Category: Marvel Superheroes

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Ultimate Annuals volume 1


By Mark Millar, Brian K. Vaughn, Brian Michael Bendis, Jae Lee, Tom Raney, Mark Brooks, Jaime Mendoza Steve Dillon,& various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2035-3

After Marvel’s financial problems and creative impasse in the late 1990s, the company took stock, braced itself and came back swinging. A critical new concept was the remodelling and modernising of their core characters for the new youth culture.

The Ultimate imprint abandoned monumental long-grown continuity – which had always been Marvel’s greatest asset – to re-imagine major characters in their own self-sufficient universe, offering varying degrees of radical makeover to appeal to the contemporary 21st century audience and offer them a chance to get in on the ground floor.

Creepy vigilante Spider-Man Parker was not-so-secretly a high-school geek, brilliant but bullied by his physical superiors whilst mutants were a dangerous, oppressed ethnic minority scaring the pants off the ordinary Americans they frequently hid amongst.

The Fantastic Four were two science nerds and their dim pals transformed into monsters, and global peacekeeping force S.H.I.E.L.D. kept them all under control with their own metahuman taskforce humbly designated The Ultimates…

The revived series all sported fresh and fashionable, modernistic, scientifically feasible rationales for all those insane super-abilities and freaks manifesting everywhere…

The experiment began in 2000 with a post-modern take on Ultimate Spider-Man. Ultimate X-Men followed in 2001, and the Mighty Avengers were reworked into The Ultimates in 2002 with Ultimate Fantastic Four joining the party in 2004.

The stories, design and even tone of the heroes were retooled for the perceived-as-different tastes of a new readership: those tired of or unwilling to stick with precepts originated by inspirational founding fathers Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, or (hopefully) new consumers unprepared or unwilling to deal with five decades (seven if you include Golden Age Timely tales retroactively co-opted into the mix) of interconnected story baggage.

The new universe quickly prospered and soon filled up with more refashioned, morally ambiguous heroes and villains but eventually even this darkly nihilistic new universe became as continuity-constricted as its ancestor.

Eventually, in 2008, an imprint-wide decluttering exercise “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which excised dozens of superhumans and millions of lesser mortals in a devastating tsunami which inundated Manhattan, courtesy of mutant menace Magneto.

Long before that, however, Marvel’s original keystone concepts were awarded their own celebratory summer specials and this stellar volume collects Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual#1, Ultimate X-Men Annual#1, Ultimate Spider-Man Annual#1 and The Ultimates Annual#1 (all from October 2005): a selection of relatively stand-alone sagas displaying the daringly different tone of the alternate yet chillingly familiar world.

The compilation kicks off with ‘Enter the Inhumans’ by Marl Millar, Jae Lee and colourist June Chung from Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual#1 wherein dim but pretty party boy Johnny Storm gets involved with a runaway princess bride.

The ethereally beautiful girl is named Crystal and she is fleeing from an arranged marriage to her creepy, crazy cousin Maximus. The match was decreed by her sister Medusa and King Black Bolt, rulers of a hidden race of super-powered parahumans who have concealed their existence from humanity for ten thousand years.

Even after the Human Torch almost dies defending her, Crystal is successfully abducted, compelling Reed, Sue, Ben and recuperating Johnny to go after her into the heart of hidden city Attilan, thanks to the teleporting talents of the princess’ faithful giant bulldog Lockjaw…

The subsequent confrontation with the lethally powerful Inhuman Royal Family leads to an inconclusive resolution but a shattering end to the lost city…

Romance plays a part in the next tale too. ‘Ultimate Sacrifice’ by Brian K. Vaughn, Tom Raney, Scott Hanna & Gina Going (Ultimate X-Men Annual#1) finds Nick Fury warning Charles Xavier that the unstoppable Juggernaut has escaped and is hunting the mutant girl he holds responsible for all his recent woes…

Unfortunately for everyone, Rogue has absconded to Las Vegas in the company of sexy bad-boy thief Gambit, where the rampaging monster maniac finally corners the duplicitous duo. Tragically Juggernaut completely underestimates his former squeeze’s lethal powers and the self-sacrificing ingenuity of the besotted Cajun…

The most significant change to Stan, Jack and Steve’s breakthrough concepts was a rather telling one: all the heroes were conceived as being far, far younger than their mainstream antecedents. This even affected the sensational Spider-Man tales wherein – after decades of comicbook stardom – the perennially youthful Peter Parker was at last portrayed as a proper High School kid rather than a stodgy 40-year old geek trapped in a teen’s body…

In ‘More than you Bargained For’ by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Brooks, Jaime Mendoza, Scott Hanna & Dave Stewart – from Ultimate Spider-Man Annual#1 – the guilt-driven lad’s constant round of villain thrashing is derailed when cute but shy mutant Kitty Pryde makes the first tentative moves in her painfully adorable bid to make the mysterious hero her boyfriend…

That sweet, silly and utterly charming yarn is followed by a far darker and cunningly convoluted tale focusing on S.H.I.E.L.D. supremo Nick Fury and his long-term plan to mass produce an army of metahumans in ‘The Reserves’ by Millar, Steve Dillon & Paul Mounts.

Rather than highlighting stars like Iron Man and Captain America, the story follows the far from smooth development of a legion of Rocketmen, Goliaths, weather based warriors “The Four Seasons” and the short, tragic career of heroic hopeful super-soldier Lieberman. Of course the one-eyed master strategist has no time for regrets as he’s busy trying to avoid becoming the latest successful contract of infallible hitman Mister Nix…

Rocket-paced, razor sharp and blisteringly action-packed, this riotous romp is also liberally dosed with teen-oriented humour for the era of the acceptable nerd and go-getting geek, offering a smart and beguiling entrée into of Marvel’s other Universe that will impress open-minded old fans of the medium just as much as the newcomers they were ostensibly aiming for.
© 2005, 2006 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

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Wolverine: Mortal


By Paul Cornell, Ryan Stegman, Mirco Pierfederici, Mark Farmer & Karl Kesel (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-606-9

James Howlett, AKA Logan, AKA Wolverine has faced a multitude of impossible situations in his long and danger-filled life but possibly the most groundbreaking shake-up only came at the conclusion of Wolverine: Killable which saw the mayhem-making mutant Methuselah coming to terms with the fact that his healing factor – and therefore his virtual immortality – were gone, courtesy of a sentient virus from an incredible alien “microverse”.

Now he could no longer properly defend himself and, most importantly, his loved ones and innocent civilians from the likes of monsters such as Mystique or Sabretooth.

To emphasise that point his most pernicious foe Victor Creed – tenacious, savage, still possessing the powers and skills Howlett once boasted and current leader of a deviant sect of ninja cult The Hand – orchestrated a murderous snipe-hunt which killed dozens of helpless humans at a shopping mall whilst leaving the helpless Canadian Crusader physically crushed, emotionally humiliated and spiritually broken…

Written by Paul Cornell, the first seven issues of Wolverine volume 6 (spanning February to May 2014) offer a brand new look and fresh modus operandi for the down but never out outlaw hero…

The action begins with the 4-part‘Rogue Logan’ (illustrated by Ryan Stegman & Mark Morales, with David Baldeon, John Livesay & Scott Hanna) which finds Logan in high-tech armour running with a new – bad – crowd.

Supported by a band of young super-powered criminals – Lost Boy, Fuel, Reflex and Pinch – Logan appears to have lost his way; joining the gang of up-and-coming underworld boss The Offer…

The feral fury seems blithely unaware that his new boss is in negotiation with and opposition to Creed/Sabretooth…

He also appears to have gone completely off the rails. When The Offer uncovers a S.H.I.E.L.D. mole in his base, it is Wolverine who eagerly shoots the agent in the head…

Flashing back to weeks earlier when all Logan’s comrades were failing to help him come to terms with his losses and failures, ‘Bad Advice’ reveals how a tense confrontation with the Superior Spider-Man changed his perspective…

The Wallcrawler (at that time Doctor Octopus inhabiting Peter Parker‘s body) and a near-death experience when Logan joined old sidekick Jubilee and the X-Men in a battle against killer mechanoids led the powerless old warrior to a serious reappraisal and the adoption of a mechanised ablation-armour outfit devised by a brilliant master of robotics. It also resulted in Wolverine quitting the X-Men and the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning…

The truth comes out in the third chapter. S.H.I.E.L.D. has learned that Sabretooth is seeking a weapon of cosmic importance and understandably wants him stopped. Their Byzantine plan involves Logan going deep undercover with a potential rival to the Hand’s new Lord and even fighting old allies like Thor…

Fully immersed in his role and unwisely starting an affair with new comrade Pinch, Logan is fully in ‘His Own Skin’ (illustrated by Gerardo Sandoval) when the mission proper begins. This involves invading The Hand’s home base on the pirate island of Madripoor, where the Canadian Canucklehead revives his old identity of debonair rogue Patch – much to the astonished hilarity of his youthful posse…

The scheme to stop Sabretooth is a multinational deal and when Patch makes contact with already-in-place assets Faiza Hussain and Peter Wisdom of Britain’s paranormal spy agency MI-13 (outrageously aided and abetted by the Carry-On Team‘s Charles Hawtrey as technical adviser “O”!) Pinch realises with horror that her new man is a plant. Quite understandably she throws a major wobbly…

Forced to act precipitately, Logan goes after Sabretooth in ‘The Madripoor Job’ and is just in time to see him acquire the mysterious ultimate weapon and promptly lose it again to one of the thieving mutated monkeys infesting the island.

Giving chase Wolverine reunites with his extremely disappointed gang as the glowing orb defends itself by manifesting an army of Wolverines from different realities…

During the subsequent melee Sabretooth catches up and by the time our hero battles free of his doppelgangers the heartbroken and furious Pinch is in possession of the artefact. As Wolverine pleads with her to hand over the potentially planet-shattering globe, Creed makes her a counter-offer: give him the device and he’ll tell his Hand ninjas not to kill the baby daughter she had kept safely apart from her deadly lifestyle…

To Be Continued…

Tense suspense, non-stop visceral action, compelling mystery and superbly surreal comedy moments carry this gripping yarn from high-octane start to fraught finish and this splendidly devious “Man from M.U.TA.N.T.” espionage extravaganza also includes a beautiful gallery of covers-&-variants by Stegman & Edgar Delgado, Kristafer Anka, Katie Cook, Frank Kozik, Jerome Opeña and Greg Horn.
™ & © 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Origin II


By Kieron Gillen, Adam Kubert & Frank Martin (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-590-1

After years of mystery and imagination, in 2001 the perennially punching-above-his-weight feral fury Wolverine was finally accorded a definitive back-story in the miniseries Origin: the True Story of Wolverine.

The Canadian Wildman had captivated audiences from his earliest appearances in the X-Men comics, and did it all over again for a far larger audience in his movie incarnation, but the story when it came did not please or satisfy everyone.

Now writerKieron Gillen, artist Adam Kubert and colourist Frank Martin have collaborated on in-filling the next chapter and their 5-part miniseries Origin II (February to July 2014) makes an extremely appetising if perhaps controversial titbit to add to the canonical menu…

In Canada at the turn of the 19th century, 12 year old Rose was hired as the companion of sickly child James Howlett, on the palatial estate of his wealthy grandfather. Among the servants she befriended an all but feral child called Logan, abused son of the estate groundskeeper and general handyman.

Tragedy occurred one night as a murder-suicide shattered the uneasy stability of the gothic estate forever, forcing Rose and the Wolverine-to-be to flee for their lives. For years they lived life on the run, eventually settling in a quarrying camp where the harsh conditions and physical toil rapidly matured the sickly mutant.

However even here the repercussions of the Howlett Estate tragedy inevitably found them leading to a final, appalling confrontation in which a hasty unplanned unsheathing of bone claws cost Rose her life…

A few years later: It’s 1907 in the icy wilds of Canada. A man more beast than human runs with the wolves, fully accepted by the pack as one of them. Their harsh but happy life is destroyed however when a colossal white bear enters the territory. The creature doesn’t know how to eat like other bears and inexorably tracks the pack to its den before destroying the cubs.

The Wolfish Man’s peace of mind is shattered and after almost dying in killing the beast an even greater tragedy begins. The loss of his family has forced the not-wolf to start thinking again…

The Polar Bear was no unhappy wanderer, but introduced by men into the unfamiliar wilderness. Now showman Hugo Haversham, the trapper Creed and his disfigured woman Clara are scouring the icy wastes for other potentially profitable attractions. Creed and Clara share some strange secret; and react badly when their erstwhile employer – creepy English scientist Dr. Nathaniel Essex – turns up in the frozen frontier town.

He clearly knows something of her amazing affinity with animals and Creed’s uncanny healing abilities and is very angry that the entrepreneur has appropriated the butchered bear carcass for his circus show…

Haversham knows a dangerous rival when he sees one, too, and takes the first opportunity to leave when Creed announces they are heading out.

The scientist continues his own endeavours, using his paramilitary “Marauders” to disseminate a poison gas of his own devising in the deep woods, intent on finding what killed his white bear…

The tactic proves disastrous as the fumes drive a bizarre clawed aborigine to attack and butcher the gas-masked Marauders. Moreover the attacker seems utterly immune to the deadly vapours…

Essex’s remaining men pursue, driving the furious wild man straight into Creed’s traps. Although the snares don’t stand up to his claws, the human beast is helpless against Clara’s uncanny calming influence. To cruel Creed’s mounting fury the connection seems to be mutual…

Soon, suitably caged, the Clawed Man of the Woods is the star attraction of Hugo the Great’s Travelling Circus. Regularly tortured and baited by Creed and fawned upon by Clara, the no-longer mute beast-man has only one thought in his head: the sight of another beloved blond girl dying on his claws…

Essex is still in the picture too: following the show and trying to buy the feral exhibit for his ongoing experiments. When his frustrated patience finally expires so does Hugo – thanks to Essex’s gas – leaving the rapid-healing Clawed Man to undying agonies on the sinister scientist’s vivisection tables…

When all hope seems lost, Clara, having convinced Creed to help, breaks her new pet out and the trio flee into the night. Thanks to the torture – or perhaps Clara’s devotion – the poor, benighted creature who now calls himself Logan has begun to speak again…

A month later the fugitives are starving in New York City and Creed has had enough. He is not there when Essex’s men try to capture Clara’s wild lover and does not see history tragically, bloodily repeat itself…

He does however join the heartbroken, traumatised Logan in going after Essex, whilst happily concealing the true nature and extent of Clara’s powers…

The man who will be Mr. Sinister is unrepentant and working on his next project: an impossibly tempting solution that can lobotomise the imbiber and eradicate all painful memories…

The saga ends in more horrific score-settling before Logan escapes into the night and into history, but this tales still has a couple of shocking twists to reveal…

Brutal, visceral and compulsive; cleverly laying as much intriguing groundwork for future stories as answering long-asked questions, Origin II is a superior yarn that will delight true aficionados of the complex Canadian crusader and this engaging tome also includes an impressive covers-&-variants gallery by Kubert & Martin, Salvador Larroca & David Ocampo, Steve Leiber, Salva Espin & Pete Pantazis and Skottie Young.

™ & © 2014 Marvel. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK.

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Marvel Platinum: the Definitive X-Men


By Stan Lee, Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Grant Morrison, Jack Kirby, John Byrne, Brent Eric Anderson, Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Frank Quitely & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-599-4

Here’s another addition to the sterling Marvel Platinum/Definitive Edition series: a long-awaited treasury of tales reprinting certified landmarks from Uncanny X-Men #1, 141-142 and 281, Giant Size X-Men #1, Marvel Graphic Novel #5, X-Men volume 2, #1 and New X-Men #114-116 thereby providing a prodigious primer containing an immense amount of marvellously mythological mutagenic madness and Fights ‘n’ Tights fun.

Moreover, this mammoth tome offers a cover gallery by Jack Kirby & Sol Brodsky, Gil Kane & Cockrum, John Byrne & Terry Austin, Brent Anderson, Whilce Portacio & Art Thibert, Jim Lee & Scott Williams and Frank Quitely, an informative Foreword from editor Brady Webb, a vast text feature detailing the complex and convoluted history of the veritable army of heroes to have worn and Mike Conroy’s scholarly trawl through comicbook mythology in ‘The True Origin of the X-Men.

Cover-dated September 1963, X-Men #1 introduced gloomy, serious Scott “Slim” Summers (Cyclops), ebullient Bobby Drake AKA Iceman, wealthy golden boy Warren Worthington III codenamed Angel, and erudite, brutish genius Henry McCoy as The Beast.

These teens were very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between the sprawling masses of humanity and Homo Superior: an emergent off-shoot race of mutants with incredible extra abilities.

Scripted by Stan Lee ‘X-Men’ opens with the boisterous students welcoming their newest classmate… Jean Grey (promptly dubbed Marvel Girl) – a beautiful young woman possessing the ability to move objects with her mind.

Whilst the Professor is explaining the team goals and mission in life an actual Evil Mutant, Magneto, is single-handedly taking over American missile-base Cape Citadel. A seemingly unassailable threat, the master of magnetism is nonetheless valiantly driven off by the young heroes on their first outing in under 15 minutes…

It doesn’t sound like much, but the gritty, dynamic power of Kirby’s art, solidly inked by veteran Paul Reinman, imparted a raw aggressive energy to the tale which carried the bi-monthly book irresistibly forward.

As the decade proceeded the team was occasionally supplemented by magnetic minx Polaris and cosmic powerhouse Havok – although they were usually referred to respectively if not respectfully as Lorna Dane and Scott’s brother Alex.

After nearly a decade of eccentric, mind-blowing adventures, the masked misfits faded away in early 1970 as mystery and supernatural horror themes once again gripped the world’s entertainment fields, consequently causing a sustained downturn in costumed hero comics.

Their title was cancelled then revived at the end of the year as a modest reprint vehicle: the missing mutants reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel universe. The Beast was made over into a monster to fit the fashion of the times.

Then in the summer of 1975, at the behest of Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Chris Claremont & Dave Cockrum revived and refashioned the mutant mystique with a brand new team in Giant Size X-Men #1.

The big, big blockbuster details how the original team was lost in action, forcing the distraught Professor X to scour Earth for replacements…

Recruiting already-established old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire – plus recent Hulk foe and Canadian secret agent Wolverine – most of Xavier’s time and attention was invested in unexploited and hidden new mutants scattered around the globe.

One such was Kurt Wagner, a demonic-looking German teleporter who would be codenamed Nightcrawler, whom Xavier saved from a religious lynch mob. Another was young Russian farm worker Peter Rasputin who could transform into a living steel Colossus and a third embittered, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who was cajoled and pressured into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird.

The final replacement was Ororo Monroe, a young woman who comported herself as an African weather goddess and would be known as Storm. These raw replacements were all introduced in the stirring opening chapter ‘Second Genesis’…

‘…And When There Was One!’ found wounded team-captain Cyclops swiftly drilling the far from willing or eager association before leading them into primordial danger against the monolithic threat of ‘Krakoa… the Island That Walks Like a Man!’

Overcoming the phenomenal terror of a sentient mutant eco-system and rescuing the original team should have led to another Special, but so great was the groundswell of support that the follow-up adventure was reworked into a 2-parter for the rapidly reconfigured reprint monthly which became a bimonthly home to the team and began the mutant madness we’re still experiencing today…

The revision was an unstoppable hit and soon grew to become the company’s most popular and high quality title. In time 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 and a naive teenaged girl named Kitty Pryde signed up…

Next in this compilation comes a brace of supremely impressive and influential issues. Uncanny X-Men #141-142 (January & February 1980) perfectly encapsulate everything that made the outrageous outcasts such an unalloyed triumph and touchstone of youthful alienation.

‘Days of Future Past’ by Claremont, Byrne & Austin depicts an imminently approaching dystopian apocalypse wherein mutants, paranormals and superheroes will have been eradicated by Federally-controlled Sentinel robots, who would then rule a shattered world on the edge of utter annihilation. New York will be a charnel pit with most surviving mutants kept in concentration camps and only a precious few free to fight a doomed and futile war of resistance.

The middle-aged Kitty 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 second 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 valiant one…

‘Mind Out of Time’ sees the mature Pryde in our era, inhabiting her juvenile body and leading her disbelieving X-Men team-mates on a frantic mission to foil the assassination of US senator David Kelly on prime-time TV by 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 stories of the Claremont/Byrne era and set the mood, tone and agenda for the next decade of mutant mayhem…

The series went from strength to strength and the franchise inexorably expanded. In 1982 a fresh generation of students enrolled in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Following hard on the heels of that X-line expansion with The New Mutants, Marvel capitalised on the buzz a year later by releasing a hard-hitting original Marvel Graphic Novel (#5) which emphasised the harsher aspects of alienation and bigotry which underpinned relations between Homo Sapiens and Superior in a stunningly effective modern parable starring the misunderstood mutants in a landmark tale truly worthy of the company’s hot new format.

‘God Loves, Man Kills’ is a grim cautionary tale: one of the most disturbingly true-to-life in the entire canon and opens with the murder of two children. The “Purifier” zealots responsible then proudly display the bodies in the playground where they died with the placard “muties” around their necks.

When mutant terrorist/freedom fighter Magneto finds the bodies the stage is set for one of the X-Men’s darkest cases…

Fundamentalist preacher Reverend William Stryker is the demagogue of the hour: his evangelical crusade against unholy, ungodly mutants has made him rich and powerful whilst his sinister secret death-squads have enabled him to undertake the latest stage of his mission in the full, controversial glare of the public eye. He even has powerful friends and allies within the Government…

Stryker’s divinely-inspired mission is to incite a race-war and eradicate the entire emergent sub-species, using not only his television ministries to whip up public fear and hatred, but with a private army of merciless mutant-hating racist killers.

His next step involves taking out the X-Men and begins when Professor Xavier, Cyclops and Storm are seemingly assassinated after participating in a TV debate.

When news of their deaths reaches the test of the team, Colossus, Wolverine and Nightcrawler track down the assailants and discover that their friends are captives of Stryker’s Purifiers, just as old enemy Magneto appears, proposing a temporary truce…

Meanwhile Colossus’s sister Illyana and Kitty Pryde have stumbled upon the captives’ fate and been attacked too. Kitty escapes and goes on the run with murderous Purifiers hot on her trail…

Stryker has been busy: whilst happily torturing his captives he has devised a way to use Xavier’s telepathic abilities to destroy mutants and all those with latent mutant genes at one genocidal stroke.

As the hate-peddler’s plans enter the final stage Magneto and the remaining X-Men prepare for their most important battle, but the showdown on live TV from Madison Square Gardens offers many surprises and reversals of fortune as Stryker, in his paranoid hubris, overestimates the power of blind prejudice and the underestimates the basic humanity of the common man …

This tale is perhaps the most plainspoken and shocking example of mutants as metaphors for racial abuse in society and the stark message herein, savagely delivered by author Chris Claremont and artist Brent Anderson at the very top of their game, made explicit the power of bigotry and the ghastly repercussions of allowing it to bloom uncontested…

Moving, scary and immensely influential, God Loves, Man Kills is the X-Men at their most effective and movie-going readers will recognise much of the tale since it formed the basis for the X-Men film sequel X2.

This moving epic is followed by the first tantalising snippet of another landmark extended saga. The team had grown in popularity and was split into Blue and Gold teams by Xavier; the division engendering the launch of another X-title.

In Uncanny X-Men #281 (October 1991) ‘Fresh Upstart’ by Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio & Art Thibert over a Byrne script saw new villains The Upstarts – led by Shinobi Shaw and Trevor Fitzroy – murderously target the Hellfire Club elite such as cyborg Donald Pierce and White Queen Emma Frost and her young protégés The Hellions, with Storm’s Gold team Archangel, Colossus, Iceman and Jean Grey unable to stop the slaughter.

The same monthClaremont, Jim Lee & Scott Williamsscored monumental sales with X-Men volume 2, #1 wherein Magneto is drawn out of self-imposed exile in ‘Rubicon’.

The weary freedom fighter had distanced himself from Earthly affairs but is gulled by ambitious, devious mutant firebrand Fabian Cortez and his band of Acolytes into renewing his defence of oppressed mutants by attacking Earth and stealing nuclear missiles.

Xavier and Cyclops’ Blue team – Beast, Wolverine, Gambit, Rogue and Psylocke – were able to thwart his attempt but only pushed the master of magnetism further into the clutches of the murderously Machiavellian Acolytes…

New X-Men #114-116 (July to September 2001) wraps up this spectacular comics collection of comicbook X-cellence with a 3-part saga that changed the landscape of Marvel continuity and introduced psychic apex mutant predator Cassandra Nova in a globe-girdling yarn of primal terror.

‘E is for Extinction’ by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely – with Tim Townsend, Dan Green & Mark Morales – saw the creepy old lady gorily secure the DNA of the last surviving Trask (the troubled family which had first invented Sentinels) and cause the robotic nemeses to undergo uncontrolled mechanical evolution before eradicating more than eleven million mutants on their safe haven island state Genosha.

She then turned her attention to the Xavier school and met her match in Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Wolverine and Emma Frost – who was undergoing her own starling secondary metamorphosis.

In the aftermath Professor X made a personal decision which would change the nature of human/mutant relations forever…

Despite the minor quibble that the “Upstarts” story is unsatisfactorily incomplete, I can’t deny that what’s on offer here is of great quality and indisputably excellent examples of the mighty mutants at their most memorable and entertaining.

Most importantly this is another perfectly-designed literary device to turn curious movie-goers into fans of the comic incarnations too. Filled with non-stop tension and blockbuster action, this the ideal tool to make film-goers into funnybook fans and another solid sampling to entice and charm even the most jaded lapsed reader to return.

© 2014 Marvel Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK.

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Avengers World: A.I.M.Pire


By Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spenser, Stefano Caselli, Rags Morales & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-596-3

Post-Infinity, the reshaping of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes into an unbeatable legion of justice continues in the new title Avengers World which serves the function of a core title from which other associated series would derive direction. Of course, that’s pretty much irrelevant if all you want is high stakes, high octane Fights ‘n’ Tights fun in the traditional Summer Blockbuster manner…

Scriptedby Jonathan Hickman & Nick Spenser with art by Stefano Caselli, Avengers World: A.I.M.Pire collects the first five issues (cover-dated January to June 2014) and includes a pertinent portion from one-shot All-New Marvel Now! Point One which nicely sets the ball rolling for the unending rollercoaster ride to come.

The drama begins as Captain America and Bruce Banner attempt to restore relations and rebuild bridges with peacekeeping security organisation S.H.I.E.L.D. by doing a favour for long-suffering Director Maria Hill.

During the Origin Bomb bombardment by planetary sculptor-turned-probationary Avenger Ex Nihilo (see Avengers: Avengers World and The Last White Event), large parts of the planet were subjected to forced, random and rapid evolution, and now Hill needs a team of seasoned metahumans to go into a transformed area of Canada which has already cost the lives of national superteam Alpha Flight.

However in a frantically fast-changing world she supersedes her own request when news comes in from the rogue state of Madripoor. Apparently the pacific island is burning…

An espionage stealth team consisting of Shang-Chi, The Falcon, Black Widow and Wolverine are soon in play but the bloody civil unrest only masks a deeper problem.

In the meantime Avengers Nightmask, Hawkeye, Spider-Woman and Starbrand are dispatched to Velletai in Italy when the entire population vanishes. Soon after arriving all contact is lost with the team…

At S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ Banner has been crunching data and pinpoints the newly autonomous nation known as A.I.M. Island as the crux of the cluster of strange crises. He also realises the island is changing shape and size and Cap reacts by sending relative neophytes Cannonball, Sunspot and Smasher in to investigate…

On Madripoor Shang-Chi has divined the reason for the unrest: mystic ninja clan The Hand, at the behest of most recent Master The Gorgon, have enacted a ritual whose collateral effects have enflamed the populace. The true purpose, however, was to awaken the unbelievably vast dragon the island rests upon. Tragically the Avengers are too late to stop the creature taking flight wearing Madripoor as a hat…

In Velletai, things are going badly too. The heroes have found a City of the Dead beneath the surface and the frantic departed are all screaming in Starbrand’s head…

The third prong of a triple threat manifests over A.I.M. Island as Smasher, Sunspot and Cannonball are easily captured by the techno-terrorists and delivered to the Scientist Supreme in his grand new capital city Barbuda: soon-to-be hub from where A.I.M. will rule the world…

The second chapter begins with the trio languishing in Barbuda even as the island continues its exponential growth. Whilst Captain America readies his rescue team, Smasher – latest Superguardian of the Shi’ar Empire and granddaughter of Golden Age hero Captain Terror – is being given a guided tour by Scientist Supreme Andrew Forson. His honeyed words are a mere trick to lull her suspicions before he turns her into the nation’s latest super-weapon with the aid of the cabal’s hidden ally: a cosmic force designated The Entropic Man…

High over Southeast Asia, in Mardipoor, Shang-Chi valiantly challenges the Gorgon to single combat only to be cruelly beaten and tossed over the edge into the void, whilst in Velletai the heroes are attacked by undead monsters and Kevin Connor is forced to confront the hundreds of classmates and neighbours who died when the White Event explosively transformed him into Starbrand…

On the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier Director Hill addresses the Avengers’ glaring lack of a mystic member by seconding neophyte wizard Sebastian Druid whilst Cap prepares an away-team to rescue the prisoners of A.I.M. island/continent.

Druid divines the nature of the Velletai situation: the location is a spirit trap built by the Entropy worshipping Cult of Yagzan. What he doesn’t know, however, is that control of the City has been usurped by infernal Avengers’ arch-foe Morgan Le Fay…

Events spiral out of control as Cap and Iron Man try to draw reality-warping former team-mate Manifold back into action, only to discover that the Australian is still trying to repair his abilities, which were damaged during the Infinity crisis.

His salvation only begins after a strange and painfully close encounter with Captain Universe who is still somewhat trapped in her role as “Mother of Creation”…

With time running out for Earth on three fronts, Manifold then teleports back to gather the remaining Avengers and transport then to the most significant battle of their lives…

To Be Continued…

Rounding off this action-packed, tantalising teaser tome is ‘Short Term Fixes’ by Nick Spenser & Rags Morales from All-New Marvel Now! Point One which reveals the background to Smasher, Sunspot and Cannonball’s mission to A.I.M. Island and the devious backroom dickering between Hill and the Sentinel of Liberty which led to the current relationship between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers…

This collection also offers digitally-diverting extra content 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 as well as a plethora of astounding covers-and-variants by John Cassaday& Laura Martin, Jung-Geon Yoon, Morales, Mike Deodato Jr., In-Hyuk Lee, Art Adams, Milo Manara, Skottie Young, Carlo Barberi, Chris Samnee, Simone Bianchi, Agustin Alessio, Ron Garney & Steve McNiven.
™ and © 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Avengers: Adapt or Die


By Jonathan Hickman, Salvador Larroca, Mike Deodato Jr., Butch Guice, Esad Ribic, Steve Pugh & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-583-3

Following an unending string of universe-shattering crises, Iron Man and Captain America swallowed old animosities and united to reshape The Avengers into a planetary defence force more army than voluntary association, with more than twenty active members – human or alien or something less clear cut – whose specialities range from stealth and counter-intelligence to sheer, blockbusting stopping power.

The posture and attitude also changed as the new group actively sought out potential disaster points rather than waiting for trouble to start.

Collecting Avengers volume 5 #24-28 (covering December 2013 to April 2014), the ongoing Big Picture series as scripted by Jonathan Hickman and illustrated Salvador Larroca, Mike Deodato Jr., Butch Guice, Esad Ribic & Steve Pugh continues to lay down the law, beginning with a Christmas present from 3030AD…

From that distant tomorrow comes a far-futuristic iteration of the Armoured Avenger bearing a timely warning of danger to interrupt a much-needed decompression barbecue on top of Avengers Tower.

Inside the building Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are working. Following twin invasions by the extra-galactic Builders and Thanos of Titan plus a mutagenic plague of new metahumans triggered by the Inhumans (Infinity and Inhumanity), the master strategists are readying the latest design of their “Avengers Machine” for safeguarding mankind…

On materialisation Iron Man 3030 panics. This cannot be the right place or time. There are heroes present that history never recorded as Avengers…

After the mandatory clash of arms the situation settles enough for the assemblage to take heed of the time-traveller who warns that a ‘Rogue Planet’ has been aimed at the Earth like a giant bullet…

With time to prepare, the heroes relocate to their frontier outpost on Mars and enact a truly original solution which leaves Earth with a monolithic secret weapon for future emergencies…

A chilling murder mystery then begins when size-changing savant Hank Pym is found dead amongst a mass of slaughtered New Yorkers in ‘Carve a Hole… Climb Inside’. With an Avenger murdered, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill makes the case her topmost priority…

As the investigation proceeds, the truth slowly comes out. Resurgent techno-terrorist cabal A.I.M. has been unwisely exploring the fringes between universes and plucked a sextet of Avengers from their own Earth in the moments before it died as part of the ongoing collapse of the multiverse.

As previously established, Reality is composed of discrete universes all held apart by an infinite crimson underspace dubbed the Superflow. Now that immemorial barrier is somehow fragmenting, with the timeless alien engineers who maintain it helpless to stop the carnage whenever an Earth drifts into contact with another Earth. On those occasions at least one is always obliterated…

A.I.M. has no grudge against their rescued finds and lets them loose upon the world as they prepare for the next phase of their research into other dimensions. Unfortunately General America, Thorr, Iron Monger, Ant-Man, Wasp and their lobotomised Hulk are no heroes and establish their credentials by slaughtering an entire district of annoying New Yorkers…

In ‘Look Around… There’s No Way Out’ Director Hill’s suspicions prove unfounded as the real Avengers go into action and the true facts unfold.

Months ago A.I.M., using genetic material stolen from the World’s Mightiest Heroes, upgraded their latest design of Super-Adaptoid, intent on tasking the six uncanny mechanoids with exploring the void between universes. The crazy scientists unwisely made their creations autonomous, self-aware and able to draw on an armoury of Avenger abilities: well able to mine the multiverse for technological treasures.

They never considered that new experiences might reshape their creatures’ programming or desires and foolishly despatched the Adaptoids to capture the extra-dimensional Avengers as they ran amok on Earth. In the resultant clash Ant-Man was killed and the enslaved Hulk broke free and fled…

Reverting to Bruce Banner the trans-dimensional fugitive made for a safe house he hoped his doppelganger also secretly maintained, whilst at A.I.M. HQ the Explorer Class Adaptoids took advantage of their newly-won free will and seized control of their own destinies…

‘Only Dirt… Six Feet Deep’ opens with Dr. Banner coming face to face with his other-Earthly counterpart and taking a very uncharacteristic chance even as on A.I.M. Island the Scientist Supreme reacts very badly to the news that his prime experiment is completely out of control. The variant Avengers have made savage contact with this Earth’s heroes and a devastating battle is wrecking the Big Apple. He wants all evidence of A.I.M. involvement eradicated…

The battle is just going the good guys’ way when an utterly out of control Hulk turns up and attacks everyone, giving the A.I.M. units a perfect opportunity to step in and surreptitiously extract the evil Avengers…

In the aftermath Bruce confronts Tony Stark, carrying ‘The Case’ and claiming to have deduced the billionaire inventor’s long-term goals. In a tense stand-off he reveals that he – not his double – was recovered by A.I.M. forces and has subsequently ensured that the evil Avengers will not be back.

Even as Captain America was agreeing to surrender the rampaging out of control Hulk to Maria Hill’s custody, Banner was learning from the Scientist Supreme that all the universes are dying – a fact Stark has concealed from his team-mates.

The rogue physicist reasoned the how and why of Iron Man’s recent actions and drive to reshape the Avengers. He also deduced that Stark had reformed the intellectual star-chamber dubbed The Illuminati to make all the really hard decisions and take those actions his fellow heroes would baulk at…

As Stark admits everything and makes Banner a shocking offer, in the trans-dimensional void the free will Adaptoids meet something strangely familiar and begin their next evolution…

To Be Continued…

A spectacular Fights ‘n’ Tights overload that will delight and astonish lovers of cosmic Costumed Dramas, this tome also offers a stunning 28 covers-and-variants gallery by Ribic, Deodato Jr., Agustin Alessio, Simone Bianchi, Joe Quinones, Carlo Barberi, J. Scott Campbell, Daniel Acuña, John Tyler Christopher, Lee Garbett, Tom Scioli, Walt Simonson, Art Adams, Michael Allred, Kris Anka, Alex Ross and Dustin Weaver, as well as digitally-diverting extra content 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 © 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Mighty Avengers volume 2: Family Bonding


By Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti, Greg Land, Jay Leisten & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-607-6

The colossal Infinity storyline detailed a staggering two-pronged threat to humanity: intergalactic eradication via all-out attack by an impossibly ancient race dubbed The Builders and – whilst the Avengers mobilised most of their assemblage off-planet to thwart that armada – a separate savage invasion at the behest of Thanos of Titan, who took advantage of the dearth of metahuman defenders to crush mankind…

In the Avengers’ absence, family man Luke Cage led a spirited superhero resistance movement and in the aftermath as the planet rebuilt itself, elected to keep his Mighty Avengers together as a decidedly different kind of crusading team…

Opening a storefront operation in his old Gem Theatre office, Cage’s intention was to bring the Avengers back to ordinary people.

His bold new idea: opening the heroic volunteer brigade to the public who can come to them with meta-related problems or issues of injustice or help the costumed folk in any way they feel able.

The core empowered team comprises The Falcon, Monica Rambeau (formerly Captain Marvel and Photon but now calling herself Spectrum), sidelined and forgotten 1960s black superman Dr. Adam Brashear AKA Blue Marvel, She-Hulk/Jennifer Walters, old comrade Iron Fist and a couple of promising if troubled new kids: Víctor “Power Man 2.0” Álvarez and Ava Ayala, the latest mortal to become the godly avatar White Tiger.

Also helpfully hanging around is a mystically savvy mystery hero who helped out in an early case and now borrows the hand-me-down guise and gear of masked marauder Ronin…

Scripted by Al Ewing, Mighty Avengers volume 2 #6-10 (April-September 2014) opens with the first shots rendered by Valerio Schiti for a sinisterly seditious saga wherein Falcon tracks a far-right radical who has just torched an anti-capitalist bookshop.

Elsewhere Cage is having an uncomfortable conversation with Brashear.

Required in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy to cease public activities lest his example harm the already torturous pace of racial integration in America, Blue Marvel has only recently returned to public life; stirred from a lengthy self-imposed exile due to the impending and building crises threatening Earth.

He doesn’t welcome veiled accusations that his past capitulation actually hindered progress and justice for his fellow African-Americans, but before the discussion can get anywhere meaningful, a cosmic alarm calls the mighty Marvel away …

All conversation is shelved when Ava joins the gathering. She has suffered intolerable personal losses in recent days, heaped atop a long-unsatisfied desire to avenge her murdered family and the chilling pact she has recently made with the primeval Tiger God who supplies her strength, speed and martial arts mastery – for a price. She cannot remember the last time she rested…

On Liberty Island Spectrum and She-Hulk are testing the junior Power Man’s limits before returning to base, but the evening goes into overdrive when Falcon radios in that his book burner was working for army renegade and paramilitary extremist Gideon Mace.

On a lonely rooftop Ava Ayala overhears that the man who slaughtered her family has been released from the psychiatric institution which kept him from her, and the White Tiger cries out to her broken soul…

The story resumes as the fury-filled girl allows her predatory patron deity to take full control of their shared body in return for the promise of justice. Her Avenger friends quickly mobilise to stop her from crossing a line there’s no coming back from, but Victor and Iron Fist are no match for her feral feline rage…

Mace has been adopted as the spokes-figure for a shady but powerful hard right lobbying organisation called the American Policy Research Initiative, and their despicable lawyers make it clear that should anything happen to their poster-boy, the repercussions would be litigious and catastrophic for the store front champions.

With no choice but to play bodyguard to a bloodthirsty, bigoted maniac, the Avengers are waiting when White Tiger attacks. Ava almost defeats them all before finally succumbing to overwhelming force.

She awakens securely bound in Kadesh – Brashear’s undersea super-science fortress – with her friends desperately trying to contact one of their numerous supernatural allies to loosen the Tiger God’s grip on her.

Although Blue Marvel compliantly vanished from America for fifty years, Brashear covertly carried on the good fight under a number of aliases in Europe, Asia and the greater universe. Now a distress call comes in alerting him that techno-terrorists and old enemies W.E.S.P.E. have sponsored an extra-dimensional incursion of devastating force. When the old soldier hurtles off to fix it, he is accompanied by Spectrum and She-Hulk.

Behind the catastrophe is flamboyant, novice mad scientist Dr. Positron who has a deeply personal score to settle with Brashear…

As the away team tackle his deadly robo-insects and the remaining Avengers bicker on over how best to help Ava, in her cell the indomitable captive White Tiger takes her fate into her own hands and finally puts her manipulative power-patron in his proper place…

On Positron’s base Brashear faces shock after shock as his deranged foe opens a portal to the astounding Neutral Zone (where matter and anti-matter collide yet somehow co-exist), liberating Marvel’s long lost son Kevin from a ghastly, torturous imprisonment…

Issue #9 (illustrated by Greg Land & Jay Leisten) opens with enigmatic eldritch warrior Ronin targeted by an increasingly varied army of ninja were-beasts, whilst on the island of Dr. Positron, Kevin Brashear – mutated to monstrous size and shape – gradually oozes though a cascading dimensional portal and Blue Marvel shares his most tragic secret.

From the 1970’s until the early years of the new superheroic age, “Doc Brashear” and his super-genius son clandestinely combatted a host of uncanny evils until one day their arch-nemesis Evald Skorpion opened a hole into infinity and Kevin was sucked into it.

To save the world, a doting parent resolutely sacrificed his son…

Now as the colossal thing that was Kevin ponderously squeezes out of the wormhole, the terrifying effects of that sojourn in other-space can be fully seen, compelling heroes and villain to unite in putting the tragic victim back there at all costs…

In New York meanwhile a flock of were-roosters and snake-ninjas have succeeded in battle against the mystery hero, exposing his shocking identity to the world as a prelude to their expediting the coming of the appalling Age of the Deathwalkers…

The epic adventure concludes – for now – with an intoxicating Original Sin crossover (another mega-major publishing event which disclosed many of the Marvel Universe’s most closely guarded secrets) as Blue Marvel is summoned to the moon to comply with the last wishes of a dead friend.

Whilst Cage and Co. resist mounting mystical menaces in New York, Adam ponders an impossible situation. Over his many years of isolation and ostracization, the seemingly immortal superman somehow became close to the aloof, remote and unshakably distant cosmic entity known as Uatu the Watcher.

Now the omnipotent sidereal witness has been murdered by agents unknown and the deeply shaken defender of the Earth is further astounded and gratified when Uatu’s significant other Ulana gives their baby into his safekeeping…

To Be Continued…

With covers by Land & Leisten Family Bonding is a fast, furious, fabulously inventive and fantastically offbeat collection combining eerie horror, amazing action and outrageous humour into an unforgettable frolic no Fights ‘n’ Tights fanboy could possibly resist.
™ & © 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Dark Reign Fantastic Four


By Jonathan Hickman, Sean Chen, Adi Granov & Lorenzo Ruggiero (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3908-9

When the draconian Federal mandate known as the Superhuman Registration Act led to Civil War between costumed heroes, Tony Stark was hastily appointed the American government’s Security Czar – a “top cop” in sole charge of the beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom. As Director of high-tech enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. he became the very last word in all matters involving metahumans and the USA’s vast costumed community…

Stark’s subsequent mismanagement of various crises led to the arrest and assassination of Captain America and an unimaginable escalation of global tension and destruction, culminating in an almost-successful Secret Invasion by shape-shifting alien Skrulls.

Discredited and ostracised, he was replaced by apparently rehabilitated, recovering schizophrenic Norman Osborn – the original Green Goblin – who assumed full control of the USA’s covert agencies and military resources, disbanded S.H.I.E.L.D. and placed the nation under the aegis of his own new organisation H.A.M.M.E.R.

The erstwhile villain had first begun his climb back to respectability after taking charge of the Thunderbolts Project; a penal program which offered a second chance to super-criminals who volunteered to undertake Federally-sanctioned missions…

Not content with legitimate political and personal power, Osborn also secretly conspired with a coalition of major malevolent masterminds to divvy up the world between them. The Cabal was a Star Chamber of super-villains working towards mutually self-serving goals, but such egomaniacal personalities could never play well together for long and cracks soon began to show, both in the criminal conspiracy and Osborn himself…

As another strand of his long-term plan, the Homeland Metahuman Security overlord fired Iron Man‘s Mighty Avengers and created his own, more manageable team consisting of compliant turncoats, tractable replacements and outright impostors. Constantly courting public opinion, Osborn launched his Avengers whilst systematically building up a personally loyal high-tech paramilitary rapid-response force.

During his Dark Reign, the rapidly destabilising madman – through means fair and foul – officially worked to curb the unchecked power and threat of meta-humanity, whilst his clandestine cabal of dictators divvied up the planet between them. The repercussions of Osborn’s rise and fall were felt throughout and featured in many series and collections covering the entire Marvel Universe.

Reed Richards had been a major supporter of Stark and key proponent of the Superhuman Registration Act even though his actions tore his family apart; driving his wife Sue and brother-in-law Johnny Storm into the opposing camp of costumed resistors dubbed the Secret Avengers.

His best friend Ben Grimm – unwilling to choose sides – left the country to become an exile in France…

This collection compiles the 5-issue miniseries Dark Reign: Fantastic Four and Dark Reign: The Cabal (May to September 2009) and serves to explore and explain Mr. Fantastic‘s side of the argument as well as the terrifying motivations which prompted his uncharacteristic behaviour even as the still-wounded family painfully try to reconcile in their old home The Baxter Building……

The drama begins a week after the Skrull invasion as the greatest mind on Earth constructs a colossal interdimensional transit threshold. ‘The Bridge’ (written by Jonathan Hickman and illustrated by Sean Chen & Lorenzo Ruggiero) is a pathway to alternate Earths. Demoralised and confused, Richards wants to explore all the other Earths to see if the Civil War and subsequent tragedies which followed happened elsewhere and how other Mr. Fantastics dealt with it.

He needs to know how to prevent such a catastrophe ever happening again…

He has only just convinced Sue, Ben and Johnny that he must go before the metaphorical roof caves in…

Acting with sublime overconfidence and seemingly blessed by fortune, Osborn has chosen that moment to invade the Baxter Building with an army of H.A.M.M.E.R. troops, determined to shut down the Fantastic Four and confiscate all their incredible technologies.

Outraged and ready for trouble, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and the Thing head for the ground floor just as Osborn’s men cut power to the building. The resultant surge in energy interacts with Reed’s Bridge and when the elevator doors open they find themselves in another realm: a primitive jungle where men and dinosaurs and space gods exist side by side…

With the adults out of action, children Franklin and Valeria take charge of the situation, bluffing the H.A.M.M.E.R. heavies into leaving, but little Val knows its only a matter of time until Osborn comes in person. She might be only three, but she’s already as smart as her father…

Setting to, she begins repairing the building’s electrical and defence systems even as in a distant time her devoted guardians battle a horde of time-lost terrors and, in a place where all places meet, her father views universe after universe and sees few happy outcomes…

As hours pass in the normal world, Sue, Johnny and Ben are bounced from one bizarre alternity to the next, gradually a gathering a stout band of like-minded heroes about them.

In fact they are strange variations of themselves: a gentle, noble erudite Thing, chamberlain to the court of the Virgin Queen; a blazing pirate Torch on a flying galleon, sharp-shooting sheriff Black Susan from an extremely wild, Wild West frontier town and so many more, all assisting as they determinedly fight their way to somewhere they can get home from…

After a night on their own Val and Franklin are awoken by Security Czar Osborn and his forces, accompanied by Dark Avenger “heavy” Spider-Man (in truth deranged impostor Scorpion possessed by the Venom symbiote). In a moment of sublime bravado the forces of Big Bad Government are stalled and legally finessed by the really annoying little girl…

In Collapsed Time, Sue, Johnny and Ben inexorably carve their way through a cascade of colliding realities whilst, in No Space, Reed – having analysed an infinity of alternate Earths – is forced to accept a truly humbling hypothesis…

His switching off The Bridge instantly returns the displaced FF to the Baxter Building where Osborn, having lost all patience, is trying to shoot the kids. After a brief but brutal battle the Federal forces are routed, and when the Czar tries to shoot Reed in the back after surrendering, Franklin displays a burst of the dormant power which will make him the terror of reality in years to come…

In the tense aftermath of a temporary, portent-laden standoff, Mr. Fantastic dismantles The Bridge at Sue’s insistence, but keeps from her the incredible beings he met before returning and the new resolution he has made: a decision that will also have devastating repercussions for all the universes in the months to come…

Rounding out this spectacular segue into the unknown is a sinister snippet from Dark Reign: The Cabal.‘And I’ll Get the Land’ by Hickman & Adi Granov gives a salutary glimpse into the scary mind of Doctor Doom as he debates a side deal with fellow Cabal associate Sub-Mariner whilst pondering what to do with maniac upstart Norman Osborn once his usefulness is ended…

Fast-paced, action-drenched, furiously imaginative and wickedly funny, this sharp sortie into strange worlds also includes a covers-&-variants gallery by Simone Bianchi & Simone Peruzzi, Pasqual Ferry & Dave McCaig and Marko Djurdjevic to complete the perfect package for all tried-and-true Fights ‘n’ Tights aficionados.
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Wolverine First Class: Class Actions


By Peter David, Ronan Cliquet, Francis Portela, Dennis Calero & Scott Koblish (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3678-1

Charming, light action-comedy is not the first thing that snikts to mind when considering Marvel’s mutant wild man… which is probably why the sorely-missed series detailing Logan‘s days as reluctant tutor to then-neophyte junior X-Man Kitty Pryde was such a delightful surprise for every rather rare reader who saw it.

The series launched in 2008, written by Fred Van Lente, but this final selection is scripted by veteran chortle-raiser Peter David who applies his deft, daft touch to the final five tales from Wolverine First Class #17-21 (September 2009 – January 2010).

The delicious pairing of surly, world-weary antihero and naïve, bubbly, keen-as-mustard, interminably chatty gamin has been comedy gold since the days of silent movies and is exploited to perfection in this hilarious but action-packed compilation which begins with ‘Two Wongs’ – illustrated by Ronan Cliquet.

This features Wolverine in his roguish persona as “Patch” investigating the son of a notorious, ruthless ganglord from outlaw island Madripoor whom the feral fury was sure he had permanently dealt with years before.

Patch is convinced that the apple doesn’t fall far from the shady tree, even though there’s no evidence that young Senatorial candidate Benjamin Wong is anything more than another idealistic hopeful looking to clean up the system…

Silly, innocent Kitty thinks otherwise and soon the argumentative pair are undercover and stealthily investigating as only two X-Men can (that is with lots of fights, chases and explosions), but they’re both in for a big surprise before all the votes are in…

Francis Portela handles the art for ‘Identity Crisis’ wherein student and master are on opposite sides of a knotty debate when Madrox the Multiple Man stops by the X-Mansion.

The young mutant needs Wolverine’s assistance to track down an errant copy of himself who doesn’t want to be reabsorbed. Unfortunately that runaway dupe has found a sympathetic ear in romantic soul Kitty who completely understands his need for independence and autonomy…

Too soon, however, events conspire to give everybody what they want, which only leaves the lass with a bitter taste of pointless tragedy…

Next up is an enthralling two part cosmic calamity as Dennis Calero limns ‘Discreet Invasion: Part One’ which finds Kitty waking up in a cunning copy of her bedroom aboard a spaceship.

Elsewhere on the vessel Professor Wolverine is enduring the tortures of the damned as the Super Skrull undertakes another plan of Earthly infiltration and conquest.

Discarding any potential threat from the stupid, puny earth girl, the Skrull is astounded to find her vanished and, soon after, all hell being let loose on his heavily fortified warship.

Things only get worse when Kree Protector of the Universe Captain Marvel bursts in…

The tension rises to blistering fever pitch in ‘Discreet Invasion: Conclusion’ as, amidst a catastrophic three-way tussle between the male heavies, Kitty displays her own shattering propensity for destruction.

It’s her innate smarts that win the day, however: when the Skrull plays his final card by becoming an exact duplicate of Wolverine, he cannot believe her solution to the age-old conundrum of who to shoot…

The series – and this volume – ends with #21 and ‘The Last Word’ (Scott Koblish art), as Kitty faces a terrifying graduation of sorts when Wolverine, apparently mind-controlled by Magneto, does everything in his power to slaughter her, just as her powers of intangibility stop working…

Also offering a lovely covers-&-variants gallery by Cameron Stewart, Skottie Young, Takeshi Miyazawa & David Williams, Class Actions is thrilling, engaging and filled with the much-missed humorous family camaraderie which made the early X-Men stories so irresistibly appealing.

What more could a Costume Dramas addict want?
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Ultimate Fantastic Four volume 2: Doom


By Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1457-4

After Marvel’s financial problems and creative roadblock in the late 1990s, the company came back swinging. A critical new concept was the remodelling and modernising of their core characters for the new youth culture.

The Ultimate imprint abandoned monumental long-grown continuity – which had always been Marvel’s greatest asset – to re-imagine major characters in their own self-sufficient universe, offering varying degrees of radical makeover to appeal to the contemporary 21st century audience and offer them a chance to get in on the ground floor.

Peter Parker was once again a nerdy high-school geek, brilliant but bullied by his physical superiors, and mutants were a dangerous, oppressed ethic minority scaring the pants off the ordinary Americans they hid amongst. There were also fresh and fashionable, modernistic, scientifically feasible rationales for all those insane super-abilities manifesting everywhere…

The experiment began in 2000 with a post-modern take on Ultimate Spider-Man. Ultimate X-Men followed in 2001 and Mighty Avengers reworking The Ultimates came in 2002.

The stories, design and even tone of the heroes were retooled for the perceived-as-different tastes of a new readership: those tired of or unwilling to stick with precepts originated by inspirational founding fathers Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, or (hopefully) new consumers unprepared or unwilling to deal with five decades (seven if you include Golden Age Timely tales retroactively co-opted into the mix) of interconnected story baggage.

The new universe quickly prospered and soon filled up with more refashioned, morally ambiguous heroes and villains but eventually even this darkly nihilistic new universe became as continuity-constricted as its ancestor.

In 2008, imprint-wide decluttering exercise “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which excised dozens of superhumans and millions of lesser mortals in a devastating tsunami which inundated Manhattan, courtesy of mutant menace Magneto.

Before that, however, Marvel’s original keystone concept was given an Ultimate working over and this stellar volume collects Ultimate Fantastic Four #17-12 (August to December 2004), and digital-colourist Dave Stewart relates how a subtly different Awesome Foursome began to affect the brand new, yet chillingly familiar world.

The most significant change to Stan & Jack’s breakthrough concept was a rather telling one: all four heroes were far, far younger than their mainstream antecedents…

Whereas in the original, middle-aged maverick genius Reed Richards, doughty friend Ben Grimm, ineffectual girlfriend Sue Storm and her younger brother Johnny survived a privately-funded space-shot which foundered when cosmic rays penetrated their vessel’s inadequate shielding and were mutated into a quartet into quirky freaks, here events transpired in a far more sinister manner…

Infant prodigy Reed was a lonely super-genius increasingly despised by his abusive blue-collar dad, bullied at school and obsessed with other dimensions. His only friend was classmate and school sports star Ben, who had unaccountably appointed himself the wonder-nerd’s protector…

Reed’s life changed the day his High School science project – teleportation – caught the eye of a government talent scout from a high powered think tank. Soon the outsider kid was ensconced in a New York facility for budding geniuses…

Run by brilliant Professor Franklin Storm, the Baxter Building was a wonderland of top-flight resources, intellectual challenges and guarded support, but school was primarily an ideas factory and the 100 strange, bright kids were expected to produce results…

Administrator Storm’s son Johnny was there mostly as a courtesy, but his daughter Sue was a biology prodigy and one of the biggest young brains on Earth…

Pretty hot, too…

Reed’s teleportation researches were just a necessary preliminary to his greater goal: mastery of a strange sub-dimension – a place the Baxter scientists call the Negative Zone. With their aid the passing years were largely spent in trying to fully access it, but regular studies continued too, with quite a few burn-outs and casualties.

Some kids thrived on the aggressive hot-housing; especially creepy, arrogant, insular Victor Van Damme, who after a particularly galling incident with Reed, somehow managed to swallow his seething animosity to collaborate on cracking the dimension calculations…

At last 21-year-old Reed and fractious lab partner Victor were shipped out to Nevada for the first full test of the N-Zone teleport system. The Storms went along for the ride, but as the army technicians counted down, Van Damme argued with Richards before secretly changing the still hotly debated and contested calculations…

At that moment backpacker Ben Grimm had wandered into camp to see his old sidekick after more than a decade apart, and snotty Johnny distracted Reed by disclosing that his sister Sue had the hots for the long-obsessed but crushingly shy wonderboy…

The test firing became a literal catastrophe.

The site was devastated in a shattering release of energy and Reed awoke some distance away as an amorphous blob of eerily boneless flesh, mistaken by the soldiers for an extra-dimensional invader.

Ben came to in Mexico as a huge rocky orange monster, and Johnny eventually called in from a hospital bed in France. He kept catching on fire without ever burning himself…

Sue has simply vanished without a trace…

She was eventually recovered from miles below New York City, gifted with invisibility and force field powers but captured by disgraced and long-missing Baxter Building boffin Arthur Molekevic: a literal Mole Man re-populating ancient, previously inhabited caverns with a selection of his own dish-grown monsters and homunculi…

The unsavoury savant had deduced that the quartet’s uncontrolled projection through N-Space – utterly unprotected from whatever transformative energies and unknown physical laws might apply there – had transformed them on some unfathomable fundamental level. Their incredible new gifts and appearances are the result…

When Mole Man attacked the surface world the foursome had chaotically united to defeat him and this second 6-part saga – by Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger and digital colour wizard Dave Stewart – picks up the story as Reed, perpetually pondering and fixating upon what transformed them and how, at last deduces that Victor had tampered with the N-Zone Superpostioner codes…

He is then pressured by Sue into finally submitting to a barrage of biological tests; even convincing barely-reactive, stonily shellshocked Ben into doing likewise. The findings are astounding, unbelievable and – for us readers – rather gross and pretty hilarious…

Victor has been missing since the test went so explosively awry. Unknown to all, he was also transformed into an uncanny new life-form and now lurks in a ramshackle communal squat in Denmark, obsessing on his abusive father and the daily cruelties that direct descent of Vlad Tepes had inflicted upon his only heir in the name of honouring the august and reviled line of Dracula…

Victor wants revenge and needs data, so his nimble but malformed hands have cobbled together a lethal swarm of killer spy wasps from discarded cellphones and the electronic detritus scattered in the streets…

As the bugs head for America the last scion of the Draculas advances his other plan: building a kingdom of the wretched from the city’s outcasts and dropouts. They all love and revere him. The electronic tattoos admitting them to his Order of the Dragon guarantee that…

When the swarm at last reaches the Baxter Building they utterly overwhelm and eradicate the military forces “protecting” the unsettling quartet of freaks, but after a spectacular struggle fall before the incredible power of Ben, Sue and Johnny.

Aware at last that the accident has turned the trio into beings as advanced as he, Victor lays new plans whilst largely discounted and loathed Reed frantically attempts to track the source of the assault.

The furious prodigy realises that if he can get the altered N-Zone Superpostioner codes from Victor, there’s a strong chance he can reverse the process and restore them all to true humanity.

Sadly, Professor Storm won’t let them go and instead dispatches a military squad to covertly rendition Van Dammer from sovereign Danish territory, but Reed is no longer the docile star pupil and sneaks off with “his” team in a flying supercar he built when he was thirteen.

He’s going to get those codes out of his treacherous lab partner and have a normal life no matter the cost…

Unfortunately Victor is waiting for them with an horrific range of new powers, deadly weapons and an army of unwashed hippie slaves, but the manic control freak is totally unprepared for the fact that his deadly rival has powers too: a fact none of his death-bugs managed to convey before they were destroyed.

The conflict then spirals completely out of control when US Special Forces blaze in to snatch Van Damme and run slam-bang into an extremely ticked off Danish army a trifle upset by the illegal American incursion…

Rocket-paced, razor sharp and blisteringly action-packed, this riotous romp is also liberally dosed with teen-oriented humour for the era of the acceptable nerd and go-getting geek, delivering a sublimely enthralling alternate view of Marvel’s most important title that will impress open-minded old fans of the medium just as much as the newcomers they were ostensibly aiming for.
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