Uncanny X-Men volume 2: Broken


By Brian Michael Bendis, Chris Bachalo, Fraser Irving, Kris Anka, Tim Townsend, Jaime Mendoza, Mark Irwin & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-555-0

Following many poor choices and horrendous paths taken by assorted mutant heroes over the last few years, and spinning off from the events of Avengers versus X-Men, the MarvelNOW! event reshaped the entire continuity, pushing the various factors of X-iterations in truly innovative directions.

At the dawn of the Marvel Age, a very special bunch of kids were singled out by wheelchair-bound telepath Charles Xavier. Insular Scott Summers, ebullient Bobby Drake, wealthy Adonis Warren Worthington III, insecure Jean Grey and bookish anthropoidal Henry McCoy were gathered up by the enigmatic Professor X – a driven man dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between massed humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants, ominously dubbed Homo Superior.

To achieve his dream he educated and trained the youngsters – dubbed Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and The Beast – as heroes, ambassadors and living symbols in an effort to counter the growing tide of human prejudice and fear.

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

The formerly idealistic, steadfast and trustworthy team-leader eventually killed Xavier before eventually joining with old (demon-possessed) ally Magik and former foes Magneto and White Queen Emma Frost in a hard-line alliance devoted to preserving the mutant race at the cost, if necessary, of the human one.

Abandoning Scott, his surviving team-mates and newer X-Men such as Wolverine, Storm and Kitty Pryde stayed true to Xavier’s dream, opting to protect and train the coming X-generation of mutant kids at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning…

Furthermore when McCoy discovered he was dying, he became obsessed with the idea that the naive First Class of X-Men might be able to sway Mutant Enemy terrorist No. 1 back from his current path of doctrinaire madness and ideological race war insanity.

To that end Beast used time-travel tech in his last-ditch attempt to prevent a species war: risking the entire space/time continuum by bringing the five youngsters back to the future to reason with the debased, potentially deranged Cyclops.

The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than restoring Scott’s to his senses, the confrontation simply hardened his renegade heart and strengthened his warped resolve.

Moreover, after the boy McCoy impossibly cured his older self, young Henry and the rest of the X-Kids refused to go home until “bad” Cyclops was stopped…

All that occurred in All-New X-Men: Here Comes Yesterday but there was a flipside and that story was told in Uncanny X-Men: Revolution.

This slim second chronicle, collecting Uncanny X-Men volume 3, #6-11, (July-October 2013) and again scripted by Brian Michael Bendis furthers the counter-argument as the outlaw mutants continue their struggle to save their endangered species.

Cyclops and his Extinction Team face many problems. Magneto is playing a double (or is it a treble?) game; betraying the terrorists to S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill, but also telling Cyclops at least some of what he’s doing for her. Moreover as they travel the world gathering up freshly activated Homo Superior kids, the Extinction-ers have been targeted by a new mysterious next generation of robotic hunter/killer Sentinels.

Most worryingly of all , since their possession by the Phoenix Force (Avengers versus X-Men) the natural gifts of Summers, ex-lover Frost, Magik and Magneto are no longer reliable, flaring from overload to ineffectuality, leaving the mutant leaders “Broken” in both powers and spirit…

On the other hand, however, new mutants are appearing in increasing numbers all over, with more impressive talents than ever before and, by carefully avoiding unprovoked acts of violence, Cyclops’ crew are winning the media war: gaining the trust and respect of many oppressed sectors of humanity: the poor, the disenfranchised and rebellious, the young…

The terrorists have begun training youngsters in their alternative institution – the Charles Xavier School for Mutants – and even poached some kids from the Jean Grey School. Raw recruits Eva “Tempus” Bell, shape-shifting Benjamin Deeds, healer Christopher Muse – AKA Triage – and the golden sphere-projecting Fabio Medina – have been joined by the psychically conjoined, socially-challenged Stepford Sisters Celeste, Mindee & Phoebe as well as the time-displaced teenager Warren “The Angel” Worthington…

Fraser Irving illustrates the first story arc here as demon-tainted llyana Nikolievna Rasputina – better known as Magik – resumes her struggle against dark god Dread Dormammu. That malign tyrant had been absorbing the hellish realm of Limbo which she rules as The Darkchylde and which fuels her mutant teleporting power…

In Atlanta another young man finds his mutant power activating, just as Dormammu shanghais Cyclops’ entire team. Trapped in hell, teachers and students alike are thrown into soul-rending, life-or-death combat with one of the vilest monsters in creation.

At the same time, Mara Hill, acknowledging S.H.I.E.L.D. is losing the PR battle, recruits former X-Man Alison BlairDazzler – to be the Government’s public face on Mutant Affairs…

Ilyana’s powers encompass both time and space and she now adroitly uses the faculty to become a student of magician Doctor Strange in the past, allowing her to learn what she needs to frustrate Dormammu, but in the subsequent clash Cyclops becomes painfully aware of how much he and his adult comrades have lost in terms of their vital powers and abilities…

With Chris Bachalo & Tim Townsend assuming the art chores, the saga resumes in more prosaic territory. Although surviving the harrowing confrontation unscathed, Fabio is so freaked out that he quits school. Frantic to regain some sense, safety and normality in his life he asks to be taken home to his parents. Unfortunately, when the completely understanding Extinction Squad take him back to San Diego, S.H.I.E.L.D. is watching and waiting. No sooner have the mutants blinked out than the spooks move in…

In AtlantaDavid Bond is innocently testing his new power when police arrive and shoot him. They barely escape with their own lives after an Extinction team led by Emma arrives. Young Celeste is especially keen on making the trigger-happy humans suffer for their prejudice…

Triage has promptly healed David and the new guy’s awesome ability to telekinetically move and interface with machinery impresses everybody – even though Cyclops and Magneto are clearly distracted. The mutant figureheads are increasingly combative regarding their powers crisis situation, but remain united in the conviction of coming mutant extinction at human hands.

Their differences on how to head off the encroaching holocaust are shelved once they learn of Dazzler’s attempt to take Fabio in for “questioning” which had resulted in a very public escalation in tension and a superpower firefight…

The Extinction team move to rescue Fabio from custody aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier and depart with a minimum of fuss, utterly unaware that the Alison they verbally sparred with is in fact a deadly shape-shifting infiltrator with an agenda all her own…

Irving returns to illustrate issues #10-11 (with additional art by Kris Anka) as the kids’ training reveals a new aspect to Eva’s time-powers. Maria Hill in the interim has demanded Magneto capture and hand over Cyclops…

The team leader is currently preoccupied by a human protest march in Michigan, where college students have come together en masse in support of Mutant Rights.

Sadly, when he decides the team should join the campus event, it offers a perfect opportunity for a new super-Sentinel determined to kill mutants no matter how many innocent humans get in the way…

Dark, cynically astute and utterly compelling, this alternative X-outing mixes staggering action, paranoiac suspense and slowly-mounting tension with the signature themes of alienation and personal freedom to deliver a marvellously enjoyable continuation of the nihilistic end of the once directionless mutant franchise.

Even so, there’s still room for some effectively trenchant humour and this series offers a perfect jumping-on point for new and retired fans alike – as long as you also read the companion All-New X-Men volumes…

Broken includes a beautiful cover-and-variants gallery by Irving, Bachalo Ronnie Del Carmen, J. Scott Campbell & Neal Adams and the now standard 21st century add-on of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) giving access to story bonuses once you download the code – gratis – from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

Superior Spider-Man volume 3: No Escape


By Dan Slott, Christos N. Gage, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Humberto Ramos, John Dell, Terry Pallot & Victor Olazaba (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-556-7

Over the years the Wondrous Wallcrawler has undergone a plethora of radical evolutions, refits and even backsliding revisions, but his latest evolution – springing out of the landmark Amazing Spider-Man #700 – was certainly the most striking and compelling character carve-up of all the MarvelNOW! relaunches.

In that issue, the personality of Peter Parker seemingly died when Doctor Otto Octavius took over his body, arguably becoming a wholly Superior Spider-Man.

Parker’s mind had been transferred and trapped in the rapidly failing body of the fading super-villain where, despite his every desperate effort, in the end Peter perished with and within that decrepit, expiring frame.

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

The situation is not completely hopeless. At the moment of the monster’s greatest triumph Parker made Octavius relive and experience every ghastly moment of tragedy and sacrifice which combined to make Spider-Man the compulsive do-gooder that he was.

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

However the ingrained monomania within proved hard to suppress and the usurped web-spinner incessantly worked to prove himself a better man: augmenting Parker’s gadgets and methodology with millions of spy robots to patrol the entire city at once, constantly adding advanced tech and refining new weaponry to the suit and even acting pre-emptively rather than merely reacting to crises as the original had…

Otto went back to college because he was appalled Parker had no doctorate and even tried to rekindle his new body’s old relationship with Mary Jane Watson.

The new, ultra-efficient Spider-Man became New York’s darling and even Mayor J. Jonah Jameson embraced the Web-spinner; all but appropriating the Arachnid as a deputy – to the utter incredulity of an imperceptible psychic shard of Peter Parker which lurked within the deepest recesses of the hero’s overwritten mind…

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

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

Everybody accepts Spider-Man has changed. Not only is he exceedingly more efficient these days, but far more brutal too: practically crippling bad-guys Boomerang, Vulture and Scorpion. This new hard-line attitude actually increased his public approval rating and, after a deadly hostage siege, the hero’s status peaked after the webslinger executed the psychotic perpetrator Massacre…

Once more scripted by Dan Slott (with Christos N. Gage), No Escape collects issues #11-16 of the fortnightly Superior Spider-Man (August-October 2013) and details the shocking events following the denouement of the previous volume.

In that stunning game-changer Octavius, having finally detected the niggling ghost of Parker’s sentience inside their head, performed cyber-psychic surgery to exorcise the fragmented remnants of his hated nemesis and now gloatingly basks in the triumph of a super-powerful body and life all his own…

A nasty new day dawns with ‘A Lock for Every Key’ – illustrated by Giuseppe Camuncoli & John Dell – as Jameson “invites” Spider-Man to accompany him on a trip to soon-to-closed super-penitentiary The Raft. The discredited prison is almost empty now and one of the last official functions will be the execution of Alistaire Smythe, the cyborg Spider-Slayer who slaughtered Jameson’s wife Marla…

The Mayor is dead-set on watching the killer die and expects the tough new Spider-Man to ensure nothing interrupts proceedings. “Parker’s” civilian life is again spiralling downward: sitting through college classes taught by morons simply to gain a doctorate is excruciating, he’s shunning all Peter’s old friends, and is being harassed for lack of productivity by employer Max Modell at technological think-tank Horizon Labs.

At least his blossoming romance with brilliant Anna Maria Marconi is still progressing satisfactorily…

When the skeleton security staff on the Raft are unable to cope with Smythe’s startling escape bid, Spider-Man is smugly convinced he has covered all the bases, but even Otto was unprepared for Spider-Slayer upgrading three villains on life-support and, as the Wallcrawler clashes with Smythe, technologically augmented Scorpion, Vulture and Boomerang are unleashed to kill all the people trapped on the island.

Worst yet, uncontrollable, voracious man-eating monster The Lizard is also loosed to stalk the jail’s darkened corridors…

The drama escalates in ‘Lockdown’ (with additional inks by Terry Pallot) as the vengeful Jameson grabs a gun and goes after Smythe himself. When he meets Spider-Man the Mayor orders the Arachnid Avenger to kill Spider-Slayer at any cost, much to the delight of the ruthless new landlord in Peter Parker’s skull…

Unleashed at last, Octavius soon cleans house and brilliantly, mercilessly ends the affair in ‘The Slayers and the Slain’. Better yet, because he recorded a certain conversation, he now has enough dirt on the Mayor to force Jameson to hand over The Raft…

Humberto Ramos & Victor Olazaba return to render ‘A Blind Eye’ as the new owner of “Spider Island” designs a new costume, builds giant war-tanks and hires a gang of arachnid henchmen to help him clean the city for the decent, law-abiding citizens.

First target is the embarrassingly public Shadowland: unassailable citadel of Wilson Fisk, Kingpin of Crime. Always logical but supremely innovative, the Superior Spider-Man and his army assault the Kingpin’s Keep head-on in full view of the astounded citizenry of Hell’s Kitchen…

Forcing Jameson to back his plan post-hoc, Octavius and his Spider-gang raze the fortress to the ground, apparently killing Fisk in the process and driving his chief enforcer Hobgoblin into hiding… and all to great public acclaim…

Unfortunately this just clears the way for covert mastermind Goblin King (a former Green Goblin) to accelerate his own plans to take over the underworld with his Goblin Army Cult…

The 2-part ‘Run Goblin, Run’ concludes this chilling compilation as ‘The Tinkerer’s Apprentice’ sees young Phil Urich, latest iteration of Hobgoblin, frantically trying to recoup his losses after the fall of Shadowland only to become the patsy for malevolent underworld armourer Ty Stone, a subtle manipulator with a deadly agenda all his own…

Forced to rob banks for ready cash, Urich becomes a priority on Spider-Man’s To-Do list and is forced to take hostages at the Daily Bugle when the web-spinner “outs” him on live TV…

Meanwhile, Carlie Cooper has shared her suspicions about Spider-Man with her Captain Yuri Watanabe (who secretly moonlights as vengeful costumed vigilante The Wraith). Together the women begin gathering definitive proof of their suspicions regarding the wallcrawler…

The convoluted machinations culminate in a bombastic battle as ‘Goblin Season’ finds Phil Urich soundly defeated only to be liberated by The Goblin King’s forces and co-opted as the crime-lord’s latest living weapon: a Goblin Knight to lead his armies to inevitable victory…

To Be Continued…

This up-to-the minute tech-heavy reinvention of course comes with 21st century AR icon sections. These Marvel Augmented Reality App pages offer access to story bonuses once you download the little dickens – free from marvel.com – onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

Spider-Man has been reinvented so often it’s almost become commonplace, but this iteration – for however long it lasts – is one no lover of high-octane adventure should miss: smart, shocking and incredibly addictive.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. Italy. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

Uncanny Avengers volume 3: The Apocalypse Twins


By Rick Remender, Gerard Gorman Duggan, Daniel Acuña & Adam Kubert (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-564-2

In the aftermath of the Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, company-wide reboot MarvelNOW! repositioned and recast the entire continuity in the ongoing never-ending battle to keep old readers interested and pick up new ones.

What You Need to Know: Once upon a time mutant Avenger Wanda Maximoff – daughter of arch-villain Magneto and known to the world as the Scarlet Witch – married android hero The Vision and they had (through the agency of magic and her unsuspected chaos-energy fuelled ability to reshape Reality) twin boys. Over the course of time it was revealed that her beloved sons were not real and they subsequently vanished (for further details see Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Avengers).

As years passed her loss slowly drove Wanda mad, and when she finally slipped completely over the edge the resultant slaughter-spree destroyed many of her Avengers team-mates. The effects of her actions subsequently reshaped the entire Marvel Universe, resulting in climactic reboot Avengers Disassembled.

The team had barely recovered from that catastrophe before she overwrote Reality again, altering recent Earth history such that mutants ruled over a society where humans or “sapiens” were an acknowledged evolutionary dead-end living out their lives and destined for extinction within two generations.

It took every champion on Earth and a huge helping of luck to put that genie back in a bottle (another colossal crossover – House of M), and in the aftermath less than 200 mutants were left on Earth…

The Witch was partially rehabilitated and began her quest for redemption during the aforementioned Avengers versus X-Men with the World’s Mightiest Heroes striving against the remaining mutants for control of Hope Summers: a girl born to be mortal host to the implacable force of cosmic destruction and creation known as The Phoenix.

However the primal phenomenon instead possessed a quintet of X-Men, corrupting them by manifesting their dream of making Earth a paradise for besieged, beleaguered Homo Superior.

In the ensuing conflict humanity was briefly enslaved before, inevitably, the selfish appetites of the Phoenix Force caused those possessed to turn upon each other. Soon its transcendent power transformed rallying figurehead and mutant freedom-fighter Cyclops into another apparently unstoppable, insatiable “Dark Phoenix”.

At that crossroads moment his beloved mentor Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men and formulator of the aspiration of peaceful mutant/human co-existence returned, only to be killed by his most devoted disciple…

Professor X’s death united X-Men and Avengers but, in the days following the expulsion of the Phoenix Force, progress and reconciliation stalled. The mostly human world festered with resentment even as new mutants began to manifest, and liberated mankind again fell into its old habits: intolerance, violence and bigoted, vigilante outrages…

When undying über-Nazi the Red Skull stole Xavier’s brain and appropriated the deceased mutant’s awesome telepathic abilities, his terrorist outrages were halted by a new team of Avengers: one formed by Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D. to counter the rising tide of inter-species hostility…

Having been born out of one wave of genocidal race-hatred, the Sentinel of Liberty was painfully aware that America’s mutant minority had been poorly served – if not actively institutionally discriminated against – and sought to make amends by continuing Xavier’s utopian vision. To that end he convened the high-profile, affirmatively-active Avengers Unity Division, comprising human and mutant heroes working together.

The quintessential Avenger chose former government agent Havok (Cyclops’ brother Alex Summers) to lead the team, which consisted of himself, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Rogue, Wolverine, Sunfire,and the squad’s bloody baptism of fire saw them stop the Skull’s freakish army of bio-engineered S-Men and seemingly prove the promise of the premise.

However at a very public press conference inducting two new members – Wonder Man and the Wasp – they were attacked by ancient enemy Grim Reaper. The clash ended when mutant Rogue slaughtered the psychopath in full view of the horrified watching world. In one shocking instant the entire enterprise seemed utterly undermined with all that hard-won pro-mutant progress wasted…

Collecting Uncanny Avengers #6-11 (cover-dated June to October 2013), and the spin-off Uncanny Avenger AU #8 (July), this astounding celebration of the magic of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction kicks everything into time-busting cosmic overdrive as the harried heroes fall prey to the bewildering machinations of arch-nemesis Kang the Conqueror and his most potent pawns The Apocalypse Twins…

It all begins in Scandinavia in 1013AD where/when a young, cocky and rebellious Thor is attacked by En Sabah Nur, immortal mutant Apocalypse and agent of the all-powerful Space Gods dubbed Celestials. The grotesque creature believes he is safeguarding the future by promoting the triumph of only the very strongest mutants, but all the petulant Thunderer knows is that he has been shamed and thrashed by a freak with an unfair advantage – star-forged armour…

Apocalypse is guided in his seemingly random attacks by former enemy Pharaoh Rama-Tut who advocates pre-emptive attacks on certain beings: those whose descendents would one day unite to resist the mutant advocate of Survival of the Fittest: the ancestors of a group called Avengers…

In Asgard Thor learns that his father Odin is subject a non-aggression pact with the Celestials but is too headstrong and angry to put aside his grievance. When sternly told to drop the matter, the furious godling finds suspiciously handy help from his malevolent half-brother Loki who shows him a spell which can enchant Thor’s battle-axe JarnBjorn into a weapon capable of rending even Celestial armour…

Delighted with his new unstoppable blade, Thor goes looking for a rematch and does not see that a stranger has been masquerading as his brother…

The Storm Lord arrives in primitive London just as Apocalypse attacks the next name on Rama-Tut’s list; a warrior named Folkbern Logan…

The Pagan soldier has been attacked by Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen and Thor is the answer to his prayers, wielding JarnBjorn with devastating effect. Saving Logan, destroying the servants and grievously wounding Apocalypse he returns to Asgard only to be severely admonished by Odin, even as elsewhen Apocalypse realises he has been played for a fool by Rama-Tut. The real winner is Kang who quietly takes his intended prize – a weapon even Space Gods cannot endure…

In our present, Apocalypse has been recently killed and many deadly creatures vie for the dubious honour of assuming his mantle and role as mutant messiah/exterminator of humanity. Thus on solar-orbiting Starcore Station his appalling son Genocide petitions the Celestials to accept him as their new agent…

The Celestials are a crucial component in the mechanics of the cosmos, their only interest being the raw, unstoppable processes of evolution. However when the enigmatic Apocalypse Twins materialise, they exercise their claim as true heirs by using JarnBjorn to achieve the impossible: executing the omnipotent Celestial Gardener and thereby endangering the very fabric of existence…

On Earth Havok has just successfully defended Rogue from murder charges at a S.H.I.E.L.D. hearing and attempts to keep her busy and out of sight by sending her after Magneto when news arrives that Earth’s alien early warning satellite The Peak is under attack.

Wanda meanwhile is trying to talk with WonderMan. Their relationship has been strained ever since she killed and resurrected him and the traumatised energy being is undergoing a few confusing life-changes. For one thing he’s now become a pacifist. He will help the team in every way possible… except by fighting…

Despite all efforts the Avengers are unable to save The Peak from the Twins, who use the fallen Celestial’s vehicle to send the station crashing down on Rio de Janeiro. Although Thor and Sunfire are able to save the city from obliteration the rest of the team are more concerned with a secret they have just uncovered: Wolverine’s hidden role in the death of the Twin’s birth-father – the former X-Man Warren Worthington, AKA Archangel…

Whilst all this is occurring Captain America is fighting for his life in war-torn South Sudan and manoeuvred into uncovering a message from a mysterious ally purporting to know what is actually going on.

The Twins are also aware of layers of deceit. Raised by Kang in time-warped isolation Eimin and Uriel are beginning to suspect their patron’s motives and each other’s dedication. These qualms do not prevent them from detonating an atomic blast just as the rest of the Avengers arrive to supplement Thor and Sunfire…

The Marvel Universe is a busy place and whilst this saga was unfolding another major event was simultaneously unfolding in the pages of Age of Ultron. There, a time-warping event created an alternate Earth where the malign mechanoid took over the world from a point in Earth’s future. The epic spawned a plethora of “extra” issues – such as Uncanny Avengers #8AU – wherein the characters from the alternate timeline spawned by the temporal tribulations offered decidedly different tales of our most famed champions.

In this chronal digression – written by Gerard Gorman Duggan and illustrated by Adam Kubert – we glimpse the formative years of the Apocalypse Twins as Kang temporarily frees his twisted children from his private concentration camp in 4145AD. The Lord of Time had been raising them in such harsh conditions to temper them for future roles, but now seeks to test his charges with a first mission of assassination.

The target is veteran Red, White and Blue Sentinel of Justice Colonel America but the operation does not go according to plan…

Returning with #9 to the regularly scheduled tale Ragnarok Now! displays the deepening rift in the Unity team as the resurgent adult Apocalypse Twins continue their campaign for mutant ascendancy by constituting their own squad of Horsemen to winnow humanity and its heroes. These heralds of Mutant Rapture and human disaster are not the bio-engineered creatures their true father preferred however.

The children of En Sabah Nur instead opt for a quartet of dead horrors to pave their way to triumph…

In Sudan meanwhile, Captain America digests information received from the godlike Immortus – another “master of time” and purportedly Kang’s reformed future self. The decidedly untrustworthy savant has entrusted the Star Spangled Avenger with the actual nature of reality and revealed why the Twins must be stopped as well as the ghastly consequences should they win the ongoing war to control all times, spaces and realities…

When Cap then learns of Wolverine’s murderous past actions the team splits over philosophy and pragmatism. Havok is hard-pressed to keep the heroes united before the onslaught of the Twins’ zombie Horsemen, Sentry, Banshee, Daken and Grim Reaper: all deadly killers with deep emotional ties to the heroes and all of whom died at the hands of Avengers…

As the Unity squad splits up to tackle the Apocalypse agents, the calamitous clashes only mask the Twins’ secret agenda: they have seemingly seduced the reality-shredding Scarlet Witch to their cause, convincing her to use her world-warping curse to bring about their long-desired ascendancy as instigators of the Mutant Rapture…

To Be Continued…

Scripted by Rick Remender and illustrated by Daniel Acuña, this rather confused and somewhat convoluted, but exceedingly spectacular, complex and ambitious epic may be a bit daunting for casual readers but dedicated followers of mutant mayhem will no doubt adore the fantastic premise and blockbusting scope of events.

Also provoking much applause and approbation are a gallery of covers and variants by John Cassaday & Laura Martin, Milo Manara and Jim Cheung, whilst the selection of 21st century extra content in the form of AR icon sections includes trailers, character bios, creator commentaries and oodles more. The Marvel Augmented Reality App pages grant access to story bonuses once you download the little dickens – free from marvel.com – onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet. So you should do that too, right?
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

Avengers: the Last White Event


By Jonathan Hickman, Dustin Weaver, Mike Deodato Jr. & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-569-7

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

Collecting Avengers volume 5 #7-11 (cover-dated May to July 2013), this ongoing big picture series is again written by the scarily impressive Jonathan Hickman; someone with a distinct gift for mixing “mind-boggling” with “thrilling” and making it all seem easy.

This corner of the grand superhero sub-set (with others including Uncanny Avengers, Avengers Arena, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Young Avengers, Avengers Assemble and Avengers Underwear Secrets – sorry, that last one’s still imaginary) could be seen as the spine which conceptually links the many series and stars together.

In the previous volume an incredibly ancient trio of “Gardeners” – robotic Aleph, seductive Abyss and passionate Ex Nihilo – landed on Mars to begin work on their latest project: remaking Earth into something special.

To attain their ends they bombarded the third rock from the sun with bio-mutational “Origin bombs”, seeding locations with new, exotic and deadly life-forms. When the Avengers went after the perpetrators, the infinitely old invaders claimed to have been tasked by the first species in creation and The Mother (of the entire universe) to test and, whenever necessary, eradicate, recreate and replace life on other worlds.

For Earth their major exhibit was a new form of man: a prototype Adam to supersede humanity…

Captain America responded by gathering an expanded contingent of Avengers: the old trusted team and a new expansion squad of champions gathered from across the globe. This auxiliaries comprised Wolverine, Spider-Man, Falcon, Spider-Woman, master of Kung Fu Shang-Chi, Captain Marvel, former X-mutants Cannonball and Sunspot, teleporter and reality shaper Eden Fesi (now calling himself Manifold), pan-dimensional superman Hyperion, cosmic crusader Captain Universe and alien mystery-woman Smasher to augment the old regulars Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow.

Although the Gardeners were thwarted, Ex Nihilo remained on Mars after the Avengers took custody of his handmade modern Prometheus. The menace bided his time, waiting whilst Tony Stark sought to decode and understand the Adam left in the Avengers’ care. When at last Earth’s greatest inventor cracked the mystery, the strange creature – now calling himself a Nightmask – promptly predicted an imminent end to everything and the advent of another extinction-level threat…

Elsewhere as the ancient aliens’ six bio-attacks radically transformed and evolved flora, fauna and geography at the strike-sites – which needed constant attention from the heroes and S.H.I.E.L.D. – arcane elements of the Infinite were aligning and both Nightmask and Captain Universe became instantly aware of a shattering “White Event”…

Reality is composed of discrete universes held apart by an infinite crimson underspace dubbed the Superflow. Now with that immemorial barrier somehow fragmenting, the timeless engineers who maintain it can only stoically observe as ‘The Last White Event’ (illustrated by Dustin Weaver, with hues from Justin Ponsor) brings destruction and a global doom device to the Avengers’ world.

As Nightmask explains – in the most obscure terminology – a White Event heralds the ascension of a universe. Usually the cosmos provides a Nightmask as herald, and creates a Justice, a Cipher, occasionally a Spitfire and – inevitably – a being of infinite power: a Starbrand. This has just happened again, but this particular universe – and the entire machinery of the multiverse – is broken…

After the artificial man pinpoints the ground-zero location of the trigger event, Iron Man leads the team to a smoking, five-mile wide crater which was once a small suburban college town. The edgy heroes discover a traumatised young man at the centre of devastation…

‘Starbranded’ (Adam Kubert & Ponsor) describes how the celestial source-code which ensures the right person receives ultimate power had failed and, rather than being suitable or even capable, bullied, needy kid Kevin Connor was the very last person who should become a living planetary defence system…

As the confrontation devolves into catastrophic combat, with Connor easily thrashing the likes of Thor and the Hulk, cosmically aware Captain Universe realises that even for such a rare occurrence as a White Event, something is fundamentally wrong with the Big Picture.

Adam/Nightmask then abruptly intervenes, arbitrarily transporting Connor to Mars where Abyss and Ex Nihilo are waiting…

‘Star Bound’ (Weaver, Mike Deodato Jr. & Ponsor) picks up the tale as, after another impatient fight, Starbrand learns how, after millennia of home world “improvements”, bored Ex Nihilo tweaked his eternal brief and did something a little different with the Origin Bombs he dropped on Earth…

The alien had no idea what results his meddling might achieve, but at least after billions of years it would be different…

Teleporting back to Earth with only the best of intentions, Connor and Adam land in Croatia in time to encounter the fruit of Ex Nihilo’s meddling but their good intentions produce only disaster and when the Avengers arrive the situation only escalates…

After a handy cryptography-key page for the alien ‘Builder Machine Code’ used throughout the stories, a clever change of pace sees a group of Avengers sent to Saskatchewan at the request of the Canadian government. The province was also the site of an Origin Bomb strike and the appalling changes to the area were at first investigated by the team of Canadian heroes from Omega Flight. They didn’t come back.

Now in ‘Validator’ (drawn by Deodato Jr. and colour-rendered by Frank Martin), with all contact lost Wolverine leads a team into the dark heart of the mutated environment to discover a terrifying secret …

When the mutagenic hard rain first fell nobody realised that there were in fact seven bio-bombs. In desolate Norway, the ruthless techno-terrorists of Advanced Idea Mechanics were unhampered as they harvested the horrific result of that particular Origin-strike.

Thus this second globe-girdling collection closes with ‘Wake the Dragon’ (Deodato Jr. & Martin) as a team of espionage-adept Avengers – Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Spider-Woman, Sunspot, Cannonball and Shang-Chi – travel to Hong Kong to gather intel and stop the sale of whatever doomsday bioweapons AIM has crafted from their researches…

As seduction, cajolery, bribery and inevitably outrageous violence all prove insufficient to the task, only the Master of Kung Fu’s “old ways” and spiritual purity are able to divine the incredible, deadly truth behind all the layers of secrets and lies…

To Be Continued…

Utter Fights ‘n’ Tights magic that will delight fans of doom-drenched Costumed Dramas, this tome also offers a stunning covers-and-variants gallery by Dustin Weaver, Justin Ponsor, Joe Quinones & Daniel Acuña and the now mandatory extra content – trailers, character bios, creator video commentaries, behind the scenes features and more – for tech-savvy consumers courtesy of AR icon sections  all accessible through a free digital code and the Marvel Comics app for iPhone®, iPad®, iPad Touch® & Android devices at Marvel’s Digital Comics Shop.
™ and © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Thor Reloaded


By Stan Lee, Mark Gruenwald, Ralph Macchio, Jack Kirby, Keith Pollard, Walter Simonson, J. Michael Straczynski & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-552-9

With another Asgardian Epic about to open in cinemas around the world, here’s a tie-in trade paperback collection designed to perfectly augment the filmic exposure and cater to movie fans wanting to follow up with a comics experience.

One more sterling Marvel Platinum/Definitive Edition, this treasury of tales reprints intriguing landmarks from Journey into Mystery #112, Thor volume 1 #136, 300-301, 345-348 and 363, Thor volume 3, #12 and Thor volume 1 #600, which will serve to answer many questions the silver screen story might throw up and provide a immense amount of bombastic mythically barbarous fun.

Moreover, in addition to the mandatory Stan Lee Foreword, this compendium contains text features detailing the secrets and statistics of Odin, Kurse, Loki and Malekith, culled from the encyclopaedic Marvel Universe Handbook, plus Mike Conroy’s scholarly trawl through comicbook mythology in ‘The True History of the Norse Gods’.

In case this is your first storm-chase: crippled doctor Donald Blake took a vacation in Norway only to stumble into an alien invasion. Trapped in a cave, he found an old walking stick which, when struck against the ground, turned him into the presumed mythical Norse God of Thunder.

Within moments he was defending the weak and smiting the wicked. Months swiftly passed with the Lord of Storms tackling rapacious extraterrestrials, Commie dictators, costumed crazies and cheap thugs, but these soon gave way to a vast kaleidoscope of fantastic worlds and incredible, mythic menaces, courtesy of the increasingly experimental graphic genius Jack Kirby…

This titanic tome’s blistering battle-fest begins with ‘The Mighty Thor Battles the Incredible Hulk!’ from Journey into Mystery #112 by Stan Lee, Kirby & Chic Stone (January 1965) and a glorious gift to all those fans who perpetually ask “Who’s strongest…?”

Possibly Kirby & Stone’s finest artistic collaboration, it details a private duel between the two super-humans which occurred during a general free-for-all between The Avengers, Sub-Mariner and the morally ambivalent, always angry Green Goliath. The raw, breathtaking spectacle of that tale is followed by a portentous vignette from the ongoing back-up feature which was fleshing out the cosmology of the burgeoning Marvel Universe.

Whereas the rapidly proliferating continuity grew ever more interconnected as it matured, with assorted superheroes literally tripping over each other as they contiguously and continually saved the world from their New York City bases, the Asgardian heritage of Thor and Kirby’s transcendent imagination increasingly pulled the Thunderer away from mortal realms into stunning new landscapes.

Admittedly the son of Odin popped back every now and then, but clearly for “King” Kirby, Earth was just a nice place to visit whilst the stars and beyond were the right and proper domain of the Asgardians and their adversaries.

Thus from issue #97 on (October 1963), each issue also carried a powerfully impressive supplementary series. Tales of Asgard – Home of the Mighty Norse Gods gave Kirby space to indulge his fascination with legends and allowed both complete vignettes and longer epics (in every sense of the word). Initially adapting the original Scandinavian folk tales but eventually with all-new material particular to the Marvel pantheon, he built his own cosmos and mythology, which underpinned the company’s entire continuity.

Inked by Vince Colletta, ‘The Coming of Loki’ (also JiM #112) was a stylish retelling of how Odin came to adopt the baby son of Laufey, king of the Frost Giants…

As the saga of Thunder God grew from formulaic beginnings into a vast, breathtaking cosmic playground for Kirby’s burgeoning imagination, Journey into Mystery inevitably became (The Mighty) Thor with #126, but in this collection we skip to #136 (January 1967) where the peculiarities and inconsistencies of the Don Blake/Thor relationship with mortal love interest Jane Foster were re-examined and finally ended.

A turning point in the feature’s history, ‘To Become an Immortal!’ saw All-Father Odin transform her into a goddess and invite her to dwell in Asgard, but Jane’s frail human mind could not cope with the wonders and perils of the Realm Eternal and she was mercifully restored to mortality and all but written out of the series.

Lucky for the despondent Thunder God the beauteous Warrior-Maiden Sif was on hand…

Thor settled into an uninspired creative lethargy after Kirby left (for DC to invent New Gods, Darkseid, The Fourth World, Kamandi, The Demon, Omac and more). Without his unbridled imagination stories subsequently suffered a qualitative drop and, once illustrator replacement John Buscema moved on too, the series languished in the doldrums until a new visionary was found to expand the mythology once again…

There were a few flourishes of the old magic, however. When Roy Thomas took over scripting he cleverly attempted to rationalise history, legend and the Marvel Universe in an extended storyline which revealed the true nature of the gods and revealed that Germanic folk heroes Siegfried, Sigurd and others were prior incarnations of Thor.

He also revealed that the gods of Earth had a hidden connection with the star-spanning Celestials and their earthly invention the Eternals…

Kirby returned to Marvel in the mid-70s and The Eternals debuted in 1976 in a series obviously at odds with and removed from regular company continuity. The tale revealed that giant alien gods had visited Earth in epochs past, gene-gineering proto-hominids into three distinct species: Human Beings; god-like super-beings who called themselves Eternals and monstrous, genetically unstable but highly intelligent creatures dubbed Deviants.

Moreover the Celestials had periodically returned to check up on their experiment…

Never a comfortable contemporary fit with the rest of the Marvel Universe, comic explorer Kirby played out his fascinations with Deities, the Cosmos and Supernature through the lens of very human observers. Once the series ended and Kirby left again, other creators quickly co-opted the concept into regular continuity. From the end of that lengthy Asgardian epic (beginning either in issue #272 or #283 depending on your temperament) comes the blistering conclusion in Thor #300 – October 1980 – and the gripping epilogue from #301 one month later.

Written by Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio with art by Keith Pollard & Gene Day, ‘Twilight of the Gods’ saw Thor finally uncover the truth about his origins and affinity for Midgard, before learning of an ancient inter-pantheon pact to oppose the Celestials in ‘Whatever Gods There Be…’

The Prince of Asgard then rushed to his dying sire’s aid and spearheaded the resistance to the Space Gods for the climactic ‘Day of Alpha’…

Through devious means Earth was saved from the alien’s destructive judgement, but only at the cost of all his people. Thor #301 found the Storm Lord petitioning the planet’s other deities for a portion of their power to restore the fallen in ‘For the Life of Asgard!’ by Gruenwald, Macchio, Pollard & Stone.

Walter Simonson had, for a brief while, been one of those artists slavishly soldiering to rekindle Kirby’s easy synthesis of mythology, science fiction and meta-humanist philosophy, but with little more success than any other.

However, always deeply invested in Kirby’s daring, exploratory, radical visionary process, when he assumed complete creative autonomy of the title in November 1983 – he was at last free to let loose and brave enough to bring his own unique sensibilities to the character.

The result was an enchantingly addictive body of work (#337-382 plus the Balder the Brave miniseries) that moved beyond Kirby’s Canon and dragged the title out of a creative rut which allowed Simonson’s own successors to also introduce genuine change to a property which had stagnated for 13 years.

The first iconic story-arc introduced alternate Thunder God Beta Ray Bill and began a slow, steady march to a cataclysmic clash with the ultimate destroyer Surtur: a stupendous overarching graphic monolith which addressed the horrendously over-used dramatic device of the Doom of the Gods which had haunted this series since the mid-1960s…

The epic was made up of compartmentalised tales such as the eerie supernatural thriller reprinted here. From Thor #345-348, July to October 1984, comes the tale of Eric Willis, human guardian of a long lost Asgardian artefact who finally loses his incredibly long battle against dark Fae killers in ‘That Was No Lady’, even as the Thunderer is courted by comely maiden Lorelei.

The Godling is blithely unaware that she is the sister of the Enchantress and planning to make him her slave through a magic potion…

In the next issue – inked by Terry Austin – Willis’ son Roger inherits the burden of keeping the Casket of Ancient Winters from sinister Dark Elf overlord Malekith the Accursed, and teams up with a rather distracted Thor whose Asgardian race has been at war with Malekith’s people since time immemorial. But whilst ‘The Wild Hunt!’ harries his enemies, the demonic destroyer captures Lorelei and drags her ‘Into the Realm of Faerie!’

When Roger and Thor go after them the Thunderer is attacked by super elf Algrim the Strong who would have killed Thor had not impatient Dark Elf thrown both combatants into a fiery pit…

All alone Roger is helpless to protect the Casket from Malekith who at last unleashes ‘The Dark and the Light’ (Bob Wiacek inks) allowing Surtur to escape from his eternal prison…

‘This Kurséd Earth…!’ from #363 (January 1985) was part of the Secret Wars II publishing event set after the Surtur conflict ended, and saw omnipotent being The Beyonder come to Earth in search of philosophical answers to imponderable questions. Adopting a trial by ordeal methodology, the alien resurrected and augmented Algrim and allowed him to hunt Thor, even as guest stars Power Pack and Beta Ray Bill attempted to reason with the oddly sympathetic obsessed berserker…

The series continued, folding in the late 1990s, to restart in an impressive second volume as part of the Heroes Return publishing event, but the same toothy problems of direction still lingered.

And so, at last the cosmic dramas all concluded with the Really, Truly, We Mean It, End of the Gods and True Day of Ragnarok, wherein Thor himself instigated the final fall to end an ceaseless cycle of suffering and destruction, ultimately defeating the ruthless overbeings who had manipulated the inhabitants of Asgard since time began…

Even so the franchise restarted in 2007 with volume 3 and the Storm Lord back from the dead. Conjoined once more with Don Blake he was looking for the displaced citizens of a somehow restored but empty Asgard, which now floated a few dozen feet above the barren flats of Brockton, Oklahoma.

Thor volume 3, #12, (January 2009) offers ‘Diversions and Misdirections’ by J. Michael Straczynski, Olivier Coipel & Mark Morales revealing how, with Odin gone and Asgard now Earthbound, implacable Loki has joined with Death Goddess Hela to dishonour and destroy his hated half-brother.

The first step requires the God of Mischief to travel back in time to that long gone moment when his father Laufey battled Odin…

Thor resumed its original numbering in April 2009 and volume 1 #600, by Straczynski, Coipel, Marko Djurdjevic & Morales, saw the insidious villain’s ultimate ‘Victory’ after resurrecting the long deceased proto-Asgardian Bor and tricking the progenitor of all Norse Gods into attacking Earth and battling his own grandson Thor… to the death…

With covers by Kirby, Stone & Colletta, Pollard, Simonson, Djurdjevic, Olivier & Morales and Gabrielle Dell’Otto, this fulsome primer is less an introduction for readers unfamiliar with the stentorian Thunder God and more a cleverly constructed appendage for the film sequel.

However, I can’t deny that what’s on offer here is of great quality and well able to stand as great examples of the comicbook hero at his most memorable and entertaining. Most importantly this is a well-tailored device to turn curious movie-goers into fans of the comic incarnation too.

Filled with non-stop tension and blockbuster action, this an ideal tool to make curious film-goers into funnybook fans and another solid sampling to entice and charm even the most jaded lapsed reader to return.

© 2013 Marvel. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. British edition published by Panini UK.

Black Widow: the Name of the Rose


By Marjorie Lui & Daniel Acuña, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Jamie McKelvie & Matthew Wilson & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4700-8

The Black Widow started life as a svelte and sultry honey-trap Russian agent during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days. Natasha Romanoff was subsequently redesigned as a super villain, fell for an assortment of Yankee superheroes – including Hawkeye and Daredevil – and finally defected; becoming an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., 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 minor fan favourite, the Widow only really hit the big time after being in the Iron Man and Captain America movies, but for us unregenerate comics-addicts her print escapades have always offered a cool, sinister frisson of delight.

This particular caper compilation originally surfaced as the first story arc of her short-lived 2010 comicbook series, (reprinting Black Widow volume 4 #1-5, June to October), but first opens with a short tale from the Enter the Heroic Age one-shot from July of that year.

‘Coppélia’, by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Jamie McKelvie & Matthew Wilson, saw Natasha back in the former U.S.S.R. to retrieve a package sought by assorted intelligence agencies, international arms dealers and even more nasty, untrustworthy types. Sadly, that also perfectly describes her own bosses…

Eponymous epic ‘The Name of the Rose’ (by Marjorie Lui & Daniel Acuña) commences as gargantuan old country ally Black Rose rendezvous with his erstwhile comrade to warn her that someone has made her a target…

Despite the timely warning the sultry spy still falls to an ambush attack and regains consciousness on an operating table. There’s a hole in her stomach from where her assailant had unlocked her most shameful secret and surgeons are desperately working to save her…

In attendance are former lovers Logan AKA Wolverine, Tony (Iron Man) Stark and current boyfriend Bucky (Captain America) Barnes, as Natasha is keenly aware since she is awake and can hear them. Paralysed, she can only think back to how this all started a day earlier when she received a black rose in an envelope marked “remember Natasha”…

As she is wheeled into Recovery, Wolverine goes hunting for her assailant, but finds himself unable to take vengeance for his friend…

In hospital, the Widow rouses from a dream of her youth on the Russian Front in WWII and finds Logan guarding her. He now knows what was taken from her and is prepared to back off as the still surgically traumatised ex-agent attempts to escape from the ward which is also her prison.

In a darkened room an anonymous spook informs Hawkeye, Stark and Captain America that for as long as she’s been their “friend” Natasha has been gathering data on them – and on everybody she has ever met…

Whilst they defend her, elsewhere Pepper Potts is shot by assassin-for-hire Lady Bullseye, and as Stark rushes to her side the spymaster casually reveals that the Widow’s files describe the best way to get to the inventor is through his cherished assistant…

On the run Natasha retreats to one of her scrupulously maintained safe-houses to recuperate and re-arm. Once fully tooled up, the Black Widow goes hunting by making herself a target and is confronted by lethal renegade Elektra who’s rather annoyed at finding she’s in those exposed files too. But then, so are all the people who ever trusted the Widow…

Barely surviving the clash, Natasha is later found and nursed by Black Rose. Having deduced a piece of the puzzle she then heads to London in pursuit of the hidden mastermind who has exposed her and stolen her clandestine insurance policy.

Because that’s all it was…after all, she would never have used any of that accumulated information unless she had to, would she?

These damning ruminations are interrupted by a trio of assassins from her KGB days and the resulting battle leads to even more deaths but further revelations and recriminations…

Pursued by friend and foe alike the quest takes Natasha to Russia and a final chilling confrontation with Lady Bullseye before her beloved Bucky finally finds her…

From here on the build up to the splendidly convoluted, sharply smart conclusion is so gripping and twisty that I’d be a real meany to even consider spoiling it for you. Suffice to say all answers are forthcoming and the bad guys get what’s coming to them in a most spectacular and resoundingly gratuitous manner…

This captivating and astoundingly beautiful tome is rounded out by ‘Black Widow Saga’ – a comprehensive prose and picture recap of ‘The Early Years’, programming and conditioning secrets of ‘The Red Room’, as well as Natasha’s ‘Spy & Saboteur’ exploits, ‘The Super Hero Life’, origins of ‘The New Black Widow’ and ‘The Deadliest Days’ of her latter life.

Also included are a gallery of covers by Acuña, Travel Foreman, Jelena Kevic Djurdjevic, Stephanie Hans & Joe Quinones, accompanied by a photographic Movie Variant and a one page Black Widow introductory strip by Fred Van Lente & McKelvie to make this such a superb example of genre-blending Costumed Drama that you’d be thoroughly suspect and probably mentioned in dispatches for neglecting it.
© 2010, 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Uncanny X-Men: Lovelorn


By Matt Fraction, Terry & Rachel Dodson, Mitch Breitweiser, Daniel Acuña & Justin Ponsor (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2999-8

Most people who read comics have a passing familiarity with Marvel’s fluidly fluctuating X-Men franchise and even newcomers or occasional consumers won’t have too much trouble following this particular jumping-on tome, so let’s just plunge in as our hostile world once more kicks sand in the faces of the planet’s most dangerous and reviled minority…

At this particularly juncture, the evolutionary offshoot dubbed Homo Superior is at its lowest ebb. This follows the House of M and Decimation storylines, wherein Wanda Maximoff, former Avenger Scarlet Witch – ravaged by madness and her own chaos-fuelled reality-warping power – reduced the world’s entire mutant population to a couple of hundred individuals with a three simple words…

Most of those genetic outsiders have accepted a generous and earnest offer to relocate to San FranciscoBay, but of course, trouble is always happy to make house calls…

This sleek, slim tome re-presents Uncanny X-Men #504-507 and Uncanny X-Men Annual volume 2, #2, cover-dated January-May 2009: one of a number of collections cataloguing the assorted mutant heroes’ and villains’ responses to the offer in a publishing event dubbed Manifest Destiny.

This compelling compilation commences with the 4-part ‘Lovelorn: Every Little Bit Hurts’, scripted by Matt Fraction and illustrated by Terry & Rachel Dodson with colourist Justin Ponsor, beginning as Russian expatriate Piotr Rasputin languishes in remorse and agonises over the recent fate which took his beloved Kitty Pryde from him.

Colossus‘ moping is beginning to affect every survivor at the newly occupied Greymalkin Facility on the Marin Headlands so leader Scott “Cyclops” Summers and Emma Frost, ex-White Queen of the Hellfire Club resort to tough love, ordering him to get his head together.

The uncrowned rulers of the mutant enclave are going through a tense patch in their own rocky relationship. The telepathic Frost is chafing over the fact that Scott is keeping one small section of his mind permanently closed to her probes and her resentment is growing daily…

As Piotr wanders through San Francisco’s Russian quarter in the Richmond District he stops for a snack in a diner and finds the owners being harassed by mobsters from the old country. Against his better judgement he agrees not to interfere, but then realises the gang leader is a mutant… one he recognises from his childhood…

Founding X-Men Angel and the Beast are in Argentina trying to recruit one of Earth’s oldest mutants for a unique “think tank”. In the 1930s abrasive and obnoxious super-genius James Bradley worked with Phineas Horton to create the android Human Torch before becoming the masked vigilante Doctor Nemesis. Now, preternaturally spry, he spends his days hunting down those Nazi war criminals he didn’t finish off during WWII.

He has no interest in helping the X-Men undo the effects of the Scarlet Witch’s spell – but none of that matters to the high-tech neo-Nazi supermen hunting Nemesis in turn…

Suddenly the world changes again as reports of a massacre leak out of Alaska. Terrorists have razed remote Cooperstown to burning rubble, apparently because a mutant baby was born there…

Already anti-mutant activist Simon Trask is stirring the flames of panic and prejudice as a Press Statement from his Humanity Now Coalition asks if this is true “what happens when one is born in your town?”

With anti-mutant hysteria growing and Trask actively lobbying in Washington, Cyclops, Beast and Emma visit the San Francisco Mayor. However, even with most of the feared and despised genetic outcasts now housed in her city and the entire population potentially at risk from fanatics and mutant-hunters, Sadie Sinclair stands firm on her offer of sanctuary.

She does however eventually suggest that they relocate the community to an uninhabited, more fortifiable island in the Bay…

Colossus is hunting. The thug in the diner was the same tattooed mutant monster who had terrorised and blackmailed his family in Russia long before the X-Men were formed. Now that he has spread his web to America and Piotr has found the reasons he needed to resume the role of hero…

As what passes for normality returns to the X-enclave Scott broods on his daughter Hope, first mutant born after “the Decimation” and currently lost in future with his son Nathan AKA Cable. Emma broods because she still can’t read her man’s mind and, in the Yukon, mutant tech-morph Madison Jeffries broods on his impending demise at the clamps, claws, grippers and wires of the autonomous mechanical life forms he’s just created.

His certain doom is deferred when Beast, Angel and Dr. Nemesis arrive to offer him a position in their “X-Club”…

In San Francisco Piotr has decided on a long game and joined the mutant racketeer’s gang, and Emma’s fretting has turned to nights filled with bad dreams. As Trask’s hate-message spreads, an increasing number of former mutants and their parents begin to arrive begging for sanctuary and Colossus only adds to the influx crisis when he rescues a cargo of trafficked Russians and brings them the relative safety of the X-enclave.

After dealing with the mech-things, the ever-expanding science team has travelled to Japan to recruit atomic mutation expert Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi where the reclusive paranoid has a slight problem.

He’s trapped on a remote island by the giant monsters he created to protect him from being abducted by the Soviets and the travellers only survive the Brobdingnagian assaults after Angel is forced to reveal his own deadly transformative secret to his astounded and horrified colleagues…

Back in San Francisco, Colossus ends his infiltration of Tattoo’s mob in decisive manner when Emma – never a big fan of men who abuse girls – invites herself along for the ride…

Later the reassembled and victorious mutants enjoy a moment of relative calm but are blithely unaware of the distant reawakening of an old and dreaded foe…

This engaging Costumed Drama then concludes with a lengthy examination of the history and motives of Emma Frost in ‘White Queen, Dark Reign’ from Uncanny X-Men Annual #2, illustrated by Mitch Breitweiser on modern-day chapters with Daniel Acuña handling the scenes from her sordid serried past…

When she was young and a villainous consort of Hellfire Club ruler Sebastian Shaw, the precocious telepath was “expected” to get cosy with Atlantean monarch and public enemy Prince Namor of Atlantis. Now the new US Metahuman Security Supremo Norman Osborn (see Dark Avengers volume 1: Assemble) has invited both Emma and Namor to join his covert cabal of criminal masterminds and global outlaws, the conniving Frost sees an opportunity to pay a few old and still-painful debts…

Exciting, enthralling and exceptionally entertaining, this stirring, supremely sensuous Fights ‘n’ Tights tome is treasure trove of treats for fans of sexy superheroes and combat connoisseurs and also includes a selection of cover reproductions and variants by Mr. & Mrs. Dodson, Greg Land & Michael Golden

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


By Jason Aaron & Simone Bianchi (Marvel Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-543-7

In the wake of the epochal Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, the company’s entire continuity was reconfigured as a jumping on point for new and returning readers. From that point on the banner MarvelNOW! indicated a radical repositioning and recasting of all the characters in an undertaking designed to keep the superhero universe an inviting, interesting place to visit.

This involved a varying degree of drastic rethink for beloved icons, concepts and brands, always, of course, with one wary eye on how the material would look on a movie screen…

Thus in advance of the forthcoming comics event Infinity and his own movie debut, the renegade Mad Titan Thanos got his own tell-all 5-issue miniseries (running from April to August 2013) collected here as a brooding, moody and extremely gory chronicle of rejection, depravity, insanity and death.

Lots and lots of death…

Thanos first appeared in Iron Man #55, as did his nemesis Drax the Destroyer, in the prelude to an epic campaign of conquest from 1972-1974 which appeared in Captain Marvel #25-33 with side skirmishes in Marvel Feature #12 and  Avengers #125 plus a few issues of Daredevil. The alien “Masterlord” seemed obsessed with conquest and destruction; using an army of space pirates, a coterie of super-villains and the wish-fulfilling Cosmic Cube to attain his ends.

In the end Thanos transformed himself into God and was revealed to be in love with the personification of Death herself. Only a cosmic entity who had awaited his emergence for eight billion years eventually turned the tide of terror.

This tale was a key event in Marvel history, innovative and still deeply thrilling on a raw, visceral instinctual level. Thanos, the death-obsessed master-villain, was a critical and commercial success in all his appearances: battles with Captain Marvel, the Avengers, the Thing and Spider-Man, whilst his destruction at the hands of the agent of Universal Life Adam Warlock was an absolute highpoint in superhero storytelling.

Thanos died but was of course brought back from The Great Beyond to resume redressing the imbalance between the Living and the Dead to please his mistress. He also worked hard fulfilling equally dark and deranged agendas of his own – such as waging an all-out war for hands-on control Reality and becoming the Supreme Being…

Scripted by Jason Aaron and beautifully illustrated by Simone Bianchi, this fearsome glance into the formative years of the Scourge of Life begins amidst the shattered ruins of Titan where Thanos regularly returns to cogitate amongst the fragments of his earliest atrocities.

The moon of Saturn had been home to an offshoot race of Eternals for millennia when the boy was born to saviour, supreme scientist and leader A’Lars and his wife Sui-San. The babe was born disfigured, a mutant amongst a population of perfect people. However it was the chilling look in the child’s eyes and not his deformities which prompted the exhausted mother to try and kill him the moment she first held him…

With Sui-San under permanent medical restraint, the freak grew up lonely but not outcast – although something in him made all the other kids uncomfortable. Eager to please and fit in, young Thanos exhibited great scientific aptitude but only ever really had one friend, a girl who constantly challenged him to greater and more incisive enquires – especially biology…

To tell more would ruin some delightfully dark passages and spoil an extremely engaging reconstruction of the Cosmic Destroyer as he transitions from comicbook mad dictator into that most popular of modern monsters, the serial psycho-killer.

Suffice to say that the saga of how Thanos leaves home, destroys home, becomes a pirate and sires an army of children before at last discovering his true vocation and destiny is a most intriguing and plausible journey: one that will impress contemporary readers and most die-hard fans alike.

Also included are pages of extra content for tech-minded consumers via the AR icon option (a printed portal providing code for free digital copy on Marvel Comics app for iPhone®, iPad®, iPad Touch® & Android devices and Marvel Digital Comics Shop: a special augmented reality content available exclusive through the Marvel AR app which includes trailers, character bios, video commentaries and more) as well as a good-old-fashioned cover-and-variants gallery by Bianchi, Marko Djurdjevic, Carlo Barberi, Mark Brooks, Skottie Young, Ed McGuiness & Mike Deodato Jr.

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

Thor God of Thunder: Godbomb


By Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic, Butch Guice & Tom Palmer (Marvel Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-551-2

In the wake of the epochal Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, the company’s entire continuity was reconfigured. From that point on the banner MarvelNOW! indicated a radical repositioning and recasting of all the characters in an undertaking designed to keep the more than 50-year-old universe interesting to readers old and new alike.

This involved a varying degree of drastic rethink for beloved icons, concepts and brands, always, of course, with one wary eye on how the material would look on a movie screen…

Collecting Thor, God of Thunder #6-11 (cover-dated May-October 2013) and scripted throughout by Jason Aaron, this blistering cosmic chronicle again encompasses a multitude of eras as the Lord of Lightning ends an epic war to save all deities throughout Creation from the sadistic depredations of Gorr, the God-Butcher…

It all began when the present-day Thor heard a prayer from another planet and voyaged to the arid planet Indigarr where a devout girl called out to alien gods because her own had been murdered.

The Thunderer’s intervention and investigations took him to the pan-cosmic metropolis Omnipotence City, where divinities from every world and time had gathered since the universe began. He found there that pantheons across the universe had been mysteriously disappearing or dying for millennia…

Moreover, as he was constantly intercepted and ambushed by monstrous black beasts he remembered a ghastly time when he was young and boisterous in Iceland and Russia and an alien foe had slaughtered his followers before capturing and torturing him. Although he had eventually overcome the insane god-hating Gorr, the present crisis had much in common with that awful, humiliating occasion…

Meanwhile, at the end of time in a universe with no gods left, an aged, one-eyed, one-armed Thor was the Last King of Asgard, unceasingly defending his Great Hall from an unending horde of savage black beasts that hungered for his doom…

Thanks to perseverance, the ramblings of broken alien minor deity Shadrak and the benisons of the enigmatic Time Gods, the contemporary Storm Lord at last learned the impossibly cruel, history-shredding scheme of the God Butcher: to invade the time-stream, unmake history and achieve a utopian “Godless Age”…

The Celestial Slaughterman was over the moon when his 21st century nemesis arrived in Asgard at the end of eternity. Now the temporal terror had two Thors to torment as he completed his awful agenda…

The saga resumes in this volume with a slight digression as ‘What the Gods Have Wrought’ (illustrated by Butch Guice & Tom Palmer) reveals the brutal ancient origins of the primitive Gorr on a hellish world where all his children died long slow deaths. Discarding the gods who had abandoned him, the enraged apostate then stumbles into a duel between two cosmic beings and kills them both after the battle leaves them spent and helpless.

One of the celestial beings had employed a black energy force, and that eerie weapon then transferred its power and allegiance to Gorr. Revelling in revenge achieved, the barbarian reshaped the dark force into armour before flying into space seeking more gods to kill…

By time’s end he had eradicated almost all of them – apart from a captive population he kept to torture and fuel his ultimate weapon…

The 5-part ‘Godbomb’ – illustrated by Esad Ribic – then opens with ‘Where Gods Go to Die’. In the final future the mature and ancient Thors gird themselves for battle as, in 893AD, young Thor is attacked by Gorr’s minions and becomes the latest captive of the God Butcher’s slaughter camp…

In the now at the Library of Omnipotence City, Shadrak reveals his hidden nature and what Gorr made him build. The Librarian is appalled at what the “God of Bombs and Explosions” has wrought…

Brought to be broken at the end of eternity, the juvenile Storm Lord meets the last deities in creation – including his own eventual granddaughters Atli, Ellisiv and Frigg – before learning the meaning of sacrifice and humility as a ‘God in Chains’. His unending torment is only leavened by his meeting the son of Gorr – a kind and decent boy who worships his own red-handed sire as a god…

The ultimate bomb is fed by the deaths of gods and when ready it will explode, sending killing energies through time to destroy all gods everywhere. The captive deities are intent on sabotaging it, but before they can find a volunteer Atli realises her boy-grandfather has already gone…

The attempt fails completely leaving the Godbomb utterly unscathed. There is no sign of young Thor. Unknown to all, the boy has been blasted into space to be fortuitously rescued by a flying dragon boat carrying two older versions of himself. Set on war, ready to die and uniquely sharing ‘Thunder in the Blood’, the Boy, Man and Dotard turn towards what will be a fateful Final Battle…

From here on the story becomes a magnificent spectacle of heroic sacrifice and glorious action as the trinity of Thors defeats the ultimate enemy and sets Reality to rights in a tale of blistering action and exultant adventure, cleverly capitalising on the Thunder God’s key conceptual strengths, producing a saga to shake the heavens and delight fans of both the comics and the movies.

Also included herein are swathes of extra content for tech-savvy consumers via the AR icon option (described as code for a free digital copy on the Marvel Comics app for iPhone®, iPad®, iPad Touch® & Android devices and Marvel Digital Comics Shop: a special augmented reality content available exclusive through the Marvel AR app – including cover recaps, behind the scenes features and more) as well as a cover-and-variants gallery by Ribic, Gabriele Dell’Otto and Julian Totino Tedesco.
™ & © 2013 Marvel. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

Rogue Touch


By Christine Woodward (Hyperion)
ISBN: 978-1-4013-1102-5

It seems that the signature genre of comics – the superhero – has at last gained some degree of literary legitimacy. Even if you ignore the collected pulp exploits of Doc Savage or The Shadow, or the assorted novelisations and prose forays from funnybook publishers capitalising on the early success of series like Wild Cards with their own key brands, the timbre of modern times has allowed costumed do-gooders and crazed masterminds to finally break into “real” publishing.

Now even proper book companies have many titles that blend crime, horror, science fiction and the peculiarly comicbook cult of the Over-Man into their mainstream fare.

With that in mind here’s something a little different and probably more in tune with the tastes of female readers, Young Adults and those fans possessing only a passing familiarity with X-Men continuity.

LET ME BE SPECIFIC. THIS IS A NOVEL. THERE ARE NO PICTURES INSIDE.

In the Marvel Universe Rogue was first seen as a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: a disturbed young girl cursed with a power that stole abilities and memories from anybody who touched her skin-to-skin.

It was an ability she could not control or turn off, and any overlong fleshy contact resulted in the victim falling into a coma with their entire history and essence drained into her. Rogue then became a reluctant jailer with stolen powers and personalities locked in her head forever.

Played as a “bad-girl” and mystery woman for years, Rogue grew to become one of the most popular characters in the excessively large X-cast, winning her own miniseries where it was first revealed that as a young girl her powers manifested just as she was kissing her first love Cody Robbins…

With the boy she wanted imprisoned in her head whilst his body permanently shut down, the girl knew she was a freak and monster who must never again experience human contact…

This novel picks up a little later and never mentions any aspect of the Marvel Universe as it begins the story of 20-year old Anna Marie: a reluctant recluse working a dead-end night job at a small bakery in Jackson, Mississippi.

Always wrapped head-to-toe in many layers, the odd night owl one night sees a weird lurking man almost waiting for her. She takes steps to avoid him, the way she avoids everybody who might accidentally touch her and suffer the horrific consequences…

However the non-incident rattles her and gives boss Wendy Lee an excuse to fire her…

All but unemployable and strapped for cash, Anna Marie is forced to apply for food stamps, but waiting in line she sees the same creepy, good-looking guy. However when she challenges him she inadvertently calls attention to the fact that he’s pulling some kind of scam and security guards chase him from the building.

She sees her stalker again on the streets and realises that even in the Mississippi heat the guy is cold and really, really hungry. Without really knowing why, she gives him some of her food stamps…

Over the next few days they keep meeting and become friendlier, but James is a strange and cagy man with an accent she can’t place and the weirdest gaps in his knowledge of everyday life.

Her prospects don’t improve and one night, reduced to desperation, Anna Marie breaks into the bakery, intent on taking food to the value of the severance check she didn’t get. Tragically, Wendy Lee discovers her and in the scuffle makes contact…

Now with a young boy and an old lady stuck in her head, the horrified, guilt-ridden girl realises she has to steal a car and get out of town as soon as possible …and that’s when James drives up, offering her a ride to anywhere she wants…

Thus begins an epic and immensely engaging rollercoaster ride across America as the mismatched loners discover each other and the incredible secrets both are concealing. He prefers to be called “Touch” rather than James and has impossible gifts too. As she slowly allows herself to love the boy, “Rogue” – as he insists on calling her – is forced to accept just how much of a stranger he is… especially once the super-scientific pursuers and monster animals chasing him start to close in on her too.

He also knows far more about her than he at first let on…

Draped in the eternal allure of two kids in love and on the run, and designed to attract readers raised on Roswell High, Sookie Stackhouse, Twilight and generations of road-buddy movies, in Rogue Touch Christine Woodward successfully translates the X-Men’s memory-&-power-leeching Southern Belle into a compelling, alienated but ultimately powerful, self-reliant and triumphant woman in an increasingly fantastic and dangerous world.

Immensely readable and engaging, this is a supremely cunning and clever confection: easily affixable to Marvel’s mutant mythology should you be so inclined, but also a completely self-contained science fiction/young romance thriller that will delight the aficionados of all those so-successful alienated teen prose franchises. There’s even room and scope for a sequel or two…

™ & © 2013 Marvel and Subs. All Rights Reserved.