X-Men volume 2: Muertas


By Brian Wood, Terry & Rachel Dodson, Clay Man, Barry Kitson, Kris Anka, Scott Hanna, Karl Kesel, Terry Pallot & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-592-5

Since its revival in 1975 Marvel’s Mutant franchise has always strongly featured powerful and often controversial female characters, so when the fourth volume of the adjectiveless X-Men launched it was no real surprise to see that the leading line-up comprised exclusively women warriors.

This second collected chronicle, scripted by Brian Wood, re-presenting issues #7-12 (from November 2013 to March 2014) takes the conceit a stage further by introducing an all-girl gang of baddies to the mix…

The eponymous triptych ‘Muertas’ – lavishly illustrated by Terry & Rachel Dodson and Barry Kitson, Scott Hanna, Karl Kesel & Terry Pallot – commences the sinister suspense as Colombian cartel princess Ana Cortes assumes her recently deceased dad’s tenuous position at the head of the bloody table and, to consolidate her position, invites underworld tech-facilitator Reiko to implant nanites and memory downloads that will body-modify the ambitious teenager.

Her first mistake is allowing her body to become the physical host of carnage-crazed mutant-hating cyber-assassin Yuriko Oyama AKA Lady Deathstrike…

At the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, vampire mutant Jubilation Lee is happily hearing how her official adoption of mystery baby Shogo is proceeding apace when multi-powered and recently resurrected wonder woman Monet St. Croix returns to the fold, looking for a place to rest and recuperate…

As the former Generation X team-mates verbally spar upstairs, down deep in the bowels of the school bestial scientist Hank McCoy is assessing the changes in former cop Karima Shapandar: a human friend previously infected with Omega Sentinel systems and transformed into the ultimate mutant eradicator. Apparently her lethal state was more or less cured during a horrifying battle against an ancient and malevolently sentient meteor-borne infection… Arkea.

When the Earth was still brand new and cooling, a pair of siblings manifested. They were immensely powerful and hated each other from the very start. They clashed and the male kicked his defeated sister loose into the cosmos while he stayed here…

Billions of years later, John Sublime – current body of the victorious sentient bacterial life form – fought the X-Men. In various forms he had continuously survived on Earth since life began but was no friend to the subspecies Homo Superior.

Then one momentous day he surrendered himself to his enemies at the Jean Grey School in the light of an urgently manifesting mutual threat…

Sublime abides by possessing biological organisms, and he came to warn the heroes that his sister – who performs the same trick with technology and electricity as well as meat – has returned to the planet, hungry for revenge on him and wanting to control everything else in existence…

Possessing humans and mutants alike, Arkea determined to supersede life on Earth, but her possession, upgrading and alteration of suitable organic-vehicles led to a cataclysmic confrontation (see X-Men: Primer) and she was declared destroyed – but for so many beings in the Marvel Universe, Death is neither fatal nor final…

Back in the now Lady Deathstrike makes her move, sending an army of cartel soldiers to steal the Omega Sentinel from the X-School, but has to change her plans on the fly when Monet and the now merely-mortal Karima drive off her army of gun-toting thugs.

Forced to regroup and reassess, Ana/Yuriko opts to recruit her own super-powered gang and begins by hiring manic multiple personality mutant assassin Typhoid Mary who goes on a daring reconnaissance mission which nets Deathstrike all the files on Arkea and even a living sample of the inimical electronic nemesis.

Ana foolishly considers the specimen as the ultimate body upgrade and even the formidable Sublime cannot convince her otherwise, but after a brief battle the sample proves to be dead. Sadly during the skirmish Yuriko learned that the Arkea hive consciousness may still be alive in other meteoric shards…

By the time Monet tracks him down, Deathstrike and Typhoid are in Norway seeking to extract a promising fallen star where they uncovered the prison of Amora the Enchantress; stripped of her Asgardian magic and locked in a force bubble by the Mighty Thor.

Seduced by the promise of her powers fully restored by the thing in the meteorite, Amora enlists in Ana’s army, a vengeful association she calls The Sisterhood…

With the world facing imminent destruction from a new Arkea assault, Storm, Psylocke, Rachel Grey (the alternate Earth daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey dubbed Marvel Girl) and Jubilee call on Israeli mutant hero and Mossad agent Sabra who, along with mystery superman Gabriel Shepherd, track Deathstrike and new Arkea to Dubai.

Before the team can strike, however, Monet streaks in, displaying all her terrifying power, but is too late. Arkea has possessed technician Reiko and begun augmenting the others… not for their benefit, but her own…

Extending her control across the planet, Arkea activates an army of broken, abandoned Sentinels, sending them marching across the Pacific sea floor to attack America…

The crisis grows in the second trilogy ‘Ghosts’ (art by Kris Anka & Clay Man) as, fleeing Monet’s blockbusting attack, Arkea drags her increasingly scared acolytes across the world, intent on augmenting the ranks of the Sisterhood by resurrecting two of the most lethal women ever to have faced the X-Men.

As Jubilee leads a squad of older students from the School to Catalina Island to intercept the Sentinels, in New York Arkea/Reiko uses Amora’s restored Asgardian magic to reanimate the immortal life-leeching horror Selene and Ana realises the full gravity of what she has unleashed…

As a too-late act of redemption, the repentant Cortes summons the X-Men to the Sisterhood’s location, but by the time the resurgent heroes arrive Arkea has excised Ana and similarly revived the hellish Red Queen Madelyne Pryor…

Sadly for the cocksure bacterial conqueror, her ungrateful revenants are more than happy to trade a threat to human existence in exchange for their own immediate survival, but as the X-Men spectacularly end the threat of Arkea again, more than one triumphantly weary woman warrior is forced to wonder if they the traded a greater evil for exigent salvation…

Fast-paced, action-packed and stuffed with engaging soap opera riffs, this bombastic extremely enjoyable collection is merely a prelude to greater Fights ‘n’ Tights traumas to come but is at least amply augmented by a lovely cover-and-variants gallery by the Dodsons, John Cassaday, David Marquez & Gerard.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

All-New X-Men volume 4: All-Different


By Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Brandon Peterson, Mahmud Asrar, Wade Von Grawbadger, Chris Claremont, Bob McLeod, Stan Lee, Louise & Walter Simonson, Roy Thomas & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-585-7

At the dawn of the Marvel Age, some very special kids were chosen by wheelchair-bound telepath Charles Xavier. Gloomy Scott Summers, ebullient Bobby Drake, trust fund brat Warren Worthington III, insular Jean Grey and simian genius Henry McCoy were gathered up by the enigmatic Professor X – a man dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between massed humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants, no matter what the cost.

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

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

During the cataclysmic events of Avengers versus X-Men the idealistic, staunch and steadfast Cyclops killed Xavier before eventually joining with old comrade Magik and former foes Magneto and Emma Frost in a hard-line alliance devoted to preserving mutant lives at the cost, if necessary, of human ones. This new attitude appalled many of their former associates.

Abandoning Scott, his surviving team-mates Beast and Iceman sided with second generation X-Men such as Wolverine, Psylocke and Storm: staying true to Xavier’s dream. Opting to protect and train the coming X-generation of mutant kids whilst honouring Xavier’s Dream, they pursued his proven processes and methods at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning under the direction of new Head Professor Kitty Pryde…

Things got really complicated after McCoy discovered he was dying. Obsessed with the idea that the naive original First Class of X-Men might be able to sway Mutant Enemy Terrorist No. 1 back from his current path of doctrinaire madness and ideological race war insanity, the Beast used time-travel tech in a last-ditch attempt to prevent a species war.

By bringing the five youngsters back to the future he hoped to reason with the debased, potentially deranged Cyclops and fix everything before his impending death…

The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than shocking Scott back to his senses, the confrontation hardened the renegade’s heart and strengthened his resolve. Moreover, even after the younger McCoy miraculously cured his older self, young Henry and the rest of the X-Kids refused to go home until “bad” Scott was stopped…

The two sides of the mutant question clashed constantly, as the modern world experienced constant change and attacks from all quarters. Amid the rising chaos new mutants began appearing in increasing numbers, all with more impressive talents than ever before.

Through careful orchestration, brilliant media massaging and by avoiding visibly unprovoked acts of violence, Cyclops’ faction began winning the trust and respect of many oppressed sectors of humanity: the poor, the disenfranchised and rebellious, the young…

Following a very public humiliation of the Government-sponsored human/mutant team Uncanny Avengers, the internecine mutant conflict heated up when Summers – utterly convinced of his species’ inevitable extinction at human hands – offered a place to any student wishing to join his own academy: one dedicated to training mutants to fight and survive rather than wait for mankind to turn on them…

The bold ploy succeeded in luring away Angel and the psychically conjoined, emotionally-challenged Stepford SistersCeleste, Mindee and Phoebe, before the situation was further muddied in X-Men: Battle of the Atom when both X-Men and Brotherhood of Mutants radicals from the future travelled back to address the issue of the time-displaced First Class.

In the resultant clashes the kids were rendered incapable of returning to their original place in history…

In the aftermath, with the Jean Grey School forever changed, Pryde was unwilling to remain with her former colleagues and joined the Extinction Team. The First Class – now willing but unable to resume their postponed lives and tragic destinies – followed her, making Cyclops’ faction immeasurably stronger…

Scripted by Brian Michael Bendis, AllDifferent re-presents All-New X-Men #18-21 from January to March 2014 and also includes the contents of the celebratory anthology X-Men Gold #1, as well as a stunning cover-&-variants gallery by Brandon Peterson, Julian Totino Tedesco, Kevin Nowlan & Chris Sotomayor, Olivier Coipel, Stuart Immonen and even a photo-cover featuring the TV sensations from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Illustrated by Immonen with Wade Von Grawbadger, the tense suspense begins as Kitty renews her childhood friendship with Illyana “Magik” Rasputin whilst the original X-class settle into the secret Extinction base.

Buried in the wilds of Canada it was once the Weapon X facility where Wolverine and so many other mutants were ruthlessly experimented upon and “improved”…

Although heartily welcomed by Angel the newbies are experiencing a few problems. Celeste seems determined to pick a fight with rapidly-evolving telepath Jean and Henry is troubled that Magneto is so different from the raving maniac who (by his reckoning) was trying to slaughter them all mere relativistic weeks ago…

The simian supermind has some other difficulties, paramount of which is Jean’s completely ignoring their recent passionate clinch. Scott the younger is also troubled by that. He’s seen all the records and knows that he and Jean are destined to marry, but she seems determined to change that fate at all costs…

Despite all the teen tumult, Kitty continues training her charges: resolute that they will become warriors capable of surviving everything the uncertain future will throw at them. The first challenge comes almost immediately as mutant-detection system Cerebro pinpoints a potential new candidate in Miami…

Peterson limns the second chapter as Magik warps the young X-Men in just as their target is ambushed by a band of Purifier zealots: bible-bashing fanatics who believe mutants are unholy abominations God ordered them to eradicate. A tremendous battle ensues and Jean’s still-uncontrollable telepathy gives her a peek inside the tormentors’ ugly minds, just as the police arrive.

Idealistic Scott completely misreads the situation and when he tries to hand the Purifiers over, the terrified cops open fire on the scary mutants…

Kitty meanwhile has followed the desperate girl who was the Purifiers’ target and is shocked to see another former student. Thankfully Magik is able to shift everybody back to the hidden academy before events got too bloody…

Laura Kinney was dubbed X-23 when she was a subject of the Weapon X sadists and it takes some time before she reconciles to being back in that now sanitised hellhole.

She is a teenaged clone grown from Wolverine’s DNA, with all his abilities and a lot of psychological problems, but as she slowly adapts to her new normal she finds herself strangely attracted to young Scott. More worrying is the fact that it might be mutual…

Nevertheless, soon after Kitty and Illyana lead the indignant, righteously enraged student team and Laura in a raid on the Florida Purifiers, only to be totally overwhelmed by their leader who possesses a metahuman power they cannot withstand…

In a telling flashback (illustrated by Mahmud Asrar and referencing the landmark X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills), it is revealed that pious bigot and demagogue Reverend William Stryker had allied with the techno-terrorists of Advanced Idea Mechanics to treat his son for an embarrassing and unwelcome “illness”, before Peterson resumes the present-day drama with the juvenile X-Men being tormented and tortured by the now-adult and even crazier than his dad junior Stryker.

When current A.I.M. supreme scientist Monica Rappaccini answers his call, he very foolishly ignores her advice not to harm the time-displaced kids, uncaring of the potential for undoing the entire universe, but his hubristic gloating and Rappaccini’s greedy harvesting of priceless mutant DNA gives the trussed-up teens time to recover and their unified counterattack soon has the fanatic’s forces in full retreat and staring real retribution in the face…

To Be Continued…

This volume also collects assorted in-filling untold tales from the ever-changing team’s history, created for 50th Anniversary one-shot X-Men Gold #1. The parade of all-star vignettes begins with an untitled novelette by Chris Claremont & Bob McLeod, set soon after Rogue joined the team and following the heroes return from Japan. Focussing on young Kitty Pryde, the tale pits the assembled mutants and freebooting Starjammers against a skyscraper-sized Sentinel and its constantly evolving progeny…

Following that is ‘The Sorrow Beneath the Sport’: a nostalgic romp by Stan Lee and Louise Simonson, riotously rendered by Walter Simonson wherein freshly inducted First Class Cyclops, Angel, Beast and Iceman spectacularly spar in an oafish contest to decide who gets to date new student Marvel Girl, after which Roy Thomas & Patrick Olliffe detail the first calamitous meeting of Banshee and Sunfire on their way to the fateful rendezvous with Professor X in Giant-Size X-Men #1…

‘Options!’, by Len Wein & Jorge Molina, adds a sidebar to that landmark tale as crazy Canadian secret agent Wolverine assesses his new team-mates and calculates the best way to kill each of them should the need arise before ‘Dreams Brighten’ (Fabian Nicieza & Salvador Larroca) wraps things up with a peek at a hard-won utopia where Xavier and Magneto count the cost of achieving their Homo Superior Promised Land…

Enthralling and engaging, All-Different also includes AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
™ & © 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

Essential Iron Man volume 5


By Mike Friedrich, Bill Mantlo, Len Wein, Roger Slifer, Steve Gerber, P. Craig Russell, George Tuska, Arvell Jones, Keith Pollard, Chic Stone, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-6733-4

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

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

Conceived in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis at a time when the economy was booming and “Commie-bashing” was America’s favourite national pastime, the emergence of a suave, gleaming new Edison, using Yankee ingenuity, wealth and invention to safeguard the Land of the Free and better the World, seemed an obvious development.

Combining the then-sacrosanct tenet that technology and business in unison could solve any problem with the universal imagery of noble paladins battling evil, the Invincible Iron Man seemed an infallibly successful proposition.

Whilst Stark was the acceptable face of 1960s Capitalism – a celebrity millionaire industrialist/scientist and alternatively a benevolent all-conquering hero when clad in the super-scientific armour of his secret alter-ego – the turbulent tone of the 1970s quickly relegated Iron Man’s rather unctuous, “can-do” image to the dustbin of history and, with ecological disaster and social catastrophe from the myriad abuses of big business forming the new zeitgeists of the young, the Golden Avenger and Stark International were soon confronting some tricky questions from the increasingly politically savvy readership.

With glamour, money and fancy gadgetry not quite so cool anymore the questing voices of a new generation of writers began posing uncomfortable questions in the pages of a series that was once the bastion of militarised America …

This sixth mammoth monochrome compilation covers another new start and change of direction for the Steely Centurion out of that transitional period, reprinting Iron Man #62-75, 77-87 and Annual #3 (September 1973 to June 1976): a period when the title experienced an unprecedented and often uncomfortable number of creative personnel changes even as the nation suffered radical and divisive schisms of ideology, an energy crisis and disco…

With Mike Friedrich scripting, the action opens in Detroit where Stark is inspecting one of his factories until former Maggia assassin ‘Whiplash Returns!’ (art by P. Craig Russell, Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia & John Romita Sr.), raging for revenge and especially ticked off that his girlfriend has been made his boss, after which an extended epic began in #63 with ‘Enter: Dr. Spectrum’, illustrated by George Tuska & Esposito.

Here, as Tony Stark relentlessly – and fruitlessly – romantically pursues pacifist dissident Roxie Gilbert in Detroit, obnoxious Ugandan financier and diplomat Dr. Kinji Obatu visited the Long Island plant and was attacked by a gang of masked thugs.

The assault was repelled thanks to the timely assistance of stand-in Iron Man Eddie March, who was promptly offered a bodyguard job by the creepy ambassador and invited to accompany him to a meeting with Stark in “Motor City”.

No sooner did they arrive however than photonic fiend Dr. Spectrum ambushed the inventor, only to be driven off by the Armoured Avenger after a titanic and costly struggle. A far more serious problem emerged later when old friend Happy Hogan accused Tony of having an affair with his wife Pepper…

Spectrum struck again in the next issue, with a similar lack of success, before Happy blew his top and took a swing at Stark, but that confrontation was curtailed when a gigantic monster kidnapped the just-arrived Obatu in ‘Rokk Cometh!’

When the beast targeted Roxie, the exhausted Iron Man intervened but was too drained to resist the relentless Spectrum…

Issue #65 revealed ‘The Cutting Edge of Death!’ when the Golden Avenger learned the true parasitical nature of Spectrum’s Power Prism as it transferred itself from the wilfully disobedient villain Obatu to the worn-out hero. Its glee was short lived though as the possessed Iron Man was challenged by recently arrived comrade the Mighty Thor, resulting in a blockbusting ‘Battle Royal!’ which only ended after the Thunderer crushed the crystal conqueror to discovered the dying man inside the armour was neither Tony Stark nor Obatu…

As a consequence of that climactic clash of myth and mechanism, IM #67 saw the impostor Iron Man temporarily mutated by Stark’s medical miracle machine the Cobalt Enervator into a rampaging monster in ‘Return of the Freak!’ but no sooner had the real Armoured Avenger and surgeon Don Blake (who we all know was Thor back then) stopped and saved the berserk victim than Stark was drawn into another conflict in South East Asia…

Iron Man #68-71 (June to November 1974) was the opening sortie in a multi-part epic which saw mystic menace The Black Lama foment a war amongst the world’s greatest villains with ultimate power, inner peace and a magical Golden Globe as the promised prizes.

Written by Mike Friedrich and illustrated by Tuska & Mike Esposito, it began in Vietnam on the ‘Night of the Rising Sun!’ where the Mandarin struggled to free his consciousness, currently trapped within the dying body of Russian super-villain the Unicorn.

Roxie had dragged Stark to the recently “liberated” People’s Republic in search of Eddie March’s lost brother Marty, a POW missing since the last days of the war. Before long however the Americans were separated when Japanese ultra-nationalist, ambulatory atomic inferno and sometime X-Man Sunfire was tricked into attacking the intrusive Yankee Imperialists.

The attack abruptly ended after Mandarin shanghaied the Solar Samurai and used his mutant energies to power a mind-transfer back into his own body and, reinstated in his original form, the Chinese Conqueror began his own campaign of combat in earnest, eager to regain his castle from rival oriental overlord The Yellow Claw.

Firstly, though, he had to crush Iron Man who had tracked him down and freed Sunfire in ‘Confrontation!’ That bombastic battle ended when the Golden Avenger was rendered unconscious and thrown into space…

‘Who Shall Stop… Ultimo?’ then found the reactivated giant robot-monster attacking the Mandarin’s castle as the sinister Celestial duelled the Claw to the death, with both Iron Man and Sunfire arriving too late and forced to mop up the sole survivor of the contest in ‘Battle: Tooth and Yellow Claw! (Confrontation Part 3)‘…

After all the Eastern Armageddon a change of pace was called for, so Stark took in the San Diego Comicon in #72’s ‘Convention of Fear!’ (by Friedrich, Tuska & Colletta from a plot by Barry Alfonso) only to find himself ambushed by fellow incognito attendees Whiplash, Man-Bull and The Melter who were made an offer they should have refused by the ubiquitous Black Lama…

Next issue the Super-Villain War kicked into high gear with ‘Turnabout: a Most Foul Play!’ (art by Arvell Jones, Keith Pollard & Jim Mooney and a premise by letterer Tom Orzechowski).

After Pepper, Happy and Tony buried the hatchet at Stark International’s Manila plant, Iron Man returned to Vietnam and a deadly clash with the Crimson Dynamo in a hidden high-tech jungle city which was subsequently razed to the ground by their explosive combat.

Iron Man #74’s ‘The MODOK Machine!’ (Jones, Pollard & Dick Ayers) brought the Black Lama’s contest to the fore as the Mad Thinker electronically overrode the Avenger’s armour and set helpless passenger Stark upon the malevolent master of AIM…

Without autonomy, the Golden Gladiator was easily overwhelmed and ‘Slave to the Power Imperious!’ (inked by Chic Stone) saw him dragged back to the Thinker’s lair and laid low by a strange psychic episode even as MODOK finished his foe and apparently turned the still-enslaved steel-shod hero on his next opponent… the Yellow Claw.

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

The tale ended on a twisty cliffhanger as the Claw destroyed MODOK and his clockwork puppet Avenger, only to discover that the Thinker was not only still alive but still held the real Iron Man captive.

That was quite unfortunate as the following issue – #76 – blew its deadline and had to reprint Iron Man #9 (represented here by just the cover) before Friedrich, Jones & Stone’s ‘I Cry: Revenge!’ saw the fighting mad hero break free of the Thinker’s control, just as Black Lama teleported the Claw in to finish his final felonious opponent.

Still extremely ticked off, the Armoured Avenger took on all comers but was ambushed by the late arriving Firebrand who had been psionically drawn into the melee.

As Iron Man went down, the Lama declared non-contestant Firebrand the ultimate victor, explaining he had come from an alternate universe before duping the unstable and uncaring rabble-rouser into re-crossing the dimensional void with him…

Although a certifiable maniac and cold-blooded killer, Firebrand was also Roxie Gilbert’s brother and the groggily awakening Iron Man felt honour-bound to follow him through the rapidly closing portal to elsewhere…

The deadline problems persisted, however, and the next two issues were both hasty fill-in tales, beginning with #78’s ‘Long Time Gone’ by Bill Mantlo, Tuska & Vince Colletta which harked back to the Avenger’s early days and a mission during the Vietnam war which first brought home the cost in blood and misery that Stark’s munitions building had caused, whilst ‘Midnite on Murder Mountain!’ (scripted by Friedrich) saw the hero emphatically end the scientific abominations wrought by deranged geneticist and determined mind-swapper Professor Kurakill…

At last Iron Man #80 returned to the ongoing inter-dimensional saga as ‘Mission into Madness!’ by Friedrich, Chic Stone & Colletta, saw the multiversal voyagers arrive in a very different America where warring kingdoms and principalities jostled for prestige, position and power.

Here the Lama was revealed as King Jerald of Grand Rapids, a ruler under threat from outside invaders and insidious usurpers within. He’d come to Earth looking for powerful allies but had not realised that travel to other realms slowly drove non-indigenous residents completely crazy…

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

With the extended epic finally completed Mike Friedrich moved on, and Iron Man #82 welcomed a new era and tone as Len Wein, Herb Trimpe, Marie Severin & Jack Abel revamped the armour just in time for the Red Ghost and his super simians to kidnap super genius Tony Stark in ‘Plunder of the Apes!’

Debuting in that issue was NYPD detective Michael O’Brien, who held Tony responsible and accountable for the tragic death of his brother Kevin. The researcher had been Stark’s confidante until his mind snapped and he died wearing a prototype suit of Guardsman armour, but Mike smelled a cover-up…

IM #83 revealed ‘The Rage of the Red Ghost!’ (inked by Marie Severin) as the deranged Russian forced Stark to cure his gradual dispersal into his component atoms only to realise, following a bombastic battle, that the inventor had outwitted him yet again, after which Wein, Roger Slifer, Trimpe & John Tartaglione detailed how the Enervator again turned the grievously injured Happy into a mindless monster, but this time flooded him with so much Cobalt radiation that he became a ticking inhuman nuke on the ‘Night of the Walking Bomb!’

The tense tick-tock to doom was narrowly and spectacularly stopped in ‘…And the Freak Shall Inherit the Earth!’ (Slifer w/Wein, Trimpe, Severin) after which Mantlo, Tuska & Colletta revived and revamped one of the Golden Avenger’s oldest and least remembered rogues when disgraced thermal technologist Gregor Shapanka dumped his loser status as Jack Frost and attacked Stark International in a deadly new guise in # 86’s ‘The Gentleman’s Name is Blizzard!’

Despite his improved image the sub-zero zealot couldn’t quite close ‘The Icy Hand of Death!’, leaving this cracking chronicle to conclude with Iron Man Annual #3 (June 1976) and ‘More or Less… the Return of the Molecule Man!’ by Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema & Abel.

Whilst Tony Stark looked into developing some soggy Florida real estate,  a little girl found a strange wand and was possessed and transformed by the consciousness of one of the most powerful creatures in existence…

Although Iron Man was helpless to combat the reality-warping attacks of the combination petulant girl/narcissistic maniac, luckily for the universe, the shambling elemental shocker dubbed Man-Thing had no mind to mess with or conscience to trouble…

Finally closing the cover on this stellar compilation is a short cover gallery from the all-reprint Iron Man Annual #1 and 2 and Giant-Size Iron Man #1.

With this volume Marvel completely entrenched itself in the camp of the young and the restless who experienced at first hand and every day the social upheaval America was undergoing.

Their rebellious teen sensibility and increased political conscience permeated the company’s publications as their core audience moved beyond Flower Power protests towards a generation of acutely aware activists. Future tales would increasingly bring reformed capitalist Stark into many unexpected and outrageous situations…

But that’s the meat of another review, as this engrossing graphic novel is done. From our distant vantage point the polemical energy and impact might be dissipated, but the sheer quality of the comics and the cool thrill of the eternal aspiration of man in perfect partnership with magic metal remains.

These Fights ‘n’ Tights classics are amongst the most underrated but impressive tales of the period and are well worth your time, consideration and cold hard cash…
© 1973, 1974, 1974, 1976, 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man: Peter Parker vs. the X-Men


By Paul Tobin, Matteo Lolli, Ben Dewey, Christian Nauck & Terry Pallot (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4116-7

Since its earliest days the company we know as Marvel has always courted the youngest comicbook consumers. Whether animated 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 and Calvin, or in the 1980s the entire originated or licensed output of peewee imprint Star Comics, the House of Ideas has always understood the necessity of cultivating the next generation of readers.

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

In 2003 the company created a Marvel Age line which updated and retold classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and mixed it in with the remnants of the manga-based Tsunami imprint, all intended for a younger readership.

The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures with the core titles transformed into Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man and the reconstituted classics supplanted by original stories. Additional series included Marvel Adventures series Super Heroes, The Avengers and Hulk. These iterations ran until 2010 when they were cancelled and replaced by new – but continuity-continuing – volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man.

This digest-sized collection re-presents issues #58-61 – the final four stories from February to May 2010, scripted throughout by Paul Tobin.

What You Need to Know: Sixteen year old Peter Parker has been the mysterious Spider-Man for little more than six months. In that time he has constantly prowled the streets and skyscrapers of New York, driven to fight injustice. However as a kid just learning the ropes he’s pretty much in over his head all the time.

The most persistent major hassle is the all-pervasive Torino crime-family, whose goombahs and street-thugs perpetually attack Spider-Man on sight, spurred on by the $500,000 bounty on the Wallcrawler’s head…

Peter’s civilian life is pretty complicated too, but great help and constant comfort is High School classmate Sophia Sanduval – an extremely talented lass nicknamed Chat – who knows Peter’s secret and can communicate with animals…

Following a handy introductory recap page, the opening tale finds him ‘Wanted’ (art by Matteo Lolli & Terry Pallot) as the protracted vendetta against the Torinos is suddenly punctuated by wanted posters for the Webslinger on every tree, fence and lamppost. During another brutal but pointless clash with the mobsters the Webspinner is assisted by a very capable masked woman in a red dress who introduces herself as the Blonde Phantom. She’s behind the find-Spidey posters but only wants to offer him a job with her Blonde Phantom Detective Agency…

Cautiously hearing her out, the hero shares his strange and complex personal life with the sultry sleuth, telling her about Chat and how Gwen Watson claims to be going out on dates with his alter ego, something Peter adamantly denies. He doesn’t even have time for the girlfriend he’s got…

Gwen’s dad is Police Captain George Stacy. He knows the boy’s secret and allows him to continue his vigilante antics whilst acting as a mentor and sounding board, but the senior cop has some very hard words concerning anyone taking money for doing good deeds. Peter sort of agrees with him, but Aunt May is in desperate need of cash to repair the foundations of her house…

Later, when conflicted Peter meets up with Blonde Phantom he still hasn’t decided, but as another band of Torinos jump them, the resulting battle reminds him that the last time he took money for being Spider-Man, his Uncle Ben died…

The guilt-ridden kid sadly declines the glamorous gumshoe’s offer but is later astounded when Captain Stacy provides a welcome – and acceptably legitimate – financial solution to May’s money woes.

The Blonde Phantom isn’t too disappointed either: she got Chat’s contact details out of Peter before they parted…

The eponymous ‘Peter Parker vs. the X-Men’ (pencilled by Ben Dewey) finds the wallcrawler and Chat having an earnest heart-to-heart about their relationship – and Gwen’s persistent and insistent claims to still going out on dates with Peter – when squirrels warn them that they are being spied on by a stranger with “three big fingers”.

A thorough investigation results in nothing but a strange whiff of sulphur…

After they go their separate ways, the hero is again ambushed by Torinos, but one of them – later revealed as the grandson of the Family’s Big Boss Berto – helps him escape, and George Stacy warns him that the increasingly impatient mobsters have finally hired some specialist help; engaging the services of super-assassin Bullseye – the Man who Never Misses…

The bewildered and nervous hero heads home only to find Wolverine spying on him. When the Arachnid attacks the triple clawed mutant he is assaulted by a whole squad of X-Men and only after a frantic clash does he discover that they have come to offer help to a fellow mutant…

When he finally convinces them that he isn’t a Homo Superior kid, the embarrassed outcast heroes realise that their mutant detector Cerebro must have been registering the girl he was with – the one who talks to pigeons and squirrels…

With pencils by Christian Nauck, ‘I’ve Got a Badge!’ then focuses on the return of teen thief and mutant mindbender Silencer as Chat – now in training with the Blonde Phantom Detective Agency – explains to a baffled Peter that she can’t remember being his girlfriend, even though all her animal associates assure her its true.

The mysteries begin to unravel after Captain Stacy offers Spider-Man a Consultant position with the NYPD and asks him to help apprehend Silencer who has been robbing the city blind.

Whilst searching for her and dreaming of a life where the cops aren’t always chasing him, the young Torino kid Carter takes an opportunity during one more gang hit to warn the Wallcrawler that Bullseye is after him…

Heading for Chat’s place Peter finds Silencer in residence and calls in the cops, only to discover the bandit is actually his girlfriend’s BFF Emma Frost…

Choosing to help Emma escape the police, Peter sacrifices his chance for an easier life, but discovers to his dismay in the concluding chapter that Emma is the cause of all his romantic woes, meddling with both Gwen and Chat’s minds because she wants the Webslinger herself. Of course the animals know what’s going on and when they tell Chat the fur – and webbing – starts to fly…

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 more culturally accessible means of introducing the character and concepts to kids born sometimes two generations or more away from the originating events.

Fast-paced, enthralling and impressive, these Spidey super stories are extremely enjoyable yarns, although parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action” and might perhaps better suit older kids…
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Amazing Spider-Man – The Gauntlet volume 2: Rhino and Mysterio


By Joe Kelly, Dan Slott, Fred Van Lente, Max Fiumara, Marcos Martin, Javier Pulido, Michael Lark, Nick Dragotta, Barry Kitson& Stefano Gaudiano (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3872-3

Outcast, geeky school kid Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and, after seeking to cash-in on the astonishing abilities he’d developed, suffered an irreconcilable personal tragedy. His beloved guardian Uncle Ben was murdered and the traumatised boy determined henceforward to always use his powers to help those in dire need. For years the brilliant young hero suffered privation and travail in his domestic situation, whilst his heroic alter ego endured public condemnation and mistrust as he valiantly battled all manner of threat and foe…

During this continuous war for the ordinary underdog, Parker has loved and lost many more close friends and family…

During a particularly hellish period a multitude of disasters seemed to ride hard on his heels and a veritable army of old enemies simultaneously resurfaced to attack him (an overlapping series of stories comprising and defined as “The Gauntlet”), before Parker’s recent tidal wave of woes was revealed to be the culmination of a sinister, slow-building scheme by the surviving family of one of his most implacable foes – and one who had long been despatched to his final reward.

From that tirade of terror and collecting material in whole or in part from Amazing Spider-Man #617-621 and Web of Spider-Man #3-4, (November 2009-April 2010), this powerful and portentous tome opens with ‘Gauntlet Origins: Rhino, written by Fred Van Lente and illustrated by Nick Dragotta, which reveals how – decades ago – Russian hard man and mercenary Aleksei Sytsevich was bamboozled into becoming the test subject for an illegal procedure which made him immensely strong and fantastically durable.

Sadly it didn’t make him any smarter or less stubborn and over the years The Rhino was too often a tool for clever men and a punching bag for weaker heroes…

The parade of foes queuing up to take on the Amazing Spider-Man resumes as ‘Rage of the Rhino’ (by Joe Kelly & Max Fiumara) sees a worn out Peter Parker co-opted by agonisingly bright and breezy journalist Norah Winters as her personal “photo-monkey” even as, in a dark hole, a fully redesigned and more deadly Rhino listens to a pervasive voice suggesting who to kill if he wants to “ascend”…

Hot for fun and a possible scoop, Norah drags Peter to a casino where his spider-sense goes berserk as he sees hulking old enemy Aleksei Sytsevich working as a bouncer… Bracing himself for another blockbuster brawl the Webslinger is astounded to see the ponderous Russian attacked by a new and far more deadly Rhino, proudly intent on becoming the “one and only”…

The undercover hero is even more gobsmacked to see Sytsevich refusing to fight and even trying to convince his assailant to quit his pointless life of mayhem. Despite every pacific effort the scene soon descends into shattering chaos before the brand new heavy escapes and in the aftermath Spider-Man learns of Oksana, the simple waitress who turned his most intransigent and hard-headed foe into a reformed and law-abiding citizen…

However in a dark den the new Rhino, manipulated by the voices of hidden provocateurs, transfers his thwarted hatred to a new target…

This tale is ably augmented by a charming peek into the first meeting of Aleksei and Oksana where the freshly paroled super-thug decided not to take up the offer of criminal scientist and thorough bad influence Dr. Tramma and instead went on ‘The Walk’ (by Kelly & Javier Pulido).

Before the main event begins, ‘Gauntlet Origins: Mysterio (by Van Lente & Barry Kitson) discloses the supernatural close shave – complete with cameo by Doctor Strange – that finally turned conman and Hollywood SFX guru Quentin Beck into murderously malevolent menace Mysterio, after which ‘Un-Murder Incorporated’ (Dan Slott & Marcos Martin) offers a quick reprise of Maggia history to reveal that, with most of the family hierarchy recently rubbed out, hapless “Baby Bruno” Karnelli is rapidly losing the latest turf war with enigmatic Asiatic upstart Mister Negative.

Even the psychotically loyal Hammerhead has switched sides and joined the Chinatown gang…

A clash between the opposing mobs at a gambling den draws in Spider-Man, and in the aftermath crime photographer Peter has an argument with chum and CSI Carlie Cooper: another girl who has suffered romantically thanks to the lad’s big secret…

He disappoints her yet again by suddenly dashing off to meet Aunt May – who is just returning from her honeymoon trip with new husband Jay Jameson – but when the old new bride accidentally stumbles into an execution by her friend Martin Li, the fiend who is Mister Negative uses his dark powers to befuddle her mind and transform her into a cold, ruthless bullying martinet…

Back at the Karnelli ranch, none-too-bright Baby Bruno is astounded to find that all nine of the Dons recently killed had actually faked their deaths and resentfully resumes his position as low man on the totem pole when cyborg Capo Silvermane takes back control of the Maggia.

The neophyte mobster has no idea his own ambitious lieutenant Carmine has gone into partnership with robotics miracle-worker Mysterio. More importantly, Carmine has no idea what kind of man Quentin Beck really is…

Carlie’s day gets worse too. When she returns to the crime scene, her dead hero-cop dad is waiting for her…

‘Re-Appearing Act’ turns up the pressure as Ray Cooper explains to his daughter that he was in the Maggia’s pocket all along, whilst elsewhere the resurgent Silvermane leads his forces against Mister Negative’s undead Inner Demons causing Hammerhead to take himself out of the game and alerting Spider-Man to the latest outbreak of gang warfare.

Plunging into the fray, the hero is astonished to be welcomed by Police Captain Yuri Watanabe who is happy to get some metahuman muscle on the hard-pressed cops’ side.

However the Arachnid only falls into Mysterio’s latest snare when he seemingly kills a mobster with a single punch…

Overruling her outraged squad, Yuri allows the horrified Wallcrawler to go free and quietly assigns Carlie to prove the death was a set-up…

Meanwhile across town, the formerly benign, negatively charged May Parker-Jameson cruelly evicts the “freeloaders” she let use her house, making Harry Osborn and many of Peter’s friends homeless…

Beck finally overplays his hand when he resurrects one time villain The Big Man whom Spider-Man unmasks as deceased cop George Stacy. Finally getting a handle on what’s really happening, the Webslinger recruits Carlie and puts his own scheme into play just as Silvermane/Mysterio kills Carmine and takes full control…

‘Smoke & Mirrors’ explosively reveals that the trickster was always about the money: using the gang war to manipulate the Maggia into putting all their cash somewhere he could relieve them of it.

Everything else was just perks, but thanks to Spider-Man and Carlie the plan is spoiled, even though Mister Negative further muddies the waters by unleashing his DNA-specific poison gas Devil’s Breath (specifically encoded to kill Spider-Man thanks to a stolen sample of Peter’s blood), almost killing the Wallcrawler at the moment of his greatest triumph…

This sterling slice of action and suspense ends with ‘Out for Blood’ (by Slott, Michael Lark & Stefano Gaudiano) as Spidey asks unstable old paramour Black Cat to help him retrieve his blood sample from Mister Negative’s Chinatown fortress. Sadly the stealth mission soon turns into a painfully straightforward clash of arms…

And elsewhere, as penniless Harry goes looking for a place to crash at old girlfriend Mary Jane Watson‘s place, Carlie has a final agonising confrontation with the inveterate criminal who might or might not be her cherished and supposedly deceased dad…

Fast, furious, and easily combining frantic action with heartwarming character vignettes and ferociously addictive soap opera melodrama, these tales are offbeat even by Spider-Man’s standards – which is no bad thing – but sadly suffer from a surfeit of unaddressed backstory… which rather is.

Nonetheless, the stories here are clever, compelling and beautifully illustrated throughout so art lovers and established fans have plenty to enjoy. Moreover, the explosive, if occasionally confusing, Fights ‘n’ Tights rollercoaster is graced with cool extras such as information features culled from the pages of the Bugle and a gallery of covers -&-variants by Jelena Kevic Djurdjevic, Fiumara, Martin, Ed McGuiness, Dexter Vines. Morry Hollowell, Pasqual Ferry, Fabio D’Auria & Joe Quinones to delight the eyes if not soothe those tired brain cells.

All in all, this is that oddest and most disappointing of beasts; a great story but an unsatisfactory book…
© 2009, 2010, Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

X-Factor volume 7: Time and a Half


By Peter David, Valentine De Landro, Marco Santucci & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3836-5

Since its debut in 1982, X-Factor has been a splendidly effective umbrella title for many uniquely off-kilter iterations of Marvel’s mutant phenomena. Perhaps the most impressive and enduring was created by writer Peter David in 2006; mixing starkly violent suspense with cool detective mystery, laugh-out-loud comedy, fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tights action and even slyly addressing social issues in a regular riot of superbly adult Costumed Drama.

The abiding premise saw Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man and veteran of the formerly government-sponsored (and controlled) team appropriating the name for his own specialist metahuman private detective agency: X-Factor Investigations.

Setting up shop in the wake of “The Decimation” which had reduced the world’s mutant population to a couple of hundred empowered individuals and millions of distressingly humanised (ex) Homo Superior, he and his perpetually fluctuating team began by trying to discover why and how it had happened…

What We Already Knew: crossover event House of M saw reality overwritten when mutant Avenger Scarlet Witch had a mental breakdown, changing history and reality so that mutantkind out-competed base-line humans, droving “sapiens” to the brink of extinction.

It took every hero on Earth, a huge helping of luck and a strange little girl named Layla Miller to correct that situation… but in the aftermath, the abhorred inheritor species had been winnowed to less than 200 super-powered souls …

This temporally-twisted tome collects X-Factor volume 3 #39-45 (April-October 2009) and opens with the long awaited birth of Jamie and Theresa “Siryn” Cassidy‘s child: the result of a drunken debauch both barely recall and are deeply ashamed of…

Madrox and Co. had relocated to scenic Detroit to avoid interference from old boss and Office of National Emergency bureaucrat Valerie Cooper but she and her Federal flunkies had pursued, and in a tense confrontation with the mum-to-be and former mutant Julio Richter (AKA Rictor) shots had been fired.

Cooper was wounded but Theresa trumped that by going into labour…

Scripted throughout by David, the adventure continues with ‘Multiple Birth’ – illustrated by Valentine De Landro & Craig Yeung – as Jaime joins still-a-mutant Theresa in the hospital just in time for her contractions to trigger her shattering sonic scream…

Following a difficult birth via C-section, everything seems under control and Madrox takes time to visit Cooper, fitfully recuperating after being shot by her own guards. He’s almost forgiven her for threatening to impound the baby when it was born…

Heading back to Theresa and his new son Sean Madrox is utterly unaware of what horror and tragedy are… until he picks up his boy and is helpless to prevent the infant from being reabsorbed into his body.

The baby is gone: never more than the progeny of one of his body duplicates.

Shocked, reeling and feeling like he’s eaten his baby, Jamie barely registers the beating the hysterical Theresa delivers before collapsing…

Madrox’s duplicates are autonomous facsimiles of him. Often displaying one particular aspect of his emotional makeup they can live their own lives for years… until he touches them and they are reabsorbed whether they want to be or not.

Being self-aware, some abscond, never wanting to come back and “die”.

Such a one became priest John Maddox and ‘Slings and Arrows’ (inked by Pat Davidson) opens with him acting as a negotiator in a tense convenience store hostage situation. Unfortunately, one of the captives is a bearded, bedraggled and utterly broken Jaime Madrox who defuses the scenario in a most unlikely manner before stalking the priest home to the wife and kids. In a terse and despondent conversation the Multiple Man ponders how a shallow facsimile can excel at everything his progenitor sucks at before telling Maddox of how another “Dupe” and little Layla Miller disappeared into a hostile future… and only the copy ever returned.

He knows all it about only because when he reabsorbed the clone, he took on all its memories… as well as the disturbing “M” eye-brand that denotes being a mutant in that sorry tomorrow…

Madrox’s real reason for the confessional confrontation comes with a warning that Maddox’s kids might not be all they seem. After wearily incapacitating the priest who mastered living better than he, Jamie puts a gun to his own tired, tortured head…

He is only saved by a nun walking in and telling him he’s not going to die.

She might be a grown woman now, but Layla Miller still “knows stuff”: after all, isn’t it her mutant power?

The time-bending madness resumes in ‘Back and There Again’ (De Landro, Marco Santucci, Davidson) as the happy reunion stalls when Jamie realises she’s just a projection asking him to rejoin him the future. Reluctantly he agrees, completely missing the gun-toting goon creeping up on him…

Elsewhere, brittle Theresa takes over at X-Factor Investigations, taking on a stalking case for frightened ex-mutant Lenore Wilkinson. She’s convinced someone is trying to kill her and delighted that de-powered “Rictor” and especially the astoundingly attractive Longshot are going to be watching over her…

Back at the church the thug has opened fire on Jamie, but when the detective turns the table on his would-be killer the assassin ends himself whilst uttering the word “cortex”…

Next thing Jamie knows, it’s the future and a colossal Sentinel is trying to kill both him and Layla…

In the now and all at sea, Guido “Strong Guy” Carosella, super-woman Monet St. Croix – AKA “M” – and new recruit Armando Muñoz or Darwin are enjoying themselves chasing down operatives of the Karma Project; a gang of science renegades who captured and experimented on the ever-evolving latter mutant.

Back in the future though there’s no fun to be found when Jamie meets Ruby Summers and finds himself neck-deep in another war against Homo Superior…

De Landro, Santucci, Davidson, Patrick Piazzalunga & Yeung all pitch in to illustrate #42 as Lenore makes a move on the naive and credulous Longshot whilst Guido and Rictor go looking for Jamie but find John Maddox instead…

Eighty years later the object of their search is coming to terms with the new normal as Ruby and Layla explain what “The Summers Rebellion” is and how he can help them not lose it, even as more death-laden Sentinels scream into the attack…

In old Detroit Val Cooper finally gets her meeting with Theresa as future mutants Hecat’e and Daemon overcome the artificial assassins attacking Jamie, whilst the real trans-time menace is making his move against Longshot and Lenore…

‘Timely Events’ finds Darwin stumbling into a hit on Lenore, helping save the victim from being killed by her own mind-controlled mother, whilst in the future Madrox is reunited with elderly mutant legend Scott Summers.

Somehow the doom-drenched Cyclops has survived every grim trial and tribulation, fathered generations of kids and is even now still fighting for his embattled species. Things don’t look so rosy in the past however as Guido and Rictor are stonewalled in their search for Jamie, and increasingly strange events are occurring around Darwin, Longshot and Lenore…

Madrox knows nothing about any of it: he’s helplessly falling for and sucking face with the aggravatingly annoying Layla in a world that makes less and less sense every minute. For a start the always dismissive Scott trusts him to be a detective and discover how and why people are disappearing and rematerialising with no memory of the act, whilst simultaneously blaming the temporally shanghaied Jamie for making the future the way it is…

In a Detroit hospital the guys have called in Monet to scan the mind of Lenore’s comatose mum but the procedure goes terribly wrong when M herself is taken over. Attacking Longshot and Darwin she utters the name “Cortex”…

Back at the church Rictor and Guido are similarly inconvenienced when team mate Shatterstar tries to kill them, incoherently mumbling the same word…

‘Dirty, Sexy Monet’ opens in the future where Jamie and Layla’s relationship deepens and the detective suggests a possible solution Cyclops doesn’t want to hear, whereas in the then-and-now M apparently regains her senses and loses her morals.

As the future mutants reluctantly follow Madrox’s advice and consult a super-genius, in the past M is back to normal-ish but incomprehensibly choosing to dress like a tart as she sensibly transfers the embattled XF guys and terrified Lenore to a safe house. Once there, however, she plies the client with booze until she conks out before making a flagrant pass at wide-eyed innocent Darwin…

Only when Monet strips off to reveal a body totally infected by technoid mechanisms does he realise that Cortex never really lost control of her…

This emphatically, wonderfully bewildering collection concludes with a bang as – in the world that’s coming – Madrox, Layla and Ruby consult the aged and senile Victor Von Doom about their recurring reality problems, whilst in the past crafty, craven Cortex overextends himself simultaneously mentally manipulating Shatterstar and Monet to kill their comrades.

As Dr. Doom tantalises with possible solutions to the time-based crisis brewing, Future America’s President ponders the cost of sending Cortex back to pre-emptively deal with X-Factor and foolishly intervenes before the chronal killer can complete his mission, giving Shatterstar an opportunity to shrug off the mind-control and prove his loyalty to his team mates in a most unconventional, if not shocking, manner…

To Be Continued…

Complex, compelling, compulsive and always maturely hilarious in a way most adult comics just aren’t, X-Factor is a splendid example of Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy for everyone who needs wit to underpin their superhero soap opera shenanigans, and this volume also includes a cover gallery by Mike McKone, David Yardin & & Nathan Fairbairn and a selection of Shatterstar design sketches by Valentine De Landro.
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Essential Silver Surfer volume 1


By Stan Lee, John Buscema, Jack Kirby & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2008-7

Although pretty much a last minute addition to Fantastic Four #48-50’s ‘Galactus Trilogy’, Jack Kirby’s scintillating creation the Silver Surfer quickly became a watchword for depth, allegory and subtext in the Marvel Universe and a character Stan Lee kept as his own personal toy for many years.

Tasked with finding planets for space god Galactus to consume, and despite the best efforts of intergalactic voyeur Uatu the Watcher, one day the Silver Surfer discovered Earth, where the latent nobility of humanity reawakened his own suppressed morality; causing the shining scout to rebel against his master and help the FF save the world.

In retaliation, Galactus imprisoned his one-time herald on Earth, making him the ultimate outsider on a planet remarkably ungrateful for his sacrifice.

The Galactus Saga was a creative highlight from a period where the Lee/Kirby partnership was utterly on fire. The tale has all the power and grandeur of a true epic and has never been surpassed for drama, thrills and sheer entertainment. It’s not included here: for that treat you’ll need to see Essential Fantastic Four volume 3 or many other Marvel collections…

In 1968, after increasingly frequent guest-shots and even a solo adventure in the back of Fantastic Four Annual #5 (thankfully included at the back of this tome), the Surfer finally got his own (initially double-sized) title. This occurred at the time when Marvel had finally escaped from a draconian distribution deal which limited the company to 16 titles per month.

That change resulted in a huge expansion in output which also saw Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Doctor Strange, Nick Fury and Captain Marvel all explode into their own titles.

This stunning and economical monochrome chronicle collects the entire 18 issue run of the Soaring Skyrider’s controversial first solo series as well as the aforementioned vignette from FF Annual #5 spanning November 1967 1968 to September 1970 and naturally enough begins with begins with ‘The Origin of the Silver Surfer!’ by Lee, John Buscema & Joe Sinnott who, after a prolonged flashback sequence and repeated examples of crass humanity’s brutal callousness and unthinking hostility, detailed how Norrin Radd, discontented soul from an alien paradise named Zenn-La, became the gleaming herald of a terrifying planetary scourge.

Radd had constantly chafed against a civilisation in comfortable, sybaritic stagnation, but when Galactus shattered their vaunted million years of progress in a fleeting moment, the dissident offered himself without hesitation as a sacrifice to save his world from the Devourer’s hunger.

Converted into an indestructible gleaming humanoid meteor Radd agreed to scour the galaxies looking for (preferably uninhabited) worlds rich in the energies Galactus needed to survive, thus saving planets with life on them from destruction. Sadly, he didn’t always find them in time…

The stories in this series were highly acclaimed – if not commercially successful – both for Buscema’s agonised, emphatic and stunningly beautiful artwork as much as Lee’s deeply spiritual and philosophical scripts; with the isolated alien’s travails and social observations creating a metaphoric status akin to a Christ-figure for an audience that was maturing and rebelling against America’s creaking and unsavoury status quo.

The second 40 page adventure detailed a secret invasion by extraterrestrial lizard men ‘When Lands the Saucer!’, forcing the Surfer to battle the sinister Brotherhood of Badoon without human aid or even awareness in ‘Let Earth be the Prize!’…

A little side-note for sad nit-picking enthusiasts like me: I suspect that the original intention was to drop the page count to regular 20-page episodes from #2, since in terms of pacing both the second and third issues divide perfectly into regular 2-parters, with cliffhanger endings and splash page/chapter titles that were dropped from #4 onwards.

Silver Surfer #3 was pivotal in the ongoing saga as Lee & Buscema introduced Marvel’s Satan-analogue in ‘The Power and the Prize!’

Mephisto back then was the one-and-only Lord of Hell and saw the Surfer’s untarnished soul as a threat to his evil influence on Earth. To crush the anguished hero’s spirit the demon abducted Radd’s true love Shalla Bal from still-recovering Zenn-La and tormented the Sentinel of the Spaceways with her dire distress in his sulphurous nether-realm…

The concluding chapter saw the alien but mortal angel of light and undying devil of depravity conduct a spectacular ‘Duel in the Depths’ wherein neither base temptations nor overwhelming force were enough to stay the noble Surfer’s inevitable triumph.

Just as wicked a foe then attempted to exploit the Earth-bound Surfer’s heroic impulses in #4’s ‘The Good, The Bad and the Uncanny!’ (inked by new art collaborator Sal Buscema) wherein Asgardian God of Evil Loki offered lies, deceit and even escape from Galactus’ terrestrial cage to induce the Silver Stalwart to attack and destroy the Mighty Thor.

The scheme resulted in a shattering, bombastic clash that built and built as the creative team finally let loose and fully utilised their expanded story-proportions and page count to create a smooth flowing all-action epic.

The tragedy of strictly human prejudice and bigotry was then highlighted in a powerful parable about race, ignorance and shared humanity when the Surfer was befriended by ostracised and sidelined black physicist Al Harper in ‘…And Who Shall Mourn Him?’

As the two outcasts bonded the scientist realised he might have a way to free the Surfer from his Galactine incarceration, but as they put their plan into operation remorseless alien entity The Stranger turned up, determined to erase the potential threat mankind offered to the rest of the universe.

To stop him both Harper and Radd had to sacrifice everything they cherished most for a world that didn’t care if they lived or died…

‘World Without End!’ in issue #6 embraced dystopian fantasy as the Surfer reasoned that by breaking the time barrier he might escape the energy shield binding him to Earth. Tragically, although the plan worked, the lonely wanderer discovered that the far future held little life, and what there was owed fealty and its own precarious continuation to a monstrous mutant who lived simply to conquer and kill.

Appalled, overwhelmed and utterly unable to beat the horrific Overlord, all Norrin could do to preserve life in Creation was escape back into time and try to prevent the murderous freak from ever being born…

Times and tastes were slowly changing and by the August 1969 release of Silver Surfer #7 the Comics Code injunctions against horror stories were being eroded away. Thus ‘The Heir of Frankenstein!’ and his misshapen but noble assistant Borgo debuted to terrorise their small Balkan community and tap into the growing monster movie zeitgeist of the era. The last maniac of a sullied line of scientists wanted to outdo his infamous ancestor and achieved his aim by his tricking the Skyrider into becoming the victim of a deadly duplication experiment.

As a result the Silver Surfer had to battle a cosmic-fuelled facsimile with all his power but none of his noble ideals or merciful intentions…

Despite some truly groundbreaking comics creativity the Silver Surfer remained a disappointing seller and with #8 (September 1969) the title was reduced to a standard 20 page story format and boosted to monthly frequency in an attempt to bolster and build on the regular readership.

With Dan Adkins lavishly inking John Buscema, Lee’s stories also became more action-adventure and less contemporary Passion Play, with ‘Now Strikes the Ghost’ bringing back Mephisto to further plague and imperil the shining sentinel by resurrecting and augmenting the tortured spectre of cruel and callous mariner Captain Joost Van Straaten, promising that phantom eternal peace in return for crushing Norrin Radd.

The Lord of Lies’ sinister scheme ‘…To Steal the Surfer’s Soul!’ concluded in #9 when the hero’s compassion trumped the tormented Flying Dutchman‘s greed and Mephisto’s satanic lust for victory, after which events took another convoluted turn for the solitary starman…

In ‘A World He Never Made!’ Shalla Bal hitched a ride with ambitious and lustful Zenn-Lavian Yarro Gort, who had built a starship to ferry her to Earth and prove he was a more worthy paramour than the long-gone Norrin Radd.

Her silver-metal lover meanwhile had again attempted to integrate with humanity, becoming embroiled in a South American war and saving dedicated rebel Donna Maria Perez from the marauding soldiers of sadistic dictator El Capitan. When the freedom fighter thanked him with a kiss, Gort made sure his ship’s scanners picked up the gesture for Shalla’s benefit…

Issue #11 then saw the sleek star-craft shot down by El Capitan’s forces and Gort join the dictator to build world-conquering weaponry. The combined villains were still no match for the Surfer’s fury, however, but Radd’s joy at being reunited with his true love was quickly crushed when Shalla was gravely injured and he had to despatch her back beyond Galactus’ barrier to be healed in ‘O, Bitter Victory!’

In Silver Surfer #12 Lee, Buscema and Adkins mixed a few genres as ‘Gather Ye Witches!’ found a British coven accidentally summoning gamma-ray mutation the Abomination from exile on a far planet rather than a supernatural slave from Hell and leaving the Skyrider no choice but to battle the brute through the ruins of London, whilst ‘The Dawn of the Doomsday Man!’ in the following issues saw seemingly repentant scientist Dr. Kronton implore the Surfer to destroy an apparently unstoppable killer robot stored in a US military bunker.

The sinister savant only wanted the trusting alien to give him access to a prototype Cobalt bomb, but their unwise invasion triggered the assassin automaton’s awakening anyway…

With sales still falling #14 saw the creative team resort to team-up tactics and ‘The Surfer and the Spider!’ detailed how a typical Marvel misunderstanding led a fighting mad and humiliated Spider-Man to repeatedly attack the gleaming extraterrestrial, accidentally endangering a young boy in the process…

A similar misunderstanding in ‘The Flame and the Fury!’ pitted an angry and distrustful Surfer against former ally the Human Torch, when Norrin Radd misconstrued a military request for aid as a betrayal. The shock and shame left the humbled exile easy prey when a wicked devil hungry for the Surfer’s soul resurfaced in #16’s ‘In the Hands… of Mephisto!’

Inked by Chic Stone, the tale revealed how the tempter abducted the now-healed Shalla Bal from Zenn-La and forced his anguished target to betray his principles to ensure her safety. The saga concluded in ‘The Surfer Must Kill!’ when the vile seducer ordered his victim to destroy peacekeeping espionage force S.H.I.E.L.D., and clandestinely hid the Surfer’s beloved amidst the agents, intending that she die by her oblivious lover’s cosmic-powered hand…

Happily the scheme was foiled, though more by luck than intent, and the poor lass was apparently returned home, but the Surfer’s fate was not so fortunate.

With nothing else working to boost sales, Marvel’s miracle worker returned to his creation but it was too late. Silver Surfer #18 (September 1970) featured ‘To Smash the Inhumans!’ by Lee, Jack Kirby & Herb Trimpe and saw the puzzled, embattled alien philosopher overtaken with rage against all humanity after surviving a misguided attack by Black Bolt and the warriors of hidden city Attilan.

However the “Savagely Sensational New Silver Surfer” promised at the end of that unfinished tale was never seen. Kirby was on his way to DC to create his magnificent Fourth World Trilogy and the bean counters at the House of Ideas had already decreed the Skyrider’s publishing demise.

He vanished into the Limbo of fond memory and occasional guest-shots which afflicted so many costumed characters at the beginning of the 1970s, making way for a wave of supernatural heroes and horrors that capitalised on the periodic revival of interest in magic and mystery fare. It would 1981before Norrin Radd would helm his own title again…

That’s not quite the end of this spectacular monochrome tome, however. As well as information pages starring the Surfer and Mephisto culled from the ever-informative Marvel Universe Handbook, this compulsive comicbook chronicle concludes with the eventful and groundbreaking vignette from Fantastic Four Annual #5 – released in November 1967 – wherein the rapidly rising star-in-the-making got his first solo shot.

‘The Peerless Power of the Silver Surfer’ by Lee, Kirby & Frank Giacoia is a pithy fable of cruel ingratitude that reintroduced the Mad Thinker‘s lethal A I assassin Quasimodo…

The Quasi-Motivational Destruct Organ was a malevolent murder machine trapped in a static computer housing which dreamed of being able to move within the real world. Sadly, although its pleas initially found favour with the gullibly innocent stranger from the stars, the killer computer itself had underestimated the power and conscience of its foolish saviour and the gleaming guardian of life was explosively forced to take back the boon he had impetuously bestowed in a bombastic and bravura display of Kirby action and Lee pathos…

The Silver Surfer was always a pristine and iconic character when handled well – and sparingly – and these early forays into a more mature range of adventures, although perhaps a touch heavy-handed, showed that there was far more to comicbooks than cops and robbers or monsters and misfits.

That exploratory experience and mystique of hero as Christ allegory made the series a critically beloved but commercially disastrous cause celebre until eventually financial failure killed the experiment.

After the Lee/Kirby/Ditko sparks had initially fired up the imaginations of readers in the early days, the deeper, subtler overtones and undercurrents offered by stories like these kept a maturing readership enthralled, loyal and abidingly curious as to what else comics could achieve if given half a chance. This fabulously engaging Essential compilation offers the perfect way to discover or recapture the thrill and wonder of those startlingly different days and times.
© 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Wolverine: Killable


By Paul Cornell, Alan Davis, Mirco Pierfederici, Mark Farmer & Karl Kesel (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-541-3

Perennially punching-above-his-weight, feral fury James Howlett, AKA Logan, AKA Wolverine has been many things in his very long life, but some of the most significant changes have only occurred in recent years.

Possibly the most significant new deal comes in this cruelly cutting collection written by Paul Cornell which was originally released as issues #7-13 of Wolverine volume 5 (cover-dated September 2013 to March 2014) and presaged a new look, new title and potentially new character to come…

At the conclusion of the previous saga the Canadian Crusader and a desperate coterie of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had repulsed an invasion by a sentient virus from an incredible alien “microverse” which almost united humanity under one all-dominant intellect.

However, although Wolverine’s astounding healing factor had proven crucial in defeating the infective invasion, the defeated pathogenic plunderer had managed to turn off his mutant healing ability in the final encounter, leaving the formerly immortal warrior little more than a tough old guy with enhanced senses and really heavy metal bones…

Before this transformative  unfolds, ‘Mortal’ (illustrated by Mirco Pierfederici & Karl Kesel) describes how the barely recuperating James Howlett adapts to his new normal and realises for the first time just how much of his previous moment-to-moment existence revolved around instantly healing from everything ranging from a shaving cut to jumping off a building.

Now aging and feeling constant and protracted niggling pain, he realises he has to unlearn all the instincts and reactions of at least one lifetime. He simply cannot fathom how to continue as a hero and hunter, no matter how much advice is offered by the likes of sympathetic comrade warriors Nick Fury Jr., the Beast, Thor and Storm…

Rattled, unsure and perhaps afraid for the first time in his life, he doesn’t need the call to arms that comes when the news arrives that mutants and metahumans who can control viruses are being systematically murdered all over the planet…

Alan Davis & Mark Farmer return to illustrate the 6-part ‘Killable’ which begins as Wolverine sneaks a hand-picked team into African world power Wakanda, seeking to steal crazed criminal The Host from custody.

She is the last remaining being with the power to affect micro-organisms…

S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to confirm that the recently repulsed Virus has returned and may be controlling one of the most technologically advanced and paranoid nations on Earth but as Storm, Fury and unflappable surgeon Victoria Frankenstein (she pronounces it “Fronken-schteen”) spring the incarcerated metahuman, Wolverine is inevitably confronted by the lethally efficient Black Panther and is soon in a ferocious fight he can’t win.

With some relief he accepts a truce when the Feline Avenger offers it. It seems the Panther was well aware of the viral threat and was simply using the infiltration to make it tip its communal hand…

However even as the mission winds down Wolverine receives a shocking communication. Murderous mutant Mystique has invaded his home at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning and threatened the students under his care…

By the time he reaches America it’s all over, but instead of killing kids the spitefully manipulative witch has simply trashed all his possessions and stolen his most treasured memento – an ancient Katana.

It doesn’t take much to deduce her motives. She’s messing with his head whilst issuing a challenge on behalf of her new boss Sabertooth…

Victor Creed is Wolverine’s most despised and tenacious foe, possessed of the same powers and skills he once boasted but now leader of a manic deviant sect of ninja cult The Hand…

Promising the assembled X-Men not to do anything stupid, Wolverine nevertheless sneaks off to track down Creed and his sword. He hasn’t fooled Kitty Pryde however and she follows him, even as elsewhere S.H.I.E.L.D. technos attempt to weaponise the furiously unstable Host in their plan to destroy the Virus which is slowly taking over the planet…

It’s clearly open season on Wolverine. En route to his rendezvous with Mystique his aircraft is blasted out of the sky by mercenary Batroc the Leaper who sees an easy chance to enhance his rep by killing the most infamous mutant on Earth. Instead the blistering battle only inspires Logan to some semblance of his former combative self. He and Kitty continue their pursuit of Creed’s creatures to Montana where another ambush – by acupuncture assassin Fiber – is narrowly circumvented, but not without more long-term damage to Wolverine’s ailing body…

The world is falling city by city to the Virus as The Host’s power slowly builds, and as she marshals her expanding resources she lets slip that only the microversial microbe monster could restore Wolverine’s healing factor…

Mystique’s trail leads to Alberta, Canada and a shopping mall built on the site of the estate where James Howlett was born in the 18th century. Wolverine’s birthplace seems like a suitably poetic venue for a final showdown, but the innocent bystanders still inside only add distraction and potential disaster to the mix.

Reluctantly enlisting the aid of local cops, Pryde and Wolverine search the near-deserted complex and are not surprised when the building goes into lockdown, trapping them in the dark with fanatical ninjas and a gauntlet of aggrieved old enemies including Lord Deathstrike and Silver Samurai.

The embattled mutants are also keenly aware that shapeshifting Mystique could be any one of their enemies… or allies…

And in the greater world S.H.I.E.L.D.’s latest data indicates that the Virus is only thirty minutes away from infecting the entire world’s population…

As Kitty and Wolverine battle for their lives in Canada, the hyper-energised Host is deployed to attack the Virus, but that means little to exhausted, punch-drunk, pushed beyond his limits Logan who abandons every vestige of humanity in his struggle to survive.

And when he is at his lowest ebb, Sabertooth attacks…

Beaten, crushed and demoralised, Wolverine lies bleeding on the floor as one of the bystanders approaches him.

The body is the last host of the defeated and globally retreating Virus. With no chance of victory it offers to restore his healing powers and return him to all he was if he will only offer it sanctuary…

As Wolverine sees another bizarre vision of the cosmic observer known as The Watcher (indicating that whatever is going on it’s of significance to the entire universe), he croaks “No”…

To Be Continued…

Non-stop visceral action and shocking suspense carry this explosive yarn from high-octane start to explosive finish and this gripping yarn also includes a beautiful gallery of covers and variants by Davis & Farmer, Matthew Waite, Leinil Francis Yu and David Lopez. Also upping the entertainment ante are the now-standard added extras provided by of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the code – for free – from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

™ & © 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

Superior Spiderman: the Superior Venom


By Dan Slott, Christos N. Gage, Humberto Ramos & Victor Olazaba, Javier Rodriguez & Álvaro López and various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-584-0

With this superb reinterpretation of the Amazing Arachnid iteration clearly approaching an ending or final resolution, the tension in this sublime series is again ratcheted up by scripter Dan Slott in The Superior Venom which collects issues #22-25 of Superior Spider-Man (4th September-13th November 2013) and Superior Spider-Man Annual #1.

Where Were You When…?: in an apocalyptic final battle Peter Parker apparently died and Doctor Otto Octavius took over his body. The hero’s mind had been imprisoned in the dying body of the super-villain where, despite his every desperate effort, at last Peter perished with and within that decrepit, expiring frame.

This left the coldly calculating Octopus permanently installed in the Wondrous Wallcrawler’s body and successfully living out Parker’s life, albeit with a few minor but necessary alterations, upgrades and improvements…

At first the situation did not seem utterly hopeless. As his foe exulted in triumph, Parker had inflicted his full unvarnished memories on the psychic invader, forcing unwary Otto to experience every ghastly moment of tragedy and sacrifice which combined to make Spider-Man the compulsive do-gooder that he was.

From that enforced emotional turmoil came a bitter understanding. Ock had a change of heart and swore to live the rest of his stolen life in tribute to his greatest enemy; earnestly endeavouring to carry on Spider-Man’s self-imposed mission, guided by Peter’s abiding principle: “with great power comes great responsibility”…

However Octavius’ ingrained monomania proved impossible to suppress and the usurper constantly toiled to prove himself the better man: augmenting Parker’s paltry gadgets and slapdash methodology with millions of spy robots to patrol the entire city at once, constantly adding advanced tech and refining new weaponry to the suit and even acting pre-emptively rather than merely reacting to crises as the original had…

Otto even took Parker’s frame back to college because he arrogantly refused to live life without a doctorate and even briefly tried to rekindle his new body’s old relationship with Mary Jane Watson.

The new, ultra-efficient Spider-Man became New York’s darling and even Mayor J. Jonah Jameson embraced the Web-spinner; practically adopting Spider-Man as his deputy – to the utter incredulity of an imperceptible psychic fragment of Peter which still screamed in frustration within the deepest recesses of the hero’s overwritten consciousness…

The helpless ghost was an unwilling passenger, unsuspected by Octavius yet increasingly privy to the villain’s own barely-suppressed memories. Simultaneously, more and more of Parker’s oldest friends began to suspect something amiss…

Police CSI Officer and ex-girlfriend Carlie Cooper knew Peter’s secret identity and recalled the last time Spidey fought Doc Ock, when the killer broke her arm. He claimed then that he was Peter trapped in the villain’s body…

The public initially seemed happy with how Spider-Man had changed. Not only was he more efficient, but far more brutal too. This new hard-line attitude actually increased the webslinger’s approval rating and, following a hostage siege, his status peaked after he executed the psychotic perpetrator Massacre…

Eventually Octavius realised there was a noble passenger in his head and eradicated the last vestiges of his enemy’s presence – at the cost of many of Parker’s useful memories – but the trade-off was a fully liberated mind able to make darker decisions whilst instigating his revolution in crime-fighting.

Helping Jameson after Spider-Slayer and other super-felons rioted on The Raft, the hero blackmailed the Mayor into donating the now empty edifice as a base of operations. The superior wallcrawler designed a new costume, built giant Arachnaut war-tanks and even hired a gang of henchmen to help him clean up the city for the decent, law-abiding citizens.

Despite winnowing “Parker’s” personal life to a less distracting level, Ock still wanted that elusive doctorate and whilst negotiating the petty bureaucracy of Academia Parker began a romance with brilliant Anna Maria Marconi …

From his transformed citadel on the now-renamed Spider Island II, Spider-Man watches over his city through the electronic eyes of thousands of tiny Spider-bots, keeping a special lookout for resurgent hidden criminal mastermind Goblin King (an updated and even crazier Green Goblin Norman Osborn) who was slowly completing his own campaign to take over the underworld with his Goblin Army Cult.

To that end the emerald maniac transformed young Phil Urich – latest iteration of The Hobgoblin – into a Goblin Knight to lead his armies to inevitable victory…

Meanwhile, Carlie shared her suspicions about Spider-Man with friend and Police Captain Yuri Watanabe (who secretly moonlights as costumed vigilante The Wraith) and together they set about gathering definitive proofs of their suspicions regarding the Wallcrawler.

Since Spidey now has an Island fortress and a mercenary gang to pay for, they even had a money trail to follow…

However Carlie’s investigations alerted all the wrong people and she was abducted by the Goblin Army…

This rocket-paced chronicle opens with ‘Hostage Crisis’ from Superior Spider-Man Annual #1, scripted by Christos N. Gage and illustrated by Javier Rodriguez & Álvaro López, which sees potential disaster stemming from the leaked (cover) story that Peter Parker is the technical wizard building all the Superior Spider-Man’s gadgets.

The secretly embedded hero/villain is just starting to repair his relationship with Aunt May and her wealthy husband (J. Jonah’s dad Jay Jameson): helplessly re-experiencing the lad’s abiding affection for the gracious old lady when vampiric villain Blackout kidnaps her.

The darkness-generating undead psychopath has got wind of the Parker connection and wants Peter to sabotage Spider-Man’s gadgets, but he has not reckoned on the insane degree of sadistic violence the new hardline Superior Wallcrawler might inflict on anyone threatening those under his protection…

Sadly for the increasingly complacent Octavius, he is equally unaware that May is a witness to the ferocious punishment beating the Webslinger delivers. Thus, even though the upshot of the rescue is that the Parker clan is categorically “off-limits” to every rational denizen in the criminal fraternity, May now wants Peter to sever all ties to the monstrous Spider-Man…

And even more disturbing, nobody ever accused the Green Goblin of rationality…

Over in Superior Spider-Man the 4-part saga ‘Darkest Hours’ commences with ‘Beginnings’ as Betty Brant investigates a new Crime Master, terrified that he may be her wayward brother Bennet when old boyfriend Eugene “Flash” Thompson intervenes.

He still has feelings for the plucky journalist and is prepared to risk his top-secret, covert US operative job for her…

Once upon a time Spider-Man spawned an implacable enemy called Venom: a deranged and disgraced reporter named Eddie Brock who bonded with Parker’s alternate costume: a semi-sentient alien parasite called the Symbiote which the wallcrawler first picked up during Secret Wars.

Brock became a savage, shape-changing, dark-side version of the Wallcrawler, but after numerous spectacular clashes, the arachnid adversaries eventually reached a brooding détente and Venom became a “Lethal Protector”, dispensing a highly individualistic brand of justice everywhere but New York City.

Since thenmany other hosts have bonded with the ebony parasite, including Brock’s wife Ann Weying, Mac Gargan AKA the Scorpion, mobster Angelo Fortunato, Mayoral assistant Edward Saks and even Franklin Richards and members of the Fantastic Four.

Eventually the Government took control of the Symbiote and offered it – with strings attached – to Flash: Spider-Man’s greatest fan and a war-hero who came back from Afghanistan without his legs.

A recovering alcoholic, Eugene became the star of a military black-ops operation which uses the Symbiote to carry out under-the-radar missions vital to US security.

In return, Thompson gets to be a hero (of sorts), feel useful again, serve his country and get out of his wheelchair prison for 48 hours at a time. Agent Venom even became a Secret Avenger, serving directly under Steve Rogers.

Of course there were drawbacks: the parasite is a voracious deadly menace, constantly seeking to permanently bond to its wearer, and is classed as one of the most dangerous entities on the planet. If the new Venom should go berserk, or if the human host stays bonded for more than two days, his war-room controllers will simply detonate explosives attached to Thompson’s body and start the project over with another volunteer. It’s what they had to do with the previous wearer, after all…

Now however Flash is risking everything for Betty, infiltrating the gang with his shapeshifting abilities…

Elsewhere his oldest friend Dr. Peter Parker is taking things to a new level by launching his own tech start-up company. Apparently gripped by exuberance – if not monomania – the very proud owner of Parker Industries is showing around his major investors, May and Jay Jameson, introducing them to medical maverick Elias Wirtham and offering his aunt the gift of a lifetime…

The doughty old lady has lived with chronic pain ever since her leg was injured in a criminal attack, but now Peter has devised a cybernetic implant which will enable her to walk normally again…

In a seedier part of town Captain Watanabe searches for her missing partner Carlie Cooper and comes to the understandable but erroneous conclusion that Spider-Man is responsible for her abrupt disappearance…

As the Spider henchmen continually scan the city for signs of the Goblin Gang they notice Venom battling Crime Master’s gang and alert their boss. Soon the entirety of the Spider force is tracking what they perceive as one of the most dangerous entities on the planet…

In ‘Complications’ the spectacular clash results in Flash’s defeat, but the new Spider-Man has no recent memory of Parker’s school days bully so when Venom escapes the Wallcrawler sets off in relentless, obsessive pursuit.

Deep in a hidden place Carlie is suffering at the hands of the Green Goblin who is desperate to glean all she knows about Spider-Man (information the troubled Osborn has himself forgotten)…

Eager to introduce May and Jay to new significant other Anna Maria, “Peter” arranges a dinner party at his apartment, but the preparations are interrupted when wheelchair-bound Flash turns up, looking to his old friend for shelter…

Another plot strand begins in the Mayor’s office where Jonah Jameson, fed up with Spider-Man’s exploitative extortion, commissions shady genius Tyler Stone of Alchemax to build a new generation of Spider-Slayer robots to protect the city.

The unscrupulous technologist is happy to turn the project over to his new protégé Michael O’Mara who unbeknownst to any is the temporally stranded Spider-Man of 2099…

The dinner party is a disaster. Peter is obsessively concentrating on Flash and doesn’t realise how disturbed old-fashioned May is that the prospective mother of the next generation of Parkers is a “little person”. After all, he never once mentioned Anna Marie’s dwarfism…

Too furious and impatient to play it cautiously, Peter shrugs off all the nonsensical emotionalism, concentrating on tricking Thompson – and the precious Symbiote – into his labs with the lure of fully responsive cybernetic legs…

The bait works and soon Spider-Man joins Dr. Wirtham (who moonlights as Robin Hood bandit Cardiac) in overseeing a procedure whose real purpose is to separate the man from the Symbiote.

It all goes horrifically awry and the ghastly invader attaches itself to the Wallcrawler, consequently reawakening the very worst instincts of the insane old Doctor Octopus and the fanatical, amalgamated defender of the weak becomes a sinisterly new horror: ‘The Superior Venom’…

As the diabolically driven creature goes on a crimebusting rampage, treating muggers, murders and litterbugs with equal savagery, the Green Goblin declares war on his rival (and cheap knock-off) Roderick Kingsley who has been franchising super-villain gigs as the Hobgoblin.

On a roll and finally losing patience with his cop captive, Osborn doses Carlie with mutagenic chemicals to transform her into one of his faithful acolytes. The forcibly crazed new Monster seems delighted to join his vile viridian family…

The Parker clan’s troubles also peak when Mary Jane Watson attempts to broker a peace between May and Peter and only succeeds in forcing her ex to terrifyingly transform into Venom before everybody’s appalled eyes. Luckily Yuri arrives to drive him off, giving MJ time to call in the Avengers to take down the out of control über-symbiote…

In ‘Conclusion’, with the city being devastated by the alien horror Flash – unable to survive without the ravening parasite – manages to trick the beast back into his body, seemingly giving the now coolly rational Octavius a golden opportunity to claim all his recent aberrant violent behaviour was caused by previous exposures to the creature.

…But whilst Parker’s friends and family are prepared to accept that line, ever-suspicious Iron Man has secured proof that the Superior Spider-Man has been lying from the very start…

Worst of all, the possession of Otto by the beast has awaked an aggravating ghost in his head he had thought long dead……

To Be Continued…

This carnage-crammed chronicle includes a covers-&-variants gallery by J.G. Jones, J. Scott Campbell, Humberto Ramos, Skottie Young, Stefano Caselli & Frank Kozik and more up-to-the minute AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App pages which provide access to story bonuses and content on your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet).

Spider-Man has been reinvented so often it’s almost become commonplace, but this iteration – for however long it lasts – is one no lover of relentless action and diabolically devious drama should miss: clever, cunning, shocking and completely addictive.

™ & © 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

House of M Ultimate Edition


By Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel, Tim Townsend & various (Marvel/ Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-0-184653-582-6

Once upon a time the mutant Scarlet Witch married the android Vision and they had – through the agency of magic and Wanda Maximoff‘s undiagnosed ability to reshape reality – twin boys. Over the course of time it was revealed that her sons were not real, and as the years passed the shock of that revelation drove her insane.

After tipping completely over the edge Wanda engineered the destruction of her other family – the vast and varied assemblage of superheroes called the Avengers – and even caused the death of former husband and some of her oldest friends.

The World’s Mightiest Heroes were shut down and rebooted in a highly controversial storyline known as Avengers Disassembled, which resulted in the formation of both The New and Young Avengers. The publishing event also spilled over into the solo titles of team members and affiliated comicbooks such as the Fantastic Four and Spectacular Spider-Man, which all ran parallel story-arcs to accompany the Big Show.

Said Show consisted of the worst day in the team’s history as the Witch manipulated people and events: betraying her oldest, closest companions and causing the destruction of everything they held dear. The chaos-storm was only ended when mystic master Doctor Strange and mutant patriarch Charles Xavier took the dazed and crazed Wandainto their personal care.

This follow-up company crossover conjunction – released originally and primarily as an 8-issue miniseries from August to November 2005 – saw reality rewritten again as Wanda apparently had another major lapse in concentration; rejigging history such that mutants now dominated a society where normal humans (“sapiens”) were an acknowledged evolutionary dead-end living out their lives and destined for extinction within two generations. Moreover her true father Magneto ruled the mutants, head of a glorious dynasty which exerted political control over the entire planet.

It took a dedicated band of heroes and a great deal of luck to put that genie back in a bottle, but in the aftermath almost no mutants were left…

Re-presenting the core fortnightly miniseries House of M this Ultimate Edition also contains covers and variants by Esad Ribic, Joe Quesada, Terry Dodson, John Cassaday, Brandon Peterson, Mike McKone, Greg Land, Salvador Larocca, Chris Bachalo and Joe Madureira, as well as a critical overview of the tale and its attendant spin-off miniseries entitled ‘The Legacy of the House of M’, but annoyingly only a quarter of The Pulse – an inspired 12 page faux issue of that world’s top mutant gossip mag, which offered engaging and pertinent snippets of congruent stories in other titles…

Following a handy scene-setting recap page the drama begins in devastated former mutant homeland Genosha, where Xavier frustratedly admits that his psychic surgeries are not helping Wanda.

The desire to restore her non-existent children is too strong and she constantly tinkers with reality to make her whims real. After much impassioned debate with her despondent father Magneto and brother Quicksilver, Professor X finally admits defeat and considers other options…

Meanwhile in New York Wonder Man, Ms. Marvel and The Falcon visit the New Avengers at Stark Tower preparatory to the latest iteration of the team going public. Thus they are on hand when the X-Men come calling: summoned by Xavier to discuss the final fate and disposition of the Scarlet Witch.

In Genosha her father and brother argue on: one seeing no option but the final sanction and the other determined that Wanda must not die.

Opinion is just as divided amongst Avengers and X-Men. Unable to reach a decision, the assemblage opt to visit Wanda and try to get through to her one last time, but by the time they reach Genosha she is gone.

Fearing the world might end at any second they frantically search until they are all consumed by a blinding light…

The second chapter begins in a very different New York, where decrepit nonagenarian war hero Steve Rogers draws a well deserved pension, millionaire celebrity Peter Parker, his wife Gwen and their son Richie as well as May and Ben Parker all live in lofty luxury and teeming billions of mutants run the world, all safeguarded and policed by colossal robotic Sentinels…

All the heroes who sought out the Witch now live perfect lives that match their deepest, most secret hearts’ desires, but there is a painful undercurrent of tension amongst the rapidly declining, soon to be extinct Homo Sapiens…

Wolverine awakes screaming. His greatest desire has always been to recover his lost memories: destroyed and discarded by more than a century of brainwashing, mind-wiping and intervention by a succession of sinister enemies. As consciousness returns he remembers everything.

Especially how a moment ago the world was completely different…

In this new universe he is leader of an elite team of mutant peacekeepers. The Red Guard are the prime enforcers of the House of M and agents of the Royal Family of Magneto: de facto rulers of Earth.

Appalled, he leaps from the ominous floating aircraft carrier dominating New York and plunges to Earth…

Healing factor in overdrive he then lurches through the streets of the city searching for Xavier and a solution to this insurmountable problem. Hard on his heels are his former subordinates in the Red Guard, all convinced their ruthless commander has gone crazy.

In his frantic flight, the desperate fugitive stumbles into old comrade Luke Cage who is, in this world, a cunning gangster leading a band of human rebels fighting mutant oppression. Shockingly, amongst his motley crew is masked archer Hawkeye – one of the cruellest casualties of the Scarlet Witch’s first killing spree…

Playing with his grandchild in the idyllic paradise of Genosha, Magneto is unaccountably troubled at the perfection of his existence even as, in New York, Sentinels track and attack Cage’s “Human Avengers”. Thanks to teleporter Cloak, Wolverine and a few of the gang escape, taking with them a strange little girl named Layla Miller.

She is a mutant and amongst her arcane and undisclosed power-set is the ability to reawaken a person’s memories of the world Wanda overwrote…

Convinced Magneto had used his crazy daughter to remake the world to his advantage, Wolverine is exultant to have a weapon that can offset all the dictator’s advantages, and with Cage begins tracking down and restoring his former allies. The game plan remains unchanged: find Xavier and use his telepathic powers to force the Witch to restore the real world.

In Genosha, meanwhile, Magneto again finds himself drawn to the simple tomb of his greatest friend and occasional enemy Charles…

The next stage in Wolverine’s campaign is to use his now restored and grimly determined Avenger and X-Men allies to take control of the helicarrier above New York, piloting it to Genosha and engaging the House of  M’s forces whilst Layla works her own special mutant magic and reawakened mystic master Stephen Strange deals with Wanda…

Throughout the horrifying ordeal everybody involved has assumed that Magneto made his daughter reorder reality to suit his dark ambitions, but the Doctor’s confrontation shockingly reveals a different hand and motive behind the grand change and, as the universe begins to unravel once more, the appalled and furious Master of Magnetism unleashes his own power against the traitor who betrayed his friends, family, species and planet…

…And at the heart of the chaos and carnage Wanda Maximoff, whether at the peak of her madness or in a chilling moment of clarity, utters three little words.

“No more Mutants”…

Dawn breaks on New York City and all the battered participants at the centre of the apocalyptic struggle awake in their own – as far as they know – proper beds. For those that remember, the world seems back to its true state, but after gathering together the shell-shocked protagonists compare notes and realise some things don’t jibe.

Wolverine still has all the memories of his long and previously clouded life; Wanda has vanished; there is evidence that Hawkeye might be alive again and, most unbelievable of all, the almost one million members of the mutant sub-species are now only human.

Across the Earth less than 200 super-powered Homo Superior remain. Governments are scrabbling to process the fact and form policies whilst the pedagogues of the religious right claim God has smitten the unclean and exhort decent – human – men and women to finish the good work…

Scientist Henry Pym has an even more chilling warning. Reminding us of Einstein’s dictum “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another”, he ominously ponders on where all the powers, radiations and assorted exotic energies formerly wielded by the ex-mutant population have gone…

To Be Continued…

Although Marvel continuity was skilfully interwoven throughout the event, this particular tale stands alone perfectly without any need to refer to the many attendant miniseries: offering an engaging, fast-paced thriller by Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel & Tim Townsend, brimming with tension and stuffed with bombastic action

House of M is an action-packed, spectacular adventure that will delight lovers of epic Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy and beguile casual readers looking for an easy entry into the madcap world of Costumed Dramas.

™ & © 2005 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.