious Elder God Shuma-Gorath, summoned by enslaved Stephen Strange. The rampant horror gleefully begins transforming native New Yorkers into ghastly demon duplicates…

As Blue Marvel rockets to the rescue, temporarily stymieing the devil god and healing Spectrum, mystically empowered White Tiger and Power Man arrive and Spider Hero -demonstrating a keen knowledge of arcane rites – devises a scheme to drive the Lovecraftian horror back to its own dimension for good.

Cage then has a eureka moment, realising ‘No Single Hero’ could have managed, declaring that they are all Avengers…

Originally parked above Manhattan, the Inhumans’ floating city Attilan was destroyed during the war and its ruins now languish in the Hudson River. Moreover, when Thanos personally attacked Black Bolt, the embattled Inhuman monarch released genetically transformative Terrigen Mists thereby unleashing a host of new super-powered warriors from the ranks of the humans below…

Issue #4 is set after the invasion is finally repelled, with the city engrossed in rapid reconstruction. The space-bound Avengers are still missing off-world but life is returning to normal.

Sleazy entrepreneur Jason Quantrell despatches his personal industrial spy Quickfire – a recent recipient of Terrigen-induced abilities – to raid the sunken citadel in search of fresh mutagens he can monetise, whilst in Times Square Cage has turned his old Gem Theatre offices into a storefront Avengers HQ.

He has a bold new idea: opening the heroic volunteer brigade to the public who can come to them with meta-related problems or issues of injustice. Even though Reservist The Falcon has come aboard, Spider-Man is becoming increasingly intolerant, alternately demanding to be placed in charge and ordering Cage’s crew to cease and desist. Unable to convince them, the furious superior wallcrawler storms off…

Meanwhile Spider Hero – who has some ominous magical acquaintances older fans might recognise – has detected an encroaching mystic crisis and resolved to stay. Adopting the vacant costume and identity of martial arts mystery man Ronin, he invites the team to join him in stopping an impending burglary in Attilan. It’s not Quickfire’s illegal raid that’s the problem, but rather that she’s going to inadvertently awaken the slumbering submerged threat of the Death Walkers if somebody doesn’t stop her…

However, as the most recent Ronin leads the Avengers to the already-in-progress monster catastrophe, Octavius returns to the Gem Theatre and – in a manic fit of frustrated rage – attacks Cage with all the paramilitary resources he can muster: mercenaries, spider-bots and urban assault vehicles all primed to shut down the Avengers forever.

Happily, the harassed Hero for Free had already contacted his lawyer and is delighted to follow Jennifer Walters’ guidance… which basically boils down to “She-Hulk Smash!”…

Fast, furious and fantastically offbeat, this epic epistle also offers a selection of editorial features from the issues in question and a covers gallery, as it delivers hard, fast, thrilling and funny stories about heroism on the other side of the tracks…
© 2013 Marvel Characters Inc.. All rights reserved.

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Thunderbolts – Cage


By Jeff Parker, Kev Walker & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4774-9 (HB/Digital) 978-0-7851-4775-6 (TPB)

At the end of 1996 the Onslaught publishing event removed The Fantastic Four, Avengers, Captain America and Iron Man from the Marvel Universe: rather unwisely handing over creative control to Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee for a year. For the early part of that period the “Image style” books got most of consumers’ attention, although a new title created to fill the gap in the “real” universe eventually proved to be the true breakthrough of that era…

Thunderbolts was initially promoted as a replacement team-book; untried champions pitching in because the big guns were dead and gone. They consisted of Captain America clone Citizen V, size-shifting Atlas, super-armoured Mach-1, energy-casting virago Meteorite, sonic siren Songbird and mechanised human weapon Techno.

A beleaguered and terrified populace instantly took them to their hearts, but these heroes shared a huge secret – they were actually super-villains in disguise and Citizen V (or Baron Helmut Zemo as he truly was) had nasty plans in mind…

Ultimately defeated by his own scheme as his criminal underlings (Mach-I AKA the Beetle, Techno/the Fixer, Atlas/Goliath, Songbird/Screaming Mimi and even deeply-disturbed Meteorite/Moonstone) increasingly yearned to be the heroic ideals they posed as, Zemo was ousted and the Thunderbolts thereafter carved out – under a succession of leaders – a rocky career as genuine, if controversial, champions.

Even with their Heroes Returned (a long story for another time) life got no easier for Earth and especially America. During the first superhero Civil War, the ever-changing Thunderbolts squad – generally comprised of felons looking to change their ways or escape punishment – became Federal hunters, tracking and arresting metahumans who refused to surrender to the Super-Human Registration Act. Eventually that iteration fell under the aegis of government hard-man Norman Osborn.

Through various deals, deeds and malign machinations former Green Goblin Osborn sought to control the Thunderbolt project as a stepping-stone to his becoming became the USA’s Security Czar…

As the “top-cop” in sole charge of a beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom, the psychotic Osborn controlled America’s costumed/metahuman community. Replacing super-spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. with his own all-pervasive H.A.M.M.E.R. Directorate, the deadly despot had Captain America arrested and defamed. Setting the world’s heroes at each other’s throats, he dedicated all his energies to stealing political power to match his scientifically-augmented strength and overwhelming financial clout.

Numerous appalling assaults on the nation occurred, including a Secret Invasion by shape-shifting Skrull infiltrators and his own draconian, oppressive response – his Dark Reign – wherein Osborn drove the World’s Mightiest Heroes underground, replacing them with his own team of deadly Dark Avengers.

Not content with commanding the covert and military resources of the United States, Osborn personally led this team, wearing appropriated Tony Stark technology and calling himself the Iron Patriot: simultaneously betraying his country by conspiring with a coalition of major super-villains to divvy up the world between them.

He overreached himself by overruling the American President to direct an unsanctioned military Siege on godly citadel Asgard, and when the fugitive outlawed heroes at last reunited to stop him, Osborn’s fall from grace and subsequent incarceration led to a new Heroic Age.

In the aftermath, it was discovered that the Security Chief’s monstrous manipulations were even more Machiavellian than suspected. One of his initiatives was the kidnapping of super-powered children: tragic innocents he tortured, psychologically abused and experimented upon in a drive to create the next generation of fanatically loyal super-soldiers…

Those traumatised and potentially lethal kids became the responsibility of the exonerated and reassembled Avengers who decided to teach the surviving lab rats how to be heroes in a new Avengers Academy, whilst Osborn – beaten but not broken -was incarcerated in ultra-high-security penitentiary The Raft.

Collecting material from the Enter the Heroic Age one-shot and Thunderbolts #144-147 (July-October 2010) this new direction, written by Jeff Parker, illustrated by Kev Walker and coloured by Frank Martin, sees the Legion of the Lost reformed with a fresh brief and a new leader to once again offer penitence, potential redemption and probable death to the defeated dregs of the Marvel Universe…

For most of modern history black consumers of popular entertainments were provided with far too few fictive role models. In the English-speaking world that began changing in the turbulent 1960s and truly took hold during the decade that followed.

Many characters stemming from those days emerged due to a cultural phenomenon dubbed “Blaxploitation”. Although criticised for its seedy antecedents, stereotypical situations and violence, the films, books, music and art generated by the phenomenon were the first mass-market examples of minority characters in leading roles, rather than as fodder, flunkies or flamboyant villains.

If you care to look elsewhere in this blog, you’ll find a rather pompous review by (old, white) me detailing how that groundbreaking era led to the birth of superheroic cultural icon Luke Cage. You should read those stories: they’re groundbreaking landmarks and really good…

Here, however, the drama begins with the arrival on the high-tech island prison of Osborn and a new intake of monstrous convicts who pretty soon learned the ropes at the calloused hands of Power Man Luke Cage: former Hero for Hire, reserve Avenger and latest director of the Thunderbolts Program. The no-nonsense hard-man and former convict – albeit an innocent, framed and ultimately exonerated one – offered a last-chance way for some of America’s worst malefactors to pay back their immense debt to society and maybe buy a slice of salvation…

Issue #144 took up the story as new Warden John Walker (formerly super-soldier U.S.Agent before losing some limbs during the Siege of Asgard) and Cage begin selecting potential recruits in ‘The Boss’.

With original, genuinely reformed Thunderbolts Fixer and Mach-V as deputies, lethally ambivalent sociopath Moonstone opportunistically joins Cage’s team: the cream of a reluctant, conflicted and very bad bunch also comprising deranged phasing hacker Ghost; dispirited mystic mobile monolith Juggernaut and Captain America’s antithesis Cross-Bones – one of the most ruthless killers in existence.

Offering technical support is size-shifting Scientist Supreme/Avengers Academy headmaster Hank Pym (AKA Ant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, The Wasp and Giant-Man), who devised a unique transport method for the penal battalion: one utilising unsuspected teleportational talents of the macabre, insentient monster called the Man-Thing…

However, before the unit can even undergo basic training, intransigent Zemo attacks the inescapable penitentiary, determined to reclaim his old team…

‘Field Test’ offers a surprise or two before Cage seizes control again and the squad set off on an emergency first mission: tracking down man-eating trolls ravaging the Oklahoma countryside and presumably escaped from Asgard after Osborn’s ill-fated attack on the dimensionally-displaced City of the Gods…

That grisly outing promptly segues into another crisis-response from the woefully untrained squad when dispatched to a New Guinea cave to rescue scientists and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents investigating mutagenic, metahuman-creating Terrigen crystals…

The mission is another tragic debacle. There is no cure for what the techs have uncovered and then become, so the salvation run turned into a grim and nasty bug hunt…

This sleek, effective thriller concludes its dramatic presentation with the intermediate part of a crossover tale which began and ended in Avengers Academy, offering some intriguing insights into the ongoing personal rehabilitation of troubled Juggernaut Cain Marko.

The students at the unique school were being trained under a hidden agenda: although officially declared the most accomplished of Osborn’s next generation protégés, sextet Reptil, Finesse, Striker, Hazmat, Mettle and Veil were actually diagnosed as the most experimented upon, abused and psychologically damaged. The Academy not only wanted to turn them into heroes but also intended to ensure the prodigies were not incurably corrupted, potential menaces…

‘Scared Straight’ reveals how toxic nightmare Hazmat, animated Iridium golem Mettle and slowly dissipating gas-girl Veil turn a school-trip to The Raft into an attempt to gain revenge on their erstwhile tormentor. Although the most secure and infallible jail on the planet, no one realises just what Hazmat can really do and when the power goes out she and her equally incensed classmates headed straight for Osborn’s solitary cell…

Their ill-conceived ploy also liberates an army of irate, murderous villains forcing the new Thunderbolts to prove how far they’ve come by choosing which side they are now on. More important than showing Cage and Warden Walker, the convicts and once-pariahs must examine their own unsuspected moral changes and how far they have progressed before order is finally, ruthlessly restored…

This collection confirming Luke Cage’s elevation from edgy outsider to first rank major player in Marvel continuity also comes with a superb cover gallery by Marko Djurdjevic, Bryan Hitch & Karl Kesel, Larry Stroman, Frank Martin, a wealth of character designs and pages of un-inked art from Walker to complete a wry, clever and suspenseful action-adventure package that all fans of gritty superhero action will adore…
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Werewolf by Night – The Complete Collection volume 1


By Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Roy & Jean Thomas, Mike Ploog, Werner Roth, Ross Andru, Tom Sutton, Gil Kane, Gene Colan & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-30290-839-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Utterly Uncanny and Irresistible Comics Chillers… 9/10

Now a star of page and screen, Werewolf by Night could be described as the true start of the Marvel Age of Horror. Although now technically supplanted by modern Hopi/Latino lycanthrope Jake Gomez – who’s shared the designation since 2020 – the trials of a teen wolf opened the floodgates to a stream of Marvel monster stars and horror antiheroes. Happy 50th anniversary, kid!

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 the mass-move into horror titles: 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 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 star character, was recycled from a classic pre-Comics Code short suspense-thriller from Marvel Tales #116, July 1953. Marvel always favoured a 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.

This copious compendium collects the early adventures of a young West Coast lycanthrope re-presenting the contents of Marvel Spotlight #2-4, Werewolf by Night volume 1 #1-15; a guest-shot from Marvel Team-Up #12 and material from the appropriate half of a horror crossover with Tomb of Dracula #18. These cumulatively span February 1972 through 1974.

Following an informative, scene-setting Introduction by long-term Marvel Editor Ralph Macchio, the moonlit madness begins with the landmark first appearance, introducing teenager Jack Russell, who is suffering some sleepless nights…

Cover-dated February 1972 ‘Werewolf by Night!’ (Marvel Spotlight #2), was written by Gerry Conway and moodily, magnificently illustrated by Mike Ploog – 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 begins 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 stepfather 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 to transform for the first time into a ravening vulpine man-beast. At dawn, he awakes wasted on a beach to learn that his mother has been gravely injured in a car crash. Something had happened to her brakes…

Sneaking into her hospital room, the distraught teen is astonished to hear 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 was 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 and then realises 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 instalment sees the reluctant nocturnal predator rescue Lissa from a sick and 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 called the Darkhold. The 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 writer 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 boy 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…

That episode ended on a cliffhanger, presumably as an added incentive to buy Werewolf by Night #1 (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 only long enough to regret it. Meanwhile, Joquez successfully translates the Darkhold: an accomplishment allowing ancient horror to possess him in WbN #3, sparking ‘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 savage – but his off-the-books investigation hardly begins before the Swami’s plans fall apart in concluding tale ‘Ritual of Blood!’ (inked by Jim Mooney).

The beast is safely(?) roaming loose in the backwoods for #8’s quirky monster-mash when an ancient demon possesses a cute little bunny in Wein, Werner Roth & Paul Reinman’s ‘The Lurker Behind the Door!’, before neatly segueing to a slight but stirring engagement in Marvel Team-Up #12 wherein Wein, Conway, Ross Andru & Don Perlin expose a ‘Wolf at Bay!’ As webspinning wallcrawler meets werewolf, they initially battle each other – and ultimately malevolent mage Moondark – in foggy, fearful San Francisco before Jack heads back to LA and ‘Terror Beneath the Earth!’

Here Conway, Tom Sutton & George Roussos dip into an impeding and thoroughly nefarious scheme by business cartel The Committee. These commercial gurus somehow possess a full dossier on Jack Russell’s night-life, and hire a maniac sewer-dwelling sound engineer to execute a radical plan to use monsters and derelicts to boost sales in a down-turned economy.

However, the bold scheme to promote “growth, Growth, GROWTH” by frightening folk into spending more is ended before it begins since the werewolf proves to be far from a team-player in the wrap up ‘The Sinister Secret of Sarnak!’

Issue #11 revelled in irony as Marv Wolfman signed on as scripter for ‘Comes the Hangman’ – illustrated by incredible action ace Gil Kane & Sutton – in something interesting about Philip Russell and the Committee is disclosed, even as 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 delusional hooded hero snatches Lissa, he soon 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, lasting for the rest of the run. Before that though, Ploog & Chiaramonte return for another session, introducing another maniac mystic and a new love-interest (but not the same person) for 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 abilities more help than hindrance to the ravening moon-beast. ‘Lo, the Monster Strikes!’ then pits the wolf against Taboo’s undead-but-getting better son, delivering unexpected 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 clash with the Lord of Vampires.

Tomb of Dracula #18 (March 1974) begins the battle with ‘Enter: Werewolf by Night’ (Wolfman, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer) as Jack and Topaz investigate a potential cure for lycanthropy, only to be attacked by rampant menace to humanity Count Dracula. Driven off by the girl’s psychic powers the undead aristocrat realises the threat she poses to him and resolves to end her…

The confrontation and this first tome conclude with Werewolf by Night #15 and the ‘Death of a Monster!’ (Wolfman, Ploog & Chiaramonte) as the demonic duel devolves into a messy stalemate… but only after Jack learns of his family’s long hidden connection to Dracula…

Supplemented with an unused Ploog cover for Marvel Spotlight#4; Kane’s pre-corrections cover to ToD #18 and previous collection covers by Ploog & Dan Kemp, this initial complete compendium also offers a wealth of original art pages (20 in total) by Ploog, Sutton & Andru.

A moody masterpiece of macabre menace and all-out animal action, this book covers some of the most under-appreciated magic moments in Marvel history: tense, suspenseful and solidly compelling chillers to delight any fright fan or drama addict. If you crave a mixed bag of lycanthropes, bloodsuckers and moody young misses, this is a far more entertaining mix than most modern movies, books or miscellaneous matter…
© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Ghost Rider Epic Comics volume 1: Hell on Wheels 1972-1975


By Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, Tony Isabella, Marv Wolfman, Doug Moench, Len Wein, Mike Ploog, Tom Sutton, Jim Mooney, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema, Ross Andru  & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4611-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Rousing Redemptive Comic Classics… 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 most of the decade; peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Older genres such as horror, westerns and science fiction returned, fed by radical trends in movie-making where another, new(ish) wrinkle had also emerged: disenchanted, rebellious, unchained Youth on Motorbikes seeking a different way forward.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Jack Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen, Captain America and many others took the Easy Rider option to boost flagging sales – and if you’re interested the best of the bunch was Mike Sekowsky’s tragically unfinished mini-masterpiece of cool Jason’s Quest in Showcase. At Marvel – still reeling from The King’s defection to DC/National in 1970 – canny Roy Thomas green-lit a new character combining that freewheeling, adolescent-friendly biker-theme with the all-pervasive supernatural furore then gripping the globe.

Back in 1967, Marvel published a western masked hero named Ghost Rider: a shameless, whole-hearted appropriation of the cowboy hero creation of Vince Sullivan, Ray Krank & Dick Ayers for Magazine Enterprises from 1949 to 1955. They both utilised magician’s tricks to fight bandits by pretending to be an avenging phantom of justice.

Scant years later, with the Comics Code prohibition against horror hastily rewritten – amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics – scary comics came back in a big way. A new crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began to appear on the newsstands, supplementing the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the formerly science-only scenarios of the surviving mystery men titles.

In fact, the lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an avalanche of horror titles (new stories and reprints from the first boom of the 1950s), in response to the industry-wide down-turn in superhero sales, that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to – albeit temporarily – bite the dust.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (and narcotics – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare on four-colour pages and with a parade of pre-code reprints making sound business sense, the creative aspect of contemporary fascination in supernatural 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 would 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 shocking superstars – beginning with a werewolf and a vampire – before chancing something new: a spectral biker who could tap into both Easy Rider’s motorcycling chic and the prevailing supernatural zeitgeist.

The all-new Ghost Rider peeled out in Marvel Spotlight #5 (August 1972 and following western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the afore-hinted Werewolf by Night in #2-4).

This canny compendium collects those earliest flame-filled exploits: adventures from Marvel Spotlight #5-12, Ghost Rider #1-11 and a terror-tinged guest shot in Marvel Team-Up (#15), spanning August 1972 to April 1975, and the comics thrills, spills and chills begin with that landmark first appearance: an eerie tale of double-dealing and desperation introducing stunt bike Johnny Blaze, his fatally flawed father-figure Crash Simpson and Johnny’s devout and devoted girlfriend, sweetly innocent Roxanne Simpson.

Plotted by Thomas, scripted by Gary Friedrich and stunningly illustrated by Ploog, ‘Ghost Rider’ sees carnival cyclist Blaze sell his soul to the devil in an attempt to save his foster-father Crash from cancer. As is the way of such things, Satan follows the letter but not spirit of the contract and Simpson dies anyway, but when the Dark Lord later comes for Johnny, his beloved virginal girlfriend Roxanne intervenes.

Her purity prevents the Devil claiming his due and, temporarily thwarted, Satan spitefully afflicts Johnny with a body that burns with the fires of Hell every time the sun goes down…

At first haunting the night and terrorising thugs and criminals, the traumatised biker soon leaves the Big City and heads for the solitary deserts where – in ‘Angels From Hell!’ – the flaming-skulled fugitive joins a biker gang led by enigmatic Curly Samuels: in actuality a resurrected agent of Satan attempting to destroy the protective Roxanne to claim Blaze’s soul.

No prizes for guessing Curly’s true identity then, since the next chapter (inked by Frank Chiaramonte) is entitled ‘Die, Die, My Daughter!’…

The origin epic concludes with a monumental battle against ‘…The Hordes of Hell!’ (offering a rather uncomfortable artistic collaboration by Ploog & Jim Mooney), spawning a torturous Cold War détente between the still nightly-transforming Blaze and the Lord of Lies, as well as introducing a new eldritch enemy in Native American Witch Man Snake-Dance…

With Marvel Spotlight #9 the tragically undervalued Tom Sutton took over pencilling – with inks by Chic Stone – for ‘The Snakes Crawl at Night…’ as Medicine Man magic and demonic devil-worship combine to torment Blaze just as Roxanne goes west looking for him. To further confound the accursed cyclist, Satan decrees that although he must feel the pain, no injury will end Johnny’s life until his soul resides in Hell – which comes in very handy when Roxanne is sacrificed by Snake-Dance and the Ghost Rider has to battle his entire deviant cult to rescue her…

In #10, ‘The Coming of… Witch-Woman!’ (Friedrich, Sutton & Mooney) opens with Blaze a fugitive from the police and rushing dying Roxanne to hospital. Meanwhile back on the Reservation, tensions remain high as Snake-Dance’s daughter Linda Littletrees reveals her own connection to Satan, culminating in a devastating eldritch assault on Blaze in #11’s ‘Season of the Witch-Woman!’ (inked by the incomparable Syd Shores).

That cataclysmic conflict continued into Ghost Rider #1 (cover-dated September 1973), further extending the escalating war between Blaze and the Devil and using the conflict to introduce a new horror-hero who would take over the biker’s vacant slot in Spotlight.

Linda Littletrees isn’t so much a Satan-worshipping witch as ‘A Woman Possessed!’, but when her father and fiancé Sam Silvercloud call in Boston-based exorcist Daimon Hellstrom, they are utterly unprepared for the kind of assistance the demonologist offers.

With Roxanne slowly recuperating and Blaze still on the run, Ghost Rider #2 depicts the bedevilled biker dragged down to Hell in ‘Shake Hands With Satan!’ (Mooney & Shores) before the saga concludes in Marvel Spotlight #12 with the official debut of ‘The Son of Satan!’ courtesy of Friedrich, Herb Trimpe & Frank Chiaramonte, revealing Hellstrom’s long-suppressed inner self is a brutal scion of the Infernal Realm eternally at war with his infernal father.

The liberated Prince of Hell swiftly rushes to Blaze’s aid – although more to spite his sire than succour the victim – and, with his own series off to a spectacular start – continues to take the pressure off the flaming-skulled hero. Ghost Rider #3’s ‘Wheels on Fire’ (by Friedrich, Mooney & John Tartaglione) sees fresh directions explored with more mundane menaces and contemporary antagonists like the outlaw gang of biker Big Daddy Dawson who kidnaps the still frail Roxanne…

Blaze also learns how to create a spectral motorcycle from the Hellfire that perpetually burns through his body: a most useful trick considering the way he treats conventional transport…

Eager to establish some kind of normal life, wanted fugitive Blaze accepts a pardon from the State Attorney General in GR #4’s ‘Death Stalks the Demolition Derby’ (Vince Colletta inks) in return for infiltrating a Las Vegas showman’s shady operation, leading to another supernatural encounter, this time against a demonic gambler dubbed Roulette in ‘And Vegas Writhes in Flame!’ by the transitional creative team of Marv Wolfman, Doug Moench, Mooney & Sal Trapani.

A rising star, Ghost Rider next joined Spider-Man to battle a demented biker bad-guy in Marvel Team-Up #15 (November 1973, by Len Wein, Ross Andru & Don Perlin) which introduced lame-duck villain The Orb. Maimed and disfigured years previously confronting Crash Simpson, he seeks belated revenge against his heirs in ‘If an Eye Offend Thee…’ but should have waited until Blaze’s travelling roadshow was far away from superhero-stuffed New York City and its overly protective friendly neighbourhood webslinger…

Back at Ghost Rider #6 Tony Isabella, Gary Friedrich, Mooney & Trapani hit the kickstart hard in a perhaps ill-considered attempt to convert the tragic haunted biker into a more conventional superhero. ‘Zodiac II’ sees Blaze stumble into a senseless fight with a man possessing all the powers of the Avengers’ arch-nemeses. However, there’s a hidden Hellish component to the mystery as Blaze discovers when reformed super-villain turned TV star Stunt-Master turns up to help close the case and watch helplessly as the one-man Zodiac falls foul of his own diabolical devil’s bargain in ‘…And Lose His Own Soul!’ (Isabella, Mooney & Jack Abel).

A final confrontation – of sorts – commences in #8 as ‘Satan Himself!’ comes looking for Johnny’s soul, enacting a foolproof scheme to force Roxanne to rescind her protection. She finally does so as the Hell-biker battles Inferno, the Fear-demon (and most of San Francisco) in game-changing epic ‘The Hell-Bound Hero!’

Here Blaze is finally freed from his satanic burden by the intervention of someone who appears to be Jesus Christ…

The cover of issue #10 (by Ron Wilson & Joe Sinnott) featured GR battling The Hulk, but a deadline cock-up delayed that tale until #11 with the reprinted origin from Marvel Spotlight #5 filling those pages. Gil Kane & Tom Palmer reinterpreted the scene for their cover on #11 as the issue which closes this first tome finally details ‘The Desolation Run!’ (by Isabella, Sal Buscema, Tartaglione & George Roussos).

When Johnny joins a disparate band of dirt-bikers in a desert race, he collides with the legendarily solitary and short-tempered Green Goliath and learns who his true friends are…

I said “closes” but there’s always a few appetising extras on offer and this high-octane compendium compounds the chilling action with the August 1972 Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page announcing the debut of the Biker Ghost Rider plus house ads; design sketches by Ploog and John Romita; an eerie back-cover from FOOM #7 featuring early Ploog visualisations of the Blazing Biker and a stunning selection of original art pages by Ploog & Chiaramonte, Mooney & Shores, Gil Kane & Frank Giacoia, Romita, Kane & Palmer, and Andru & Perlin.

The 1990s saw these classics frequently reprinted and here Marvel Tales #254 provides 3 pin-ups by Jae Lee, Jan Harpes & Renee Witterstaeter plus a cover by Brian Stelfreeze, as well as The Original Ghost Rider reprint series cover gallery: offering art by Mark Teixeira, Jimmy Palmiotti, Javier Saltares, Andy Kubert, Joe Quesada, Jan Anton Harps, Kevin Maguire, Brad Vancata, Mark Pacella, Jeff Johnson, Dan Panosian, Ploog, Klaus Janson, Michael Bair, Darick Robertson, Chris Bachalo, Bill Wylie, Walter McDaniel, Andy Smith, Manny Galan & Scott Koblish, Gary Barker, Kris Renkewitz & Andrew Pepoy, bringing the fearsome fun to a close for now…

One final note: backwriting and retcons notwithstanding, the Christian boycotts and moral crusades of a later decade were what compelled the criticism-averse and commercially astute corporate Marvel to “translate” the biblical Satan of these tales into generic and presumably more palatable demonic creatures such as Mephisto, Satanish, Marduk Kurios and other equally naff downgrades. However, the original intent and adventures of Johnny Blaze – and spin-offs Daimon Hellstrom and Satana – respectively Son and Daughter of Satan – tapped into the period’s global fascination with Satanism, Devil-worship and all things Spookily Supernatural which had begun with such epochal breakthroughs as Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski’s 1968 film more than Ira Levin’s novel) so remember these aren’t your feeble bowdlerised “Hell-lite” horrors.

These tales are about the real-deal Infernal Realm and a good man struggling to save his soul from the worst of all bargains – as much as the revised Comics Code would allow – so brace yourself, hold steady and accept no supernatural substitutes…
© 2022 MARVEL.

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Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur volume one: BFF


By Brandon Montclare, Amy Reeder, Natacha Bustos, Tamra Bonvillain & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0005-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

The Marvel Universe is absolutely stuffed with astounding young geniuses but Lunella Lafayette is probably the most memorable you’ll ever meet. Very young, very gifted and proudly black, she lives with her parents on Manhattan’s Lower East Side when not attending Public School 20 Anna Silver on Essex Street.

Thanks to her obsessive interest in astronomy and alien races the other kids mockingly call her “Moon Girl” whilst the brilliant, bored 4th grader’s teachers universally despair because she already knows so much more than they do…

It’s a hassle, but Lunella actually has bigger problems. Time is running out and her numerous applications to specialist schools such as the Fantastic Four’s Future Foundation have all gone unanswered. The situation needs resolving as it’s pretty important and urgent. Lunella has – correctly – deduced that she carries dormant Inhuman genes, and the constantly moving mutagenic Terrigen Cloud recently released into Earth’s atmosphere (see both the Infinity and Inhumanity events) could transform her into a monster at any windswept moment…

Thanks to her investigations, she’s an expert in advanced and extraterrestrial technology, and her quest for a cure or Terrigen-deterrence procedure sees her perpetually sneaking out past bedtime in search of gadgets and detritus left behind after frequent superhero clashes around town…

That impetus reaches its hope-filled climax when her handmade detectors locate a discarded Kree Omni-Wave Projector in opening chapter ‘Repeat After Me’…

At some unspecified time in Earth’s distant prehistory, various emergent species of hominids eked out a perilous existence beside the last of the great lizards and other primordial giants. At one particular key moment, a wide-eyed innocent of the timid yet clever Small Folk saved a baby tyrannosaur from ruthless pre-human hunters the Killer Folk.

They had already slaughtered its mother and siblings with cunning snares and were merrily torturing the little lizard with blazing firebrands – which turned its scorched hide a livid, blazing red – before Moon Boy intervened…

Under the roaring light of a blazing volcano, boy and beast bonded, becoming inseparable companions. It was soon apparent the scarlet saurian was no ordinary reptile: blessed with uncanny intelligence and unmatchable ferocity, Devil became an equal partner in a relationship never before seen in the world. It did not, however, prevent the duo becoming targets for ruthless Killer Folk leader Thorn-Teeth who now slaughters and sacrifices beasts and Small Folk to a mystic “Nightstone”. A more advanced observer might remark on how much it resembles a Kree Omni-Wave Projector…

When Moon-Boy steals the dread talisman, he is savagely beaten near to death even as – in a gym class on Essex Street – Coach Hrbek confiscates and accidentally activates a fancy doodad Lunella’s been playing with instead of paying attention to getting fit.

Lights flash, time shreds and universes collide. A hole opens in space and a pack of bizarre monkey men shamble into modern New York. Arriving too late in the antediluvian valley, Devil Dinosaur thunders straight through the portal, intent on avenging his dying comrade…

Arriving in an impossibly confusing new world, Devil understandably panics. After causing much chaos and carnage, the bombastic beast sniffs little Lunella and snatches her up…

A mad chase ensues in ‘Old Dogs and New Tricks’ as deeply confused Devil marauds through Manhattan with outraged Lunella unable to escape or control the ferocious thunder lizard.

Meanwhile, the Killer Folk rapidly adapt to the new environment. Hiding out and observing everything occurring in the Yancy Street Subway Station, they soon prove the old adage about primitive not meaning stupid. Within days they have grasped the fundamentals of English and new concepts like money and clothes, as well as the  trickier notions of “gangs” and “protection rackets”…

Most importantly, Thorn-Teeth remembers that when they arrived, one of the hairless Small Folk was holding his Nightstone…

In ‘Out of the Frying Pan’, Moon Girl is having little luck ditching the overly-attentive, attention-attracting Torrid T-Rex. Tragically, when she finally does, the Killer Folk grab her and the Omni-Wave…

Their triumph is short-lived, since the lizard’s superior sense of smell summons Devil to the rescue, although, in the resulting melee, the precious device is lost. Growing grudgingly fond of the colossal critter, Lunella stashes Devil in her super-secret lab underneath PS 20, but when a spot of student arson sets the school ablaze, her hideaway is exposed and Devil bursts up through the ground to rescue kids trapped on an upper floor…

The fracas also unfortunately attracts the kind of superhero response Lunella has been dreading. ‘Hulk + Devil Dinosaur – ‘Nuff Said’ sees smug, teenaged Gamma-powered Avenger Amadeus Cho butt in with his bulging muscles and inability to listen to reason…

Poor Devil is no match for the Totally Awesome Hulk, forcing Moon Girl to intervene with some her own inventions. Across town, the Killer Folk – proudly carrying the Nightstone – deal with the last obstacle to their supremacy in the Yancy Street criminal underworld…

The Battle of PS 20 reaches its inevitable conclusion and Cho confiscates Devil Dinosaur, leaving Lunella thoroughly grounded and (apparently) behaving like a normal little girl in ‘Know How’.

Of course, it’s all a trick and as soon as everybody is lulled into complacency Moon Girl kits herself out with more devious gadgetry and busts Devil out of the Top Secret Wing of the Natural History Museum. She’s on a tight deadline now: her weather-monitoring gear confirms the Terrigen Cloud is rolling back towards Manhattan…

The spectacular jailbreak results in a ‘Eureka!’ moment coinciding with the Killer Folk consolidating their grip on the streets and using the Omni-Wave to capture Moon Girl. It also results in Lunella’s mother discovering who broke a dinosaur out of jail, and she furiously heads to the school for a reckoning with her wayward child…

The final conflict sees our little warrior at last victorious over the Killer Folk, albeit too late. As Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur roar in triumph on the rooftops, Lunella realises she is trapped outside with the Terrigen cloud descending. Her time and opportunity to create a cure has come and gone…

To Be Continued…

Collecting Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1-6 from January to June 2016, this compelling, immensely entertaining romp is crafted by writers Brandon Montclare & Amy Reeder, with art from Natacha Bustos, colours by Tamra Bonvillain and letters from Travis Lanham. With a cover and variants gallery from Trevor Von Eeden, Pascal Campton, Paul Pope, Jeffrey Veregge & Pia Guerra, this addictively engaging yarn affords non-stop fun: a wonderful all-ages Marvel saga that is as fresh, thrilling, moving and hilariously funny now as it ever was.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: BFF is the kind of tale to lure youngsters into the comics habit and a perfect tool to seduce jaded older fans back into the fold…
© 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection volume 1


By Brian Michael Bendis, Sarah Pichelli, Chris Samnee, David Marquez & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9778-2 (TPB/digital edition)

After Marvel’s financial and creative problems in the late 1990s, the company came back swinging. A key new concept involved remodelling and modernising their core pantheon for the new youth culture. The Ultimate imprint abandoned the monumental, slavish continuity which had always been Marvel’s greatest asset, giving its revamped players a separate reality to play in. Varying degrees of radical makeover appealed to a contemporary 21st century audience and proved a godsend as base material for the new Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Peter Parker was once again reduced to a callow, nerdy high-school geek, brilliant but perpetually bullied by his physical superiors. There were even fresh, fashionable, more scientifically feasible rationales for the fore-destined spider bite which imparted those patented, impossible arachnoid abilities.

His uncle Ben Parker still died because of the lad’s lack of responsibility. The Daily Bugle was still there, as was bombastically outrageous J. Jonah Jameson. Now, however, in a more cynical, litigious world, well-used to cover-ups and conspiracy theories, arch-foe Norman Osborn – a corrupt, ruthless billionaire businessman – was behind everything.

Any gesture towards the faux-realism of traditional superhero fare was surrendered to the tried-and-tested soap-opera melodrama which inevitably links all characters together in invisible threads of karmic coincidence and familial consanguinity but, to be honest, it seldom hurt the narrative. After all, as long as internal logic isn’t contravened, subplots don’t have to make sense to be entertaining.

After a short and spectacularly impressive career, the originally outcast Peter finally gained a measure of acceptance and was hailed a hero when the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man valiantly and very publicly met his end at Osborn’s hands during a catastrophic super-villain showdown…

Soon after he died, a new champion cast in his image arose to carry on the fight…

Written throughout by Brian Michael Bendis, this collection concerns controversial new kid Miles Morales, and contains material published before mega-crossover events Time Runs Out and Secret Wars merged him and other remnants of the Ultimate Universe with the mainstream Marvel continuity. It specifically re-presents an introductory teaser from Ultimate Comics Fallout #4 (August 2011), Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1-12 (-February 2013) and trans-multiversal team-up Spider-men #1-5 (June to September 2012).

In the aftermath of Parker’s last moments, brilliant African American/Latino child prodigy Miles Morales was revealed to have gained similar powers. The freshly empowered 13-year old quickly adjusted to his astounding new physical abilities whilst painfully discovering the daily costs of living a life of lies and how an inescapable sense of responsibility is the worst of all possible burdens…

The revelations here begin by spinning back to the relatively recent past when manic industrialist Osborn repeated the genetic experiment which first bestowed incredible powers on Peter Parker via the accidental bite of a deliberately-mutated spider. Unfortunately, the deranged mastermind failed to anticipate a burglar waltzing in and carrying off the latest test animal as part of his haul …

When grade-schooler Miles gets into prestigious, life-changing Brooklyn Visions Academy Boarding School by the most callous of chances, the boy cynically realises life is pretty much a crap-shoot… and unfair to boot. Feeling guilty about his unjust success and sorry for the 697 other poor kids who don’t get his lucky break, he sneaks off to visit his uncle Aaron. The visit has to be secret since his uncle is a “bad influence” and a career criminal …

Whilst there, a huge spider with a number on its back bites Miles and the boy begins to feel very odd. He also starts fading from sight…

Suddenly super-fast and strong, able to leap huge distances and become practically invisible, Miles rushes to consult geeky pal Ganke, a prodigious nerd already attending Brooklyn Visions. Applying “scientific testing”, the self-proclaimed hero-expert confirms Miles is similar to Spider-Man but can also deliver shocking, destructive blasts through his hands.

When Morales heads home, Ganke continues online research and deduces the connection to the wallcrawler, and is soon strenuously pushing his friend towards becoming a costumed crusader just like him…

However, after Miles intervenes during a tenement fire and saving a mother and baby, shock sets in and he resolves never to use his powers again…

Time passes: Miles and Ganke have been roommates at the Academy for almost a year when news of a major metahuman clash rocks the city. Troubled Miles heads out and becomes an accidental witness to Spider-Man’s murder. Seeing a brave man perish so nobly, he is again consumed by guilt: if he had used his own powers when they first manifested, he might have been able to help save a true hero…

Part of the crowds attending Parker’s memorial, Miles and Ganke talk to another mourner, a girl who actually knew Parker. Gwen Stacy offers quiet insights to the grieving boys and a phrase which alters the course of Miles’ life forever – “with great power comes great responsibility…”

Clad in a Halloween Spidey costume borrowed from Ganke, Miles takes to the night streets for the first time and stops minor miscreant Kangaroo from committing murder…

Feeling he’s come full circle, on his third night out the exhilarated 13-year old encounters the terrifying and furiously indignant Spider-Woman who thrashes and arrests him. Morales wakes at a Government agency in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody where Hawkeye, Iron Man and master manipulator Nick Fury coldly assess him.

However, before they can reach a decision on the boy’s fate, murderous malcontent Electro breaks free of the Triskelion’s medical custody ward and goes on a rampage. Despite easily defeating the seasoned heroes, the voltaic villain is completely unprepared for a new Spider-Man: especially as the kid’s extra powers include camouflage capability and an irresistible “venom-strike” sting…

As Miles considers the full implications of his victory, Fury imparts a staggeringly simple homily: “With great power…” even as he arranges for the kid a properly designed and tooled high-tech costume to crusade in…

Now a day resident at the Brooklyn Boarding School, Miles spends only weekends at home and is coming to terms with some unpleasant truths. Foremost is that his secrets must be kept from his parents, but also poisoning the family air is the fact that his father used to be a street-thug and now passionately hates costumed heroes like Spider-Man.

Almost as bad is the discovery that Uncle Aaron is a major thief and bad-guy known in the game as The Prowler …

Ever since a living piece of Aaron’s loot bit Miles and transformed him, the Prowler has been laying low, but the tide turns here as he resurfaces in Mexico, narrowly escaping a deal-gone-sour with local super-powered gang-lord the Scorpion. Meanwhile the new Spider-Man has been making a name for himself in New York, and news of a junior Arachnid Avenger is making global headlines…

With additional art from Chris Samnee, David Messina and David Marquez, classmate, confidante and fellow nerd Ganke undertakes to “train” Miles using candid footage of the deceased Peter Parker in action and – when continued sightings of the boy hero reach Aaron south of the border – the wily rogue instantly puts two and two together and heads back to the Big Apple.

As the troubled teen tackles street scum and old Spidey villains like Omega Red – triumphing more by luck than skill or judgement – Uncle Aaron murders underworld tech-guru The Tinkerer and swipes his ingenious arsenal of criminal gadgets before confronting Miles at school. He’s thinking possible partnership…

Since Parker perished his Aunt May and true love Gwen have been world travelling. They’re in Paris when the shocking news of a successor reaches them…

In New York, Police Captain Quaid is also coming to terms with a new wallcrawling crazy complicating his life, but is utterly unaware that major grief has hit town as the Scorpion, following the Prowler, has realized New York is wide open for a new Kingpin of Crime to step in and take over…

After a brutal battle against The Ringer, Spider-Man and Quaid reach an accommodation of sorts, but Prowler’s first North American clash with the Scorpion doesn’t go nearly as well and Aaron Morales once again accosts his nephew with veiled threats and a shocking offer…

Of course it all devolves into a fist-fight before calmer heads prevail and Miles really thinks over what’s on the table: one of the world’s most effective and capable villains is offering to train him in combat, strategy and survival on the streets whilst schooling him in the myriad ways the underworld works…

Only problem is that the Prowler has no intention of reforming and won’t say what he expects in return…

Eventually Miles realises his uncle has been secretly grooming him ever since some of his loot bit the youngster, and refuses to let the manipulative creep tricks Miles into attacking the seemingly unstoppable Mexican gang-lord seizing control of the city…

The action (illustrated by David Marquez) begins with a blistering raid on the Scorpion’s plush new club where, in the heat of battle, the novice wall-crawler at last realises Aaron will never change or make amends, but his simply eradicating opposition in advance of his own attempt to take over the underworld…

Events explode tragically when Aaron accosts Miles at school, trying to blackmail him with threats of telling the boy’s father all about Spider-Man, and resulting in a devastating showdown. Equipped with years of criminal experience and Tinkerer’s ingenious arsenal, Aaron goes crazy, determined to finish his rebellious nephew.

The fight inevitably escalates, endangering a busload of civilians who all apparently see the neophyte wallcrawler first save them before killing the Prowler in a horrific explosion…

To Be Continued…

Meanwhile in the mainstream Marvel Universe, “our” Peter Parker underwent his own turmoil and travails, surviving to become a more-or-less grown man and first rank superhero…

The miniseries Spider-Men #1-5 was designed as part of celebrations for the webspinner’s 50th anniversary, and offers a slight but magically enthralling guest-star-packed riff on one of the superhero genre’s most popular themes.

The action begins in the original universe where Peter is on patrol, stopping some fleeing thieves – and almost getting arrested for his help – when he spots an eerie light. Investigating, he discovers the latest hideout of old foe Mysterio and – after a brief struggle – overpowers the sinister Special Effects savant.

Something is off though and the villain’s babblings make no sense. The creep is clearly delusional, screaming Spider-Man is already dead before breaking loose to trigger a bizarrely glowing device he’d been defending.

In a blaze of light, Spider-Man transits from a dark warehouse at night to a sunny rooftop in a radically different New York. Things get even stranger when he stops a mugging and the victim thanks him but says his costume is in “terrible taste” before enquiring if he knew Peter Parker.

…And that’s when the kid in a way cooler Spider suit shows up…

In another universe, the Ultimate Mysterio wakes up and activates a telemetric avatar of himself to follow Spider-Man across dimensions, where Parker is – in true Marvel style – fighting his namesake in a fever of confused misapprehension. Utterly underestimating his diminutive opponent, the elder Arachnoid is defeated by the kid’s secret powers (invisibility and a debilitating venom sting) and wakes up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. cell where an African-American Nick Fury confirms that he’s fallen into an alternate Earth…

Eventually released into Miles’ custody, the newcomer is introduced to a New York where Peter Parker is a revered – albeit dead – hero. Before he can adapt, the Mysterio avatar attacks with a lethal arsenal of ballistic weapons and mind-warping chemical weapons…

By the time Ultimate operatives Thor, Hawkeye and Iron Man appear, the battle is won and the mechanoid trashed, but as ferociously curious Tony Stark examines the dimensional transfer tech in our world, their Mysterio is preparing another deadly assault…

As the assembled heroes seek a way home for the wallcrawling wanderer, Parker is torturing himself by visiting “his” old haunts and hangouts, leading to gut-wrenching meetings with Aunt May, Mary Jane Watson and a Gwen Stacy who wasn’t murdered by the Green Goblin…

…And in the other universe, Mysterio just can’t let go: once again preparing to launch his devilish devices across the rift to kill Spider-Man… all of them and whoever stands with them…

Aided by painter/colourist Justin Ponsor, Bendis & Sara Pichelli crafted a hugely impressive and fresh take on alternate Earth team-ups: drenched in warmth and tragedy, brimming with breathtaking action and stuffed with light-hearted, razor sharp humour, elevating it from the ranks of formularized Costumed Dramas into it easily one of the best superhero tales of the decade.

This initial Ultimately Ultimate compendium also offers a colossal gallery of covers and variants by Kaare Andrews. Jorge Molina, Marquez, Rain Beredo, Pichelli, Ponsor, Adi Granov Marko Djurdjevic, Mark Bagley, Marcos Martin, Terry & Rachel Dodson, Travis Charest, Tommy Lee Edwards, Jimmy Cheung, Humberto Ramos & Mike Deodato to delight and thrill in a rollercoaster ride of tense, evocative suspense and easy-going adventure that is the essential Spider-Man.

Tense, breathtaking, action-packed, evocative, suspenseful and full of the light-hearted, self-aware razor sharp humour which blessed the original Lee/Ditko tales, this second Spider-Man is here to stay …unless they kill him too…
© 2019 MARVEL.

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Brother Voodoo Marvel Masterworks volume 1


By Len Wein, Doug Moench, Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, David Anthony Kraft, Roger Slifer, Roger Stern, Scott Lobdell, Jean-Marc Lofficier, Randy Lofficier, Gene Colan, Don Perlin, Jim Mooney, Tony DeZuñiga, Ron Wilson, Marshall Rogers, Vicente Alcazar, Fred Hembeck, Geoff Isherwood & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2923-7 (HB/Digital edition)

In 1968 the consciousness-raising sporting demonstration of Black Power at the Olympic Games politicised a generation of youngsters. By this time a few comics companies had already made tentative but concerted efforts to address what were national and socio-political iniquities. Nevertheless, issues of race and ethnicity took a bloody long time to filter through to still-impressionable young minds avidly absorbing knowledge and attitudes via four-colour pages that couldn’t even approximate the skin tones of African-Americans.

As with TV and films, breakthroughs were small, incremental and too often reduced to a cold war of daringly liberal “firsts.” Excluding characters in 1940s-1950s jungle themed comic books, Marvel clearly led the field with a recurring character: historically impossible Gabe Jones, a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos – debuting in #1 (May 1963).

Technically, he was beaten to that dubious honour by DC’s Jackie Johnson. Created by Robert Kanigher & Joe Kubert, the negro prizefighter joined Sgt Rock’s Easy Company in late 1961 (Our Army at War #113), but it was years before he was a regularly-seen character…

By the way, so unlikely a character was ol’ Gabe in 1963 that he was – without even consulting editor Stan Lee – helpfully re-coloured Caucasian at the printers who didn’t realise his ethnicity but just knew that he just couldn’t be non-white. Jones was eventually followed by actual black superheroes Black Panther in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966), and the Falcon in Captain America #117 (September 1969). America’s first hero or colour to helm his own title had come and gone (largely unnoticed) in a little remembered or regarded title from Dell Comics. Debuting December 1965 and created by artist Tony Tallarico & scripter D.J. Arneson, Lobo was a wild west gunslinger battling injustice just like any cowboy would.

Arguably the greater breakthrough was Joe Robertson, City Editor of the Daily Bugle: an erudite, brave, proudly ordinary mortal distinguished by his sterling character, not costume or skin tone. He debuted in Amazing Spider-Man # 51 (August 1967), proving in every panel thereafter that the world wouldn’t end if black folk and white folk shared the same spaces…

This big change slowly grew out of raised public awareness during a terrible time in US history: even worse than today’s festering social wounds and agonisingly commonplace occurrences of cops claiming to misjudge immediate life-or-death situations, perilous racial pressures and a seemingly constant, officially policy of Black Lives Not Mattering. These tragedies occur unpardonably often the UK too, so we’ve nothing to be smug about…

Britain has suffered race riots since the Sixties, leaving simmering scars that only comedians and openly racist politicians dare to talk about. Things today don’t seem all that different, except the bile and growing taste for violence is turned towards European accents, or health workers as well as brown skins, and now includes non-white sectarian aggravation too…

As the 1960s became a newer, darker decade, more positive and inclusive incidences of ethnic characters appeared in the USA, with DC finally getting an African-America hero in John Stewart (Green Lantern #87 December 1971/January 1972) – although his designation as a replacement Green Lantern might be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary.

The first DC hero with his own title was Black Lightning. He didn’t debut until April 1977, although Jack Kirby had introduced Vykin in Forever People #1, the Black Racer in New Gods #3 (March and July 1971) and Shilo Norman as Scott Free’s apprentice (and eventual successor) in Mister Miracle #15 (August 1973). A month later there was Dr. Jericho Drumm: Brother Voodoo…

It was a turbulent time culturally, but it was also a life-or-death moment for comics. The American industry was in turmoil if not meltdown, much like the youth of the nation they courted. With costs of production skyrocketing, every title had to be a success and no one seemed clear on what audiences wanted…

Superheroes had dominated for most of the 1960s: peaking globally before explosively falling to ennui and overkill. Traditional genres like horror, westerns, romance and science fiction returned, fed by radical trends in movie-making where another wrinkle had emerged: films by and for African American audiences. Most called them “Blacksploitation” films…

Marvel was already a pioneer in diversity. As well as a plethora of white Christian males there were pagan gods, female characters (a few but not for long), extraterrestrials, native Americans, Atlanteans and monsters spearheading their own features. Why not another black lead with roots in multiple of genres at once?

Contemporary Blaxsploitation cinema and novels had fired up commercial interests throughout America, and in that miasma of outlandish dialogue, daft outfits and barely concealed – if justified – outrage, an angry black man with a shady past and questionable morals must have felt like a sure-fire hit to Marvel’s bosses. Luke Cage, Hero for Hire launched in the summer of 1972. A year later, Black Panther finally got his own series in Jungle Action #5 and Blade: Vampire Hunter debuted in Tomb of Dracula #10 (July 1973. Surely there was room for more?

Astonishingly soon after, with the Comics Code prohibition against horror hastily rewritten (amazing how plunging sales can affect ethics), scary comics returned in force and a fresh crop of supernatural superheroes and monsters began appearing on newsstands to supplement the ghosts, ghoulies and goblins already infiltrating the once science-only scenarios of the surviving Fights ‘n’ Tights titles.

In fact, the lifting of the Code ban resulted in such an avalanche of horror titles in response to the industry-wide downturn in superhero sales, that it probably caused a few more venerable costumed crusaders to – albeit temporarily – bite the dust.

Almost overnight nasty monsters – both new and reprinted from the1950s (and narcotics; but that’s another story) became acceptable fare on four-colour pages. Whilst a parade of pre-code reprints made sound business sense, 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. Oddly the last Code-embargoed genre – Crime comics – never figured in this particular populist revival…

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. When proto-horror Morbius debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover-dated October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of shocking superstars.

They began with a traditional werewolf and a vampire before chancing something new: a haunted biker who tapped into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the prevailing supernatural zeitgeist. Recycling an old western’s title, the all-new Ghost Rider debuted in Marvel Spotlight #5, August 1972. He had been preceded by western hero Red Wolf in #1 and the aforementioned Werewolf by Night in #2-4. From these beginnings spooky floodgates opened to such an extent there was even room for non-white stars like The Living Mummy and our star turn today…

This quirky compendium collects Brother Voodoo’s earliest exploits from a time when he was equal parts tragic outsider and in-joke laughing stock and long before he was reclaimed as a major hero and rebooted as Doctor Voodoo. These adventures from Strange Tales #169-173, Tales of the Zombie #6 &10, Marvel Team-Up #24, Werewolf by Night #38-41, Marvel Two-in-One #41, Doctor Strange #48, Moon Knight #21, Marvel Super-Heroes #1 and Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #16, 17, 20 also include extracts from Tomb of Dracula #34-37: epically spanning cover-dates September 1973 to August 1990. The mystic materials are preceded by an informative Introduction from Ron Wilson on how the series came to be and his editorial origins…

Built from an idea by then Editor-in-Chief  Roy Thomas, with defining input from Stan Lee, John Romita and eventual assigned creators Len Wein & Gene Colan, the end result was a complex and convoluted affair spread out over a number of issues. It’s also fair to say that there’s a lot of dialogue and some notions that haven’t fared well as we’ve become a more inclusive society. If you can’t temper your modern sensibilities in the face of well-meaning but dated attitudes, it might be best to look elsewhere for evidence of role models for young black readers…

Brother Voodoo was a series that took its time to tell a tale, and we need to remember that the idea was to create a hero who could have lots of adventures for as long as possible: a new Doctor Strange or Spider-Man or Daredevil, created at a moment when society and the comic industry were in utter turmoil. Lots of good ideas debuted and died unfulfilled, only to blossom again in years to come…

With their hero ready to launch, Marvel capitalised on the times as much as possible. The company had launched a wave of new titles (many of them cost-effective reprint anthologies) and restored defunct titles to crowd rival publishers off newsstands. Cover dated May 1968, Strange Tales #168 was officially the last issue of a prestigious horror book that had run from the 1951 before becoming a vehicle for The Human Torch, Doctor Strange and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the 1960s. When Marvel the top-selling brand in 1968, its numbering had carried on for Doctor Strange’s first solo title.

Cover dated September 1973, the book was revived after a 5-year hiatus as a try-out title, kicking off with Brother Voodoo who occupied #169-174, after which The Golem, classic horror reprints and Jim Starlin’s landmark reinterpretation of Adam Warlock took the magazine to its ultimate oblivion in 1975.

Enough background now: let’s get down among the dead men…

The drama commences in the eponymous ‘Brother Voodoo!’ (Wein, Gene Colan & Dan Adkins), as a UN special investigator lands in Haiti and is saved from murderous ambush by an oddly-garbed man with incredible powers, emerging from clouds of smoke amidst thunderous frenetic drum beats. Accompanied by elderly aide Bambu, the stranger escorts Dr Maitland to safety even as his mind flashes back to how it all began…

Years ago, Jericho Drumm abandoned his brother Daniel and family heritage as voodoo priests for the rationalism, wealth and acclaim of the USA. Almost 20 years later, celebrated psychologist Dr. Drumm returned to Haiti to witness his brother’s murder by magic. Daniel had taken his brother’s destined place as houngan (voodoo priest) of his people but was dying from a curse laid by evil loa (spirit)/serpent god Damballah…

Utterly disbelieving, Jericho was helpless to prevent his brother’s death and his own subsequent humiliation by Damballah, and after swallowing his civilised pride sought out Daniel’s teacher Papa Jambo to accept his fate, learn the lore and accept the onerous responsibilities of protecting the world from evil magic. Now splitting his time between his Caribbean homeland and his practice in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Dr. Jericho Drumm ministers to the world’s unknown ailments and hidden horrors…

The origin flashback extended to the next issue with a ‘Baptism of Fire!’ tracing Jericho’s accelerated course of study and triumphant battle against the loa lord. Amongst his many new gifts, the power that tipped the balance was his eerie ability to channel his dead brother’s power and soul: a chilling tactic possible because Daniel now lived within him…

We return to the present with ST #171 and learn why the UN is under attack in Haiti when ‘March of the Dead!’ (with Frank Giacoia inking Colan’s gloriously beautiful, increasingly scary pencils) sees Drumm attacked by the walking dead.

Thanks to the Comics Code, at this time the literal word “zombie” was banned in newsstand publications, compelling writers and editors to take torturous steps to do their job. Marvel’s monochrome magazines used the term with impunity and without sanction, but for the mainstream colour titles, Wein had to coin a new appellation, which is why Brother Voodoo here clashes with “zuvembies” in a graveyard. You couldn’t make it up, could you?

These specific “soulless ones” prowl at the command of sinister Baron Samedi, sabotaging much-needed industry providing jobs for the impoverished nation. The tale catapults BV into the heart of Marvel continuity as the true perpetrators are exposed as far-from-supernatural assailants and one of the MU’s greatest threats to life and liberty…

Dick Giordano inked #172 and 173 as the hero returns to Louisiana. Seeking to assist a woman targeted by mystic malevolence, in ‘Fiend in the Fog!’, police chief’s daughter Loralee Tate is singled out by voodoo villain and cult leader Black Talon and Drumm is inexorably drawn into a massive conspiracy demanding a ‘Sacrifice Play!’ and the initially unwelcome aid of local legend Mama Limbo. The spooky thrills culminate in a do-or-die battle with the Talon’s tribe and Brother Voodoo’s defeat and capture, resulting in a painful cliffhanger since the series ceased here with April 1974 episode…

Mere months later, the already drawn conclusion resurfaced in one of those aforementioned mature Marvel magazines. The Black Talon tale concluded in July’s Tales of the Zombie #6, with Doug Moench scripting Wein’s plot and Frank Chiaramonte inking Colan – who always worked best in monochrome. ‘End of a Legend!’ exposes devious duplicity and reaps a rich harvest of destruction when Drumm breaks loose and unleashes all his power…

He then appeared in New York, joining Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up #24 (August 1974) in a Wein yarn illustrated by Jim Mooney & Sal Trapani: a decidedly offbeat hero haunting the Big Apple to quash a Manhattan murder cult in ‘Moondog is Another Name for Murder’

Almost one year later, Brother Voodoo returned as Tales of the Zombie #10 delivered ‘The Resurrection of Papa Jambo!’ (March 1975, by Moench & Tony DeZuñiga) wherein Jericho Drumm’s long-departed tutor is forcibly revived by malign Dramabu, the Death-Lord. As the revered savant stalks the shanty towns of Haiti, claiming sacrificial fodder for his power-hungry new master, the harassed hero and Bambu return to their roots and make some hard decisions to save their people…

Following that yarn, Brother Voodoo joined Marvel’s own ranks of the living dead: reduced to occasional cameos and guests shots in other series. Represented here in excerpts from The Tomb of Dracula #34-37 (July to October 1975 as crafted by Marv Wolfman, Colan & Tom Palmer), the houngan visits the Brazilian Amazon, rescuing vampire hunter Frank Drake from an army of zuvembies unleashed by the Transylvanian terror. Times and tastes were changing, with superheroes again ascendent, and the horror fad fading. Soon, only The Tomb of Dracula would remain…

Lovingly realised by Moench & Don Perlin, former furry hit Werewolf by Night had ridden the storm longer than most: deftly adapting to new trends and ideas by allowing character and not plot dictate the course. An earlier arc depicting Haiti holding a cure for lycanthrope Raymond Coker was revisited and an extract here from WBN#38 (May 1976) sets up an epic intervention and unfolding wonder as Coker now requests the aid of Brother Voodoo…

Cover-dated July, Werewolf by Night #39 reveals ‘Some Are Born to the Night’ as – after being visited by a trinity of infinite beings who threaten to alter his existence forever – wild werewolf Jack Russell is hurled into a life-changing crisis. The celestial visitants are also in touch with Coker as he squats in a hut in far off Haiti, and even appear to Russell’s sister Lissa and girlfriend Topaz.

The “Three Who Are All” are manoeuvring players into a game of cosmic consequences and when Jack gets home, he finds Coker and Drumm waiting. No sooner are introductions made than another army of zuvembies attack and Russell learns that ‘Some are Born to the Night!’

Portentous proclamations of unfulfilled destinies propel the adventurers and Topaz back to Haiti where they are abducted and taken to an infernal pit nurturing a shocking travesty of life with resurrected wizard/old enemy Dr. Glitternight in charge of ‘Souls in Darkness’…

Revealed in WBN #41 as an ex-member of the gestalt once called “Five Who Are All”, the villain’s obsessive monster-making is explained before his attempts to dominate reality are spectacularly thwarted through the return of a missing fourth being and the indomitable resistance of Jack and Brother Voodoo in ‘…And Death Shall Be the Change’…

Key to their eventual triumph is the moment when Russell discovers how to transform into a werewolf fully in control of his mental faculties day or night. Returning to America, the Werewolf-by-Choice naturally became a superhero and moved to New York, but for Jericho Drumm it was time to fade into the shadows once more…

Marvel Two-in-One #41 (July 1978) sees David Anthony Kraft, Ron Wilson & Pablo Marcos close an open case where The Black Panther had vanished whilst fighting a “zombie-vampire” stalking New York’s streets and abducting prominent African Americans. Here, concluding chapter ‘Voodoo and Valor!’ sees Drumm volunteer his specialised services to Ben “The Thing” Grimm to save T’Challa, and end the crisis. The trail takes them to Uganda for a confrontation with Doctor Spectrum and far deadlier crazed killer Idi Amin…

Jumping to August 1981 and Doctor Strange #48, Roger Stern, Marshall Rogers & Terry Austin reveal how the voodoo vigilante and his passenger Daniel are possessed by minor god Damballah and require ‘The Power of Dr. Strange’ to restore them to sanity and safety, after which Moon Knight #21 (July 1982) is paid a visit by ‘The Master of Night Earth!’

Crafted by Moench, Vicente Alcazar, John Tartaglione & Bob Camp. This dark delight sees the Fist of Khonshu join Brother Voodoo in Haitian port city Mirebalais. Battling gunrunners before colliding with a thug possessed by Daniel Drumm, the lunar avenger is soon helping head off a revolution: one fought by zuvembies on zombie alligators fighting for a greedy politician with voodoo training…

May 1990 brought giant anthology Marvel Super-Heroes (Spring Special) #1 and buried deep inside Scott Lobdell, Fred Hembeck & Dell Barras detailed short done-in-one saga ‘Don’t Do that Voodoo You Do So Well’ with Drumm saving hurricane victims and unexpectedly encountering again a lost love from his youth…

Contemporaneously, Drumm scored a short back-up series in Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme (April-August 1990) seen here as ‘The Book of the Vishanti: The Mark of the Vodû! Part I-III’ as featured in issues #16-17 and 20. A way of reinventing the hero whilst revisiting and revising his origins, the serial by Roy Thomas, Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier and illustrator Geoff Isherwood, Mickey Ritter reprised the Brother’s career and legacy, whilst laying out how the history and practise of voodoo slotted into Marvel’s cosmology. and continuity.

With covers by Romita, Gil Kane, Giordano, Giacoia, Rich Buckler, Ernie Chan, Earl Norem, Palmer, Keith Pollard, Bill Sienkiewicz & Jim Lee, pages of original art by Colan, Kane and a host of forementioned inkers, this tome also offers contemporary house ads, info pages on Brother Voodoo and Black Talon from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and the 2008 cover of Essential Marvel Horror volume 2. These are supplemented by full creator biographies, ‘Introducing Brother Voodoo!’ – a heavily illustrated feature by Tony Isabella from Tales of the Zombie #2 in anticipation of his imminent debut in Strange Tales #169 and ‘Brother Voodoo Lives Again’ from TotZ #5 discussing his move out of colour comics.

Definitely not everybody’s role model or anyone’s “Great White Hope”, Brother Voodoo remains a noble experiment and intriguing concept that still offers great enjoyment and astounding art for those who like their fun challenging and off centre.

Don’t let silly prejudice make you miss out on something special…
© 2021 MARVEL.

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Thor Epic Collection volume 8: War of the Gods 1975-1977


By Len Wein, David Anthony Kraft, Steve Englehart, John Buscema, Pablo Marcos, Tony DeZuñiga & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-3364-7 (TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Thunderous Fun… 8/10

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

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

Whilst the ever-expanding Marvel Universe had grown ever-more interconnected as it matured through its first decade, with characters literally tripping over each other in New York City, the Asgardian heritage of Thor and the soaring imagination of Jack Kirby had most often drawn the Thunder God away from mortal realms into stunning, unique landscapes and scenarios.

However, by the time of this compelling compendium, the King had been long gone and was actually back for a last hurrah. Only echoes of his groundbreaking presence remained in the evolving multiverse he had made. In the interim, John Buscema had visually claimed the Thunder God as his own, as a succession of scripters struggled to match the epic scope of Kirby’s vision and Stan Lee’s off-kilter, comfortingly faux-Shakespearean verbiage…

This power-packed trade paperback/eBook gathers Thor #242-259, Annual #5 and Marvel Spotlight #30, spanning December 1975- May 1977: a period when writer/editor Len Wein arrived to steady a rather shaky ship…

Previously, a round-robin flurry of writers detailed how lordly Odin had gone missing before being rescued from bondage to a pantheon of Egyptian gods, but now stability resumed with #242 as Wein joined illustrators Buscema & Joe Sinnott for epic time travel tale ‘When the Servitor Commands!’

In the 20th century, a colossal all-conquering warrior construct scoops up Thor, his lover Jane Foster (mystically imbued with the life force of goddess Sif) and visiting Asgardians Fandral the Dashing, Voluminous Volstagg and Hogun the Grim at the behest of despotic chrononaut  and old enemy Zarrko the Tomorrow Man…

The time tyrant claims to be on the side of the angels for now: seeking heroes to help stop a trio of entropic entities travelling back from the end of eternity, callously destroying all life as they go. Although suspicious, the assembled Asgardians agree to help stop ‘Turmoil in the Time Stream!’ caused by the uncanny Time-Twisters…

Clashes with vagrant monsters and warriors plucked from other eras barely slow the heroes, but neither do they hinder the widdershins progress of the Armageddon entities in ‘This is the Way the World Ends!’ However, by the time the voyagers discover ‘The Temple at the End of Time!’ – which originally spawned the Time-Twisters – and end the crisis before it began, Zarrko has already reverted to type and tried to betray them… much to his own regret…

A rematch between Thunder God and an extra-terrestrial Flaming Fury sparks up in #246 as ‘The Fury of Firelord!’ follows the unworldly alien’s meeting with a lovely witch working for Latin American rebel and would-be tin pot dictator El Lobo. Whilst Thor heads south to stop a civil war, in Asgard his boon companion Balder comes to a staggering conclusion: Odin may be back in body, but his spirit is still ailing. In fact, the All-Father might well be completely insane…

When Thor also succumbs to sinister gypsy enchantments, ‘The Flame and the Hammer!’ unite to crush the feeble democracy of Costa Verde, once again vibrant valiant Jane is there to save the day…

An out-of-chronology break follows as try-out title Marvel Spotlight #30 serves up a tale of the Warriors Three. Crafted by Wein, Buscema & Sinnott, ‘A Night on the Town!’ finds Fandral, Volstagg and Hogun drawn into a tale of love on the rocks when their Manhattan carousal is interrupted by a woman’s suicide attempt. Her cry for help impels the heroic trio to save her fiancé from a life of crime and leads to action, adventure and matrimony…

Back in Thor #248, ‘There Shall Come… Revolution!’ (inked by Tony DeZuñiga) starts the build-up to anniversary issue #250 with the earthbound Asgardians recalled to the Realm Eternal by bold Balder whose battered body is living proof that Odin has become a brutal, vicious tyrant. Rebellion builds in ‘The Throne and the Fury!’ (Wein, Buscema & DeZuñiga, and featuring the first of a series of new covers by Jack Kirby) as Thor and Company batter their way into the godly citadel. As the heroes seek to ally with old enemy Karnilla the Norn Queen, amidst the madness, Jane assumes the form of Sif in time to join the potentially universe-shattering battle as Odin is proved an imposter and defeated in ‘Asgard Should Perish!’

In the aftermath – AKA #251 – the search for the true All-Father leads Thor to the underworld to see if Odin is dead. Despite cataclysmic combat against the legions of the dead, ‘To Hela and Back!’ proves a frustrating waste of time, barely ameliorated by a new clue in #252. ‘A Dragon at the Gates!’, by Wein, Buscema & DeZuñiga, sees the Thunderer undertake a quest for knowledge that draws him into another brutal battle with ultimate troll Ulik which concludes in the next issue with seeming defeat for the Prince of Asgard and ‘Chaos in the Kingdom of the Trolls!’

These issues also include a return for venerable back-up feature Tales of Asgard, Home of the Mighty Norse Gods: a glimpse of Thor’s boyhood by David Anthony Kraft & Pablo Marcos wherein the young warrior learns the value of restraint and self-reliance while learning how to wield Mjolnir in ‘The Weapon and the Warrior!’

Mighty Thor #254 reprinted #159 due to another deadline crisis, and is only represented here by its cover after which Wein & DeZuñiga launch a new epic interstellar adventure in Thor #255’s ‘Lo, the Quest Begins!’ After embattled Asgard survived invasion the heroes learned their divine Liege Lord has gone missing again. Having exhausted every avenue of investigation available, Thor must search the galaxies, prompted by vague hints from all-knowing spirit Mimir of a distant destination – the Doomsday Star…

Boarding spacefaring dragonship Starjammer, Thor, Lady Sif, Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg set (solar) sail, leaving a beleaguered Eternal Realm under the stewardship of Balder and his dark inamorata the Norn Queen. However, before they even leave local space, the seekers encounter – and battle – malign aliens marooned ever since they initially fought the Storm Lord in his debut adventure…

A classic case of Marvel Misunderstanding occurs in #256 as the voyagers encounter an ancient and colossal colony ship populated by the last survivors of a civilisation that died from over-exploiting their environment. As the Asgardians are joined by Rigellian Recorder Memorax, the slowly-fading Levianons reveal how their poverty and resource-blighted existence has been further threatened by an invasive beast who takes the elderly like a ‘Lurker in the Dark!’

When the hideous Sporr abducts recently wounded Sif, enraged Thor leads a savage counter-assault that sparks incomprehensible tragedy in concluding chapter ‘Death, Thou Shalt Die!’

Another mineral-based miscreant resurfaces in #258. ‘If the Stars be Made of Stone!’ sees the Starjammer attacked by space pirates inexplicably led by human supervillain – and early Thor foe – the Grey Gargoyle. It’s not a job he wants, but as the unwilling captain conspires with the beaten-&-enslaved Asgardians for a chance to see again the Green Hills of Earth, their plot is exposed by fanatical second-in command Fee-Lon.

As in Asgard, Balder and Karnilla resist an invasion helmed by arch-traitors Enchantress and Executioner, brutal usurper Fee-Lon proves a truly ferocious and capable brigand, but ultimately fights in vain to end the gods’ ‘Escape into Oblivion!’

Thor’s hunt for his father will conclude in the next volume but this one holds still more action and drama in the form of Mighty Thor Annual #5 which depicts ‘War of the Gods!’

Crafted by Steve Englehart, Buscema & DeZuñiga, it opens with the origin of Asgard’s divine inhabitants while explaining the geographical limitations of pantheons and worship, after which an adolescent Thunderer is drawn by his earthly worshippers into battle with alien gods he never knew of.

As the territorial clash between Norsemen and invading Greeks escalates, Asgardians and Hellenics fight to the death but aloof Odin and Zeus know a secret that makes all the bloodshed simultaneously pointless and crucial…

This early peek into Marvel’s ever-expanding cosmology is followed by house ads, Kirby’s wraparound cover for Marvel Treasury Edition #10 (reprinting the Mangog saga from Thor #154-157), cover roughs by Gil Kane and a wealth of original art and covers by Buscema, Kirby, Kane, Frank Giacoia, Sinnott, DeZuñiga, John Romita art pages.

The tales gathered here may lack the sheer punch and verve of the early years but fans of ferocious Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy will find this tome still stuffed with intrigue and action, magnificently rendered by artists who, whilst not possessing Kirby’s vaulting visionary passion, were every inch his equal in craft and dedication, making this a must-read for all fans of the character and the genre.
© 2022 MARVEL

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Thor Volume One


By Dan Jurgens & John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, with Howard Mackie, Scott Hanna, & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4632-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

In the middle of 1962, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched their latest offbeat superhero creation in anthology monsters-and-mysteries title Journey into Mystery #83. The tale introduced meek, disabled American doctor Donald Blake who took a vacation in Norway only to encounter the vanguard of an alien invasion. Fleeing in terror, he was trapped in a cave and found an old, gnarled walking stick. When, in helplessness and frustration, he smashed the cane into a huge boulder obstructing his escape, his insignificant frame was transformed into the hulking and brawny Norse God of Thunder, Thor!

The series grew from formulaic beginnings battling aliens, commies and cheap thugs into a vast, breathtaking cosmic playground for Kirby’s burgeoning imagination with Journey into Mystery inevitably becoming the Mighty Thor. After years of celestial adventuring, the peculiarities and inconsistencies of the Don Blake/Thor relationship were re-examined – as well as his doomed romance with his nurse Jane Foster – and all was finally clarified and explained regarding how an immortal godling could also be frail Don Blake.

The epic saga took the immortal hero back to his long-distant youth, ultimately revealing that the mortal surgeon was no more than an Odinian deception: a living shell designed to teach the Thunder God humility and compassion…

Time passed, Kirby left and the Thunderer’s fortunes waxed and waned. During the troubled mid-1990’s the title vanished, culled with The Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America and Fantastic Four and subcontracted out to Image creators Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld during 1996-1997 in a desperate attempt to improve sales after Marvel’s apocalyptic Onslaught publishing event.

In 1998 Heroes Return and Heroes Reborn saw those properties rejoin the greater Marvel Universe, relaunched with brand new first issues with the Thunder God reappearing a few weeks later. In July, Mighty Thor volume 2 launched, and this compendium gathers #1-8, plus Peter Parker, Spider-Man #2 spanning July 1998 to February #1999.

It begins with ‘In Search of the Gods’ by Dan Jurgens, John Romita Jr. & Klaus Janson and finds the Thunderer back on Midgard after more than a year away from the home cosmos, and instantly involved in a desperate hostage situation.

Acting immediately, he ends the crisis only to discover the perpetrator is the now-powerless Guardian God Heimdall. In the recently relaunched Avengers #1, Thor had found Asgard devastated and deserted and now that shocking mystery has been further compounded on Earth…

Elsewhere, Death Goddess Hela and Volla the Prophetess conspire in anticipation of cosmic calamity and desires reaching fruition, even as a military shipment goes badly wrong at New York’s docks where EMT/paramedic Jake Olsen gets the call to assist…

Before leaving Heimdall with (now) Doctor Jane Foster, Thor and the sentinel Asgardian explored shattered Asgard again, inadvertently liberating an unknown horror from ancient captivity, but that is forgotten as the docks situation worsens and Thor joins the hard-pressed Avengers in battling reawakened Odinian ultimate weapon The Destroyer…

Despite the best efforts of the World’s Mightiest Heroes, the carnage is shattering and people die. People like Olson… and Thor…

Thor’s story nevertheless continues as his journey to Hela’s realm is interrupted by disturbing new cosmic entity Marnot who claims the Thunderer’s soul and returns it to the living world, bound to equally-miraculously resurrected Olsen in a revival of the spell that created Don Blake and just in time to stop The Destroyer. However, the new-old arrangement will prove to be a true ‘Deal with the Devil!’

Reborn as ‘God and Man’ in #3, the Storm Lord again walks the Earth – but only as the dormant-until-summoned alter-ego of another frail mortal host with a painfully complex personal life. It makes battling the sea-monsters of beguiling sea-goddess Sedna beside former Avenger Namor the Sub-Mariner a far from friendly reunion in ‘From the Ashes’ and leads to Mjolnir rebelling after Thor’s take-charge personality overrules Olsen’s legal authority when the Thunderer compels the paramedic to perform illegal surgery to save a life in ‘Heroes’ …

The wreckers of Asgard and Marnot have all been manoeuvring in the background throughout and following a flashback to Asgardian childhood ‘What’s a God to Do?’ finds Thor edging closer to the truth after another pointless clash with best pal Hercules. Once the dust has settled, Thor finds his people have been framed for attacking Olympus even as in Asgard the fate of the vanquished All-Father is revealed. However,  the ‘Deception’ has proven effective and Thor and Hercules are attacked by the entire outraged Hellenic pantheon…

The true architects of most of this mayhem are a pantheon of previously unknown Dark Gods – Perrikus, Adva, D’Chel, Slottoth, Tokkots and Majeston Zelia – so powerful that they have managed to take possession of the fallen Fabled Realm, constantly attack Thor since his return to Asgard and now bar him entirely from reaching his sundered home…

This initial collection concludes with a stellar crossover between hammer-hurler and webspinner as Thor #8 sees the Thunder God encounter Spider-Man when Tokkots goes on an Earthly rampage of destruction in ‘…and the Home of the Brave!’ before being spectacularly defeated and despatched to enslaved Asgard in ‘Plaything of the Gods’ (Peter Parker, Spider-Man #2, by Howard Mackie, Romita Jr. & Scott Hanna).

An all action, rocket-paced return to comic book basics, this revival includes a wealth of covers and variants by Romita Jr., Janson & Hanna, and, whilst perhaps not to everyone’s taste (it’s woefully short of anything even approaching a funny moment) is a blistering epic to delight the Fight’s ‘n’ Tights faithful, with the artwork undeniably some of the best of the modern Marvel Age. If you want your pulse to pound and your graphic senses to swim, this is the ideal item for you.
© 1998, 1999, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. Digital version © 2020 MARVEL