Category: Marvel Superheroes

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Essential Hulk volume 5


By Len Wein, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Chris Claremont, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema, Jack Abel, Joe Staton & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-7851-3065-9

By the close of the 1960s the Incredible Hulk had settled into a comfortable niche – and satisfyingly effective formula as radioactively afflicted Bruce Banner sought cures for his gamma-transformative curse, alternately aided or hunted by US General (and father of the scientist’s one true love) Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross and a variety of guest-star heroes and villains.

Illustrator Herb Trimpe had made the character his own; the “house” Jack Kirby-based art-style quickly evolving into often startlingly abstract mannerism, augmented by an unmatched facility for drawing technology – especially honking great ordnance and vehicles – all of which looks especially great in the crisp black and white of these magically affordable Essentials volumes.

Most importantly, no one could possibly deny the sheer cathartic reader-release rush of a great big “Hulk Smash!” moment…

This chronologically complete monochrome mammoth contains Incredible Hulk #171-200, plus Hulk King Size Annual #5 (spanning January1974-November 1976) and opens with excessive bombast but no appreciable fanfare as ‘Revenge!’ (by Gerry Conway – from a Steve Englehart plot with art by Trimpe & Jack Abel) finds the Green Goliath a stowaway on a plane back to military Mecca Hulkbuster Base carrying new Project: Greenskin commanding officer Colonel John D. Armbruster who has taken over from the politically sidelined Thunderbolt Ross.

The camp is eerily deserted and the reason soon becomes clear as bludgeoning brutes Abomination and The Rhino attack. Having subdued the entire garrison, they plan on detonating the base’s gamma-bomb self-destruct device but are utterly unprepared for the Hulk’s irascible intervention…

Roy Thomas plotted Tony Isabella’s script for #172 wherein the Hulk – captured by the ungrateful soldiers he saved – is hurled into another dimension, allowing a mystic menace to inadvertently escape. ‘And Canst Thou Slay… The Juggernaut?’ reveals that even that magically augmented menace cannot resist our favourite monster’s might and features a telling cameo by the X-Men, after which Thomas scripts all-Trimpe art-fest ‘Anybody Out There Remember… The Cobalt Man?’, wherein another old X-adversary – Ralph Roberts – picks up the Jade Giant at sea before sailing his research vessel into a nuclear test explosion…

Dying of radiation exposure the deranged technologist then determines to demonstrate atomic bombs are bad to a callous, uncaring world by detonating one over Sydney in Doomsday… Down Under’ (Conway, Thomas, Trimpe & Abel). The second clash with the azure-armoured Cobalt Man results in a blistering battle in the stratosphere, a cataclysmic explosion and Hulk crashing to earth far, far away as a ‘Man-Brute in the Hidden Land!’ (#175, Thomas, Trimpe & Abel)…

Here a typically short-tempered encounter with the Uncanny Inhumans and devastating duel with silent super-monarch Black Bolt, after the usual collateral carnage, ends with the gamma gladiator hurtling to the far side of the sun in a rocket-ship for a date with allegory if not destiny.

During the early 1970s a throwaway Fantastic Four character dubbed Him was turned into a modern interpretation of the Christ myth and placed on a world far more like our own than the Earth of Marvel’s universe.

That troubled globe was codified as Counter-Earth and upon it the messianic Adam Warlock battled a Satan-analogue known as the Man-Beast. Hulk had briefly visited once before and now he crashed there again to complete the allegorical epic beginning with ‘Crisis on Counter-Earth!’ by Conway, Trimpe & Abel.

Since the Hulk’s departure Man-Beast and his animalistic minions (all spawned by godlike genetic meddler The High Evolutionary) had become America’s President and Cabinet. Moving decisively they had finally captured Warlock and led humanity to the brink of extinction, leaving the would-be messiah’s disciples in utter confusion.

Now with the nation in foment the Hulk’s shattering return gives Warlock’s faithful flock an opportunity to save their saviour in ‘Peril of the Plural Planet!’ but the foray badly misfires and Warlock is captured. Publicly crucified at the behest of the people, humanity’s last hope perishes…

Meanwhile on true-Earth Ross and Armbruster discover trusted comrade (and Ross’ son-in-law) Major Glenn Talbot has escaped from a top security Soviet prison and is making his triumphant way back to the USA…

The quasi-religious experience concludes with ‘Triumph on Terra-Two’ (Conway, Isabella, Trimpe & Abel) as the dead prophet resurrects whilst Hulk is waging his last battle against Man-Beast in time to deliver a cosmic coup de grace before ascending from Counter-Earth to the beckoning stars…

Incredible Hulk #179 signalled a much-need thematic reboot as Len Wein signed on as writer/editor with strong ideas on how to put some dramatic impact back into the feature. It begins with ‘Re-enter: The Missing Link’, as the Jade Juggernaut loses patience during his return trip and bursts out of his borrowed spaceship just as America’s military defences shoot it down.

He crashes to earth in the mining district of Appalachia and, reverting to befuddled Bruce Banner, is adopted by the dirt-poor Bradford family. They have a habit of taking in strays and have already welcomed a strange, huge yet gentle being they’ve named Lincoln.

As time passes Banner recognises the creature as a former Hulk foe known as the Missing Link. The colossal brute is neither evil nor violent (unless provoked) but is lethally radioactive, and the fugitive physicist faces the dilemma of having to break up a perfect happy family before they all die.

The Link of course, refuses to cooperate or go quietly…

Next comes the most momentous story in Hulk history which starts with ‘And the Wind Howls… Wendigo!’ (#180, October 1974, Wein, Trimpe & Abel), wherein the blockbusting brute bounces across the Canadian Border and encounters a witch attempting to cure her lover of a curse which has transformed him into a rampaging cannibalistic monster.

Unfortunately that cure meant Hulk had to become a Wendigo in his stead…

It was while the Great Green and Weird White monsters were fighting that mutant megastar Wolverine first appeared – in the very last panel – and that’s what leads into the savage fist, fang and claw fest that follows.

‘And Now… The Wolverine!’ captivatingly concluded the saga as the Maple nation’s top-secret super-agent is unleashed upon both the Emerald Goliath and man-eating Wendigo in an 18-page romp stuffed with triumph, tragedy and lots of slashing and hitting. The rest is history…

Back south of the border, Major Talbot has been reunited with his wife and family and is eagerly expecting a meeting with President Ford as ‘Between Hammer and Anvil!’ (with Trimpe taking sole charge of the art chores) finds the ever-lonely Hulk meeting and losing a true friend in jolly hobo Crackerjack Jackson.

The über-action portion of the tale comes from two escaped convicts who despise each other but are forced to endure togetherness because of an alien chain which shackles them whilst imparting overwhelming power. It’s not, nearly enough, however, enough to stop a fighting-mad, heartbroken Hulk…

Electrical vampire and life-stealer ZZZAX returns in ‘Fury at 50,000 Volts!’, wrecking a new life Banner surreptitiously carves for himself in Chicago, after which ‘Shadow on the Land!’ finds the wandering man-mountain battling alien invader Warlord Kaa who has taken possession of the Hulk’s shadow. This close encounter leads to Banner’s capture by Armbruster just in time for the President’s visit and a shocking ‘Deathknell!’ as the truth about Talbot is revealed when the trustworthy major attempts to assassinate the Commander-in-Chief.

During the attendant death and chaos Hulk busts out and General Ross regains his credibility by recapturing him, but the Soviet infiltration of the base is far from over as a traitor dons super-armour to continue the attacks in ‘The Day of the Devastator!’

This time when the Jade Juggernaut smashes their common foe, the American army are suitably grateful…

Sometime later SHIELD intelligence discovers the real Talbot is still a prisoner in Siberia and that Hulkbuster Base’s current problems have been caused by a Soviet mutant genius they’ve all battled before…

‘There’s a Gremlin in the Works!’ (Incredible Hulk #187, with Joe Staton joining the team as inker) features the return of the son of the Green Goliath’s very first foe The Gargoyle – see Essential Hulk volume 1 – a vicious mastermind with plans far beyond merely serving the Soviet state.

The little maniac is holding Talbot at his Bitterfrost fortress and quite prepared for Ross and SHIELD agent Clay Quartermain to stage a rescue bid, but all the cyborg super-soldiers and giant mutant monster dogs in the world are not enough when mission stowaway Bruce Banner gets scared and goes green…

The fiend’s personality-altering technology is exposed in ‘Mind Over Mayhem!’ but as the heroes escape with Talbot’s comatose body Hulk seemingly dies in Bitterfrost’s explosive death-throes. Nothing could be further from the truth and #189 sees the monster battle the Mole Man to secure a miracle-remedy for a sightless little Russian girl in ‘None Are So Blind…!’

Veteran Hulk illustrator Marie Severin inks Trimpe on ‘The Man Who Came Down on a Rainbow!’ as alien benefactor Glorian whisks the solitary man-monster to a veritable promised land in the stars, only to have the idyll shattered by invading Toad Men hungry for the secret power fuelling paradise…

After murdering Glorian, ‘The Triumph of the Toad!’ (Trimpe & Staton) is short-lived and catastrophically self-destructive after the enraged Hulk and the Shaper of Worlds extract a measure of justice for their fallen friend…

Cast back to Earth, the Green Giant lands in Scotland in time to get between feuding hotheads with violently opposing attitudes to ‘The Lurker beneath Loch Fear!’ after which Banner heads back to America where Ross and Quartermain have recruited a famous psychologist to fix the catatonic Glenn Talbot.

‘The Doctor’s Name is… Samson!’ finds the one time Gamma-powered superhero falling victim to another scientific gaffe and accidentally reborn as the green-haired strongman, yet still unable to cure his patient. For that he needs Banner, but when his wish comes true, Leonard Samson just isn’t tough enough to hold onto him…

After years on the strip Trimpe moved on to other things and Incredible Hulk #194 saw the pencilling debut of Sal Buscema in ‘The Day of the Locust!’ (with Wein & Staton still doing what they did best).

Lost in the American heartland the Hulk stumbles upon young lovers pursued by an overly possessive dad determined to end the affair. This angry parent however is a former X-Men enemy who can enlarge insects to immense size so the kids are more than grateful for the assistance of a Jolly Green Cupid…

With Samson and the army one step behind him, the Hulk befriends a small boy running away from home in ‘Warfare in Wonderland!’ Eager for any advantage Ross tricks the Abomination into attacking the Jade Giant but is unprepared for the gamma gladiators to team up rather than tussle in #196’s ‘The Abomination Proclamation!’

The villain’s innate viciousness soon alienates his temporary ally however and after winning another spectacular fight Hulk blasts off on a runaway rocket and crashes down in the Everglades where the invidious Collector has made his latest lair…

The phenomena fanatic is on a monster kick and, having scooped up Banner and a mute young man who is in actuality The Glob, feels ‘…And Man-Thing Makes Three!’ to be the perfect set. He has grossly underestimated the deeply buried humanity of his living trinkets and soon must face a mass-escape and the loss of all his living exhibits after ‘The Shangri-La Syndrome!’ hits home…

Hulk Annual #5 (November 1976) was the first all new King-Size compendium since 1968 and featured a huge monster mash reviving a half dozen iconic threats and menaces from the company’s pre-superhero phase. Written by Chris Claremont, with art by Sal B & Jack Abel, ‘And Six Shall Crush the Hulk!’ offers little in the way of plot but stacks of sensational action as a procession of resurrected aliens attack one after another, beginning with ‘Where There’s Smoke, There’s Diablo!’, ‘And Taboo Shall Triumph!’ and ‘It Is Groot, the Monster from Planet X!!’, after which ‘For I am Goom!!’ and ‘Beware the Blip!’ pile on the pressure until an evil mastermind is revealed as grudge-bearing Defenders foe Xemnu in ‘A Titan Shall Slay Him!’

Naturally even exhausted the Hulk is too much for the spiteful schemer…

Building up to a spectacular anniversary, Incredible Hulk #199 saw Samson and Ross employ all America’s most advanced assets in ‘…And SHIELD Shall Follow!’ (Wein, Sal B & Staton) to capture the critically necessary Jade Giant, but in the end it is the psychologist’s sheer guts and determination which won the day, allowing the big issue #200 resolution as Hulk is shrunk to infinitesimal size and injected into Talbot’s brain to battle materialised memories and a viciously sentient tumour as ‘An Intruder in the Mind!’

The struggle to restore the mind of Banner’s rival for Betty Ross-Talbot‘s undying affections is not without complications, however, and at the moment of his greatest triumph and sacrifice the Hulk suffers a major setback and begins uncontrollably shrinking beyond the ability of Samson and his team to rescue him…

To Be Continued…

This superbly cathartic tome also includes Hammer and Anvil pages taken from the Marvel Universe Handbook plus an alternative cover to Incredible Hulk #174.

The Incredible Hulk is one of the most well-known comic characters on Earth, and these stories, as much as the movies, cartoons, TV shows, games, toys and action figures are the reason why. For an uncomplicated, earnestly vicarious experience of Might actually being Right, you can’t do better than these yarns, so why not Go Green – even if it’s only in monochrome and in your own delirious head?
© 1974, 1975, 1976, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Secret Warriors volume 5: Night


By Jonathan Hickman, Mirko Colac, Alessandro Vitti, David Marquez & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4803-6

In his “Infinity-formula” extended career, Marvel’s immortal secret agent Nick Fury fought in every war since WWII, worked for the CIA and ran numerous iterations of superspy agency S.H.I.E.L.D.; generally finding over and again that nobody could be trusted – not to stay clean and decent – in a world of temptation.

Worse yet, even the best of men could be forced to whatever was necessary given the right motivation…

Too many times the spooks “on our side” became as debased as the bad guys in a world where covert agencies were continually exposed as manipulative, out-of-control tools of subversion, oppression and ambition.

The taste of betrayal and those seeds of doubt and mistrust never went away, and following a succession of global crises – including a superhero Civil War and the rise of a certified maniac to the second most powerful position in America – Fury was ousted as S.H.I.E.L.D. director.

His immediate successor Tony Stark proved to be a huge – if well-meaning – mistake, and after an alien invasion by Skrulls the entire organisation was mothballed. He was replaced by the dynamic Norman Osborn and his cultishly loyal H.A.M.M.E.R. outfit. It was a case of giving a rabid fox the keys to the henhouse…

As America’s Director of National Security, the former Green Goblin instituted a draconian “Dark Reign” of oppressive, aggressive policies which turned the USA into a paranoid tinderbox.

The nation’s Top Fed was specifically tasked with curbing the unchecked power and threat of a burgeoning metahuman community, but he was also covertly directing a cabal of the world’s greatest criminals and conquerors; intent on divvying up the planet between them. The repercussions of Osborn’s rise (and inevitable fall) were felt throughout and featured in many series and collections throughout the entire fictive universe.

His brief rule also drastically shook up the entrenched secret empires of the planet and his defeat destabilised many previously unassailable clandestine Powers and States…

Fury, a man driven by duty, fuelled by suspicion and powered by a serum which kept him vital far beyond his years, didn’t go away. He just went deep undercover and continued doing what he’d always done – saving the world, one battle at a time. From this unassailable, unsuspected vantage point, free of the shackles of politically motivated oversight, Fury picked his battles and slowly gathered assets and resources he had personally vetted or constructed…

The indomitable freedom fighter had always known that to do the job properly he needed his own trustworthy forces and no constraints. To this end he had spent decades secretly sourcing and stockpiling his own formidable, unimpeachable army. Decades in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided him with mountains of data on metahumans. From these he had compiled “Caterpillar Files” covering many unknown, unexploited and, most importantly, untainted potential operatives who might one day metamorphose into true assets…

His first move was to assemble a crack squad of super-human agents. Team White initially comprised Yo Yo Rodriguez AKA Slingshot, neophyte mystic Sebastian Druid, Jerry “Stonewall” Sledge, J.T. “Hellfire” James, instinctive leader Daisy Johnson – codenamed Quake – and the terrifyingly volatile Alexander: a 12-year old boy with incredible power.

The child Phobos was destined to become a true god and personification of Fear itself but until then his daily-growing divine gifts were Fury’s to use… if he dared…

In the aftermath of the wave of crises the old soldier had come across a truly shocking piece of intel: for most of his career, S.H.I.E.L.D. had been no more than a deeply submerged and ring-fenced Hydra experiment.

All Fury’s world-saving triumphs had been nothing more than acceptable short-term losses for a secret society which claims to reach back to ancient Egypt, secretly steering the world for millennia.

However since Osborn and the Skrull invasion had shaken things up, the old war-dog now had an honest chance of wiping out his perfidious many-headed, faceless foe forever…

Hydra had been badly damaged by the crisis, and as the dust settled Baron Wolfgang von Strucker sought to capitalise on the chaos to regenerate the cult in his own image, seizing all fallow assets, technology and even experienced agents abandoned by friends and enemies alike…

To this end, Strucker co-opted breakaway factions of Hydra and convened a new hierarchy of deadly lieutenants loyal to him alone. However even with Viper, Madame Hydra, Kraken, Silver Samurai, The Hive and mystically resurrected mutant ninja The Gorgon on board, the prospect of wedding super-science and corporate rapaciousness with ancient magic and millennial covert cabals was a risky ploy…

Their rabid rapid expansion also gave Fury an opportunity to place one of his own deep within the organisation…

To further bolster his own relatively meagre forces, Fury reached out to selected old S.H.I.E.L.D. comrades and especially his former second-in-command Dum-Dum Dugan who had gathered up the most trustworthy agents and veterans into a private security agency – the Howling Commandos Private Military Company. Warriors to the last, they were all looking for one last good war and a proper way to die…

Some of them got their wish when the good guys launched a daring raid and stole three of the mothballed colossal flying fortress warships dubbed Helicarriers, laying the groundwork for an imminent, unavoidable and very public shooting war…

Fury’s counterattack failed spectacularly and in the resultant chaos that followed things only got worse…

Now Hydra has once more splintered into factions again leaving Strucker embroiled in a globe-spanning vendetta with Soviet-founded subversive organisation Leviathan. Moreover, their once-covert conflict has escalated into a monstrously damaging and destructively public shooting war resulting in thousands of collateral civilian casualties all over Earth…

Written throughout by Jonathan Hickman, this fifth complex and intriguing espionage epic collects Secret Warriors #20-24 (November 2010-March 2011) and opens with the eponymous 3-parter ‘Night’ and ‘How Did Things Ever Come to This?’ (art by Mirko Colak and Alessandro Vitti) wherein Fury briefs his diminished White team – Hellfire, Stonewall, Slingshot, Daisy, Phobos and human teleporter Eden Fesi – about the growing crisis and tells them how they’re going to stop it.

Once the squad’s preparations to raid and eradicate Hydra’s key base are finalised, the traitor in Fury’s handpicked team takes the first opportunity to pass on the plans to the always-one-step-ahead opposition…

Infiltrating the supposedly unsuspecting Gehenna Base in ‘This is How it was Always Going To Be’ Team White find a veritable army of hostiles led by Gorgon, Strucker and Madame Hydra waiting for them, but still manage to plant a devastating “mountain-breaker” bomb before beginning a frantic retreat. In the melee Fury and Phobos are separated from the rest.

Confronted by Gorgon, the boy-god tricks his grizzled human mentor into leaving before turning to duel the Gorgon. After a shattering battle with enchanted swords Alex dies heroically, enigmatically stating “this is how it’s supposed to be”…

The tragedy concludes with ‘I Gave Everything I Had’ as the mountain-breaker – aided by Daisy’s quake powers – detonates and Fury pragmatically drives his protégés to a secret rendezvous where his back-up escape plan is waiting.

The old warrior then selects one of the squad to join him in a rearguard action and, as they hold back the Hydra hordes, makes it plain that he’s aware of the greedy treachery which caused this debacle and Phobos’ death.

Only Fury rejoins the rest of Team White as they make their hairsbreadth escape…

In the aftermath, Strucker fumes, his frustration at fever pitch and his power further diminished by the desertion of The Gorgon and Madame Hydra. He is not expecting his faithful subordinate Kraken to try to kill him…

Illustrated by Alessandro Vitti, ‘Rebirth’ offers an elucidatory flashback which clarifies the mechanics of the team’s lucky escape. Six months previously Fury had very publicly kicked junior sorcerer Sebastian Druid out, declaring him a liability.

It was another ruse and ‘There Is No Out’ reveals how the portly mage was subsequently hot-housed by cyborg SHIELD agent John Garrett whose draconian training program turned the sad sack into a lethally capable operative in complete control of his eldritch abilities.

As a graduation test Garrett had Druid assassinate one of the Leviathan leaders and make it appear as if Hydra was behind the killing…

The Beginning of The End commences with ‘Wheels Within Wheels Part One’ (art by David Marquez & Vitti) as another strand of Fury’s Byzantine scheme seemingly falls apart. A year ago and unknown to all, he had activated another, completely covert Caterpillar team of super-agents, led by his own son Mikel.

Now ‘I Did My Best’ reveals how that entire squad falls in battle against Hydra rebel Hive and a shell-shocked, heartbroken and utterly beaten Nick Fury surrenders himself to Kraken and his Hydra host…

To Be Concluded…

This excellent exercise in tense suspense and Machiavellian manipulation also includes a stunning ‘Cover gallery’ by Jim Cheung and Paul Renaud to supplement the bleak, engagingly cynical, convoluted, over-the-top action and dazzling cloak-and-dagger conflicts: employing enough intrigue to bamboozle even the most ardent espionage aficionado, with the added bonus that far less knowledge of Marvel continuity is necessary to fully appreciate this particularly intense and engaging effort to the full.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Thor: Son of Asgard


By Akira Yoshida & Greg Tocchini & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1456-3

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

The series grew from formulaic beginnings battling aliens, commies and cheap thugs into a vast, panoramic and breathtaking cosmic playground for Kirby’s burgeoning imagination. Anthological Journey into Mystery inevitably became Mighty Thor where, after years of bombastic adventuring, the inconsistencies of the Blake/Thor relationship were re-examined and finally clarified to explain how an immortal godling could also be locked within a frail short-lived mortal.

That startling saga took the immortal hero back to his long-distant youth and finally revealed that the mortal surgeon was no more than an Odinian construct designed to teach the Thunder God humility and compassion…

As decades passed the series underwent numerous reboots and re-imaginings to keep the wonders of fabled Asgard appealing to an increasingly jaded readership. An already exceedingly broad range of scenarios spawned even greater visual variety after the Thunderer’s introduction to the pantheon of cinematic Marvels with his ongoing triumphs making him a bona fide blockbuster movie star.

In this scintillating traditional fantasy yarn (collecting Thor: Son of Asgard #1-12, May 2004-March 2005) scripter Akira Yoshida and illustrator Greg Tocchini – with the initial inking assistance of Jay Leisten – expand on the largely unexplored childhood of the Prince of Asgard, with special attention paid to his closest companions; a bold, brave and imaginative lad named Balder and the only female student in Warrior School – raven-haired tomboy Sif…

After a beguiling pictorial introduction to the Eternal Realm, the action opens in ‘The Warriors Teen’ as the heir of All-father Odin strives with increasing frustration to lift mystic hammer Mjolnir, an arcane artefact which can only be wielded by one who is worthy…

His latest failure is made worse by the gut-busting laughter of his best friends Balder and Sif who have seen this scene played out many times by the impetuous, impatient warrior in waiting. Also watching is the Prince’s foster-brother Loki. The malevolent child attends the sorcery school rather its martial cousin and everybody but Thor knows him to be mean-spirited, if not outright evil…

The hidden watcher quickly proves everybody right when he prankishly turns harmless bugs into ravening giant monsters, subsequently forcing the children to fight for their lives.

Drawn by the sounds of battle Odin arrives and, impressed with the carnage, deems it time to send the trio on a Warriors Quest. Without pausing to ask, Thor accepts the dangerous obligation and cannot understand why his friends are so angry with him…

Only after despatching the youngsters to gather four rare articles from the far corners of the Nine Realms to create a new magical weapon does the All-Father turn his attention to his other son…

As the intrepid youths set out to collect the scale of a dragon, the feather of a snow-eagle, a mystic gem and water from an enchanted lake, no one in Asgard is aware that spiteful eyes are watching and planning further harm…

One of Marvel’s richest seams of pure imagination, the Nine Realms impacted by the mighty races of Asgard and its satellites have always offered stirring, expansive tales of a non-traditional nature to comicbook readers. The full range of those worlds of wonder are explored when the heroic trio enter the Hidden Hills only to be confronted by a monstrous dragon somehow warned of their coming and quite prepared to unleash ‘The Heat of Hakurei’.

Only by the most inspired teamwork do the heroes succeed before travelling on to the frozen wilds of Jotunheim to battle undying ice pixies before scaling ‘The Nest of Gnori’ and winning a feather from the mighty avian deity’s wing.

After such extremes the idyllic green jungles of their next destination are a welcome break. Luxuriating by a limpid pool the boys are placed in embarrassing straits when skulking Loki – who has secretly followed – orchestrates a scenario where oafish Thor accidentally stumbles upon Sif bathing.

However her rightful wrath soon turns to something gentler after she boxes her blushing friend’s ears, leaving Loki to agonise about what he must do to destroy the comrades’ regard for each other…

The answer comes later as the trio traverse scorching sands to reach mystic mines and are all – even Loki – dragged down unto ‘The Jaws of Jennia’ by emotion-sucking imps. Once more cool, logical Balder saves the day where all Thor’s strength cannot…

As they make their way back to the surface and their final task, the trio do not realise that their invisible stalker Loki has been abducted by a truly inimical enemy…

The quest then takes a dramatic turn as the Prince of Mischief escapes the clutches of evil sorceress Karnilla and finds the wandering heroes en route to the final element at ‘The Lakes of Lilitha’.

Owning up to many attempts at sabotaging them, the trickster begs them to return him to Asgard as Karnilla is planning an imminent attack and the Realm must be warned. Thor, always more blind to his brother’s schemes than his friends, is in a quandary over how to proceed but ultimately decides Balder and Sif should return with his brother whilst he completes the final task alone.

After overcoming immense and outrageous ordeals the boy tastes nothing but frustration when he finally reaches the enchanted lake to discover it is nothing but a dried-up pit of sand…

Fuming with fury he rushes back to Asgard only to arrive as an army of giants and dragons breach the city’s walls. Joining the fray he helps repel the invading horde but is struck down by vengeful Karnilla at the moment of the Aesir’s triumph…

Suffering the vengeful fury of Odin, the sorceress is unable to see how Sif’s tears and the magic articles gathered in the quest bring the heroic prince back from the Land of the Dead in ‘The Trio Triumphant’. Nevertheless the witch makes one last defiant gesture by trying to kill Odin’s other son. With all Asgard stymied, once again cool Balder’s quick mind saves the day…

Their grand adventure over, the young Asgardians return to their studies in the 3-part follow-up ‘The Enchanted’ but something has changed between Thor and his combat classmate Sif. As the city gradually rebuilds there is unseemly tension between the comrades and after the prince humiliates her in a practice duel Sif uncharacteristically storms off.

Elsewhere Loki – the only boy in the city’s School of Sorcery – is accosted by classmate Amora, whose precocious preoccupation is spells of seduction. She instinctively knows why Thor and Sif are fighting and wants Loki to help her captivate the beautiful prince before he realises that cause is mutual attraction…

The Trickster of course is only too happy to sow more discontent…

Sif’s misery grows when a new girl joins the war classes. Brunnhilda is a vibrant, glamorous blonde every inch Thor’s equal in might and beauty and all too soon the dark-haired student is convinced the newcomer will steal Thor’s heart away…

The second chapter opens with a flashback revealing the vile prank perpetrated by Loki which made Sif the only dark-haired girl in Asgard (and an isolated, self-loathing outsider) before returning to the present where tensions boil over as she and Brunnhilda come to blows in class.

Repentant, angry and despondent, Sif is easy meat for the wily Loki who tricks her into stealing Odin’s magical Mirror of Mycha, with which she can enchant Thor into loving only her. Hating herself, the heartsick maiden liberates the looking glass but is ambushed by Loki’s confederate Amora who confiscates the stolen Mirror and uses it to make Thor her love-drunk slave…

When Sif tries to beat a confession out of the Enchantress, it is besotted Thor who roughly defends his smug new paramour but supposed rival Brunnhilda who sees what has truly occurred. In a quiet moment she approaches Sif and plans are laid to save the prince and punish the scheming perpetrators…

And with the status quo restored Sif and Thor finally find the perfect moment to speak their hearts and minds…

The final 3-part arc is based on Tales of Asgard back-up ‘Death Comes to Thor!’ (from Journey into Mystery #102, March 1964); an early Lee/Kirby classic 5-pager which introduced noxious King Rugga, The Norns, Sif and Hela, Queen of the Dead whilst revealing how Thor first took up his magic mallet.

The expanded version begins with the heir again struggling to raise Mjolnir before settling upon the singular notion of asking the terrifying trio of witches known alternatively as the Fates or Norns exactly how to become ‘Worthy’…

Their answer is appalling in its simplicity: he must face Death.

Returning to Asgard Thor finds his home again under attack by brutal giants and learns with horror that Sif has been abducted. As Odin and the adult warriors ride off in pursuit, the All-Father orders his son to remain, but the headstrong, lovesick youth – filled with fury and passion – instead grasps the impossibly heavy magic hammer and storms off for the castle of King Rugga, smashing his way through the venal ruler’s colossal army with a revelatory display of power…

Decimating the villain’s Storm Giants, Thor learns that his beloved has been traded to Death Goddess Hela in return for immortality. Without pause he turns his attention to her… This confrontation goes very differently and none of the hammer’s awesome capabilities have any effect on the gloating goddess.

Cheated of Thor once, her plan was to take him again, thus delivering to Odin the most heartbreaking blow she can, but against true love even the Queen of the Damned is powerless…

Epic, rousing and astonishingly beguiling, this superb fantasy frolic also includes a full cover gallery by Adi Granov and Jo Chen, as well as Tocchini Sketchbook designs for Thor, Loki, Sif, Balder and Odin and a selection of inked story pages prior to the application of Guru eFX’s resplendent digital colours.

A little off the Thunderer’s regulation stamping grounds, Thor: Son of Asgard offers magic, mystery and coming-of-age drama to suit Fantastic Romantics of every type and persuasion…
© 2004, 2005, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Deadpool Corps volume 1: Pool-Pocalypse Now


By Victor Gischler, Rob Liefeld, Marat Mychaels & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4825-8

Stylish killers and mercenaries craving something more than money have long made popular fictional protagonists, and light-hearted, exuberant bloodbath comics will always find an appreciative audience…

Deadpool is Wade Wilson (yes, a thinly disguised knockoff of Slade Wilson AKA Deathstroke the Terminator; get over it – DC did): an inveterate, unrepentant hired killer who survived cancer and genetics experiments that left him a grotesque bundle of scabs, scars and physical abnormalities but also practically immortal, invulnerable and capable of regenerating from any wound.

He is also a certifiable loon…

The wisecracking high-tech “Merc with a Mouth” was created by Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza, debuting in New Mutants #97, another product of the “Weapon X” project which created Wolverine and so many other mutant/cyborg super-doers. He got his first shot at solo stardom with a couple of miniseries in 1993 (Deadpool: the Circle Chase & Sins of the Past) but it wasn’t until 1997 that he finally won his own title, which blended fourth-wall-busting absurdist humour (a la Ambush Bug and Warner Brothers cartoons) into the mix and secured his place in Marvel’s top rank.

Since then he has become one of Marvel’s iconic, nigh-inescapable characters, perennially undergoing radical rethinks, identity changes, reboots and more before always – inevitably – reverting to irascible, irreverent, intoxicating type in the end…

Here, following events too ludicrous to mention, Wilson has linked up with a quartet of alternate Deadpools from very different alternate Earths and formed the strangest team in Marvel’s history (and yes, that includes the Pet Avengers).

Collecting Deadpool Corps #1-6 (June-November 2010) the manic mayhem begins with the 5-part ‘Disrespect Your Elders’ (by Victor Gischler, penciller Liefeld and inker Adelso Corona) as the new comrades – Wilson, the strikingly female Lady Deadpool, killer bad boy and errant pre-teen Kidpool, a floating masked cranium from the Marvel Zombiverse dubbed Headpool and a costumed mutt who answers to Dogpool – are hired by the Elder of the Universe known as The Contemplator to expunge a horrific threat to creation…

From a universe preceding The Big Bang an unstoppable force has manifested which absorbs intelligence. Thousands if not millions of planets have succumbed to the power of The Awareness, their sentience and independence subsumed into a slavish nullity. Protected as they are by their own innate, intrinsic imbecility, Contemplator wants the Deadpools to go kill it…

In a bit of a dudgeon over their selection is another Elder calling himself The Champion. The mightiest physical specimen in existence feels the honour of saving universal intellect should be his, but although he’s no big brain either he just isn’t in the Wilson squad’s league…

Whizzing across the cosmos in the super ship “Bea Arthur” – with plenty of pit-stops in the skeeviest bars, cantinas and dives for information and violent recreation – the team soon confront and readily outwit their brawny rival…

Forced to take a different tack, Champion teams up with fellow Elder The Gardener to remove his insufferable rivals but is utterly astounded by their response. Somehow elected their leader, “Championpool” readies himself for glorious combat before again finding himself humiliatingly outsmarted by the Terran morons and stranded on a dead-end world whilst they fly off to reap all the glory…

Tracking the menace involves going undercover, drinking, beating up lots of aliens, shopping and even colluding and cohabiting with legendary star smuggler The Broken Blade, but eventually they near the end of their quest…

More a superb succession of gags than a plot, the adventure follows the Crazy Corps as they bumble and smart-mouth their way across the universe until finally they confront The Awareness and despite – or rather because of – their uniquely skewed mentalities, triumph in the strangest way possible…

Rewarded with wishing rings by the exultant Contemplator, the Silly Squad stay in space where this initial compilation concludes with the bombastic ballad of ‘The Blue Buccaneer’ (illustrated by Marat Mychaels & Jaime Mendoza).

Trading on their intergalactic reputation as badasses-for-hire, the Deadpool Corps accept a commission to wipe out a pirate band preying on interstellar commerce, necessitating Lady Deadpool going undercover in the most shocking – to her at least – of disguises, uncovering the most unexpected of old acquaintances leading the perilous privateers…

Surreal, wickedly irreverent and excessively violent in the grand Bugs Bunny/Road Runner tradition, Deadpool Corps is frat boy foolish and frequently laugh-out-loud funny: a wonderfully antidote to the cosmic angst and emotional Sturm und Drang of most contemporary Fights ‘n’ Tights comics but pays lip service to being a notionally normal Marvel milestone by also offering a full covers-&-variants gallery by Liefeld and sketch variant by Ed McGuinness…
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Black Widow: Kiss or Kill


By Duane Swierczynski, Joe Aherne, Manuel Garcia, Brian Ching, Lorenzo Ruggiero, Bit & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4701-5

The Black Widow started life as a svelte and sultry honey-trap Russian agent during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days. Natalia Romanova was subsequently redesigned as a super villain, falling for an assortment of Yankee superheroes – including Hawkeye and Daredevil – defecting and finally becoming an agent of SHIELD, freelance do-gooder and occasional leader of the Avengers.

Throughout her career she has been considered efficient, competent, deadly dangerous and somehow cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours. As her backstory evolved, it was revealed that she had undergone experimental Soviet procedures which had enhanced her physical capabilities and lengthened her lifespan, as well as assorted psychological processes which had messed up her mind and memories…

Always a fan favourite, the Widow only really hit the big time after featuring in the Iron Man, Captain America and Avengers movies, but for us unregenerate comics-addicts her print escapades have always offered a cool, sinister frisson of delight.

This particular caper compilation (reprinting Black Widow volume 4 #6-8 spanning November 2010 to January 2011) was the second and final story arc of a short-lived series and includes a riotous team up tale from the Iron Man: Kiss & Kill 1-shot (August 2010).

The espionage elitism opens with the eponymous 3-chapter ‘Kiss or Kill’ by writer Duane Swierczynski, illustrated by Manuel Garcia, Lorenzo Ruggiero, Bit and colourist Jim Charalapidis, as idealistic young journalist and recently bereaved son Nick Crane finds himself the target of two mega-hot, ultra lethal female super-spies in Houston’s club district.

Both of them say they want to save him but each seems far more intent on ending Nick’s life, and in between mercilessly fighting each other and hurtling across the city in a stampede of violent destruction both have demanded that he name his privileged source…

Nick is inclined to believe the blonde called Fatale. After all, he has a surveillance tape of the redhead – the Black Widow – with his father moments before he died…

After his senator dad was found with his brains all over a wall, Nick started digging and uncovered a pattern: a beautiful woman implicated in the deaths of numerous key political figures around the world…

After a staggering battle across the city Natalia is the notional victor but isn’t ready when Nick turns a gun on her. She still goes easy on him and he wakes up some time later in Roanoke, Virginia utterly baffled. She explains she’s on the trail of an organisation devoted to political assassination using a double of her to commit their high profile crimes but the angry young man clearly doesn’t believe her.

Further argument is curtailed by the sudden arrival of an extremely competent Rendition Team who remove them both to a secret US base in Poland. After a terrifying interval the Widow starts thinking that her extreme scheme to get the name out of Nick might be working but that all goes to hell when a third force blasts in and re-abducts them.

Realising that her government liaison is playing for more than one side, the Widow blasts her way out, dragging Nick with her, and soon they are on the run with only her rapidly dwindling and increasingly untrustworthy freelance contacts to protect them.

The escape has however almost convinced Nick to trust her with his source but that moment passes when the latest iteration of Crimson Dynamo and illusion-caster Fantasma derail the train they’re on…

Another explosive confrontation is suddenly cut short when Fatale arrives but rather than assassination she has an alliance in mind. The mysterious mastermind behind the killings and framing the Widow has stopped paying the killer blonde and thus needs to be taught a lesson about honouring commitments…

Now armed with Nick’s contact’s details they go after the enigmatic “Sadko” but the shady operator seems to be one step ahead of them as usual.

But only “seems”…

To Be Continued…

Rounding out this espionage extravaganza ‘Iron Widow’, written by Joe Aherne with art by Brian Ching and colourist Michael Atiyeh from Iron Man: Kiss & Kill, sees the Russian émigré give Avenging inventor Tony Stark a crash course in spycraft after a very special suit of Iron Man armour is stolen.

Fully schooled, the billionaire succeeds too well in locating his missing mech but falls into a terrifying trap set by sinister Sunset Bain and becomes a literal time-bomb pointed at the origin of The Avengers. Luckily Black Widow is on hand to prove skill, ingenuity and guts always trump mere overwhelming power…

A fast and furious, pell-mell, helter-skelter rollercoaster of high-octane intrigue and action, Kiss or Kill also includes a captivating collation of covers-&-variants by Daniel Acuña, J. Scott Campbell, Brian Stelfreeze, Ching & Chris Sotomayor and Stephane Perger, making this such a superb example of genre-blending Costumed Drama that you’d be thoroughly suspect and subject to scrutiny for neglecting it.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Hulk: Red Hulk volume 1


By Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness, Dexter Vines & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2882-3

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

A phenomenally popular character both in comics and more global accessible media like TV and movies, he has often undergone radical changes in scope and style to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling…

In the early part of the 21st century the number of gamma-mutated monsters rampaging across the Marvel landscape proliferated to inconceivable proportions and the days of Bruce Banner getting mean and going green are long gone, so anybody taking their cues from the small or big screen incarnations would be wise to assume a level of unavoidable bewilderment.

There are a few other assorted ancillary atomic berserkers roaming the planet, so be prepared to experience a little confusion if you’re coming to this particular character cold. Nevertheless these always-epic stories are generally worth the effort so persist if you can.

At the time of this collection – gathering the contents of Hulk volume 2 #1-6 from March-August 2008, plus a gamma-tinged bonus tale from Wolverine volume 3 #50 (and March 2007) – the Banner iteration of the Jade Giant is presumed dead and a smattering of new gamma gargantua are only just beginning to appear…

This will be eventually revealed as the first public phase of an extended plot by the world’s wickedest brain trust to conquer everything (as would be later seen in the epic Fall of the Hulks) but here action and enigma take precedence in the form of a bizarre murder mystery as She-Hulk, gamma-augmented psychologist Leonard “Doc” Samson, veteran Hulk-Buster General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, SHIELD agent Maria Hill and her new boss/Director Tony “Iron Man” Stark work a crime scene in Dimitri, Russia.

The assembled experts are standing over the corpse of Emil Blonsky – formerly the vicious indestructible monster known as the Abomination. He was beaten near to death by something which can only have been the dearly-departed Hulk but finished off with a gun of implausibly large calibre and power…

The assembled experts are baffled and suspicious. Since when has the Hulk ever been calm enough to use a gun? Other things don’t add up either – most notably the Hulk-sized footprints which were somehow so hot that they turned the ground to glass…

Before they get too far into their CSI task, however, Russia’s metahuman unit The Winter Guard show up and claim jurisdiction in a manner which can only lead to a fight and international incident…

The still-unexplained gamma-assassination took out an entire village as collateral damage and the battle between the American intruders and People’s Patriots Dark Star, Ursa Major, Crimson Dynamo and Red Guardian looks set to do even more harm until a shellshocked little girl shambles from the wreckage, muttering one word over and over. The chastened warriors stop and Darkstar translates. The broken waif is saying “red”…

Sometime later in Alaska, Banner’s greatest friend Rick Jones wakes up amidst a scene of devastation only a Hulk could have made, whilst in Gamma Base, Nevada, Samson and Ross enter a top secret dungeon to ask a prisoner ‘Who Is The Hulk?’

Just like the rest of the American investigators, they both know Blonsky’s killer can’t be Banner. The world at large may believe he’s dead but all the Hulk experts know he’s still alive and well, locked in the inescapable cell where they shoved him…

The mystery of the new Hulk resumes in ‘The Smoking Gun’ as aboard SHIELD Director Stark’s new Helicarrier, Hill reveals the gun used to kill Abomination was stolen from their own armoury deep within the flying super-fortress. She has no chance to expound further as She-Hulk is savagely attacked and beaten – by a colossal crimson monster that resembles the Hulk – so swiftly that even battle-seasoned Iron Man cannot react in time…

With the monumental vessel crippled and about to smash into New York City, the heroes’ attentions are divided between hunting the monster and preventing an appalling disaster, leaving Red Hulk to pick off the champions at his leisure…

In Nevada, hitchhiking Rick Jones has reached the supposedly decommissioned Gamma Base, only to be attacked by a massive scarlet horror. The assault triggers a strange change and the young man suddenly transforms into a huge and hideous blue abomination calling itself A-Bomb…

With more than one gamma suspect at large, ‘Creatures on the Loose’ opens in the smouldering remains of the downed Helicarrier as Stark reviews security footage from Gamma Base and realises that the captive Banner has had unmonitored conversations with Ross and Samson. Suspicions aroused, he takes the recordings to an expert even as at the Nevada site Red Hulk and A-Bomb engage in a furious no-holds barred battle.

So cataclysmic is the clash that it shatters the mile of ground above Banner’s cell and triggers the San Andreas Fault…

With a fight this ferociously apocalyptic, the impassive alien observer known as The Watcher naturally materialises to record the event but even he is not immune to the Crimson Barbarian’s unrelenting fury. However the beast’s attempted celestia-cide is interrupted by the resurgent return of the original Jade Juggernaut in ‘Red Light, Green Light’.

It is clearly what the devious scarlet newcomer has been wanting all along and their hyper-destructive duel carries them all the way to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge…

With catastrophe imminent ‘Rolling Thunder’ introduces another recently resurrected champion as Asgardian storm lord Thor dives headlong into the fray seconds after the Red Hulk seemingly drowns his viridian counterpart. As their subsequent staggering struggle takes the combatants from Earth to the Moon, A-Bomb and green Hulk struggle out of the choppy waters in time to join a band of heroes (Iron Man, She-Hulk, Human Torch, The Thing, Sub-Mariner and Ares, God of War) in preventing the roiling San Andreas Fault tipping the city and a good part of the Golden State into the Pacific Ocean…

The semi-mindless Green Goliath soon falls into fighting with his allies and hurtles away – somehow able to track to his scarlet-skinned alternate – and arrives as the beast returns to Earth after trouncing the Thunderer. Loathing each other on sight they clash again with the ‘Blood Red’ barbarian finally falling before the pounding fists of the unstoppable original Hulk. As the weary victor wanders away, however, the mastermind behind the Red Hulk finally reveals himself…

To Be Continued…

Also included in this collection is a collation of cartoon comedy vignettes (‘Hulk Art Class’, ‘Hulk Splash’ and ‘Hulk Zoo’) by Audrey Loeb & Chris Giarrusso) and a brief but visually bombastic retelling of the Jade Juggernaut’s first clash with manic mutant mainstay Wolverine in ‘Puny Little Man’ by Jeph Loeb, McGuinness & Vines from Wolverine volume 3 #50, and an assortment of covers and variants by McGuinness, Vines & Jason Keith, Michael Turner, Dale Keown, Daniel Acuña, Marko Djurdjevic, David Finch, Olivier Coipel and Arthur Adams.

If staggering, blockbusting Fights ‘n’ Tights turmoil is your fancy, a Hulk of any colour is always going to be at the top of every punch-drunk thrill-seeker’s hit list…
© 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Fantastic Four: the Beginning of the End


By Dwayne McDuffie, Karl Kesel, Paul Pelletier, Tom Grummett & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2554-9

The Fantastic Four has long been considered the most pivotal series in modern comicbook history, introducing both a new style of storytelling and a decidedly different manner of engaging the readers’ impassioned attentions.

More family than team, the roster has changed many times over the years but always eventually returns to the original configuration of Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and the Thing, who have together formed the vanguard of modern four-colour heroic history.

The quartet are actually maverick genius Reed Richards, his wife Sue, their trusty college friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s obnoxious and impetuous younger brother Johnny Storm; survivors of an independent space-shot which went horribly wrong once ferociously mutative Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

When they crashed back to Earth, the foursome found that they had all been hideously changed into outlandish freaks.

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible and form force-fields, Johnny could turn into self-perpetuating living flame, and poor, tormented Ben was transformed into a horrifying brute who, unlike his comrades, could not return to a semblance of normality on command.

The sheer simplicity of four archetypes – mercurial boffin, self-effacing distaff, solid everyman and hot-headed youth, uniting to triumph over accident and adversity – shone under Stan Lee’s irreverent humanity coupled to Jack Kirby’s rampant imagination and emphatic sense of adventure.

Decades of erratic quality and floundering plotlines followed the original creators’ departures, but from the beginning of the 21st century Marvel’s First Family experienced a steady climb in quality which culminated in their own blockbuster film franchise.

A key factor in the series success was an incredible roster of unforgettable villains and this slim compilation – re-presenting Fantastic Four #525-526 and #551-553 – features a brace of the very best at their very worst…

By this time the FF had achieved the comfortably universal status of being defined mostly by their current creators (like a Brannagh or Olivier Hamlet, Rathbone or Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes or Stan Lee vs. Frank Miller Daredevil) and this beguilingly mismatched collection gathers two story-oddments which wouldn’t comfortably fit in the themed compilations that surround it, but nonetheless offer some splendidly entertaining Fights ‘n’ Tights action from the “World’s Greatest Comics Magazine” for fans and aficionados to enjoy…

The drama anachronistically kicks of with a 3-part ‘Epilogue’ from Fantastic Four #551-553 (January-March 2008) which followed the return of the original quartet after a period when the universe had been championed by a substitute team (see Fantastic Four: the New Fantastic Four)…

‘The Beginning of the End’ by scripter Dwayne McDuffie, illustrated by Paul Pelletier & Rick Magyar, opens 75 years after the great superhero Civil War. Reed Richards has triggered a global revolution in humanity, but he spends his days as warden of a high security facility with only six incorrigible reprobates pent within.

When that number is suddenly reduced by one the science hero isn’t too bothered: after all, he remembers it happening decades ago…

Back at Now, the in-their-prime FF are astonished to find Doctor Doom accompanied by elderly incarnations of Sub-Mariner and recent team-mate Black Panther sitting on their couch. After the usual violent preamble the visitors explain they have come from the future to stop Richards from making the greatest mistake in human history…

Reed has a secret room in the Baxter Building where he brainstorms his “100 Ideas” to create a utopia, but Doom and his fellow time-travellers are determined to stop the super genius from instigating Idea 101 – the concept which made the future a living hell.

To prove his point the Iron Dictator reveals the shocking fate of his wife and comrades in years to come. In response Reed picks up a gun and murders one of his “guests”…

The shocking saga continues with ‘The Middle of the End’ as Reed proceeds to expose the time-tossed terror’s true intent, but as combat climaxes his comrades – so recently sundered by the Civil War and still trying to regain trust in each – other cannot shake the dread that there’s a kernel of truth in what Doom predicts …

The suspense then roars into overdrive when the Fantastic Four of Doom’s distant era materialise, determined to recapture the fugitive and prevent catastrophic time-branching no matter who has to pay the price in ‘The End’…

After a stunning all-out battle, a measure of equilibrium is restored before this cunning chronicle harks back to Fantastic Four #525-526 (June-July 2005) for ‘Dream Fever parts I and 2’, written by Karl Kesel with art by Tom Grummett, Larry Stucker & Norm Rapmund.

A less conflicted First Family have just returned from a peril-packed jaunt to the Micro-verse when alarms alert them that arcane immortal alchemist Diablo is attacking a bank, but this time he’s not looking for loot or even a fight…

Revealing his origins in 9th century Spain the mage wants the FF’s time machine so that he can return to his birth era and crush the sadistic Inquisition before it can torture and murder millions – and he’s prepared to raze New York to get his way…

After failing to capture the mystic maniac the heroes return home but are plagued by shared horrendous dreams which increasingly set the family at each other’s throats. Reed’s researches, however, soon prove Diablo is not the cause but only another victim of what seems to be a globally debilitating epidemic of nightmares…

Frantically racing against time the pliable genius traces the true cause of the contagion but to save the world the quarrelsome quartet might well have to strike that deal with the devil…

Supplemented with a cover gallery by Michael Turner and Jim Cheung plus a selection of pre-inked pencil pages from issues #551 and 553, The Beginning of the End is a fast-paced, action packed and tension-soaked chronicle of fantastic fragments that provides all the thrills and chills a devoted Costumed Drama lover could ever want.
© 2005, 2007 and 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Essential X-Men volume 2


By Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Terry Austin, Brent Anderson & Joe Rubenstein (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0298-4

In 1963 TheX-Men #1 introduced Scott “Cyclops” Summers, Bobby “Iceman” Drake, Warren “Angel” Worthington, Jean “Marvel Girl” Grey and Hank “The Beast” McCoy: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants dubbed Homo Superior. After years of eccentric and spectacular adventures the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 during a downturn in costumed hero comics whilst supernatural mysteries once more gripped the world’s entertainment fields.

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

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

The revision was an instantaneous and unstoppable hit, with Wein’s editorial assistant Chris Claremont taking over the writing from the second story onwards. The X-Men reclaimed their own comicbook with #94 and it quickly became the company’s most popular – and high quality – title.

Cockrum was succeeded by John Byrne and as the team roster shifted and changed the series rose to even greater heights, culminating in the landmark “Dark Phoenix” storyline which saw the death of arguably the book’s most beloved and imaginative character.

In the aftermath team leader Cyclops left but the epic cosmic saga also seemed to fracture the epochal working relationship of Claremont and Byrne. Within months of publication they went their separate ways: Claremont staying with the mutants whilst Byrne moved on to establish his own reputation as a writer on series such as Alpha Flight, Incredible Hulk and especially his revolutionised Fantastic Four…

After Apache warrior Thunderbird became the team’s first fatality, the survivors slowly bonded, becoming an awesome fighting unit under the brusque and draconian supervision of Cyclops and this second superlative monochrome Essential collection re-presents the groundbreaking tales from (Uncanny) X-Men #120-144, covering April 1979 to April 1981.

The action begins here with the introduction of a foreign super-squad in ‘Wanted: Wolverine! Dead or Alive!’, as the enigmatic mutant, accompanied by Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, Banshee and Nightcrawler, return from a bombastic battle in Japan but are covertly herded into Canadian airspace so that the Ottawa government can confiscate their property.

Forced down by a magical tempest the heroes are soon on the run in Calgary, ambushed by the aforementioned Alpha Flight – specifically battle-armoured Vindicator, super-strong Sasquatch, magician Shaman, shapeshifting Snowbird and mutant speedster twins Northstar and Aurora – all ordered to repossess former special operative “The Wolverine”…

After a brutal but inconclusive clash at the airport the X-Men fade into the city but only after Wolverine and Nightcrawler are captured…

The retaliation results in a ‘Shoot-Out at the Stampede!’ with the mutants confronting their pursuers as Shaman’s eldritch blizzard spirals out of control, threatening to destroy the entire province. Even after Storm fixes the problem, the Canadians are adamant and to end hostilities Wolverine surrenders himself in return for his comrades’ safe passage.

Of course he never promised to stay captured…

With Byrne producing light breakdowns, inker Terry Austin stepped up to produce full art finishes for issue #122’s ‘Cry for the Children!’ as the heroes finally return to the Xavier School to find their home boarded up and deserted.

Months previously, following a catastrophic battle against Magneto of which Beast and Phoenix believed themselves the only survivors, heartbroken Professor X had grieved for his fallen pupils and left Earth to be with his fiancée Empress Lilandra of the Shi’ar.

As the prodigals slowly settle in at the Professor’s mansion again, they try to resume their previous routines but psychological stress testing shows Russian Colossus is having second thoughts about deserting his family and country…

Reborn as the cosmic-powered Phoenix, Jean Grey went globetrotting to bury her woes and is currently in Scotland, unaware that she has been targeted by one of the team’s oldest enemies for a cruel assault. In New York, Storm has at last taken the time to trace her roots, visiting the old home of her American dad, only to find it now a junkie squat filled with doped and feral kids who viciously attack her…

Stabbed and bleeding she lashes out and only the sudden arrival of hero for hire Luke Cage and his friend Misty Knight (coincidentally Jean’s Manhattan room-mate) prevents a tragedy. None of them are remotely aware that they have been targeted by the world’s most outrageous hit-man…

With Byrne back in full pencil mode X-Men #123 includes a cameo from Spider-Man as jolly psycho-killer Arcade proceeds to pick off the oblivious mutants and run them through his fatal funfair Murder World in ‘Listen… Stop Me if You’ve Heard It… But This One Will Kill You!’, subjecting the abductees to perils mechanical and psychological.

The former prove understandably ineffectual but family guilt and cunning conditioning soon transform the homesick Russian into a vengeful mind-slave dubbed The Proletarian, determined to smash his former comrades in the concluding ‘He Only Laughs When I Hurt!’ Happily his inner child and the assorted heroes’ gifts and training prove too much for the maniacal killer clown…

Jean re-enters the picture when her stay with biologist Moira MacTaggert leads to the release of a long secret family shame in ‘There’s Something Awful on Muir Island!’ Throughout her long holiday Phoenix has been gradually turned and psychically seduced by a psionic predator. Groomed for a life of refined cruelty and debauchery by a man calling himself Jason Wyngarde, the intention is to create a callous “Black Queen” for the mysterious organisation known as the Hellfire Club…

At the other end of the galaxy Charles Xavier reviews records of how Phoenix once reconstructed the fragmenting universe and is gripped with terror at the thought of all that power in the hands of one frail human personality, whilst in his former home The Beast checks a tripped alarm and discovers his long-mourned friends are all alive.

The first thought is to tell Jean the incredible news, but no sooner is a transatlantic call connected than a scream echoes out and the line goes dead…

Issue #126 resumes frantic hours later as the X-Men approach Muir Island in their supersonic jet. With all contact lost and no telepath aboard, Cyclops assumes the worst and the team infiltrate in battle formation only to find a withered corpse and badly shaken comrades Lorna Dane, Havok, Madrox, Moira and Jean slowly recovering from a psionic assault.

In ‘How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth…!’ Dr. MacTaggert bitterly reveals the attacker is a psychic bodysnatcher imprisoned on Muir for years. He’s also her son…

Rapidly burning out one of Madrox’s duplicate bodies, the monster has already reached the mainland, but as the mutants disperse to hunt him down Jean is hampered by a torrent of seductive mirages projected by the smugly confidant Wyngarde, allowing the predatory Proteus to ambush the X-Men and try to possess Wolverine.

It is his first mistake. Metal has an inimical effect on the formless horror and the feral fury’s Adamantium skeleton forces him to flee his victim in screaming agony. It is then the creature unleashes his most terrifying power: warping reality to drive Wolverine and Nightcrawler to the brink of madness. Only the late-arriving Storm prevents their immediate demise but soon she too is at the edge of destruction…

‘The Quality of Hatred!’ finds the badly shaken team undergoing desperate “tough-love” remedies from Cyclops to regain their combat readiness whilst Moira tries to make up for her dangerous sentimentality by putting a bullet into her deadly offspring.

Frustrated by the idealistic Cyclops but having divined the path Proteus is taking, she then heads for Edinburgh and an unpleasant reunion with her former husband: brute, bully, Member of Parliament and father of most merciless monster the world has yet produced…

As Jean finally shrugs off her distractions and telepathically homes in on Proteus, the team swing into action a little too late: the sinister son has possessed his scurrilous sire and created an unstoppable synthesis of world-warping abomination…

With Edinburgh and perhaps the entire world roiling and rebelling as science goes mad, X-Men #128 sees the valiant champions strike back and spectacularly triumph in ‘The Action of the Tiger!’ after which ‘God Spare the Child…’ sees another happy reunion as the heroes (all but the now retired Banshee) find Charles Xavier awaiting them when they reach Westchester.

Jean is increasingly slipping into visions of a former life as a spoiled, cruel child of privilege, contrasting sharply with her renewed love for Scott, but the home atmosphere is troubled by another discordant factor. Xavier is intent on resuming the training of the team, haughtily oblivious that this group are grizzled, seasoned veterans of combat, rather than the callow teenagers he first tutored.

Elsewhere a cabal of mutants and millionaires plot. Black King Sebastian Shaw, White Queen Emma Frost and the rest of the Hellfire Club hierarchy know Wyngarde is an ambitious and presumptuous upstart but the possibility of subverting the Phoenix to their world-dominating agenda is irresistible…

When two new mutants manifest Xavier splits the team to contact both, taking Storm, Wolverine and Colossus to Chicago to meet the parents of naive thirteen year old Kitty Pryde who has just realised that along with all the other problems of puberty she can now fall through floors and walk through walls…

However no sooner does Professor Xavier offer to admit her to his select and prestigious private school than they are all attacked by war-suited mercenaries and shipped by Emma Frost to the Hellfire Club. Only Kitty escapes, but instead of running she stows away on the transport; terrified but intent on saving the day…

The other mutant neophyte debuts in X-Men #130 as Cyclops, Phoenix and Nightcrawler head to Manhattan’s club district to track down a disco singer dubbed ‘Dazzler’ unaware that they too have been targeted for capture. However little Kitty’s attempts to free the captives at the Hellfire base forces the villains to tip their hand early and with the assistance of Dazzler Alison Blair – a musical mutant who converts sound to devastating light effects – the second mercenary capture team is defeated…

In #131 Kitty is frantically fleeing but her ‘Run for Your Life!’ leads straight into the arms of the remaining X-Men. Soon the plucky lass – after an understandable period of terror, confusion and kvetching – is leading an incursion into the lair of the White Queen and freeing Wolverine, Colossus and Xavier whilst Frost faces off for a psionic showdown with a Phoenix far less kind and caring than ever before…

The saga expands in #132 as ‘And Hellfire is their Name!’ brings the Angel back into the fold. The Hellfire Club is in actuality a centuries-old association of the world’s most powerful and wealthy individuals and Warren Worthington’s family have been members in good standing for generations. What better way of infiltrating the organisation than with someone on the inside?

As Wolverine and Nightcrawler scurry through sewers beneath the society’s palatial New York headquarters, Warren inveigles the rest through the grand front doors into the year’s swankiest soiree whilst he and the Professor await events.

It’s a bold move but a pointless one. Although the rank and file are simply spoiled rich folk, there is an Inner Circle led by Shaw which comprises some of Earth’s most dangerous men and women… and they have been waiting and watching for the mutants-in-mufti’s countermove…

As soon as the heroes are inside, Wyngarde strikes, pushing Jean until she succumbs to the fictitious persona he has woven to awaken her darkest desires. With her overwhelming power added to the Inner Circle’s might, former friends quickly fall before the attack of super-strong Shaw and cyborg human Donald Pierce. Even Wolverine is beaten, smashed through the floors to his doom by mass-manipulating mutant Harry Leland…

As the Inner Circle gloat, Cyclops – connected to Jean by their psionic rapport – sees the world through his lover’s corrupted, beguiled eyes and despairs. However, when Wyngarde, revealed as mutant illusion caster Mastermind, apparently stabs Cyclops the effect on “his” Black Queen is far from anticipated…

Far below their feet, a body stirs. Battered but unbowed ‘Wolverine: Alone!’ begins to work his ruthless, relentless way through the Club’s murderous minions. His explosive entrance in #134’s ‘Too Late, the Heroes!’ gives the heroes a chance to break free and strike back, soundly thrashing the Hellfire blackguards. Sadly for Mastermind, not all his tampering has been expunged and when Jean catches him Jason Wyngarde’s fate is ghastly beyond imagining…

As the mutants make their escape the situation escalates to crisis level as the mind-manipulation unleashes all Jean’s most selfish, self-serving desires and she shatteringly transforms into ‘Dark Phoenix’…

Manifested as a god without qualm or conscience, Jean attacks her comrades before vanishing into space. Soon she reaches a distant system and, cognizant that she is feeling depleted, consumes the star, indifferent to the entire civilisation that dies upon the planet circling it…

Passing the D’Bari system is a massive ship of the Shi’ar star fleet. Rushing to aid the already extinct world they are merely a postprandial palate cleanser for the voracious Phoenix…

X-Men #136 opens with the horrified Empress Lilandra mobilising her entire military machine and heading for Earth, determined to end the threat of the ‘Child of Light and Darkness!’ On that beleaguered world Cyclops has called in the Beast to build a psychic scrambler to disrupt Jean’s immeasurable psionic might but when she cataclysmically reappears to trounce the team, the device burns out in seconds.

Sporadically Jean’s gentler persona appears, begging her friends to kill her before she loses control, but Dark Phoenix is close to destroying the world before, in a cataclysmic mental duel, Xavier shuts down her powers and establishes psychic circuit breakers to prevent her ever going rogue again…

With Jean left as little more than human, the heroes shudder in the aftermath of Earth’s latest close call when suddenly in a flash of light they all vanish…

The epic tale concludes in X-Men #137 as the outraged and terrified Shi’ar arrive in orbit to settle ‘The Fate of the Phoenix!’ With observers from the Kree and Skrull empires in attendance, Lilandra has come to exact justice and prevent the Phoenix from ever rising again. She is not prepared to accept her fiancé’s word that the threat is already ended…

Summary execution is only avoided when Xavier invokes an ancient rite compelling Lilandra to accept a form of trial-by-combat. Relocating to the Blue Area of the Moon (with its pocket of breathable atmosphere) the mutants engage in all-out war with brigade of cosmic champions The Shi’ar Imperial Guard (an in-joke version of DC’s Legion of Super Heroes), but despite their greatest efforts are pushed to the brink of defeat.

With collapse imminent and her friends doomed, Jean’s psychic shackles slip and the Phoenix breaks free again. Horrified at what will inevitably happen, Jean commits suicide to save the universe…

Days later on Earth the X-Men mourn her passing in #138’s ‘Elegy’ as Cyclops recalls his life with the valiant woman he loved so deeply – and we get a comprehensive recap of the mutant team’s career to date. Heartbroken, the quintessential X-Man resigns just as Kitty Pryde moves in…

A new day dawns in issue #139 ‘…Something Wicked This Way Comes!’ as the Angel rejoins the squad in time to see Nightcrawler join Wolverine in heading north for a reconciliation with the Canadian’s previous team, Alpha Flight. The visit turns into a hunt for the carnivorous magical monster Wendigo, culminating in a brutal battle and a rare clean win in #140’s ‘Rage!’

X-Men #141 saw the start of an evocative and extended subplot which would dictate years of tales to come. ‘Days of Future Past’ depicted an imminently approaching dystopian apocalypse wherein almost all mutants, paranormals and superheroes have been eradicated by Federally-controlled Sentinel robots.

The mechanoids rule over a shattered world on the edge of utter annihilation. New York is a charnel pit with most surviving superhumans kept in concentration camps and only a precious few free to fight a losing war of resistance.

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

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

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

With history restored and tragedy averted things slowed down at the X-Mansion as John Byrne left for pastures new. His swan song in #143 was a bombastic romp which found lonely, homesick Kitty home alone at Christmas… except for a lone N’garai ‘Demon’ determined to eat her…

Her solo trial decimated the X-Men citadel and proved once and for all that she had what it takes…

The story portion of this classic compendium concludes with ‘Even in Death…’ from X-Men #144, scripted by Claremont and illustrated by Brent Anderson & Joseph Rubenstein wherein heartbroken Scott fetches up in coastal village Shark Bay and joins the crew of Aleytys Forester‘s fishing boat.

Trouble is never far from the man called Cyclops however and when she introduces him to her dad the hero must draw upon all his inner reserves – and uncomprehending help of the macabre Man-Thing – to repel the crushing soul-consuming assaults of pernicious petty devil D’spayre…

Accompanied by fact-filled entries on Professor X, Cyclops, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Beast and Angel, all taken from the Marvel Universe Handbook, this comprehensive monochrome includes some of the greatest stories Marvel ever published; entertaining, groundbreaking and painfully intoxicating. These adventures are an invaluable grounding in contemporary fights ‘n’ tights fiction no fan or casual reader can afford to ignore.
© 1979, 1980, 1981, 1997, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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X-Men Legacy: Salvage


By Mike Carey, Scott Eaton, Phil Briones & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3876-1

Since its creation in 1963 and triumphant revival in 1975, Marvel’s Mutant franchise has always strongly featured powerful, conflicted and often controversial characters with the balance never resting solely on the side of light. One of the least explored and underused – except perhaps as the last-reel, deus-ex-machina, nuke-the-fridge problem solver – was the man who started it all: Professor Charles Xavier.

This particular collection gathers X-Men Legacy #219-225 (cover-dated February to August 2009); written by Mike Carey, it smartly redresses that imbalance as the usually sedentary mind-master becomes a fully participant mutant warrior determined to put right a number of sins and omissions plaguing his conscience and repay some too long outstanding debts…

At this point in time, the evolutionary offshoot dubbed Homo Sapiens Superior is at its lowest ebb. As seen in the House of M and Decimation storylines, Scarlet Witch Wanda Maximoff – ravaged by madness and her own reality-warping power – has reduced the world’s multi-million plus mutant population to a couple of hundred individuals with three simple words…

The quest begins with ‘Jagannátha’ (illustrated by Scott Eaton, Phil Briones & Cam Smith) as Xavier is summoned by his murderous half-brother Cain Marko to settle a lifetime of grudges. The bullying wastrel was transformed by evil magic in decades past into the brutally unstoppable Juggernaut and wants to finally end the savant’s perpetual efforts to save and cure him.

Taking a bar and all its patrons hostage Cain thinks he’s got the upper hand, but when confronting the mightiest telepathic mind on Earth it’s never wise to trust what your brain and senses are telling you…

At last accepting that all he can do is contain his savage sibling, Xavier moves on to the student he feels he has most failed in the 4-part epic psycho-drama ‘Salvage’ with art by Eaton, Andrew Hennessy & Lee Bermejo.

When former Evil Mutant Rogue originally joined his school she was desperate to find a way to turn her power off and still the voices inside her. Anna-Marie could steal abilities with a touch but overlong contact stole the donor’s mind and personality, cramming them screaming inside her head until Rogue couldn’t hear her own thoughts.

After conflicted years of world-saving service she disappeared: exiling herself from the X-Men in search of peace. Now just as Xavier resolves to finally fix her, a brace of extra-terrestrial terrors simultaneously hone in on the missing mutant…

In New Orleans the savant asks former X-Man Gambit to join him in his mission. Remy Lebeau had spent frustrating years loving a woman he could never touch and knows her better than anyone, but Xavier doesn’t want him for his insights: where he’s going the mind-master might need a capable bodyguard…

In desolate Maynards Plains, Western Australia, Rogue is hotly debating her life with adopted mother Mystique. It’s not a conversation she can avoid: the murderous mutant is the most strident and forceful personality still stuck inside her head…

The argument is postponed when a lone social historian wanders into the ghost town Anna-Marie has made her home. The woman is going to be trouble – but not as much as the crew of the Boneyard Dog, a Shi’ar salvage vessel which has just picked up a most appetising and potentially profitable tech signature…

As Xavier and Gambit approach the town – once a hidden base and scene of a colossal battle between the X-Men and an army of cyborgs – the alien scrap dealers land and trigger a horrific metamorphosis in the annoying anthropologist…

Revealed as a sentient but crippled AI born of the amalgamation of Shi’ar hard-light holographic technology and Xavier’s Danger Room programming software, the stranger fixates on Anna-Marie whilst transforming the entire region into nested scenes from her troubled past: everything from Sentinel assaults to attacks by past foes such as The Marauders, Magneto and Mystique and even the boy she killed when her powers first manifested.

Caught in the reality storm, the Shi’ar raiders unite with Gambit and Xavier as Rogue physically confronts past demons in the centre of a horrific mind-maze, but even as they gradually battle their way through to the victims at the heart of the chaos, the mutant heroes are painfully unaware that their alien allies are only in it for profit and are preparing to betray them…

Events take an even stranger shape when Xavier admits that he knew his hologram training suite had evolved into a free-thinking being. When it happened years ago he had, in a moment of weakness and fear, shackled, lobotomised and psychically enslaved the unique technological newborn.

With the Shi’ar about to kill them all to strip-mine and cannibalise her consciousness, Charles removes his hastily-applied psi-chains and Danger becomes a fully autonomous, remarkably forgiving but momentarily ticked-off creature. Deep within her, Rogue has been reliving her own crisis-moments and has reached an accommodation with her selves and her sins. Achieving a balance previously denied her, Rogue is ready and more than willing to take out her pent-up hostility on the unscrupulous scrap merchants… as is the now irrevocably autonomous Danger…

With two more stains removed from his escutcheon, Xavier finally seeks to end a thorny problem which is more a threat to his race than his soul.

Charismatic mutant terrorist Magneto was responsible for many crimes and tragedies but the undoubted worst was inspiring a fanatical squad of zealots known as the Acolytes.

Led by almighty Exodus, Joanna “Frenzy” Cargill, Carmella Unuscione, Amelia Voght, Omega Sentinel Karima Shapandar, Heather “Tempo” Tucker and shapeshifter Random are some of the most powerful beings on Earth and a constant threat to humanity and Xavier’s dream of peaceful coexistence.

They are utterly unprepared for their greatest enemy to walk alone into their citadel, intent on ending the animosity forever. Exodus is even less ready for how the telepathic scholar and humanitarian achieves this major miracle in ‘The Retreat’ (Eaton & Briones)…

With covers by Mike McKone & John Rauch, Lee Bermejo, Morry Hollowell and Daniel Acuña and variants by Marko Djurdjevic, Frank Miller/Hollowell and Adriana Melo, this slim, stirring, compelling Fights ‘n’ Tights chronicle also is a superb example of how, even in comicbooks, brain always trumps brawn .

© 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

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Captain America: The Chosen


By David Morrell & Mitch Breitweiser with Brian Reber & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2016-2

The Sentinel of Liberty was created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby at the end of 1940 and confidently launched in his own title Captain America Comics #1, cover-dated March 1941. He was an unstoppable, overwhelming overnight success.

The absolute and undisputed star of Timely – now Marvel – Comics’ “Big Three” (the other two being Human Torch and Sub-Mariner), he was amongst the very first to fade as the Golden Age ended.

When the Korean War and Communist aggression gripped the American psyche Steve Rogers was briefly revived in 1953 – along with Torch and Subby – before sinking once more into obscurity…

A resurgent Marvel Comics drafted him again in Avengers #4. It was March 1964 and Vietnam was just beginning to pervade the minds of the American public…

This time he stuck around. Whilst perpetually agonising over the tragic, heroic death of his young sidekick (James Buchanan Barnes AKA Bucky) during the final days of World War II, the resurrected Rogers stole the show, then promptly graduated to his own series and title as well.

He waxed and waned through the most turbulent period of social change in US history, constantly struggling to find an ideological niche and stable footing in a precarious and rapidly changing modern world.

After decades of vacillating and being subject to increasingly frantic attempts to keep the character relevant, in the last years of the 20th century a succession of stellar writers finally established his naturally niche: America’s physical, military and ethical guardian…

That view was superbly taken to its most impressive extreme in an evocative 6-issue miniseries under the adult-attuned Marvel Knights imprint. As explained in David Morrell’s fascinating Afterword to Captain America: The Chosen, the author of First Blood (the original Rambo novel, and many others such as The Brotherhood of the Rose and Fireflies) jumped at the chance to play with America’s other abiding patriotic symbol…

Running November 2007 to March 2008, Captain America: The Chosen takes a simultaneously down-to-Earth and metaphorically fanciful look at the nation’s saviour which begins in ‘Now You See Me, Now You Don’t’ as Marine Corporal James Newman takes heavy fire after his patrol enters a seemingly quiet village in Afghanistan.

He’d rather be home in San Francisco with wife Lori and baby boy Brad, or at the very least just certain who the bad guys are and who the victims American like him are here to help, but a furious assault by Al Qaeda insurgents soon drives all thoughts other than survival out of his head.

Pinned down in a house he thinks his time has come until Captain America suddenly appears. The hero’s mere presence drives doubts away and steadies his fear. With the mighty crusader’s inspirational assistance – always repeating a mantra of “Courage. Honour. Loyalty. Sacrifice” – Newman breaks out of the trap and rescues his endangered men from certain death.

In the aftermath the weary Corporal ducks the thanks and praise of his grateful comrades, attributing the lion’s share of credit to the Star Spangled Avenger. He cannot understand where Captain America vanished to, nor why nobody else saw him…

And thousands of miles away in a secret laboratory a Super Soldier lies dying…

The mystery deepens in ‘The Shape of Nightmares’ as a bevy of scientists assess the Sentinel of Liberty’s rapidly declining state in the very building where he was created, whilst in Afghanistan Newman ruminates on the apparent hallucination which saved his life one day ago. As his squad investigate a cave his mind goes back to his own childhood, a time when an innocent game trapped him in a car boot and almost killed him. The event left its mark and he’s terrified of entering the hole in the ground which might hold all manner or peril…

The threat comes from enemy combatants with grenades and a brief fierce firefight results in a rock-fall which buries the squad under tons of rock. As Newman radios for help with mounting panic, Captain America is there again calmly repeating “Courage. Honour. Loyalty. Sacrifice.” None of his fellow survivors can see him as the superhero explains what’s really going on…

In a secret US citadel a paralysed Captain America is linked to radical technology. His perfect body is dying as the serum which created him fails, but has linked his still valiant mentality to experimental Remote Viewing equipment to provide strategic intel for the American forces in combat.

It’s fortuitously also allowed him to contact kindred spirits like Newman but being ‘Out of Body… Out of Mind’ is only the start. Despite being also able to terrify many particularly receptive insurgents, his time on Earth is ending…

As the entombed soldiers slowly expire in the collapsed caves, Cap’s calm discourse again inspires Newman and the claustrophobic Corporal begins digging deeper into the mountain looking for a way out.

‘Fear in a Handful of Dust’ follows as he strives, accompanied by an ever-more skeletal patriotic phantasm. Perhaps to keep him steadied, Captain America tells James how it all started: how a skinny physical specimen, rejected by the army, was transformed into the perfect soldier during World War II, of the friends he made, the family he formed and the losses he endured for the sake of his country and the world…

As Newman burrows through the mountain Captain America shares the most intimate details of his life in ‘The Crucible’ of service, but as the Corporal stubbornly overcomes every obstacle, on an operating table the Spirit of a Nation is dying…

The saga ends as the President rushes to the side of America’s greatest resource. The hero’s mind is elsewhere, imparting details of his return after decades frozen in ice and the new world he found himself lost in, further triumph and sacrifice and his recent decline into frailty and powerlessness.

And how he knows one thing above all else: Captain America is not unique and a ‘Multitude’ of good people like him can be united to carry on his work. He has been patiently seeking them all out whilst his life was leaking away…

As Newman inches his way to sunlight and freedom the communication suddenly ends. He has no idea that a world away the Star Spangled Avenger has seen one final crisis and overcome the body that has betrayed him to save America one last time…

Scrabbling into the open air, the Corporal is ambushed by insurgents but somehow seems imbued with the energy of a superhero triumphing over impossible odds to save his men. He isn’t tired and knows this is only the beginning…

Moving, mythological, elegant and illustrated with sublime understatement by then-newcomer Mitch Breitweiser (ably augmented by colourist Brian Reber), this powerful paean to symbolism also offers Morrell’s complete script for the first chapter and a superb gallery of a dozen covers-&-variants from Breitweiser, Travis Charest & Julian Ponsor.

© 2007, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.