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

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 the groundbreaking 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 new ventures as the strip graduated to in-house originated material. This monumental paperback 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…

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

In 1898, 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 tale of tragic Victor reaches the terrible moment when the monster demands a mate. The guilt-plagued scientist complies 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 the hard-pressed Ploog – turns the tables as the monster reveals what happened after the polar showdown with his creator, leading to a new beginning when 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 as ‘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 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 and 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 and Bob Brown before Val Mayerik settled as regular artist and Friedrich gave way to Doug Moench, a writer once synonymous with Marvel’s horror line.

Issues #7, 8 and 9 bowed to the inevitable and pitted 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, John Buscema and John 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 Bob Brown & Vince Colletta – and #12’s ‘A Cold and Lasting Tomb’ by Doug Moench, Val Mayerik and Colletta, the Monster wrapped his historical adventures by falling into a glacial sea. Frozen once again into another block of ice he was revived, Captain America-like, in modern times: i.e. the swinging 1970s…

The epic account then switches to monochrome as the more mature episodes from Monsters Unleashed begin, starting with #2 and ‘Frankenstein 1973’ by Friedrich, John 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 and Golden-Age Great 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 and Val Mayerik who wrapped up the introduction to today’s storyline with a good old-fashioned monster hunt in ‘…Always a Monster!’ which leads directly to #7’s ‘A Tale of Two Monsters!’: a dark, socially relevant tale of the modern underclass and man-made horrors carried on in ‘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 tale ‘The Monster and the Masque’ appeared in the 1975 one-shot The Legion of Monsters, by Moench, Mayerik, Dan Adkins & Pablo Marcos (accompanied by a chilling frontispiece by Marcos). This bittersweet morality play sees 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 comicbooks, next up is a rather tame team-up/clash from Giant-Sized Werewolf #2 wherein ‘The Frankenstein Monster Meets Werewolf by Night’ (by Moench, Don Perlin & Colletta): collaterally combining to quash a band of run-of-the-mill West Coast Satanists in the process.

Resuming his own series, The Frankenstein Monster #13 displays ‘All Pieces of Fear!’ (Moench, Mayerik and 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 a sidekick/spokesperson ‘Fury of the Night-Creature’ (with Dan Green inking) extends the saga by introducing I.C.O.N. (International Crime Organizations Nexus): yet another secret organisation intent on conquest through corporate business practices and traditional gangsterism.

Issue #15 ‘Tactics of Death’ (with a young Klaus Janson on inks) briefly concludes the acronym-agenda as the Monster and his young 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 claims to be fixing her ancestors’ mistakes when the incorrigible I.C.O.N. creeps show up, demanding her biological techniques in ‘A Phoenix Beserk!’. Beautifully inked by Mayerik and Dan 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 a few years later) when 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 two-part tale by Gerry Conway, Sal Buscema & Colletta from Marvel Team-Up #36 and 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 and has already secured the Frankenstein Monster to practise on, but after the Webslinger busts them both out and they stumble upon sexy SHIELD Agent Klemmer, their rapid counterattack goes badly wrong after 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 and 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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S.H.I.E.L.D. by Lee & Kirby: The Complete Collection


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Denny O’Neil, John Severin, Don Heck, John Buscema, Joe Sinnott, Howard Purcell, Ogden Whitney & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9901-4

Veteran war-hero Nick Fury debuted in Fantastic Four #21 (December 1963): a grizzled, world-weary and cunning CIA Colonel at the periphery of the really big adventures.

What was odd about that? Well, the gruffly capable everyman was already the star of the minor publisher’s only war comic, set twenty years earlier in (depending on whether you were American or European…) the middle or beginning of World War II.

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos was an improbable, decidedly over-the-top and raucous combat comics series, similar in tone to later movies such as The Wild Bunch or The Dirty Dozen and had launched in May of that year. Although Fury’s later self became a big-name star when espionage yarns went global in the wake of popular sensations like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the elder iteration was given a second series beginning in Strange Tales #135 (August 1965).

Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. combined Cold War tensions with sinister schemes of World Conquest by a subversive, all-encompassing, hidden enemy organisation. The saga came with captivating Kirby-designed super-science gadgetry and, later, iconic imagineering from Jim Steranko whose visually groundbreaking graphic narratives took the art form to a whole new level (but that’s a subject of another Complete Collection…).

For those few brief years with Steranko in charge, the S.H.I.E.L.D. series was one of the best strips in America – if not the world – but when the writer/artist left just as the global spy-fad was fading, the whole concept faded into the background architecture of the Marvel Universe…

This astounding full-colour paperback compendium, however, deals with the outrageous, groundbreaking, but still still carefully wedded-to-mundane-reality iteration which set the scene. Here Jack Kirby’s genius for gadgetry and gift for dramatic staging mixed with Stan Lee’s manic melodrama to create a tough and tense series which the new writers and veteran artists that followed turned into a non-stop riot of action and suspense…

This stunning hardback omnibus gathers those early days of spycraft; comprising Fantastic Four #21, Tales of Suspense #78 and Strange Tales #135-150 – spanning December 1963 to November 1966 – and providing timeless thrills for lovers of adventure and intrigue.

Fantastic Four #21 introduced the latter-day Fury as a CIA agent seeking the team’s aid against a sinister demagogue called ‘The Hate-Monger’ (by Lee & Kirby with inks by comics veteran George Roussos, under the protective nom-de-plume George Bell) just as the 1960s espionage vogue was taking off, inspired by James Bond films and TV shows like Danger Man.

Fury craftily manipulated Marvel’s First Family into invading a sovereign nation in the throes of revolution in a yarn cracking with tension and action.

The main event starts next as Strange Tales #135 (August 1965) saw the Human Torch solo feature replaced by Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. – which back then stood for Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division…

In the rocket-paced first episode, Fury is asked to volunteer for the most dangerous job in the world: leading a new counter-intelligence agency dedicated to stopping secretive subversive organisation Hydra. With assassins dogging his every move, the Take-Charge Guy with the Can-Do Attitude quickly proves he is ‘The Man for the Job!’ in a potent twelve-page thriller from Lee, Kirby & Dick Ayers.

Even an artist and plotter of Kirby’s calibre couldn’t handle another strip at that busiest of times so from the next issue “The King” cut back to laying out episodes, allowing a variety of superb draughtsmen to flesh out the adventures. Even so, there’s probably a stunning invention or cool concept on almost every page that follows…

‘Find Fury or Die!’ brought veteran draughtsman John Severin back to the company; pencilling and inking the Kirby’s blueprints as Fury becomes the target of incessant assassination attempts and we are introduced to the masked Supreme Hydra…

The tension ramps up in the next instalment as a number of contenders are introduced – any of whom might be the obscured overlord of evil – even as S.H.I.E.L.D. strives mightily but fails to stop Hydra launching its deadly Betatron Bomb in ‘The Prize is… Earth!’

Despite the restrictions of the Comics Code, these early S.H.I.E.L.D. stories were stark and grim and frequently carried a heavy body count. Four valiant agents died in quick succession in #137 and the next issue underscored the point in ‘Sometimes the Good Guys Lose!’ with further revelations of Hydra’s inner workings.

Fury and fellow Howling Commando war heroes Dum-Dum Dugan and Gabe Jones meanwhile played catch-up after Hydra assassins invade S.H.I.E.L.D. and almost eradicate Fury and munitions genius Tony Stark: the only man capable of destroying the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over the world. Although Nick saves the inventor, he is captured in the process…

Tortured by Hydra in #139’s ‘The Brave Die Hard!’ (with Joe Sinnott replacing Severin as finisher) Fury finds an unlikely ally in Laura Brown: Supreme Hydra’s daughter and a young woman bitterly opposed to her father’s megalomaniacal madness.

Even with only half a comic book per month to tell a tale, creators didn’t hang around in those halcyon days and #140 promised ‘The End of Hydra!’ (Don Heck & Sinnott) as a S.H.I.E.L.D. squad invades the enemy’s inner sanctum to rescue the already-free-and-making-mayhem Fury, just as Stark travels into space to remove the Betratron Bomb with his robotic Braino-Saur system. The end result left Hydra temporarily headless…

Strange Tales #141 saw Kirby return to full pencils (inked by Frank Giacoia pseudonymously moonlighting as Frank Ray) for the mop-up and ‘Operation: Brain Blast!’ as Mentallo – a renegade from S.H.I.E.L.D. ESP division – joined with technological savant the Fixer to attack the organisation as the first step in an ambitious scheme to rule the world.

The raid began in ‘Who Strikes at… S.H.I.E.L.D.?’ (illustrated by Kirby with Mike Demeo – AKA – Esposito) with the deadly rogues hitting hard and fast: seizing and mind-controlling Fury before strapping him to a mini-H-bomb. None too soon, however, Dugan and the boys come blasting in ‘To Free a Brain Slave’ in #143 with Howard Purcell & Esposito embellishing Kirby’s layouts.

A new and deadly threat emerged in #144 as ‘The Day of the Druid!’ saw a mystic charlatan target Fury and his agents with murderous flying techno-ovoids. Happily, new S.H.I.E.L.D. recruit Jasper Sitwell was on hand to augment the triumphant fightback in ‘Lo! The Eggs Shall Hatch!’ by Heck & Esposito over Kirby.

As Marvel continuity grew evermore interlinked, ‘Them!’ saw Captain America team with Fury in the first of the Star-Spangled Avenger’s many adventures as a (more-or-less) Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Taken from Tales of Suspense #78 (June 1966: scripted by Lee with Kirby full pencils and Giacoia inks), the story saw the WWII wonders battling an artificial assassin with incredible chemical capabilities after which Nick sought the creature’s mysterious makers in Strange Tales #146 ‘When the Unliving Strike!’ (Kirby, Heck & Esposito).

As technological Special Interests group Advanced Idea Mechanics courted Fury’s governmental and military masters, promising incredible weapons if only they sacked that barbaric slob Fury, the S.H.I.E.L.D. supremo was getting close to exposing A.I.M.’s connection to “Them” and an old enemy thought long gone…

A concerted whispering campaign and “briefing-against” seemingly sees Fury ousted in ‘The Enemy Within!’ and put on trial in ‘Death Before Dishonor!’ (scripted by Kirby with Heck & Esposito finishing his layouts) but it’s all part of a cunning counter-plan which results in a shattering conclusion and ‘The End of A.I.M.!’ in #149 (with script from Denny O’Neil, and art by Kirby & Ogden Whitney).

As depicted by Lee, Kirby, John Buscema & Giacoia, a malign and devilishly subtle plan is finally uncovered in Strange Tales #150 as Fury’s team put together clues from all the previous year’s clashes and come to one terrifying conclusion: ‘Hydra Lives!’…

This sets the scene for the bombastic debut by Jim Steranko, but that’s to be seen in another collection at another time…

Here the epic espionage extravaganza wraps up with appetising Afterword ‘Against the Hordes of Hydra’ by Lee and a treasure trove of original art pages comprising covers, pencils and inked pages – and even try-out pages – by Kirby, Severin, Whitney and Buscema, plus a rousing 1965 House Ad plugging not just the Espionage elite but the simultaneously debuting Sub-Mariner strip in Tales to Astonish #70.

Fast, furious and fantastically entertaining, these high-octane vintage yarns are a superb snapshot of early Marvel Comics at their creative peak and should be part of every fanboy’s shelf of beloved favourites.
© 2015 Marvel Characters. Inc. All rights reserved.

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Iron Fist Epic Collection: The Fury of Iron Fist – volume 1 1994-1997


By Roy Thomas, Chris Claremont, Doug Moench, Tony Isabella, Gil Kane, Larry Hama, John Byrne & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9164-3

Comicbooks have always operated within the larger bounds of popular trends and fashions – just look at what got published whenever westerns or science fiction dominated on TV – so when the ancient philosophy and health-&-fitness discipline of Kung Fu made its unstoppable mark on domestic entertainment it wasn’t long before the Chop Sockey kicks and punches found their way en masse onto the four-colour pages of America’s periodicals.

As part of the first Martial Arts bonanza, Marvel converted a forthcoming license to use venerable fictional villain Fu Manchu into a series about his son. The series launched in Special Marvel Edition #15, December 1973 as The Hands of Shang Chi: Master of Kung Fu and by April 1974 (#17) it became his exclusively.

A month later the House of Ideas launched a second oriental-tinged hero in Iron Fist; a character combining the Eastern combat philosophy with high fantasy, magic powers and a proper superhero mask and costume…

The character also owed a hefty debt to Bill Everett’s pioneering golden Age super-hero Amazing Man who graced various Centaur Comics publications between 1939 and 1942. The tribute was paid by Roy Thomas & Gil Kane who adopted and translated the fictive John Aman’s Tibetan origins into something that gibed better with the 1970’s twin zeitgeists of Supernatural Fantasy and Martial Arts Mayhem…

This collection gathers the far-ranging appearances of the Living Weapon from Marvel Premier #15-25, Iron Fist #1-15 and Marvel Team-Up #63-64 (spanning May 1974 to December 1977), which saw the high-kicking wonder uncover his past and rediscover his heritage and humanity before inevitably settling into the inescapable role of costumed crusader as half of superhero and detective bromance Power Man and Iron Fist.

The saga began on a spectacular high in Marvel Premier #15 with ‘The Fury of Iron Fist!’ by Thomas, Kane and inker Dick Giordano as a young masked warrior defeats the cream of a legendary combat elite in a fabled other-dimensional city before returning to Earth.

Ten years previously little Daniel Rand had watched as his father and mother died at the hands of Harold Meachum whilst the party risked Himalayan snows to find the legendary city of K’un Lun.

Little Danny had travelled with his wealthy parents and business partner Meachum in search of the fabled city – which only appeared on Earth for one day every ten years. Wendell Rand had some unsuspected connection to the fabled Shangri La but was killed before they found it, and Danny’s mother had sacrificed herself to save the child from wolves and her murderous pursuer.

As he wandered alone in the wilderness, the city found Danny. The boy spent the next decade training: mastering all forms of martial arts in the militaristic, oriental, feudal paradise and enduring arcane ordeals, living only for the day he would return to Earth and avenge his parents…

After conquering all comers and refusing immortality, Iron Fist returned to Earth a Living Weapon able to turn his force of will into a devastating super-punch…

From the outset the feature was plagued by an inability to keep a stable creative team, although, to be fair, story quality never suffered, only plot and direction. Reaching New York City in #16, ‘Heart of the Dragon!’ by Len Wein, Larry Hama & Giordano found Iron Fist reliving the years of toil which had culminated in a trial by combat with mystic dragon Shou-Lao the Undying, winning him the power to concentrate his fist “like unto a thing of Iron” and other unspecified abilities. The epic clash permanently branded his chest with the seared silhouette of the fearsome wyrm.

His recollections are shattered when martial arts bounty hunter Scythe attacks, revealing that Meachum knew the boy was back and had put a price on his head…

Danny had not only sacrificed immortality for vengeance but also prestige and privilege. As he left K’un Lun, supreme ruler of the city Yü Ti, the August Personage in Jade, had revealed that murdered Wendell Rand had been his brother…

Marvel Premier #17 saw Doug Moench take over scripting as Iron Fist stormed Meachum’s skyscraper headquarters; a ‘Citadel on the Edge of Vengeance’ converted into a colossal 30-storey death trap, leading to a duel with a cybernetically-augmented giant dubbed Triple-Iron and a climactic confrontation with his parents’ killer in #18’s ‘Lair of Shattered Vengeance!’

The years had not been kind to Meachum. He’d lost his legs to frostbite returning from the high peaks, and, hearing from Sherpas that a boy had been taken into K’un Lun, the murderer had spent the intervening decade awaiting in dread his victims’ avenger…

Filled with loathing, frustration and pity, Iron Fist turns away from his intended retribution, but Meachum dies anyway, slain by a mysterious Ninja as the deranged multi-millionaire attempts to shoot Danny in the back…

In #19 Joy Meachum and her ruthless uncle Ward – convinced Iron Fist had killed the crippled Harold – steps up the hunt for Iron Fist via legal and illegal means, whilst the shell-shocked Living Weapon aimlessly wanders the strange streets of Manhattan. Adopted by the enigmatic Colleen Wing Danny meets her father, an aging professor of Oriental Studies who has fallen foul of a ‘Death Cult!’

In his travels the aged savant had acquired ancient text The Book of Many Things, which, amongst other things, held the secret of K’un Lun’s destruction. The deadly disciples of Kara-Kai are determined to possess it. After thwarting another murder attempt Iron Fist tries to make peace with Joy, but instead walks into an ambush with the bloodthirsty ninja again intervening and slaughtering the ambushers…

A period of often painful inconsistency began as Tony Isabella, Arvell Jones & Dan Green took over with #20. The Kara-Kai cultists renew their attacks on the Wings whilst Ward Meachum hires a veritable army of killers to destroy the Living Weapon in ‘Batroc and other Assassins’ – with the identity of the ninja apparently revealed here as the elderly scholar…

Marvel Premier #21 introduced the ‘Daughters of the Death Goddess’ (inked by Vince Colletta) as the Wings are abducted by the cultists and bionic ex-cop Misty Knight debuts, first as foe but soon as an ally. When Danny tracks down the cult he discovers some shocking truths – as does the ninja, who had been imprisoned within the ancient book by the August Personage in Jade in ages past and recently possessed Professor Wing in search of escape and vengeance…

All was revealed and the hero exonerated in #22’s ‘Death is a Ninja’ (inked by “A. Bradford”) with the ninja disclosing how, as disciple to sublime wizard Master Khan, he had attempted to conquer K’un Lun and been imprisoned within the crumbling tome for his pains.

Over the years he had discovered a temporary escape and subsequently manipulated the Wing and Iron Fist to secure his permanent release and the doom of his jailers. Now exposed, he faces the Living Weapon in a final cataclysmic clash…

A measure of stability began with #23 as Chris Claremont, Pat Broderick & Bob McLeod took the series in a new direction. With his life’s work over and nearly nine years until he could go “home”, Danny was now a man without purpose… until whilst strolling with Colleen he stumbles into a spree shooting in ‘The Name is… Warhawk.’

When the cyborg-assassin has a Vietnam flashback and begins heedlessly sniping in Central Park, the Pride of K’un Lun instantly responds to the threat… and thus began his career as a hero…

In ‘Summerkill’ (inked by Colletta) the itinerant exile battles alien robot the Monstroid and opens a long and complicated association with Princess Azir of Halwan, with the mysterious Master Khan resurfacing, apparently intent on killing her and seizing her country…

Marvel Premier #25 was the last of the hero’s run and the start of his short but sweet Golden Age as John Byrne became regular penciller for ‘Morning of the Mindstorm!’ (inked by Al McWilliams). Whilst Colleen is driven to unconsciousness and abducted – and her father driven to the edge of insanity – by mind-bending terrorist Angar the Screamer, Danny, made of far sterner stuff, overcomes the psychic assaults and tracks the attackers to Stark Industries and into his own series…

Iron Fist #1 (November 1975) featured ‘A Duel of Iron!’ as he is tricked into battling Iron Man, even as Colleen escapes and runs into Danny’s future nemesis Steel Serpent before being recaptured and renditioned to Halwan…

After a spectacular, inconclusive and ultimately pointless battle, Danny and Misty Knight also head for Halwan in ‘Valley of the Damned!’ (#2, inked by Frank Chiaramonte) with our hero recalling a painful episode from his youth wherein his best friends Conal and Miranda chose certain death beyond the walls of regimented K’un Lun rather than remain in the lost city where they could not love each other…

As Master Khan begins to break Colleen, Danny and Misty stopover in England where a nuclear horror named The Ravager slaughters innocents by blowing up London Airport and the Post Office Tower (we rebuilt it as the BT Tower, so don’t panic), compelling Iron Fist to punch way above his weight in ‘The City’s Not For Burning!’

Inevitably it ends in ‘Holocaust!’ as Ravager is unmasked as old villain Radion the Atomic Man. He fatally irradiates Danny until the wounded warrior fortuitously discovers the cleansing and curative power of the Iron Fist and storms to his greatest triumph yet…

With Misty recuperating, Danny gets involved with a guilt-ridden IRA bomber named Alan Cavenaugh before tackling another of Khan’s assassins in ‘When Slays the Scimitar!’ after which Iron Fist and Misty finally infiltrate Halwan in #6, courtesy of crusading lawyer Jeryn Hogarth who also promises to secure Danny’s inheritance and interests from the Rand-Meachum Corporation.

The Pride of K’un Lun doesn’t much care since the successfully brainwashed Colleen had been unleashed by Khan, determined to kill her rescuers in ‘Death Match!’…

None of the earthly participants are aware that, from a hidden dimension, Yü Ti is observing the proceedings with cold calculation…

By using his mystic Iron Fist to psychically link with Colleen, Danny breaks Khan’s conditioning and at last the malignant mage personally enters the fray in #7’s ‘Iron Fist Must Die!’: a blistering battle which breaches the dimensions and exposes the August Personage in Jade’s involvement in Wendell Rand’s death.

Given the choice between abandoning his friends on Earth or returning to K’un Lun for answers and justice, the Living Weapon made a true hero’s choice…

With Iron Fist #8 Danny returns to New York and attempts to pick up the pieces of a life interrupted for more than a decade. Unaware that Steel Serpent now works for Joy Meachum, Danny joins the company until merciless mob boss Chaka and his Chinatown gangs attack the business ‘Like Tigers in the Night!’ (inked by Dan Adkins), and Iron Fist is fatally poisoned.

Sportingly offered an antidote if he survives a gauntlet of Chaka’s warriors, Danny triumphs in his own manner when ‘The Dragon Dies at Dawn!’ (Chiaramonte inks) but when a hidden killer bludgeons Chaka, Danny is once again a fugitive from the cops and dubbed the ‘Kung Fu Killer!’ (Adkins) until he, Colleen and Misty expose the entire plot as a fabrication of the gangster.

In #11 ‘A Fine Day’s Dawn!’ the Living Weapon squares off against the Asgardian-empowered Wrecking Crew and, with Misty a hostage, is compelled to fight Captain America in #12’s ‘Assault on Avengers’ Mansion!’ until the Pride of K’un Lun and the Sentinel of Liberty unite and turn the tables on the grotesque god-powered gangsters…

In the intervening time Cavenaugh arrives in New York, but has not escaped the reach of his former Republican comrades. They hire hitman Boomerang to kill the defector and ‘Target: Iron Fist!’ with little success, whereas the villain introduced in issue #14 comes a lot closer: even eventually eclipsing Iron Fist in popularity…

‘Snowfire’ – inked by Dan Green – finds Danny and Colleen running for their lives in arctic conditions when a retreat at Hogarth’s palatial Canadian Rockies estate is invaded by deadly mercenary Sabre-tooth. It just wasn’t their week as, only days before, a mystery assailant had ambushed Iron Fist and impossibly drained off a significant portion of the lad’s Shou-Lao fuelled life-force…

Despite being rendered temporarily blind, the K’un Lun Kid ultimately defeats Sabre-tooth, but the fiercely feral mutant would return again and again…

With Claremont & Byrne increasingly absorbed by their stellar collaboration on the revived and resurgent adventures of Marvel’s mutant horde, Iron Fist #15 (September 1977) was their last Martial Arts mash-up for a while. The series ended in spectacular fashion as – through a comedy of errors – Danny stumbles into battling Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Storm and Phoenix in ‘Enter, the X-Men’.

The cancellation was clearly not planned however as two major subplots went unresolved: Misty had disappeared on an undercover assignment to investigate European gang-boss John Bushmaster and Danny again had his chi siphoned off by Steel Serpent…

Fans didn’t have to wait long: Claremont & Byrne had already begun a stint on Marvel Team-Up and turned the Spider-Man vehicle into their own personal clearing house for unresolved plot-lines.

MTU #63-64 (November & December 1977 and inked by Dave Hunt) revealed the secret of K’un Lun exile Davos in ‘Night of the Dragon’ as Steel Serpent sucked the power of the Iron Fist from Danny, leaving him near death. Risking all she had gained, Misty broke cover and rushed to his aid…

With the Wall-crawler and Colleen (the girls using the team name “Daughters of the Dragon”) to bolster him, Iron Fist defeated Davos and reclaimed his heritage in ‘If Death be my Destiny…’ before shuffling off into a quiet retirement and anonymity.

…But not for long – and certainly the subject of further mammoth full-colour paperback Epic Collections to come…

Although suffering a few grim patches, the greater bulk of the Iron Fist saga ranks amongst the most exciting and enjoyable Costumed Dramas of Marvel’s second generation. If you want a good, clean fight comic this is probably one of your better bets, especially if you’re a fan of original artwork as this titanic tome closes with a fabulous selection, shot from Byrne’s inked pages and original pencil character sketches…
© 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 2015 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks: Luke Cage, Hero for Hire volume 1


By Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, Billy Graham, Tony Isabella, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9180-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Ideal Item for new Marvel Movie-verse addicts… 8/10

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 efforts to address what were national and socio-political iniquities, but issues of race and ethnicity took a 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 television, breakthroughs were small, incremental and too often reduced to a cold-war of daringly liberal “firsts.” Excluding a few characters in Jungle comic-books of the 1940s and 1950, Marvel clearly led the field with a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos team (the historically impossible Gabe Jones who debuted in #1, May 1963, and was accidentally re-coloured Caucasian at the printers, who clearly didn’t realise his ethnicity). He was followed by first negro superheroes Black Panther in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966), and the Falcon in Captain America #117 (September 1969).

America’s first Black hero to star in his own title had come (and gone largely unnoticed) in a little remembered or regarded title from Dell Comics. Created by artist Tony Tallarico and scripter D.J. Arneson, Lobo was a gunslinger in the old west, battling injustice just like any cowboy hero would, first appearing in December 1965.

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

This big change slowly grew out of raised social awareness during a terrible time in American history; yes, even worse than today’s festering social wound, as typified by cops under pressure providing no answer to the seemingly constant Black Lives Matter events. Although far rarer, those tragedies occur here in the UK too, so we have nothing to be smug about either. We’ve had race riots since the Sixties here which left simmering scars that only comedians and openly racist politicians dared to talk about. Things today in post-Brexit Britain don’t seem all that different, except the bile and growing taste for violence is turned towards European accents as well as brown skins…

As the 1960s became a new 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, who didn’t debut until April 1977, although Jack Kirby had introduced Shilo Norman as Scott Free‘s apprentice (and eventual successor) in Mister Miracle ##15 (August (1973).

As usual, it took a bold man and changing economics to really promote change. With declining comics sales at a time of rising Black Consciousness, cash – if not cashing in -was probably the trigger for “the Next Step.”

Contemporary “Blaxsploitation” cinema and novels had fired up commercial interests throughout America, and in that atmosphere of outlandish dialogue, daft outfits and barely concealed – if justified – outrage, an angry black man with a shady past and apparently dubious 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 the Black Panther finally got his own series in Jungle Action #5 and Blade: Vampire Hunter debuted in Tomb of Dracula #10.

This stunning full-colour hardback compendium collects the first 16 issues of the breakthrough series: the entire run before the series was thematically adjusted to become Luke Cage Power Man.

The saga begins with Lucas, a hard-case inmate at brutal Seagate Prison. Like all convicts he claims to have been framed and his uncompromising attitude makes mortal enemies of the savage, racist guards Rackham and Quirt whilst not endearing him to the rest of the prison population such as genuinely bad guys Shades and Comanche either…

‘Out of Hell… A Hero!’ was written by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by George Tuska & Billy Graham – with some initial assistance from Roy Thomas and John Romita senior – and sees a new warden arrive promising to change the hell-hole into a proper, correctly administered correctional facility.

Prison Doctor Noah Burstein then convinces Lucas to participate in a radical experiment in exchange for a parole hearing, having heard the desperate con’s tale of woe…

Lucas had grown up in Harlem, a tough kid who had managed to stay honest even when his best friend Willis Stryker had not. They remained friends even though they walked different paths – until a woman came between them. To be rid of his romantic rival Stryker planted drugs and had Lucas shipped off to jail. While he was there his girl Reva, who had never given up on him, was killed when she got in way of bullets meant for up-and-coming gangster Stryker…

With nothing to lose Lucas undergoes Burstein’s process – an experiment in cell-regeneration – but Rackham sabotages it, hoping to kill the con before he can expose the illegal treatment of convicts. The equipment goes haywire and something incredible occurs. Lucas, panicked and somehow super-strong, punches his way out of the lab and the through the prison walls, only to be killed in hail of gunfire. His body plunges over a cliff and is never recovered…

Months later a vagrant prowls the streets of New York City and stumbles into a robbery. Almost casually he downs the felon and accepts a reward from the grateful victim. He also has a bright idea. Strong, bullet-proof, street-wise and honest, Lucas will hide in plain sight while planning his revenge on Stryker. Since his only skill is fighting, he became a private paladin… A Hero For Hire…

Making allowances for the colourful, often ludicrous dialogue necessitated by the Comics Code’s sanitising of “street-talking Jive” this is probably the grittiest origin tale of the classic Marvel years, and the tense action continued in ‘Vengeance is Mine!’ as the man now calling himself Luke Cage stalks his target.

Stryker has risen quickly, now controlling a vast portion of the drug trade as the deadly Diamondback, and Cage has a big surprise in store when beautiful Doctor Claire Temple came to his aid after a calamitous struggle.

Thinking him fatally shot her surprise is dwarfed by his own when Cage meets her boss. Seeking to expiate his sins, Noah Burstein has opened a rehab clinic on the sordid streets of Times Square, but his efforts have drawn the attention of Diamondback who doesn’t like someone trying to fix his paying customers…

Burstein apparently does not recognise Cage, and even though faced with eventual exposure and return to prison, the Hero for Hire offers to help the hard-pressed medics. Setting up an office above a movie house on 42nd Street Cage meets a lad who will be his greatest friend: D.W. Griffith: nerd, film freak and plucky white sidekick.

However, before Cage can settle in, Diamondback strikes and the age-old game of blood and honour plays out the way it always does…

Issue #3 introduced Cage’s first returning villain in ‘Mark of the Mace!’ as Burstein – for his own undisclosed reasons – decides to keep Cage’s secret, and disgraced soldier Gideon Mace launches a terror attack on Manhattan. With his dying breath one of the mad Colonel’s troops hires Cage to stop the attack, which he does in explosive fashion.

Inker Billy Graham graduated to full art chores for ‘Cry Fear… Cry Phantom!’ in #4 as a deranged and deformed maniac carried out random assaults in Times Square. Or was there perhaps another motive behind the crazed attacks?

Steve Englehart took over as scripter and Tuska returned to pencil ‘Don’t Mess with Black Mariah!’ in the next issue: a sordid tale of organised scavengers which introduced unscrupulous reporter Phil Fox, an unsavoury sneak with greedy pockets and a nose for scandal…

The private detective motif proved a brilliant stratagem in generating stories for a character perceived as a reluctant champion at best and outright antihero by nature. It allowed Cage to maintain an outsider’s edginess but also meant that danger and adventure literally walked through his shabby door every issue.

Such was the case with ‘Knights and White Satin’ (by Englehart, Gerry Conway, Graham and Paul Reinman) as the swanky, ultra-rich Forsythe sisters hire him to bodyguard their dying father from a would-be murderer too impatient to wait the week it will take for the old man to die from a terminal illness.

This more-or less straight mystery yarn (not counting a madman and killer-robots) is followed by ‘Jingle Bombs’, a strikingly different Christmas tale by from Englehart Tuska & Graham, before Cage properly entered the Marvel Universe in ‘Crescendo!’ when he is hired by Doctor Doom to retrieve rogue androids which had absconded from Latveria.

They were hiding as black men among the shifting masses of Harlem and the Iron Dictator needed someone who could work in the unfamiliar environment. Naturally Cage accomplishes his mission, only to have Doom stiff him for the fee. Big mistake…

‘Where Angels Fear to Tread!’ in issue #9 finds the enraged Hero for Hire borrowing a vehicle from the Fantastic Four to play Repo Man in Doom’s own castle just in time to get caught in the middle of a grudge match between the tyrant and an alien invader called the Faceless One.

It was back to street-level basics in ‘The Lucky… and the Dead!’ as Cage takes on a gambling syndicate led by the schizophrenic Señor Suerte who could double his luck by becoming murderous Señor Muerte (that’s Mr. Luck and Mr. Death to you): a two-part thriller complete with rigged games and death traps that climaxes in the startling ‘Where There’s Life…!’ as relentless Phil Fox finally uncovers Cage’s secret…

Issue #12 featured the first of many battles against alchemical villain ‘Chemistro!’, after which Graham assumed full art duties with ‘The Claws of Lionfang’ – a killer using big cats to destroy his enemies – before Cage tackles hyperthyroid lawyer Big Ben Donovan in ‘Retribution!’ as the tangled threads of his murky past slowly become a noose around his neck…

‘Retribution: Part II!’ finds Graham and Tony Isabella sharing the writer’s role as so many disparate elements converge to expose Cage. The crisis is exacerbated by Quirt kidnapping Luke’s girlfriend, and fellow Seagate escapees Comanche and Shades stalking him whilst the New York cops hunt him.

The last thing the Hero For Hire needs is a new super-foe, but that’s just what he get in #16’s ‘Shake Hands With Stiletto!’ (Isabella, Graham & inker Frank McLaughlin): a dramatic finale which literally brings the house down and clears up most of the old business. This would lead to a re-branding of the nation’s premier black crusader, but that’s meat for a different collection.

Bracketed by an Introduction from Steve Englehart – offering an informative issue-by-issue breakdown on how the series was created and bonus material including a cover gallery, promotional material from the times, unused artwork and pre-corrected/toned down pages (LCHFH was one of the most potentially controversial and thus most scrupulously edited books in Marvel’s stable at the time) and full creator Biographies, this is a fabulous and unmissable glimpse at one of the edgiest series of the era, and a fine way to back up the live-action Netflix iteration.
© 2015 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

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Essential Hulk volume 6


By Len Wein, Roger Stern, David Anthony Kraft, Gerry Conway, Chris Claremont, Sal Buscema, Herb Trimpe, George Tuska, Keith Pollard, Jim Starlin & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-7851-4540-0

Bruce Banner was a military scientist accidentally caught in a gamma bomb blast of his own devising. As a result, stress and other factors cause him to transform into a giant green monster of unstoppable strength and fury. He was one of Marvel’s earliest innovations and first failure but after an initially troubled few years finally found his size-700 feet and a format that worked, becoming one of the company’s premiere antiheroes and most popular features.

During the 1960s, artist Herb Trimpe had made the character his own; the Jack Kirby-based “house” art-style he initially employed quickly evolving into often startlingly abstract mannerism, augmented by an unmatched facility for drawing technology – especially honking great ordnance and vehicles – and, crucially, who could possibly deny the sheer cathartic reader-release rush of those spectacular “Hulk Smash!” moments…

However, by the time of the tales in chronologically complete monochrome mammoth (re-presenting Incredible Hulk #201-225 and Incredible Hulk King Size Annual #6, July 1976-July 1978) the artistic reins had passed to another illustrator who would become inextricably associated with the Jade Juggernaut whilst writer Len Wein continued to insert fresh ideas and characters, redefining the man-monster for the modern age…

The blockbusting battle-action starts with ‘The Sword and the Sorcerer!’ (illustrated by regular art-team Sal Buscema & Joe Staton) wherein the Hulk found himself in a perilously primitive world.

He had been miniaturised and inserted into the brain of Major Glen Talbot by former pursuers Dr. Leonard Samson and General Thaddeus Ross to restore the mind of Banner’s comatose rival for Betty Ross-Talbot‘s affections. The radical psycho-surgery was not without complications, however, and at the moment of his greatest triumph and sacrifice the Man-Monster began uncontrollably shrinking beyond the ability of Samson’s team to reach him…

He stabilised on a sub-atomic world long enough to liberate a primitive people from the domination of a brutal despot (and demon-possessed pawn) Kronak the Barbarian before starting to diminish once more. His last stop was the promised land of his beloved and long-lost alien queen Jarella…

Sadly ‘Havoc at the Heart of the Atom’ revealed how his last visit had rendered the world tectonically unstable and shattered the civilisation which once had the power to blend Banner’s mind with the Hulk’s body. Moreover the once-gentle population had turned on the queen they held responsible…

Reunited with his beloved, the simplistic brute swore to fix the problem and was soon embroiled with the antediluvian horror who first hijacked him to the Microverse and who still craved bloody revenge…

Once again evil was defeated as the ‘Assault on Psyklop!’ led to another crushing defeat for the vile insectoid and a guardedly happy ending for the man-brute as a rescue attempt from Earth brought the Hulk home, carrying the astounded Jarella with him…

Herb Trimpe returned in #204 to pencil a tale of time-bending might-have-beens as brilliant theoretician Kerwin Kronus offered to eradicate Banner’s problems by turning back time and undoing the accident which created the Hulk. Sadly, the experiment succeeded all too well: briefly forming an alternate timeline where original sidekick Rick Jones died and the time-master became an even greater menace to reality. Banner/Hulk made a heartbreaking sacrifice to close that ‘Vicious Circle’…

The evergreen artist – aided by inkers Frank Giacoia & Mike Esposito – remained to illustrate David Anthony Kraft’s ‘Beware the Beehive!’ from Incredible Hulk King Size Annual #6, wherein a band of mad scientists attempted to recreate their greatest success and failure.

Morlak, Hamilton, Shinsky and Zota were a rogue science collective known as the Enclave and from their hidden “Beehive” had spawned puissant artificial man Him (latterly Adam Warlock). Here and now, three of them reunite for another go at building a god they can control, but when they abduct Dr. Stephen Strange to replace their missing fourth, the magician summons the Jade Juggernaut to save him from the experiment’s inevitable consequences: a marauding, compassionless super-slave dubbed Paragon whose first tasks are to eradicate Strange and subdue mankind.

Happily, after a border-shattering, army-crunching global rampage, that’s when the Hulk kicks the wall in and goes to work…

‘Do Not Forsake Me!’ in Hulk #205 saw Wein, Buscema & Staton back to depict the most tragic moment in the Green Goliath’s tortured life as Jarella sacrifices herself to save a child from rampaging robbery robot Crypto-Man, leaving the bereft Hulk ‘A Man-Brute Berserk!’

His grief-stricken trail of destruction leads from Gamma Base, New Mexico all the way to New York City where even his friends and allies are unable to calm the green gargantuan, leading to a brutal battle ‘Alone Against the Defenders!’ who finally realise compassion is the only method that will work against their traumatised foe…

Hulk #208 finds ‘A Monster in Our Midst!’ as Bruce finally rejects ending his pain-wracked existence and begins a new and hopefully stress-free life where his alter ego will never be seen again. That resolve only lasts as long as it takes the maniacal Crusher Creel – freed as a consequence of the Jade Juggernaut’s most recent rampage – to accept a commission from a triumvirate of hooded schemers who want the Hulk dead…

However, even though ‘The Absorbing Man is Out for Blood!’ the super-thug is no match for Hulk’s unfettered fury, but his well-deserved defeat results in Banner collapsing unconscious in alley where he is eventually found by a mystic do-gooder in search of an ally…

With #210, Ernie Chan became new regular inker as ‘And Call the Doctor… Druid!’ sees both Banner and the Hulk crucial to a plan to stop immortal mutant Maha Yogi, his vast mercenary army and alien bodyguard Mongu before they complete their preparations for world domination…

Although the battles of ‘The Monster and the Mystic!’ are a close-run thing, virtue is eventually victorious, but that makes little difference to the Hulk’s once-companion Jim Wilson as he hitch-hikes across America, utterly unaware that he is the target of a vicious criminal conspiracy…

The plots hatch once Jim reaches New York where his hidden tormentors decide that he must be ‘Crushed by… the Constrictor!’ but neither they nor their ruthless high-tech hitman expected the Hulk to intervene…

With a friend and confidante who knows all his secrets, you’d expect Banner’s life to get a little easier, but the authorities will never stop hunting the Hulk, who initially realises ‘You Just Don’t Quarrel with the Quintronic Man!’ (inked by Tom Palmer) before bouncing back to trash the formidable five-man mecha suit.

As Chan returns this battle leads to a frenzied clash with a new hyper-powered hero determined to make his name by defeating America’s most terrifying monster in ‘The Jack of Hearts is Wild!’

Macabre old enemy the Bi-Beast is resurrected in #215; still hungry to eradicate humanity in ‘Home is Where the Hurt Is’ and close to succeeding after seizing control of SHIELD’s Helicarrier. Only desperate action by General Ross can save the day and the old soldier uses the carrier’s tech to shanghai Banner, letting nature take its course and hoping that the right monster wins the inevitable earthshaking battle before a ‘Countdown to Catastrophe!’ leaves the planet a smoking ruin…

A moodily poignant change of pace graces #217 as ‘The Circus of Lost Souls!’ sees the shell-shocked Hulk lost somewhere in Europe, defending a band of carnival freaks from the crooked depredations of the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime: a solid demarcation as Wein moves away from scripting in favour of simple co-plotting, allowing Roger Stern to find his own big green feet to guide the Green Goliath’s future…

It all begins with ‘The Rhino Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore’ (#218 by Wein, Stern, George Tuska, Keith Pollard & Chan) as super-strong psychologist Doc Samson takes centre stage battling the ruthless Rhino whilst in #219 Banner learns ‘No Man is an Island!’ (Wein, Stern, Buscema & Chan) after hiring on as a deck hand on a freighter, only to have it sunk from under him by submarine-based pirate Cap’n Barracuda.

Washed ashore on a desert atoll, Hulk is befriended by a deluded individual who believes himself to be Robinson Crusoe, but as events unfold an even stranger truth is revealed. After Barracuda captures the madman, it is to pluck the secret of making monsters from his broken mind but the cruel corsair has completely underestimated the ferocious loyalty and compassion of the Hulk, who unleashes devastating catastrophic ‘Fury at 5000 Fathoms!’

With Stern in complete authorial control, Sal Buscema is joined by Alfredo Alcala for #221’s ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’ as the still all-at-sea Banner is rescued from drowning by marine explorer Walt Newell who ferries his exhausted passenger back to New York where he is recognised as Bruce Banner. Realising he has unleashed the Hulk on a major population centre, Newell exposes his own secret identity as sub-sea superhero Stingray and pursues his former guest. The battle is painfully one-sided and Stingray is near death when Jim Wilson intervenes, saving the marine crusader’s life but only at the cost of Hulk’s trust…

Wein returned for one last hurrah in #222, aided and abetted by Jim Starlin & Alcala for a creepy horror yarn as the Green Goliath tears through another unfortunate army unit before being gassed into unconsciousness. Banner awakens in the care of two children living in a cave, but they’re not surprised by the fugitive’s transformations: not since the radioactive stuff changed their little brother.

Of course now people have started disappearing and although they haven’t grasped the truth of it yet, Bruce instantly grasps what is involved in ‘Feeding Billy’ and what his intended role is…

Now firmly established, Stern began an ambitious storyline in Incredible Hulk #223 as ‘The Curing of Dr. Banner!’ (illustrated by Sal Buscema & Josef Rubinstein) saw the monster’s human half spontaneously purged of the gamma radiation that triggered the changes.

Heading for Gamma Base to verify his findings, Bruce discovers the entire facility has been taken over: mind-controlled by his ultimate archenemy…

As the crowing villain makes everyone ‘Follow the Leader!’, Doc Samson and General Ross escape and beg Banner to again sacrifice his humanity for the sake of mankind. Only the Hulk has ever defeated the Leader and their only hope is to recall and harness the beast’s unstoppable fury. Tragically, the halfway measures fail at the final moment and the villain has cause to ask ‘Is There Hulk after Death?’

With Banner seemingly deceased, his compatriots tried to jump start his system with another overwhelming dose of gamma rays and soon have cause to regret the resurrection of the original Gamma Goliath…

To Be Continued…

This catastrophically cathartic tome also includes pages taken from the Marvel Universe Handbook giving the lowdown on Jarella and the Constrictor plus an alternative cover to Hulk #206.

The Incredible Hulk is one of the most well-known comic characters on Earth, and these stories, as much as the movies, cartoons, TV shows, games, toys and action figures are the reason why. For an uncomplicated, earnestly vicarious experience of Might actually being Right, you can’t do better than these exciting episodes, so why not Go Green – even if it’s only in monochrome and in your own delirious head?

1976, 1977, 1978, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Adventures Avengers: Thor and Captain America


By Paul Tobin, Scott Gray, Todd Dezago, Ronan Cliquet, Ron Lim, Lou Kang & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5584-3

Since its earliest days Marvel has always courted young comicbook consumers. In 2003 the company instituted the Marvel Age imprint to update and reframe classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others for a fresh-faced 21st century readership.

The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures. The tone was very much that of the company’s burgeoning TV cartoon franchises, in execution if not name. Titles bearing the Marvel Adventures brand included Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Super Heroes, The Avengers and Hulk. These iterations ran until 2010 when they were cancelled and replaced by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man.

Almost all of those yarns have been collected in digest-sized compilations such as this one which gathers a selection of fantastic feats starring the God of Thunder or Sentinel of Liberty and their friends, comprising four all-ages tales from the second volume of Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #13-16 (spanning June-September 2011).

The action opens with a mythological masterpiece by Paul Tobin, Ronan Cliquet & Amilton Santos wherein plucky novice hero Nova is invited by Avenging comrades Thor and Valkyrie to accompany them on an annual errand for Odin the All-Father.

In the distant past when Asgardians warred with Trolls, a godling messenger named Glane failed in his mission and was banished to the ghastly Fields of the Fallen to pay penance by continually battling the Golden Realm’s vilest enemies.

Periodically Thor has been sent to add new tasks to the sinning failure’s heavy burden, and this year as the Thunderer and Valkyrie ready themselves for the trip, they invite the starstruck Nova to tag along.

However, as the trio battle their way through horrific monsters and overwhelming odds, Nova finds himself increasingly uncomfortable with the sentence meted out to Glane and even begins to doubt the motives of his immortal mentors. All that changes once he meets and battles beside the convicted penitent…

Originating in MASH #14, ‘Out of Time!’ is by Todd Dezago, Ron Lim & Scott Koblish (inspired by Gerry Conway & Ross Andru’s tale from the original Marvel Team-Up #7) and sees the Lord of Storm intercepting Spider-Man after the wall-crawler is blasted high into the sky whilst battling raving maniac the Looter.

That happy coincidence occurs just a bizarre force freezes time around them. When the heroes discover that only they have escaped a devastating weapon deployed by Trollish tyrant Kryllk the Conqueror to paralyze and overwhelm both Asgard and the mortal plane, they must divide their strength to simultaneously smash the conqueror in both Manhattan and Asgard if they are to set time running free again…

Captain America takes the spotlight in #15 as ‘Back in Time’ (Tobin, Cliquet & Santos) finds the Star-Spangled Avenger battling Neanderthals with ray-guns in a National Forest after tracking down rogue geneticists who have stolen a huge amount of plutonium.

A mere mile away, Peter Parker‘s girlfriend Sophia Sanduval is getting back to nature and chilling with her furry, scaly and feathered friends. As Chat, the mutant teen’s power to communicate with animals makes her a crucial component of the mystery-solving Blonde Phantom Detective Agency, but even she has never seen anything like the wave of extinct creatures which appear after Cap begins battling the tooled-up cavemen.

Soon she has been briefed on the deadly experiments of rogue technologist Jerrick Brogg – whose ambition is to build an army out of revived extinct creatures – and swears to help Cap put the maniac away and save all the beasts he has recreated from short painful lives of terror and brutal exploitation…

Wrapping up the action comes ‘Stars, Stripes and Spiders!’ by Dezago, Lou Kang & Pat Davidson (based on Len Wein & Gil Kane’s tale from Marvel Team-Up #13).

When a certain wall-crawling high-school student and occasional masked hero stumbles into Captain America tackling an AIM cadre stealing super-soldier serum, the nervous lad learns a few things about the hero game from the legendary guy who wrote the book. Sadly, not making that lesson any easier is petrifying super-villain Grey Gargoyle, whose deadly touch almost ends Spidey’s homework worries – and continued existence – forever…

Never the success the company hoped, the Marvel Adventures project was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to those Disney XD television shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories are still an intriguing, amazingly entertaining and superbly accessible means of introducing characters and concepts to kids born sometimes three generations or more away from the originating events.

Fast, furious, funny and enthralling, these riotous mini-epics are extremely enjoyable yarns, although parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the level of violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action”…
© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Daredevil: Born Again


By Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3481-7

Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer whose remaining senses hyper-compensate, making him an astonishing acrobat, formidable fighter and living lie-detector. Very much a second-string hero for most of his early years, Daredevil was nonetheless a striking and popular one, due in large part to the captivatingly humanistic art of Gene Colan.

He battled thugs, gangsters, a plethora of super-villains and even the occasional monster or alien invasion, quipping and wise-cracking his way through life and life-threatening combat.

However in the late 1970s, under the auspices of Jim Shooter, Roger McKenzie and finally Frank Miller, the character transformed into a dark, moody avenger and latterly grim, quasi-religious metaphor of justice and retribution…

Miller’s tenure on the series was groundbreaking, transformative, commercially successful and critically acclaimed, but – as is the nature of comicbooks – brief. After thoroughly shaking things up, the auteur moved on to other landmark projects, but was occasionally enticed over the years to return for short stints and special events to the troubled advocate of both legal and vigilante justice.

Miller’s initial run was measured by a number of powerful relationships he wove for the sightless swashbuckler: primarily his doomed first love Elektra Natchios and his ultimate enemy Wilson Fisk, the undisputed Kingpin of Crime.

In 1988 Miller returned for a short run where, with artist-of-the-moment David Mazzucchelli, he wrote what is still considered by most fans as the definitive Daredevil tale, as well as one of the most memorable contests of Good against Evil ever seen in comics.

Born Again collects Daredevil volume 1, #226-233 (January-August 1985) and changed the way superhero comics were perceived by fans and by the vast world of casual readers beyond the confines of our art form.

Fisk has been untouchable for years. He has bribed, terrorised and colluded his way to a position of legal invulnerability and is, to all intents and purposes, beyond the reach of justice. This has resulted in an uncomfortable status quo and grudging détente with costumed vigilantes such as Spider-Man, The Punisher and Daredevil, but that is about to change forever…

Before all that however, a taste of things to come can be seen in ‘Warriors’ by Denny O’Neil, Miller, Mazzucchelli & Dennis Janke as former costumed villain and recovering mental patient Melvin Potter is blackmailed into committing crimes by crooks who have kidnapped his girlfriend.

In the past Daredevil had been a largely sympathetic opponent, but recent personal events have pushed the Man Without Fear to a dark, angry, unforgiving place, and when he confronts Potter in his Gladiator alter ego, the fight is brutal and without pity until the barely-resisting super-villain can explain the situation. Then, all that anger is supplemented by guilt as the Devil in Red deals with the real bad guys…

The main event begins as Miller & Mazzucchelli reveal the fate of a long-missed early cast-member. Karen Page had been Matt Murdock’s true love before eventually leaving him for an acting career in Hollywood. Now she resurfaces as a fading porn star and junkie, stuck in Mexico, who sells the secret of Daredevil’s identity for one more fix…

The revelation is toxic. As it inevitably makes its way into the hands of Fisk, the arrogant crimelord ensures everyone who passed the knowledge up the line to him is eradicated. He plans an epic vengeance against his foe and wants to share the joy with no one…

The mounting pressure of impending ‘Apocalypse’ first surfaces as an IRS audit and missed mortgage payments Matt knows he already paid…

He’s not even suspicious when his own accountant won’t talk to him and honest cop pal Nick Manolis formally accuses Murdock of bribing witnesses and committing perjury…

With his friends attacked and legal career destroyed, Daredevil goes on a rampage, trying to beat information out of underworld small-timers in a frantic search for the mastermind behind Murdock’s woes. Everything falls into place when his house blows up. Matt knows whose hand is behind the impossible procession of bad fortune…

In the heart of a New York winter, Matt Murdock vanishes. Penniless, homeless and pushed beyond all rational limits, his mind shuts down. ‘Purgatory’ sees the brilliant lawyer in the black depths of a breakdown, with Fisk’s spies dogging his heels. The Kingpin revels in each report of comatose depressive bouts or incidence of petty violence perpetrated on innocent bystanders. However, as Fisk revels in sending his enemy into a living hell, a woman already there breaks out…

Between moments of drugged oblivion, Karen Page is tortured by guilt. Finally, unable to contact Matt, she throws in with a most dangerous man who promises to bring her to New York for a few small considerations…

She won’t make it in time. Insanely galvanised to seek retribution, Murdock confronts Fisk in his palatial Manhattan skyscraper and is beaten almost to death. The brutalised Daredevil regains consciousness in a car rapidly filling with water at the bottom of the East River…

Kingpin’s euphoria turns to paranoia as the vehicle is recovered but no body is found…

Utterly beyond rationality, the thing that was once Matt Murdock roams the back alleys in ‘Pariah!’ His friends, however, have not forgotten him, and Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich has been quietly digging. When he discovers why Manolis fabricated charges against Matt, Ben is forced to witness the cop’s fate as a warning…

Lost on the streets as Christmas dawns, Matt endures another brutal beating from petty thugs and crawls off to die. Is it destiny or something else that leads him to a church and a woman he thinks he knows?

…And time passes and Wilson Fisk knows no peace of mind. There is still no corpse…

‘Born Again’ finds the strands coalescing. In a church hospital ward, Matt Murdock emerges from the recuperating husk of his broken mind. The nun called Maggie is infuriatingly familiar but fierce in her determination to make him whole in both body and soul. Elsewhere, although the Kingpin’s ubiquitous tentacles keep Urich quiet and Matt’s friends fully occupied, the big man is not content.

His victory is incomplete and perhaps the vanished foe will return. Thus, Wilson Fisk makes an ill-judged decision and begins calling in carefully-hoarded favours from the high and mighty of the establishment…

As Matt slowly recovers, he has no idea Karen Page is about to re-enter his life, nor that Urich, fed up with being terrorised, is speaking both to the police and on record in the Bugle…

‘Saved’ begins with Murdock battling his way back to fighting fitness in time to save Ben Urich from Fisk’s grotesque assassin. He then reaches out to Melvin Potter. Soon, the resurrected Man Without Fear is ready to make his first move against Fisk…

All subtlety abandoned and gripped by mania, the Kingpin co-opts a military top secret to strike back. Through his illicit connections Fisk forces an Army General to unleash the military’s latest super-soldier in the heart of Murdock’s beloved Hell’s Kitchen, even as his usually impeccable attempts to ensure silence go spectacularly awry when a hit team fails to kill Urich and a vital witness…

Nuke is a Vietnam-obsessed, drug-fuelled, black ops killing machine spouting deranged mantras of ‘God and Country’ and his savage assault on the district certainly draws out Daredevil. Sadly, he also comes to the attention of the nation’s first patriotic guardian and ‘Armageddon’ finds the out-of-control human weapon also confronting his idol Captain America as well as the rest of the mighty Avengers.

From that point on, Fisk’s fate is sealed…

Epic, devious and still shocking, this is a blockbusting tour de force which ranks amongst the very best Fights ‘n’ Tights clashes ever crafted and remains one of the most accessible and entertaining.
© 1985, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Adventures Spider-Man Volume 4: Friendly Neighborhood


By Paul Tobin, Roberto Di Salvo, Matteo Lolli, Terry Pallot & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5257-6

Since its earliest days Marvel has always courted the youngest comicbook audiences. Whether through animated movie or TV tie-ins such as Terrytoons Comics, Mighty Mouse, Super Rabbit Comics, Duckula, assorted Hanna-Barbera and Disney licenses and a myriad of others, or original creations such as Tessie the Typist, Millie the Model, Homer the Happy Ghost, Li’l Kids or even Calvin, the House of Ideas has always understood the necessity of cultivating the next generation of readers.

These days however, accessible child-friendly titles are on the wane and with Marvel’s proprietary characters all over screens large and small, the company usually prefers to create adulterated versions of its own pantheon, making that eventual hoped-for transition to more mature comics as painless as possible.

The process began in 2003 when the company created a Marvel Age line which updated and retold classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, merging it with the remnants of its failed manga-based Tsunami imprint, which was also intended for a junior demographic.

The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures with the core titles transformed into Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. The reconstituted classics were then replaced by all-original yarns.

Additional titles included Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes, The Avengers and Hulk, running until 2010 when they were cancelled and replaced by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man which carried on the established continuities.

This digest-sized collection collects issues #13-16 of that second iteration and sees Paul Tobin firmly in the driving seat, deftly blending action with humour and even inserting a little low level soap opera romance as 16-year old Peter Parker continues his first steps as reluctant yet driven superhero Spider-Man. Even after all the time he has prowled the streets and skyscrapers of New York, fighting crime and injustice, he’s still just a kid learning the ropes and pretty much in over his head all the time…

Illustrated by Roberto Di Salvo, the drama begins with our hero and his Aunt May vacationing in Britain. Whilst the senior Parker checks out antiques shops and farmers’ markets in Devon, her poor nephew has found a spot of bother on Dartmoor, beside British “Scooby Gang” T.U.F.F. (Teenage Ultimate Forteans Forever).

Following reports of monster sightings on the moors, Spidey and Co. unite with jungle lord Ka-Zar and his smilodon ally Zabu to crush a ring of exotic pet smugglers selling dinosaurs stolen from the Savage Land in ‘Raptor of the Baskervilles’.

A tricky task at the best of times, their valiant endeavour almost ends in disaster when the thieves bring in mutant maniac Sabretooth to kill the pesky, interfering kids…

Back in the Big Apple, the Web-spinner then teams up with Police Captain George Stacy to stop a run of armoured car heists perpetrated by Mysterio. ‘The Illusionist’ (Matteo Lolli & Pallot) had liberally dosed the heroes with hallucinogenic gases but was unaware of Spider-Man’s secret weapon: Peter Parker’s mutant girlfriend Sophia Sanduval who can communicate with animals and works as a part-time operative of the Blonde Phantom Detective Agency. “Chat” has got a lot of unusual animal resources at her disposal and is more than willing to lend some assistance…

The critter-whisperer is of even greater use when Doctor Doom seizes control of the UN whilst she and Peter are attending on a school trip. With delegates held hostage and a deadly bomb hidden on the premises, Chat and her bestial buddies play a key role saving the day in ‘Council of Doom’ (Di Salvo art) whilst all Spidey has to do is keep the Iron Dictator and his deadly army of robot doubles distracted. Well, that and not die…

Wrapping up the narrative action is ‘Magically Suspicious’ (Lolli & Pallot) as insane enchanter Baron Mordo seeks to open the gates of hell and let the Elder Eldritch Ones loose on Earth.

To facilitate their return he has pre-emptively unleashed a horde of demonic wraiths to take out the world’s superheroes, leaving only Spider-Man, Chat and Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Stephen Strange free to lead the extremely messy resistance…

These Spidey super stories (accompanied by a cover gallery from Barry Kitson, Patrick Scherberger, Edgar Delgado, Ale Garza & Chris Sotomayor and a big bundle of pin-ups by the likes of John Romita Senior, Terry & Rachel Dodson, Salvador Larroca and more) are all exceptionally enjoyable escapades, but parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action” and would perhaps sit better with older kids…

Fast-paced and impressive, brightly and breezily leavening light-hearted action with loads of sly laughs, this book shows the alternative web-spinner at his wall-crawling best with the violence toned down and “cartooned-up” whilst the stories take great pains to keep the growing youth-oriented sub-plots pot-boiling on but as clear as possible.

Never the success the company hoped, the Marvel Adventures project was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to Disney XD television shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories are still an amazing and arguably more culturally accessible means of introducing character and concepts to kids born two or three generations away from those far-distant 1960s originating events.
© 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Essential X-Men volume 1


By Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Bill Mantlo, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Bob Brown, Tony DeZuniga & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2376-7

In 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Scott “Cyclops” Summers, Bobby “Iceman” Drake, Warren “Angel” Worthington, Jean “Marvel Girl” Grey and Hank “The Beast” McCoy: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier.

He was a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants dubbed Homo Superior; considered by many who knew him as a living saint.

After nearly eight years of eccentric and spectacular adventures the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 during another periodic downturn in superhero comics. Just like in the closing years of the 1940s, mystery men faded away as supernatural mysteries and traditional genre themes dominated the world’s entertainment fields…

Although their title was revived at the end of the year as a cheap reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel universe, whilst the bludgeoning Beast was opportunistically transformed into a monster to cash in on the horror boom.

Then, with sales of the spooky stuff waning in 1975, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas green-lighted a bold one-shot as part of the company’s line of Giant-Size specials and history was made…

This groundbreaking monochrome monolith of mutant mayhem first appeared in 1996, offering an economical, phonebook (remember those?) sized mass-market collection for newbies and neophytes catch-up to the sun-bright excitement of those exuberant and pivotal early stories.

Collecting Giant Size X-Men #1 and issues #94-119 of the definitely “All-New, All-Different” X-Men (spanning May 1975 to March 1978), this titanic tome traces the reinvigorated merry mutants from young, fresh and delightfully under-exposed innovations to the beginnings of their unstoppable ascendancy to ultimate comicbook icons…

Without pause or preamble, the epic voyage begins with a classic mystery monster mash from Giant Size X-Men #1. In ‘Second Genesis!’ Len Wein & Dave Cockrum (the artist hot from his stint reviving DC’s equally eclectic fan-fave super-team The Legion of Super-Heroes) detailed how the original squad – sans new Avengers recruit The Beast – had been lost in action, leaving Xavier to scour Earth and the entire Marvel Universe for replacements.

To old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire was added a one-shot Hulk adversary dubbed the Wolverine, but the bulk of time and attention was lavished upon original creations Kurt Wagner, a demonic-seeming German teleporter codenamed Nightcrawler, African weather “goddess” Ororo Monroe AKA Storm, Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin who could turn into a living steel Colossus and bitter, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who was cajoled into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird.

The second chapter of the epic introductory adventure ‘…And Then There Was One!’ reintroduced battered, depleted but unbowed team-leader Cyclops who swiftly drilled the newcomers into a semblance of readiness before leading them into primordial danger against the monolithic threat of ‘Krakoa… the Island That Walks Like a Man!’

Overcoming the phenomenal terror of a rampaging rapacious mutant eco-system and rescuing the “real” team should have led to another quarterly Giant-Size issue, but so great was the groundswell of support that the follow-up adventure was swiftly reworked into a two-part tale for the rapidly reconfigured comicbook which became a bimonthly home to the new team.

Those epic beginnings are supplanted by a trio of vignettes explaining how the heroes’ formidable abilities function, beginning with ‘Call Him… Cyclops’ from X-Men #43, revealing the secrets of his awesome eye-blasts in pithy quickie by Thomas, Werner Roth and John Verpoorten whilst Stan Lee, Arnold Drake, Roth & Verpoorten performed similar duties with ‘I, the Iceman!’ from #47.

Finally, from X-Men #57 comes a chattily entrancing rundown describing Marvel Girl’s psionic abilities in ‘The Female of the Species!’ from Thomas, Roth & Verpoorten.

X-Men #94 (August 1975) offered ‘The Doomsmith Scenario!’ – plotted by Editor Wein, scripted by Chris Claremont and with Bob McLeod inking man-on-fire Dave Cockrum – in a canny Armageddon-shocker as the newly pared-down strike-squad (minus Sunfire and still-recuperating Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, Havok and Lorna Dane) were despatched by the Beast – calling in a favour from Avenger’s HQ – to stop criminal terrorist Count Nefaria starting an atomic war.

The insidious mastermind had invaded America’s Norad citadel with a gang of artificial superhumans and accidentally escalated a nuclear blackmail scheme into an inescapable countdown to holocaust, leaving the untrained, unprepared mutants to storm in to save the world in epic conclusion ‘Warhunt! (inked by Sam Grainger).

One of the new team didn’t make it back…

X-Men #96 saw Claremont take charge of the writing (albeit with some plotting input from Bill Mantlo) for ‘Night of the Demon!’ Guilt-wracked Cyclops blamed himself for the loss of his team-mate, and in his explosive rage accidentally unleashed a demonic antediluvian horror from earth’s dimmest prehistory for the heroes-in-training to thrash.

The infernal Nagarai would return over and again to bedevil mankind, but the biggest innovation in this issue was the introduction of gun-toting biologist/housekeeper Moira MacTaggert and the first inklings of the return of implacable old adversaries…

Issue #97 started a long-running, cosmically-widescreen storyline with ‘My Brother, My Enemy!’ as Xavier, tormented by visions of interstellar war, tried to take a vacation, just as Havok and Lorna (finally settling on superhero nom de guerre Polaris) attacked: apparently willing servants of a mysterious madman using Cyclops’ old undercover alter ego Eric the Red.

The devastating conflict segued into a spectacular, 3-part saga as pitiless robotic killers returned under the hate-filled auspices of mutantophobic Steven Lang and his mysterious backers of Project Armageddon. The action began with #98’s ‘Merry Christmas, X-Men…the Sentinels Have Returned!’

With coordinated attacks capturing semi-retired Marvel Girl plus Wolverine, Banshee and Xavier, Cyclops and the remaining heroes had to co-opt a space shuttle and storm Lang’s orbital HQ to rescue them in ‘Deathstar Rising!’ (inks by Frank Chiaramonte): another phenomenal all-action episode.

Accompanied by a magical pinup of portraits by Cockrum, the saga concludes on an agonising cliffhanger with the 100th issue anniversary tale. ‘Greater Love Hath no X-Man…’ (with Cockrum inking his own pencils) sees the new X-Men apparently battle the original team before overturning Lang’s monstrous schemes forever.

However, their catastrophic clash had destroyed the only means of escape and, as a colossal solar flare threatened to eradicate the satellite-station, the only chance of survival meant certain death for another X-Man.

As #101 unfolded, scripter Claremont & artist Cockrum were on the on the verge of utterly overturning the accepted status quo of women in comics forever…

The team consisted of old acquaintance and former foe Sean “Banshee” Cassidy, Wolverine, and new creations Nightcrawler, Storm and Colossus, led by field-leader Cyclops and part-timer Jean Grey – still labouring under the nom-de guerre Marvel Girl… but not for much longer…

‘Like a Phoenix from the Ashes’ (inked by Frank Chiaramonte) saw a space-shuttle spectacularly crash into Jamaica Bay. The X-Men had safely travelled in a specially-shielded chamber but Marvel Girl had to needed manually pilot the vehicle, unprotected through a lethal radiation storm.

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

Immediately collapsing, the critically injured girl is rushed to hospital and a grim wait begins.

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

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

‘Who Will Stop the Juggernaut?’ (Grainger inks) sees the inexperienced heroes in over their heads and fighting for their lives, but still finds room to reveal the origins of Storm and provide an explanation for her crippling claustrophobia, before ‘The Fall of the Tower’ cataclysmically concludes the tale with mutant heroes and the Keep’s Leprechaun colony (no, really!) uniting to expel the murderous usurpers.

Although bi-monthly at the time, the series kicked into confident top gear with ‘The Gentleman’s Name is Magneto’ as the weary warriors then divert to Scotland to check on Moira MacTaggert’s island lab: a secret facility containing many mutant menaces the X-Men have previously defeated.

It’s a very bad move since the ever-active Eric has restored the dormant master of magnetism to full power. The mutant terrorist had been turned into a baby – a strangely common fate for villains in those faraway days – but was all grown up again now… and indulging in one last temper tantrum…

Freshly arrived from America, Moira and Cyclops are only just in time to lead a desperate, humiliating retreat from the triumphant Master of Magnetism. Scott doesn’t care: he realises the entire affair has been a feint to draw the heroes away from Xavier and Jean…

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

In the interim a long-standing mystery is solved as the visions which had haunted Xavier are revealed as a psychic connection with a runaway princess from a distant alien empire. Lilandra of the Shi’ar had rebelled against her imperial brother and whilst fleeing had somehow telepathically locked onto her trans-galactic soul-mate Xavier.

As she made her circuitous way to Earth, embedded Shi’ar spy Shakari had assumed the role of Eric the Red and attempted to remove Lilandra’s potential champion before she arrived…

During the blistering battle which follows the X-Men’s dramatic arrival, Shakari snatches up Lilandra and drags her through a stargate to their home galaxy, and with the entire universe imperilled, Xavier urges his team to follow. All Jean has to do is re-open a wormhole to the other side of creation…

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

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

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

This tale (from issue #107) was Cockrum’s last for years. He would eventually return to replace the man who replaced him. John Byrne not only illustrated but also began co-plotting the tales and as the team roster expanded the series rose to even greater heights. It would culminate in the landmark “Dark Phoenix” storyline which saw the death of arguably the book’s most beloved and imaginative character and the departure of the team’s heart and soul. The epic cosmic saga also seemed to fracture the epochal working relationship of Claremont and Byrne.

Within months of publication they went their separate ways: Claremont staying with the mutants whilst Byrne moved on to establish his own reputation as a writer on series such as Alpha Flight, Incredible Hulk and especially his revolutionised Fantastic Four…

There and then though, the X-Men and Starjammers battled the Crystal’s astoundingly deadly automated guardians, as this final chapter saw the newly puissant Phoenix literally save Reality in a mind-blowing display of power and skill.

Trapped inside a staggering other-realm, and appalled and enthralled by the intoxicating, addictive nature of her own might, Phoenix rewove the fabric of Reality and for an encore brought the heroes home again.

The conclusion of this ambitious extended saga was drawn by Byrne and inked by Terry Austin and their visual virtuosity was to become an industry bench-mark as the X-Men grew in popularity and complexity.

However, even though the bravura high-octane thrills of “Armageddon Now” seemed an unrepeatable high-point, Claremont & Byrne had only started. The best was still to come…

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

Next follows a rather limp and hasty fill-in as ‘The “X”-Sanction’ (illustrated by Tony DeZuniga & Cockrum), sees cyborg mercenary Warhawk infiltrating the mansion in search of “intel” for a mysterious, unspecified master before getting his shiny silver head handed to him…

After a magical pinup of the extended team by Arthur Adams (the cover of Classic X-Men #1 from 1986) the saga got back on track with ‘Mindgames’ (Claremont, Byrne & Austin) as Beast visits a circus in search of the new team which has been missing for weeks.

His presence disrupts a devilish scheme by Mesmero to subjugate the mutant heroes through false memories and implanted personalities but the reawakened team’s vengeance is forestalled when their greatest enemy ambushes them…

In X-Men #112 they fight and fail leaving ‘Magneto Triumphant!’ and his enemies helplessly imprisoned miles beneath Antarctica in the follow-up ‘Showdown!’ However, by the time the Homo Superior tyrant returns after terrorising the humans of Australia, the X-Men have broken free and are waiting for him…

In the apocalyptic battle which follows the base is utterly destroyed and Magneto grievously wounded. With boiling lava flooding everywhere, only Beast and Phoenix manage to reach the surface and in horror realise they are the only survivors…

They could not be more wrong. Unable to go up, the remaining mutants tunnelled downwards and ‘Desolation!’ turned to joy as they emerged into the antediluvian wilderness dubbed the Savage Land.

Linking up with old ally Ka-Zar, the team slowly recover in a dinosaur-filled paradise but the idyll is shattered when former foe Karl Lykos succumbs to an old addiction and absorbs their mutant energies to become lethal leather-winged predator Sauron…

His ‘Visions of Death!’ are readily dispelled by the assembled heroes, but he’s just the first course in a campaign of terror after barbarian queen Zaladane revives proto-god Garokk as the figurehead of her army of conquest…

When their meddling disrupts the tropical climate of the sub-polar region, Ka-Zar and the X-Men invade their noxious citadel ‘To Save the Savage Land’ but the battle demands the best and worst from the young warriors before the job is done…

With the distasteful task completed, the mutants opt to try a perilous sea-passage back to the outside world…

X-Men #117 begins with their rescue by an Antarctic exploration vessel and slow torturous voyage to Japan, before lapsing into an untold tale of Charles Xavier before he lost the use of his legs. ‘Psi War!’ is full of clever in-filling insights as it details how the dispirited, restless young telepath fetched up in Cairo and met his first “Evil Mutant”…

Amahl Farouk used his psionic abilities to rule the city’s underworld: a depraved, debauched monster who thought he was beyond justice. The enraged, disgusted Xavier defeated the beast and in doing so found his life’s purpose…

This initial volume concludes with a revelatory two-part epic as the X-Men – still believed dead by Xavier, Jean and the wider world – arrive in Agarashima just as the port is being devastated by a vast firestorm. ‘The Submergence of Japan!’ (inked by Ricardo Villamonte) saw tectonic terrorist Moses Magnum undertake a most audacious blackmail scheme, countered by the valiant mutants who had briefly reunited with old – and still belligerently surly – comrade Sunfire.

Perhaps he was just surprised to discover Wolverine had unsuspected connections to Japan and had turned the head of local highborn maid Lady Mariko. A bigger surprise awaited the American specialist the government had consulted. Misty Knight was Jean Grey’s roommate in Manhattan and grieved with her at the X-Men’s deaths. Now she has to tell Cyclops his girl has moved on and Professor X has abandoned Earth for the Shi’ar Empire…

Of course all of that might be moot if they can’t stop Magnum and his Mandroid army sinking Japan into the Pacific, but after a catastrophic conflict inside a volcano there’s a seasonal reunion in store for all in the Austin inked ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas…’

The immortal epics compiled here are available in numerous formats (including colour softcover editions and luxurious and enticing hardbacks) but there’s just something both immediate and emphatic about seeing them in stark, potent monochrome…

Entertaining, groundbreaking and incredibly intoxicating, these adventures are an invaluable grounding in contemporary fights ‘n’ tights fiction no fan or casual reader can be allowed to ignore.
© 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1996 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc/Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Death Sentence: London


By Montynero & Martin Simmonds with John Pearson & Jimmy Betancourt (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-507-3

For most of us Sex Sells. If that’s not you and you’re easily shocked or offended, stop Right Here, Right Now and come back for a less grown-up review tomorrow.

As for the salacious, tawdry, vulgar majority of humanity, however, fornication is a force that will not be resisted and we’re always gagging for it.

One outrageous potential result of that inescapable biological imperative was recently explored in a dark, decadent fable from writer, artist and games designer Montynero who, with illustrator Mike Dowling, crafted a ferociously effective satire on modern attitudes in Death Sentence.

After an initial and truncated appearance in Clint Magazine in 2012 the sexily sordid saga was retooled as a breakthrough 6-issue miniseries which took the comics world by storm when released in 2013.

Something that good was bound to be tried again and a series followed, of which Death Sentence: London – illustrated now by Martin Simmonds – is but the first compulsive compilation…

In the World That’s Coming a sexually transmitted disease known as G+ is spreading rapidly through the population. It is invariably fatal and kills in six months. For that length of time, however, the victim “suffers” from increased vigour, stamina, sex drive and even develops super powers…

The true extent of the threat only became apparent to the public after media darling, affirmed libertine and proud G-Plus carrier David “Monty” Montgomery used his exponentially-expanding psychic powers to kill Britain’s government, royal family and one million Londoners.

Having crowned himself King of Britain, Monty was only stopped by two other critically enhanced G-Plus sufferers: frustrated artist Verity Fette and shambolic fading rock star Daniel Waissel AKA Weasel.

More through luck than effort – and despite the interference of a UN Taskforce, covert US super-weapon deployment and best attempts of the British military – the wonder kids narrowly managed to kill Monty in a blockbusting super-battle televised around the world. The conflagration especially terrified the assorted world governments who collectively feared their days of ruling the masses were over…

Britain’s bosses had been aware of the growing crisis for ages and had already tasked its shadowy Department of National Security to deal with it. The usual tactics of murder, blackmail, disinformation and cover-ups proved ineffective, however, and soon something else was being considered.

At least Verity died in the final battle and what’s left of the UK’s Powers-That-Be now only have sybaritic, self-destructive Weasel to manage until the disease finally kills him…

In the meantime, on a remote Scottish island, a very nice old lady runs a vast secret base beneath the heather where she and her team toil away with no sense of scientific niceties – or ethics – as they strive to find a cure for G+…

Dr. Lunn had been helping sufferers for quite a while. She crash-trained Verity and Weasel in the use of their abilities (also providing space, time, tuition and medical-grade drugs) before siccing them on the out-of-control Monty…

Following handy recap ‘Previously in Death Sentence’ the story resumes with ‘“A” Bomb on Wardour Street’ as Weasel is riotously fêted by the metropolitan populace whilst über-ambitious Old Etonian London Mayor Tony Bronson seethes and schemes. There’s a power-vacuum in the country at this moment and he’ll be buggered if he lets anyone else fill it… especially some oikish, pox-ridden musical miscreant…

An ocean away, undercover Fed Jeb Mulgrew is closing his latest case when everything goes tits-up after his targets display out of control super-powers. Luckily his keenly-observing back-up team are equipped with the latest horrific innovation in anti-G-Plus ordnance…

At City Hall, Tony’s latest opportunistic sound-bite does nothing to slow the looting tearing up the remainder of London; much of it seemingly orchestrated by new dissident movement the Invaders. The spreading violence even reaches a nearly deserted fast-food franchise where an armed robbery is foiled, giving first notice that Verity might not be dead after all…

As Jeb tries to reconnect with his wife and home in Texas, London sees another bloody crime stopped by the enigmatic Artgirl and Tony snaps, declaring martial law in His city…

Each episode is followed by a carefully-tailored supplemental feature and here ‘The Age of the Super G’ exposes the Americans’ thermonuclear contribution to Monty’s demise before the comics saga continues with ‘Uprising’ as Weasel attends a rally in Brixton. The borough is in the process of declaring its independence and seceding from Tory-infested London and big-business corrupted Britain…

Bronson’s response is uniquely typical: ramping up military action, closing down social media and arresting G+ carriers whilst ordering the public to stop having sex until a cure is found.

When tanks roll up during a memorial service, Weasel is just in the mood to share the misery he’s been feeling since Monty killed his little boy, but in the victorious aftermath it’s the anonymous mask-wearing Invaders who are making converts and dictating policy on the streets of Brixton…

In Texas, things just aren’t working out for Jeb so when his bosses ask him to infiltrate British intelligence and steal their potential cure for the super-sex plague, he can’t wait to start…

After a faux magazine feature on Creighton Baines and how his alien-masked Invaders haunt protest sites and agitate for social change, the story starts again in ‘Eton Rifles’ as dedicated journalist Fincham is handed a certain dossier by a mole with suspicious intent. Soon the Chronicle‘s top scribe is making things hot for golden gibbon-esque, sexually-deviant Tony…

As tensions escalate everywhere, Verity assuages her own through increasingly bawdy encounters as she drifts ever closer to isolated, segregated, curfew-enduring Brixton. She has no idea that she’s been targeted for immediate assassination, but then again, her would-be executioners have no idea how powerful she now is…

Preceded by excerpts from reputable rag The Chimes – detailing the rise of international angst and the stalling of the World Powers debating a space-based weapons ban – ‘Sitting Here’ sees a turf war brewing between local gangster Retch and weed-dealing newcomer Roots. Both have their supporters and both are high-functioning G-Plus victims, with all the deadly benefits that condition brings…

As Tony’s Territorials rumble into Brixton savage violence erupts, but he’s elsewhere, busily indulging his nasty copulatory habits. Fincham, meanwhile, is tracking a rumour about a Scottish Island and a woman who might have a cure, even as Retch and Roots clash for control of their streets…

Following snippets from The Chronicle News – revealing the not-so-quiet war for dominance between power-hungry Mayor Bronson and top surviving aspirant Party-leader Michael DeGraves – the Mayor gets a rude and ribald awakening as the winner of the Brixton gang rumble exposes the hypocrite’s nasty upper-class peccadilloes in ‘Burn’. Across town, Verity gives doggedly determined Fincham an exclusive, comprehensive interview which will never see print…

Later, as Bronson strives frantically to keep ahead of the political game, an intimate well-wisher makes a big mistake by approaching G+ sufferers in tune with the old guard and hereditary rulers. They can be of immense service to this Sceptr’d Isle… after they pass a training course at a facility on a certain Scottish island…

An excerpt from Creative Review debating ‘Artgirl: High Art of Graffiti?’ leads the tale to a temporary halt in ‘Kill at Will’ as Dr. Lunn welcomes a new bioanalyst – who looks remarkably like American Jeb Mulgrew – to her little secret empire. In Brixton, meanwhile, the military are moving in to wipe out all resistance but are totally unprepared for the unlikely, unstable convergence of all London’s omega-level G-Plus super-beings waiting for them…

And then long-range telemetry shows that Verity’s condition has taken a terrifying and impossible turn nobody could have predicted…

To Be Continued…

Packed with plenty of bonus features including a breathtaking covers and variants selection by Montynero, Death Sentence: London is an uproarious adult fairytale blending superhero tropes with outrageous cheek, deliriously shocking situations and in-your-face irreverence.

Buy it, read it and spread it around to anyone you fancy… and maybe some you don’t…
Death Sentence ™ and © 2014 Montynero, Mike Dowling and Titan Comics. All rights reserved.