Marvel Superheroes – Page 69

July 13, 2014July 11, 2014

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 â€œtop copâ€ 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 communityâ€¦

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 missionsâ€¦

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 himselfâ€¦

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 Franceâ€¦

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 Buildingâ€¦â€¦

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 againâ€¦

He has only just convinced Sue, Ben and Johnny that he must go before the metaphorical roof caves inâ€¦

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 sideâ€¦

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 fatherâ€¦

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 outcomesâ€¦

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 fromâ€¦

After a night on their own Val and Franklin are awoken by Security Czar Osborn and his forces, accompanied by Dark Avenger â€œheavyâ€ 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 girlâ€¦

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 hypothesisâ€¦

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 comeâ€¦

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 comeâ€¦

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 endedâ€¦

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

July 11, 2014July 10, 2014

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 manâ€¦ 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 naÃ¯ve, 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 â€œPatchâ€ 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 systemâ€¦

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 inâ€¦

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 autonomyâ€¦

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

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 inâ€¦

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 shootâ€¦

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 workingâ€¦

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?
Â© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

July 6, 2014

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 everywhereâ€¦

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 â€œUltimatumâ€ 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 antecedentsâ€¦

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 mannerâ€¦

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 protectorâ€¦

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 geniusesâ€¦

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 resultsâ€¦

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 Earthâ€¦

Pretty hot, tooâ€¦

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 calculationsâ€¦

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 calculationsâ€¦

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 wonderboyâ€¦

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 himselfâ€¦

Sue has simply vanished without a traceâ€¦

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 homunculiâ€¦

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 resultâ€¦

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 codesâ€¦

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 hilariousâ€¦

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 Draculaâ€¦

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 streetsâ€¦

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 thatâ€¦

When the swarm at last reaches the Baxter Building they utterly overwhelm and eradicate the military forces â€œprotectingâ€ 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 â€œhisâ€ 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 costâ€¦

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 incursionâ€¦

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.
Â© 2005 and 2005 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

June 30, 2014June 29, 2014

Essential Punisher volume 1

By Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, Len Wein, Mike W. Barr, Marv Wolfman, Dennis O’Neil, Roger McKenzie, Frank Miller, Bill Mantlo, Stephen Grant, Jo Duffy, Ross Andru, Tony DeZuniga, Frank Springer, Keith Pollard, Al Milgrom, Greg LaRocque, Mike Zeck, Mike Vosburg& variousÂ (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-8571-2375-0

Although one of the industry’s biggest hits from the late 1980s onwards, the compulsive vengeance-taker known as The Punisher was always an unlikely and uncomfortable star for comicbooks.

His methods are always excessively violent and usually permanent. It’s intriguing to note that unlike most heroes who debuted as villains (Black Widow or Wolverine come to mind) the Punisher actually became more immoral, anti-social and murderous, not less: the buying public simply shifted its communal perspective; The Punisher never toned down or cleaned up his actâ€¦

He was created by Gerry Conway, John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru; a necessarily toned down, muted response to such increasingly popular prose anti-heroes as Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan: the Executioner and a bloody tide of fictive returning Viet Nam vets who all turned their training and talents to wiping out organised crime in the early 1970s.

The story goes that Marvel’s bosses were reluctant to give The Punisher a starring vehicle in their standard colour comic-book line, feeling the character’s very nature made him a bad guy and not a good one. Other than the two magazine stories and the miniseries which closes the volume, Frank Castle was not supposed to be the star or even particularly admirable to the impressionable readership.

Therefore these early appearances might disappoint die-hard fans even though they are the formative tales of his success. Perhaps it’s best to remember and accept that when not actually the villain in the tales he was at best a worrisome guestâ€¦

Boy, how times do changeâ€¦

He was first seen as a villain and patsy in Amazing Spider-Man #129, repeatedly returning thereafter before getting his shot at the big time – and then not in newsstand publications but in the company’s black and white, mature magazine lineâ€¦

This initial Essential compilation gathers all those tentative stabs and guest-shots from February 1974 through to the breakthrough 1986 miniseries which really got the ball rolling: specifically Amazing Spider-Man #129, 134-135, 162-163, 174-175, 201-202; Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15; Giant-Size Spider-Man #4; Marvel Preview #2; Marvel Super-Action #1; Captain America #241; Daredevil #182-184; Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #81-83 and The Punisher #1-5, and many die-hard fans might be a little disappointed in the relative lack of brutality, carnage and even face time contained herein.

Just keep in mind that for the greater part of these early appearances the Skull-shirted slayer was at best a visiting partner and usually the villain du jourâ€¦

The first case in this mammoth monochrome war journal comes from Amazing Spider-Man #129, introducing not only the renegade gunslinger but also nefarious manic mastermind The Jackal in ‘The Punisher Strikes Twice!’ by Conway, Andru, Frank Giacoia & Dave Hunt wherein the Man with the Guns was duped by manipulative Professor Miles Warren into hunting Spider-Man. The unhappy Wallcrawler was currently a suspect in the death of Norman Osborn and subsequently set up by the Jackal for the murder of the Punisher’s gunmakerâ€¦

The much-misunderstood champions of the oppressed crossed paths again in Amazing Spider-Man #134-135 when a South American bandit intended to be his oppressive regime’s Captain America attempted to pillage a Manhattan tour boat in ‘Danger is a Man Namedâ€¦ Tarantula!’ Once again unwilling allies, the duo dutifully dismantled the villains schemes after a ‘Shoot-Out in Central Park!’

The Punisher played a more pivotal role in Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 (April 1975) when the Webslinger forced himself into one of the Lone Gunman’s cases in ‘To Sow the Seeds of Death’s Day!’ Ruthless arms dealer Moses Magnum had perfected a lethal chemical weapon and begun testing it on randomly kidnapped victims. Tracking down the vile monster in ‘Attack of the War Machine!’, the pair found themselves infiltrating his ‘Death-Camp at the Edge of the World!’ before summary justice was dispensed as much by fate as the heroesâ€¦

John Romita senior’s original concept pencil sketch of The Punisher from 1973 is followed by the vigilante’s first solo role – in black-&-white magazine Marvel Preview #2 (August 1975) – where Conway & Tony DeZuniga pronounced a ‘Death Sentence’ on some of Castle’s old army buddies who had been tricked into becoming assassins by a millionaire madman who wanted to take over America. The gritty yarn also at last revealed the tragic reasons for the Punisher’s unending mission of vengeance.

Highly decorated Marine Castle saw his wife and children gunned down in Central Park after the carefree picnickers stumbled into a mob hit. When the killers turned the guns on the witnesses, only Castle survived. Recovering in hospital the bereft warrior dedicated his life to eradicating criminals everywhereâ€¦

Following a stunning Punisher and Dominic Fortune pin-up by Howard Chaykin, ‘Accounts Settledâ€¦ Accounts Due!’ by Archie Goodwin, DeZuniga & Rico Rival from Marvel Super Action #1 (January 1976) follows the matured-themed plot to a close as Castle at last tracks down the gunsels who carried out the shooting and the Dons who ordered it, only to find that his bloody vengeance hasn’t eased his heart or dulled his thirst for personal justiceâ€¦

Castle was reduced to a bit-player in Amazing Spider-Man #162-163 (October and November 1976, by Len Wein Andru & Esposito, as the newly reconstituted X-Men were sales-boosted by a guest-clash with the Wallcrawler in ‘â€¦And the Nightcrawler Came Prowling, Prowling’, wherein the Arachnid jumps to wrong conclusion after a sniper shoots a reveller at Coney Island.

By the time Nightcrawler has explained himself – in the tried-and-true Marvel manner of fighting the webspinner to a standstill – old skull-shirt has turned up to take them both on before mutual foe Jigsaw is exposed as the real assassin in the concluding episode ‘Let the Punisher Fit the Crime!’

Amazing Spider-Man #174 from November 1977 declared ‘The Hitman’s Back in Town!’ (inks by DeZuniga & Jim Mooney) and saw Castle hunting a costumed assassin hired to remove J. Jonah Jameson but experiencing an unusual reticence since the killer was a old army pal who had saved his life in Vietnam. Nevertheless the tale ended with a fatality in the ‘Big Apple Battleground!’ in #175.

Captain America #241 (January 1980, by Mike W. Barr, Frank Springer & Pablo Marcos) was very much a fill in which benefited from the Frank Miller effect – he drew the cover – as ‘Fear Grows in Brooklyn’ as the Sentinel of Liberty got in the way of a mission and refused to allow the Punisher to go free.

He couldn’t however, stop him from escaping police custody and Amazing Spider-Man #201-202 –‘Man-Hunt!’ and ‘One For Those Long Gone!’ (February and March 1980, by Marv Wolfman, Keith Pollard & Mooney) – reveal how The Punisher almost uncovers Peter Parker‘s big secret whilst relentlessly stalking a mob boss responsible for the death of a kid who had saved Castle’s lifeâ€¦

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15 (1981 by Dennis O’Neil, Frank Miller & Klaus Janson) is putatively the genesis of the antihero in his true form. ‘Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?’ sees maniac fugitive Frank Castle back in the Big Apple and embroiled in a deadly scheme by Doctor Octopus to poison five million New Yorkers.

It’s not long before both Peter Parker and his colourful alter-ego are caught in the middle of a terrifying battle of ruthless wills in a tense and clever suspense thriller, which perfectly recaptures the moody mastery of Steve Ditko’s heydays.

The Miller connection continued in three unforgettable issues of Daredevil (#182-184 from May-July 1982) which perfectly encapsulated everything that made the Punisher run such a momentous, unmissable, â€œmust-readâ€ characterâ€¦

Beginning with only a pertinent untitled excerpt by Miller & Janson from ‘She’s Alive’ wherein a reeling Matt Murdock is trying to cope with the murder of his first love Elektra whilst elsewhere Castle is clandestinely removed from prison by a government spook to stop a shipment of drugs the authorities can’t touch. Once he’s killed the gangsters, however, The Punisher refuses to go back to jailâ€¦

The story proper begins in ‘Child’s Play’ – with Roger McKenzie lending a scripting hand – and deals with school kids using drugs. It was originally begun by McKenzie & Miller but shelved for a year, before being reworked into a stunningly powerful and unsettling tale once Miller & Janson assumed the full creative chores on the title.

When Matt visits a High School he is a helpless witness when a little girl goes berserk, attacking staff and pupils before throwing herself out of a third floor window.

She was high on â€œAngel Dustâ€ and as the appalled hero vows to track down the dealers he first encounters her bereaved and distraught younger brother Billy, determined to exact his own vengeance and later the coldly calculating Castle who has the same idea and far more experienceâ€¦

The hunt leads inexorably to a certain street pusher and DD, Billy and the Punisher all find their target at the same time. After a spectacular battle the thoroughly beaten Daredevil has only a bullet-ridden corpse and Billy with a smoking gunâ€¦

The kid is innocent – and so, this time at least, is Castle – and after Murdock proves it in court, the investigation resumes with the focus falling on the pusher’s boss Hogman. When DD’s super-hearing confirms the gangster’s claims of innocence his alter-ego Murdock then successfully defends the vile dealer, only to have the exonerated slime-ball gloatingly admit to having committed the murder after allâ€¦

Horrified, shocked, betrayed and determined to enforce justice, DD finds a connection to a highly-placed member of the school faculty deeply involved with Hogman in the concluding ‘Good Guys Wear Red’ but it’s far too late: Castle and Billy have both decided the end the matter Hogman’s wayâ€¦

Scripted by Bill , Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #81-83 (August to October 1983) opens with ‘Stalkers in the Shadows’, illustrated by Al Milgrom & Mooney, and sees an increasingly crazy Punisher going after misdemeanour malefactors with the same murderous zeal he previously reserved for killers and worse. Spider-Man meanwhile has his hands full with teen vigilantes Cloak and Dagger who have graduated from tackling street drug pushers to go after Wilson Fisk, Kingpin of crime.

‘Crime & Punishment!’ sees Castle applying lethal force indiscriminately all over town, culminating in his own crazed attack on Fiskâ€¦ who beats him to a pulp.

The saga ends with ‘Delusions’ by Mantlo, Greg LaRoque & Mooney wherein the Punisher goes on trial and is found to have been dosed with psychosis-inducing drugsâ€¦

At last Marvel gave way to the inevitable and commissioned a Punisher miniseries, although writer Steven Grant and penciller Mike Zeck apparently had an uphill struggle convincing editors to let the grim, gun-crazed maniac loose in that shiny world where little kids might fixate on a dangerous role model – and their parents might get all over-protective, litigious and (skull) shirtyâ€¦

In 1985 they finally got the green-light and the 5-issue miniseries – running from January to May – turned the industry on its head. There was indeed plenty of controversy to go around, especially as the tale featured a â€œheroâ€ who had lots of illicit sex and killed his enemies in cold blood. Also causing problems for censorious eyes were the suicide of one of the major characters and the murder of innocent children. Doesn’t it make you proud to realise how far we’ve since comeâ€¦?

The company mitigated the potential fall-out with the most lacklustre PR campaign in history, but not telling anybody about The Punisher didn’t stop the series from becoming a runaway, barnstorming success. The rest is historyâ€¦

Two years later as the graphic novel market was finally getting established and with Frank Castle one of the biggest draws in comics (sorry, I’m such a child sometimes), that contentious series was released as a complete book and it remains one of the very best of all his many exploits.

Here, rendered even more stark and uncompromising in gritty moody monochrome, the action begins in ‘Circle of Blood’ as Castle is locked in Ryker’s Island prison where every inmate is queuing up to kill him. Within hours though he has turned the tables and terrified the General Population, but knows that both old foe Jigsaw and the last of the great mob â€œGodfathersâ€ have special plans for himâ€¦

When a mass breakout frees all the cons, Castle brutally steps in. For this he is allowed to escape by the warden, who casually offers him membership in The Trust, an organisation of â€œRight-minded, law-abiding citizensâ€ who approve of his crusade against crime. Castle also discovers he’s being stalked by Tony Massera, a good man who thought he had escaped the influences of his bad familyâ€¦

Tony wants to kill Castle to avenge his father, one of Punisher’s many gory successes – but only after the streets have been swept clean of scum like his own familyâ€¦

‘Back to the War’ finds the Punisher on the streets again, hunting scum, armed and supplied by the Trust but still not a part of their organisation.

After an abortive attempt to blow up The Kingpin, Castle is saved by the mysterious Angel, and begins a loveless liaison with her. With everybody mistakenly believing the master of New York’s underworld dead, a bloody gang-war erupts with greedy sub-bosses all trying to claim the top spot, but by the events of ‘Slaughterday’ Castle realises that too many innocents are getting caught in the crossfires.

He also discovers in ‘Final Solution’ that the Trust have their own national agenda as hit men and brainwashed criminals dressed in his costume surreptitiously hit the streets, executing mobsters and fanning the flamesâ€¦

All the Trust’s plans for this â€œPunishment Squadâ€ and the country are uncovered in the blockbusting conclusion ‘Final Solution Part 2’ as all the pieces fall into place and the surviving players reveal their true allegiances. In a classy final chapter mysteriously completed by the highly underrated Jo Duffy and Mike Vosburg, from Grant’s original plot, The Punisher takes charge in his inimitable manner, leaving God and the cops to sort out the paperworkâ€¦.

We can only speculate as to why the originators fell away at the last hurdle, but I’m pretty sure those same reluctant editors played some part in it allâ€¦

This economical Essential edition comes with a plethora of pin-ups and concludes with a comprehensive information dossier culled from the ever-informative Marvel Universe Handbook, and these superbly gritty, morally ambiguous if not actually ethically challenging dramas never cease to thrill and amaze, and have been reprinted a number of times.

Whichever version suits your inclinations and wallet, if you love action, cherish costumed comics adventure and crave the occasional dose of gratuitous personal justice this one should be at the top of your â€œMost Wantedâ€ list.

June 25, 2014June 24, 2014

Superior Spider-Man: Goblin Nation

By Dan Slott, Christos N. Gage, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Humberto Ramos, John Dell & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-602-1

Amazing Spider-Man #700 began one of the most impressive reboots of the wondrous Webslinger’s mythology and was certainly the most striking and compelling character shake-up of all the MarvelNOW! relaunches.

In that issue, all that was Peter Parker apparently died when Doctor Otto Octavius took over his body. The hero’s mind had been trapped in the super-villain’s expiring body where, despite his every effort, at the last Peter perished with and within that decrepit frame.

Permanently installed in a strong and vital body, the coldly calculating Octopus began living Peter’s life, albeit with some minor necessary alterations, upgrades and improvements: arguably becoming a wholly Superior Spider-Manâ€¦

At first the situation did not seem completely hopeless. At the moment of the monster’s greatest triumph Peter inflicted his full unvarnished memories on the psychic invader, forcing Octavius to experience every ghastly moment of tragedy and sacrifice which combined to make Spider-Man the compulsive do-gooder that he was.

From that enforced emotional turmoil came a bitter understanding. Otto had a change of heart and swore to live the rest of his stolen life in tribute to his greatest enemy; earnestly endeavouring to carry on Spider-Man’s self-imposed mission and inescapably guided by Peter’s abiding principle: â€œwith great power comes great responsibilityâ€â€¦

However Octavius’ monomania proved hard to suppress and the overwritten webspinner constantly toiled to prove himself a better man: augmenting Parker’s paltry gadgets and methodology with millions of spying â€œSpiderbotsâ€ to patrol the entire city at once, always adding advanced tech and new weaponry to his uniform and, most importantly, acting pre-emptively rather than merely reacting to crises as the original hadâ€¦

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

The new, ultra-efficient Spider-Man became New York’s darling and even Mayor J. Jonah Jameson embraced the hero; all but adopting the Arachnid as his deputy – to the utter incredulity of an imperceptible psychic shard of Peter which still screamed in frustration within the deepest recesses of the hero’s overwritten consciousnessâ€¦

The helpless ghost was an unwilling passenger, unsuspected by Octavius yet increasingly privy to the villain’s own barely-suppressed memories. Moreover, many of Parker’s oldest friends and allies began to suspect something amissâ€¦

Police CSI 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 had claimed then that it was an accident: that he was Peter trapped in the villain’s bodyâ€¦

The public seemed happy with the changed Spider-Man. Not only was he more efficient, but far more brutal too: crippling bad guys like Boomerang, Vulture and Scorpion. This hard-line attitude actually increased the wallcrawler’s approval rating and, after a hostage siege, his status peaked when he executed the psychotic perpetrator Massacreâ€¦

Eventually Octavius realised there was a noble passenger in his head and eradicated the last vestiges of his insidious enemy’s presence – at the cost of many of Parker’s later memories. However, now utterly liberated, Otto ambitiously extended his campaign of modernised crime-fighting.

After helping Jameson when the Spider-Slayer and other super-felons broke loose on The Raft penitentiary, Spider-Man blackmailed the Mayor into giving him the now-empty island edifice for a base. The Superior Wallcrawler designed a new costume, built giant war-tanks and even hired henchmen to be his â€œSpiderlingsâ€, helping him clean up the city for decent, law-abiding citizens.

â€œParker’sâ€ personal life was all but over. Finally achieving a doctorate, he opened his own tech start-up company and entered into a romance with brilliant college companion Anna Maria Marconi whilst his arachnid alter ego monitored the metropolis through the electronic eyes of the tiny but universal spiderbots from his transformed citadel on the now-renamed Spider Island IIâ€¦

There’s still plenty that he doesn’t see though: resurgent criminal mastermind Goblin King (former Green Goblin Norman Osborn) had taken over the underworld through his Goblin Army Cult.

To that end he transformed young Phil Urich – latest iteration of The Hobgoblin – into his devilishly Strong Right Arm: a Goblin Knight to lead his armies to inevitable victoryâ€¦

Carlie had shared her suspicions about Otto possessing Spider-Man with her friend Police Captain Yuri Watanabe (who secretly moonlights as costumed vigilante The Wraith). Together they gathered proof of their suspicions regarding the Ock and the Wallcrawler; but the mission went cold when Cooper suddenly vanishedâ€¦

Elsewhere disgraced psychopathic genius Ty Stone joined Osborn’s daughter-in-law Liz Allen-Osborn as director at her new conglomerate Alchemax. He was cautiously building his own powerbase, unaware that his new assistant Michael O’Mara was in truth Miguel O’Hara, (Spider-Man 2099) trapped in our era following a chronal crisisâ€¦

Otto/Peter was trying to repair his relationship with Aunt May and her wealthy husband (J. Jonah’s dad Jay Jameson), helplessly re-experiencing the lad’s abiding affection for the gracious old lady. However after seeing Spider-Man at work torturing a captured foe, May wanted her family to have nothing to do with the Arachnid, even though Peter’s company was officially the creator of all the Superior Spider-Man’s gadgets and crime-fighting improvementsâ€¦

As Yuri searched for Carlie, she came to the understandable but erroneous conclusion that Spider-Man was responsible for her abrupt disappearance, whilst Ock’s Spiderlings continually scanned the city for signs of the Goblin cult, neither side able to glean that deep in a subterranean lair Carlie was suffering at the hands of the Goblin King.

The villain was hungry to learn all she knew about Spider-Man (information the mentally unstable Osborn had himself forgotten), but only got what he was after once he’d dosed her with the madness-inducing mutagenic goblin formula which had originally transformed him from business mogul to costumed maniacâ€¦

The bid to transform her into one of his faithful acolytes worked perfectly, and artificially crazed new acolyte Monster seemed delighted to join his vile viridian familyâ€¦

In the Mayor’s office Jonah Jameson, fed up with Spider-Man’s exploitative extortion, commissioned Stone and Alchemax to build a new generation of Spider-Slayer robots. The unscrupulous technologist was happy to turn the project over to his new protÃ©gÃ©â€¦

In other news: Green Goblin had declared war on his rival (and cheap knock-off) Roderick Kingsley who had been franchising super-villain gigs and poaching capers as the Hobgoblin, preparatory to making his big move on the city.

Parker’s Avenger ally Iron Man finally secured concrete proof that the Superior Spider-Man had been playing fast and loose with the truth from the very startâ€¦

Worst of all, after being briefly possessed by the Venom Symbiote Otto had awaked the aggravating ghost of the real Peter Parker in the recesses of their co-owned headâ€¦

To Be Concludedâ€¦

Scripted by Dan Slott with Christos N. Gage, Goblin Nation brings the saga of the brilliant bodysnatcher to a spectacular close, collecting issues #26-31 of the Superior Spider-Man as well as the second Annual (encompassing November 2013- April 2014), delivering a stunning conclusion to the story of Otto Octavius in advance of the Amazing return of the one true Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Manâ€¦

‘Goblin Nation Prelude: Goblin Wars’ illustrated by Humberto Ramos, Javier Rodriguez, Marcos Martin, Victor Olazaba & Alvaro Lopez, opens as Goblin Nation soldiers and Hobgoblin’s crew clash one last time, whilst across town the Superior Spider-Man’s battle with AIM is interrupted by an indignant pack of Avengers demanding some honest answersâ€¦

Deep in Octavius’ mindscape, everything that remains of Peter Parker reviews again the 31 key memories left after Ock performed psychic surgery to excise his young foe’s thoughts and influence. They aren’t much, but they are the very quintessence of what made the boy a heroâ€¦

In the outer world Goblin King kills Hobgoblin, subsequently recruiting his victim’s men to the cause. Suspicious and fearful, his Goblin Knight Phil Urich wisely conceals from Osborn the fact that the corpse is not Kingsley but only a brainwashed proxy, whilst at Avengers Tower, the interview with the Webslinger goes badly and â€œSpider-Manâ€ quits the World’s Mightiest Heroesâ€¦

‘Goblin Nation’ resumes 31 days later with New York City devastated and all but conquered by Osborn’s ghoulish forces. Spider-Man is reeling at his impossible fall from grace. The invaders have combined ruthless force with subversive computer programming to decimate the city’s defences and defendersâ€¦

As Otto questions how it could all have happened he accesses one of Parker’s remaining memories just as the ghost in his mindscape remembers the same event. Curiosity piqued, Peter finds a memory starring Octavius and enters Otto’s representation only to find himself trapped and reliving the villain’s life – every cruel, brutally sad moment of itâ€¦

In the physical world, crushed Otto-in-Peter labours to create a technical solution to the Goblin invasion, whilst his concerned girlfriend Anna Maria Marconi looks on helplessly. Suitably equipped he then invades Osborn’s underworld for a showdown but is appalled when the madman announces that he knows he’s talking to Doctor Octopus not Peter Parkerâ€¦

Goblin King offers Otto a subordinate role in his new empire and, when the monomaniac Arachnid refuses and escapes, Osborn sends a battalion of his creepy minions to raze Spider Island and everything on itâ€¦

With Giuseppe Camuncoli & John Dell assuming the art chores the story continues with only Otto getting away: sneaking off like a whipped dog thanks to his robot slave â€œThe Living Brainâ€, whilst deep in his head, the real hero struggles to retain his own identity whilst experiencing every frustration and defeat that made Octavius who he is.

On TV Mayor Jameson has denounced Spider-Man and announced his own solution to the crisis: a â€œSlayer Patrolâ€ army of super-robots designed to take back the streets. Watching the broadcast, Mary Jane and boyfriend Pedro Olivera are suddenly attacked by a detachment of Goblins. Fighting them off, MJ realises that all Spider-Man’s friends and family must be targets and moves to warn and save themâ€¦ if she canâ€¦

At Parker Industries, The Wraith attacks â€œPeterâ€ believing he has kidnapped Carlie only to have the battle interrupted by Monster. Recognising the missing girl has been mutated by Goblin-serum, Parker and his colleague Sajani Jaffrey capture the raving acolyte and attempt to reverse the processâ€¦

Mary Jane has narrowly moved May and Jay before the Goblins could find them, but is not able to save Anna Maria from capture and as the next chapter opens the Goblin Underground is in control of New York. With Otto/Peter frantically working on curing Carlie Osborn celebrates his triumph by blowing up all the landmarks and repositories of Octavius’ past successes, prompting the Superior Spider-Man to rashly come after him. The final straw is the Goblin’s boast that he has all his friends. Unable to reach Anna Maria the Wallcrawler tackles Goblin King head-on and one of the Emerald sociopath’s hostages pays the final priceâ€¦

Deep in the Mindscape Peter has been subsumed by Otto’s memories and is gone just as the memory lane reaches the point where Arachnid and Octopus began their lethal rivalry, whilst in the real world Spider-Man’s rage and torment are momentarily forgotten when Jameson’s Spider-Slayer robots attack him.

Luckily Spider-Man 2099 is there to disable them but even he is taken by surprise when Osborn hacks their programming, turning the mechanoids into another terror weapon to destroy the city and its heroesâ€¦

The epic takes a necessary detour as Superior Spider-Man Annual #2 offers a brace of tales scripted by Gage as intersecting sidebars to the unfolding calamity, beginning with ‘Blood Ties’.

Illustrated by Javier Rodriguez & Alvaro Lopez, the downbeat yarn chronicles Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich‘s desperate attempts to save his nephew Phil from the curse of the Green Goblin and his own weak nature whilst ‘Chasing Ghosts’ (art by Philipe Briones) reveals how Sajani and the Wraith begin administering their highly experimental cure on Carlie and discover the secret of how Osborn has been subverting the City and Spider-Man’s electronic security systemsâ€¦

Back in Superior Spider-Man #30, Otto’s battle against Osborn has reached a critical stage, just as in the Mindscape helpless passenger Parker reaches the point where Ock took over his body. Galvanised by shock the hero returns to full mental control of himself but not, crucially, the body Otto still commands.

The usurper is in dire straits: frozen by indecision as Osborn threatens to kill another hostage. The occluded sight of the frail female form has paralysed the Superior Spider-Man, but not Parker who forces the faux hero to actâ€¦

The victim is not Anna Maria and in a final example of excoriating self-examination Otto realises he cannot save her. Thus he willingly surrenders his consciousness allowing Peter Parker to reclaim forever their body.

It might not be an act of kindness. Even though the Amazing Spider-Man is back Osborn has never been stronger or more likely to triumph or take the world to destruction with himâ€¦

This truly titanic terminal tome includes a covers-&-variants gallery by Ryan Stegman, Ramos, Camuncoli, Mark Brooks, Jennifer Parks, David Marquez, J. Scott Campbell, Jorge Molina, Kevin Maguire and Tim Sale and comes fully augmented with AR icon sections – Marvel Augmented Reality App pages which provide access to story bonuses and content on your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

Spectacular, sensational and breathtakingly satisfying, the all-action conclusion offers a stunning climax to the catastrophic carnage with the original Wallcrawler utterly transcendent as he resumes his rightful position in the world, but even with the Superior Saga ended the aftermath has stacked up a huge number of changes, problems and perils for Parker to deal with in the days to come.

To Be Continuedâ€¦
â„¢ & Â© 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.

June 23, 2014

Savage Wolverine: Wrath

By Phil Jimenez, Scott Lope, Richard J. Isanove & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-605-2

Company kick-start initiative Marvel NOW! having reinvigorated the entire continuity, assorted X-stars began life anew and Savage Wolverine was launched to spotlight tales outside the usual helter-skelter, non-stop progression of Marvel Universe continuity.

This grimly dark and moody collection – gathering issues #12-17 (published between February and June 2014) – captures two of the feral fury’s most brutal sagas in a bloody volume reaffirming the character’s charnel-house underpinnings.

Ever since his early glory days in the All-New, All Different X-Men, the mutant berserker known variously as Wolverine, Logan, Patch and latterly James Howlett has been a character who appealed to the suppressed, put-upon, catharsis-craving comic fan by perpetually promising to cut loose and give bad guys the kind of final punishment we all know they truly deserve.

Always skirting the line between and blurring the definitions of indomitable hero and maniac murderer, Wolverine soldiered on: a tragic, brutal, misunderstood champion cloaked in mysteries and contradictions. Then society changed and, as with ethically-challenged colleague the Punisher, final sanction and quick dispatch became acceptable and even preferred options for costumed crusadersâ€¦

Debuting as a throwaway foe for The Incredible Hulk in a tantalising teaser-glimpse at the end of issue #180 (October 1974) before indulging in a full-on scrap with the Green Goliath in the next issue, the semi-feral Canadian mutant with fearsome claws and killer attitude rode – and maybe even caused – the meteoric rise of the rebooted X-Men before gaining his own series, super-star status and silver screen immortality.

He hasn’t looked back since, although over the years many untold tales of the aged agent (since the miniseries Wolverine:Origins revealed the hero had been born at the end of the 19^th century) have explored his missing exploits in ever-increasing intensity and torturous detail.

Thus Wolverine’s secret origin(s) and increasingly revelatory disclosures regarding his extended, conveniently much-brainwashed life have gradually seeped out. Cursed with recurring and periodic bouts of amnesia and mind-wiped ad nauseum by sinister or even well-meaning friends and foes, the Chaotic Canucklehead has packed loads of adventurous living into his centuries of existence – but until relatively recently hasn’t remembered most of it.

This infinitely unploughed field has conveniently resulted in a crop of dramatically mysterious, undisclosed back-histories, and ‘Come Conquer the Beasts Part 1: Claws and Teeth’ by Phil Jimenez (with additional input from Scott Lope) reveals the undying Wild Rover’s ancient connection with Africa and particularly a tribe of elephants with whom Logan has a semi-mystical relationshipâ€¦

Now that beloved tribe is dying out: another callous casualty of the man-made extinction event caused by Asian and Arabian hunger for ornamental ivory and animal parts for the moronic, misconceived Chinese Medicine tradeâ€¦

On one of his visits Wolverine encounters the stomach-churning results of organised poaching and is compelled by rage and disgust to do something about it. Following the bloody trail back to a staging post in rogue state Madripoor he is shocked to find one of his most trusted human friends neck-deep in the gory, indefensible businessâ€¦

‘Come Conquer the Beasts Part 2: Death in Its Eyes’ further explores the crisis caused by human superstition and greed as Wolverine calls in the X-Men to help stop one pitifully small operation whilst being ultimately helpless to affect the ghastly global ongoing atrocityâ€¦

This is a tale filled with tragedy, hopelessness, small moments of vicarious indulgence and even gallows humour, but the message is what’s really important. Uncompromising, stark, breathtakingly brutal and packed with enough facts to appal any rational, clear-thinking individual, this is comics propaganda of the very best kind: horrifying, impassioned and strident, a true call to arms for all decent people to make self-serving governments act now…

Just as dark but remaining faithfully locked into ferocious fiction, the eponymous 4-part ‘Wrath’ by Richard Isanove takes us back to 1933 to reveal Logan’s own trip down the Road to Perdition, beginning when he was a rum-runner smuggling booze from Canada into Minnesota.

His contact is storekeeper Elias, a fellow survivor of the Great War just trying to keep his four kids safe and well fed in the depths of the Great Depression. Sadly, selling illegal hooch is a dangerous game for independent little guys and, when representatives of the Chicago mob arrive demanding a cut, things very quickly get out of handâ€¦

In the bloody melee, Elias dies and both kids and gangsters discover that Logan is nothing like an ordinary little manâ€¦

With Elias dead Logan is honour-bound to take his kids to their aunt in Sterling, Colorado, but psychotic button men Pierre-Anselme AKA â€œFrenchyâ€ and Sergio (don’t call me â€œMarionâ€) are deadly opponents and despite being maimed by the feral Canuck, manage to escape with pretty Matti – a valuable prospect for the mob’s cathousesâ€¦

Recovering from the assorted Tommy-gun and grenade wounds, Logan drags the kids –Sofia, Peter, and poor consumptive Vicky – in pursuit and soon rescues Matti – but only after another incomprehensible bloodbath.

However Logan makes a critical error in leaving Marion and Frenchy alive and the vengeance-crazed thugs relentlessly follow, using all their Chicago connections to turn the venal and corruptible local law-enforcement officers against the fugitivesâ€¦

Doggedly moving on the party makes friends with â€œOkiesâ€ and other Dust-Bowl economic fugitives but the mobsters are equally determined and remorseless in their pursuit, leaving a trail of bodies and ultimately taking an unimaginable, unforgivable toll on the children, their tragedy-soaked family and the man called Wolverineâ€¦

Short, feisty and indomitable, Logan has always threatened and promised an explosion of visceral, vicarious ultra-violence and grim, gritty justice at every moment and in this slim, savage collection the fact has never been more impressively realised.

With covers-&-variants by Jimenez, Isanove, Chris Samnee, J. G. Jones and John Cassaday, Wrath returns the mutant megastar to realms and milieus largely ignored in recent mainstream appearances, living up to its named promise with brooding, bloody blisteringly bombastic, shocking sagas: a stirring reminder of past glories and uncanny adventures still to be revealedâ€¦
â„¢ & Â© 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.

June 21, 2014June 20, 2014

Revolutionary War

By Alan Cowsill, Andy Lanning, Kieron Gillen, Rob Williams, Glenn Dakin, Richard Elson, Dietrich Smith, Nick Roche, Brent Eric Anderson, Ronan Cliquet de Oliveira, Gary Erskine & Thomas Palmer (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-598-7

Marvel UK set up shop in 1972, reprinting the company’s earliest US successes in the traditional British weekly format, and quickly carved out a solid slice of the market – even though the works of Lee, Kirby, Ditko et al had already been appearing in other British comics (Smash!, Wham!, Pow!, Eagle, Fantastic!, Terrific!) for years.

The characters and stories had also been seen in paperbacks, Christmas Annuals and the ubiquitous anthologies of Alan Class Publications (which re-packaged a mesmerising plethora of American comics from Marvel, Charlton, Tower, Archie/Radio Comics and ACG amongst others in comforting, cheap black and white) as well as in the their original imported form since their inception thanks to the aggressive marketing and licensing policies of Stan and the gang.

In 1976 Marvel decided to augment their output with an original British hero in a new weekly – albeit in that parochial, US style and manner so well-beloved by English comics readers. Yes, that was sarcasmâ€¦

Although the new title included Fantastic Four and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. reprints to fill out the issues, one bold departure was the addition of full colour printing up front for the new hero, and the equivalent back quarter of each issue. Captain Britain Weekly lasted 39 weeks before being absorbed into the far more popular Super-Spiderman titleâ€¦

He later returned in new material in Hulk Weekly – guest-starring in Arthurian fantasy strip the Black Knight. Other original material included British-created Hulk stories based on the TV show, new Nick Fury stories and a stunning period noir crimebuster named Night Ravenâ€¦

In 1979 Marvel UK – still primarily a reprint arm for the American parent company – started to stretch itself. Besides new material generated for Hulk Comic and licensed titles such as Transformers, My Little Pony and Dr Who Weekly/Monthly and many others, the lads and lasses were ready to produce US-style full comic books.

The world was a rapidly changing place in the 1980s and fledgling offshoot Marvel UK was (critically at least) rising high, thanks to an immensely impressive run of original Captain Britain material being created by Dave Thorpe, Alan Davis and Alan Moore.

Yet rather than dive in with full-blown costumed cut-ups like the still commercially disappointing Flag-clad hero, they wisely looked for a premise that would also resonate with established comics tastes. Thus was born The Dragon’s Teeth (which due to an unforgiving Intellectual Rights clash became Dragon’s Claws). On a roll, the company then attempted to expand its line with creator-owned sci-fi detective spoof The Sleeze Brothers and an ongoing title once more combining Arthurian fantasy with tried and true Marvel action.

Or so everybody thoughtâ€¦

Knights of Pendragon prominently featured Captain Britain on the covers but the epic tale which unfolded over the following months was far more a supernatural horror story (in the manner of prophetic TV show â€œDoomwatchâ€) than traditional Fights ‘n’ Tights slugfests – even by the often outrÃ© British standards.

Steeped in ecological hot-button topics, it starred, initially at least, a podgy, over-the-hill Welsh copper who had begun life as an authoritarian gadfly before becoming a solid, stolid comrade to Brian Braddock (Cap’s aristocratic alter ego).

KoP followed Chief Inspector Dai Thomas as he seemingly went off the deep end, plagued by horrific premonitions of grisly massacres all seemingly linked to environmental crimes perpetrated by globe-girdling conglomerate the Omni Corporation. However as the months passed a pattern slowly unfolded that indicated something far older and more dangerous than money was flexing long dormant fangs and sinewsâ€¦

The publishing floodgates opened and from 1992-1994 the British annexe generated a vast number of ongoing titles and miniseries (nearly 40), many with big-name American guest-stars to goose the interest of fans.

Underpinning the entire line was a sinister cabal of undying wizards who were trading stolen souls to the demonic Mephisto in return for continued life and power. As the overweening Mys-Tech Corporation they had been feeding the beast for a thousand years and were now trying to find ways to get out of their Faustian pact without paying the horrific penalty clause which increasingly brought them into conflict with superheroes, assorted villains and dangerous folk a lot harder to pigeonholeâ€¦

For a brief period the UK titles were a meteoric success in the USA, regularly outselling the competition but also – crucially – Marvel’s American output. At the height of a speculator-fed comics boom, the House of Ideas unceremoniously pulled the plug on the British invasion during the fast-approaching climax of the Mys-Tech saga and hunkered down for bad times to come.

Due to poor sales and the junk bond manipulations of Marvel’s new owner Ron Perelman/Andrews Group, Marvel filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection at the end of 1996.

They got out and got betterâ€¦

At the beginning of 2014 the twentieth anniversary of those heady days when the UK’s angelic upstarts outsold their parent company – and everybody else – was celebrated with a semi-reunion and wrapping up exercise in the form of a stylish mini-event. That interlinked tale, as seen in thematic bookends Revolutionary War: Alpha #1 and Omega#1, bracketing the Revolutionary War prefixed one-shots Dark Angel, Knights of Pendragon, Death’s Head II, Supersoldiers, Motor-Mouth and Warheads (all released between January and March), is now available in a single wondrous – and, if you’re a Brit, nostalgia-evoking – tome which combines the best of the old with the thrill of the newâ€¦

Before the unfinished symphony resumes writer/editor Alan Cowsill supplies all the background and narrative colour you could possibly want in ‘Unfinished Business’ after which the heady (re)introductions commence in Revolutionary War: Alpha #1 ‘Tramp The Dirt Down’ by Cowsill, Andy Lanning & Richard Elsonâ€¦

A Crossrail Extension excavation beneath Canary Wharf brings Captain Britain and MI-13 operative Peter Wisdom into conflict with Mys-Tech’s demonic Psycho-Wraiths unearthed during the digging.

The monstrous myrmidons haven’t been seen since the Battle of London Bridge when a motley collection of super-powered individuals became unlikely allies to finally finish off the fiendish world-wrecking cabal. Of course these days nobody – including the mutant superspy – seems able to remember that horrific clash at allâ€¦

Now with this new eldritch eruption Wisdom discovers that the â€œbloody Yanksâ€ of S.H.I.E.L.D. have been keeping secrets – as well as most of the wizards’ confiscated weaponry and artefacts – and are only now sharing the fact that old Mys-Tech bases and enclaves are suddenly waking up all over Britainâ€¦

With unknown forces in motion, Nick Fury and British opposite number Commodore Lance Hunter want Wisdom and the Captain to seek out the survivors of that forgotten Armageddon: especially the turncoat mercenary who betrayed the cabal who employed him to save the world at the cost of all he held dearâ€¦

The years have not been kind to Colonel Liger. It took years of drinking to drown the memories of the moment all his comrades and innocent child super-warrior Killpower were sucked into Hell, sealing a breach to the Inferno with their bodies and souls, and he’s not happy to be picked up, unwillingly detoxed and dumped into the fire again.

The only consolation is that he’s reunited at last with his sentient alien supergun Clementine, but even that dubiously unwholesome reunion is soured when the cabal’s long-dormant global prognosticator the UnEarth Chasm flares into arcane life, predicting doom and destruction for a select band of his fellow long-scattered survivorsâ€¦ and the entire planetâ€¦

Soon after, as Captain Britain rushes to warn one of the depicted endangered paladins, he is treacherously ambushed by another of themâ€¦

The tale continues in Revolutionary War: Dark Angel where Kieron Gillen & Dietrich Smith focus on Shevaun Haldane whose father was once a Mys-Tech mover-&-shaker whose evil she swore to amend and atone for. Now however she is stuck paying off his karmic debt to Mephisto. She is also close friends with Captain Britain and when he is abducted she sets out to save him. Instead she interrupts another Psycho-Wraith incursion which leaves her ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ and stupidly agrees to accept assistance from that selfsame satanic loan shark who doomed her dadâ€¦

The epic revival resumes in Revolutionary War: Knights of Pendragon (Rob Williams & Simon Coleby), where former mystical avatars Dai Thomas and Kate McClellan travel to the Lake District. Their investigation into an Omni Corporation fracking operation uncovers an attempt to mystically taint and suborn the heart of the nationâ€¦

Wisdom meanwhile has joined with Union Jack – another ex-Pendragon knight – and translated to the realm of Avalon only to find the totemic Green Knight overrun by evil growths. They are just in time to witness England’s WWI Superman Albion awaken from a daytime TV-induced stupor and rush them all to Earth where Kate and Dai have unleashed the corrupted, voracious Zombie King Arthur and his Zombie Knights of the Zombie Round Tableâ€¦

With the land imperilled by a corrupted prophecy, the assorted Pendragons are re-empowered to stop them in ‘Swords of a Thousand Men’ but it’s Wisdom’s 21^st century cynicism and nous that really save the dayâ€¦

Marvel UK had very few long-term successes in its decades as a semi-autonomous company, but the time-travelling robotic bounty hunter – sorry, free-lance peace-keeping agent – Death’s Head was certainly one of their most eccentric and long-lasting main contenders.

Starting out as a bit player in Transformers and Dr. Who he graduated to his own short-lived series and a number of guest shots in American titles like Fantastic Four.

In 1991 he was drastically retooled when AIM savant Dr. Evelyn Necker created the Minion warbot. Minion was sent through time and space to kill and absorb more than a hundred of the universe’s greatest killers – including Death’s Head – but after the murder machine succeeded the bounty hunter’s personality took over his killer’s perfect bodyâ€¦

Now in ‘Synchronicity II’ (Lanning, Cowsill & Nick Roche from Revolutionary War: Death’s Head II), the autonomous amalgam is betrayed by Mys-Tech after carrying out a profitable commission for them.

Targeted by an army of Psycho-Wraiths, he is only saved after sidekick Tuck hires the original Death’s Head from the depths of the time-stream to go save himâ€¦

Revolutionary War: Supersoldiers then reveals how the top secret warriors designed to be Britain’s Captain America are handling being put out to pasture. ‘Stop the Cavalry’ (by Williams, Brent Anderson & Tom Palmer) finds Hauer, Guvnor, Dalton and Gog in a small Scottish village watching a biopic of their careers being filmed.

Watching idiots bowdlerise their reputations is so awful they’re almost glad when Wisdom turns up with a warning of real action in store, but when a legion of Psycho-Wraiths begin slaughtering the locals they barely have time to regret their rash dream of one last glorious battleâ€¦

The emotional core of the saga comes in Revolutionary War: Motormouth (by Glen Dakin & Ronan Cliquet de Oliveira) which reveals how reality and two kids caught up with the most free-spirited and anarchic of the old anti Mys-Tech brigade.

Although Harley Davis is stuck in poverty on a council estate and crushed by guilt over the fate of simpleminded partner Killpower, she is not beyond the reach of the rampant Psycho-Wraiths.

Unfortunately for them, though, she kept some of the tools and weapons picked up from every corner of time and space and still has a few friends who are a bit handy with their fists (knives, guns, baseball bats, ray blasters etc etc)â€¦

Liger stars in Revolutionary War: Warheads (Lanning, Cowsill & Gary Erskine) as the true story of that last battle emerges and Dai Thomas gets an inkling that not all the bad guys are on Mys-Tech’s side. Even though a traitor is exposed and the true scheme revealed, it’s too late and the entire Earth is overrun by demonic horrors.

As every superhero everywhere engages in a furious holding action, the tattered remnants of the British brigade of champions unites to battle one of their own and all the hordes of Hell in Revolutionary War: Omega#1 (Lanning, Cowsill & Elson) in a burning place where there are ‘No More Heroes’â€¦

This engaging epistle also includes a host of covers-&-variants by Mark Brooks, Barry Kitson, Salvador Larroca, Neil Edwards, Liam Sharp, Dave Gibbons, Declan Shalvey, Erskine and Jamie McKelvie, a ‘Behind the Scenes’ glimpse at the original series proposal, page after page of original art, pencils, roughs, character designs and sketches plus incisive afterthoughts from Dakin and Gillen in ‘The Final Word’.

Grim, explosively action-packed, slyly sardonic and deliciously satirically tongue-in-cheek, Revolutionary War is a delight for old-timers that will spark a lot of interest from neophyte readers in search of a different take on Fights ‘n’ Tights adventure.
â„¢ & Â© 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.

June 19, 2014July 6, 2014

Amazing X-Men: The Quest for Nightcrawler

By Jason Aaron, Ed McGuinness, Cameron Stuart & Dexter Vines (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-591-8

Amidst all the constant existential angst and apocalyptic StÃ¼rm und Drang of the average X-Men saga over the years, there was still the occasional moment of lighter-hearted, boldly dashing, fun-filled exuberant derring-do – and it generally gravitated towards or sprang from the general vicinity of German swashbuckler Kurt Wagner: Nightcrawler.

However even he eventually succumbed to the bleak tone of the times and, after increasingly dark dire deeds, he died in the X-Event Second Coming.

Now after the team’s dalliances with doppelgangers and alternate Earth iterations, the original and genuine article has returned for the first story-arc of new ongoing title Amazing X-Men. Collecting the first six issues (cover-dated January-May 2014), this metaphysical merry-go-round of magic and mutant mayhem by Jason Aaron & Ed McGuiness (aided and abetted by Cameron Stewart and Dexter Vines) opens in Heaven, where the devout, deceased Christian mutant is strangely listless and ill-at-ease.

He perks up, however, when a quartet of demon pirates invade the Promised Land looking for souls to shanghai, and gives the invaders the sound thrashing they so richly deserve. The situation suddenly becomes seriously serious when his father appears.

Demon mutant Azazel had maintained his connection to Earth for millennia by mating with human women, but Kurt had always been the most disappointing of his progeny. Now the moribund mutant realises he would do anything to thwart his sinister sire’s schemes – including foregoing forever his hard-earned eternal restâ€¦

On Earth The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning is â€œwelcomingâ€ its newest teacher. Angelica Jones (AKA Firestar) is already nervous about her job and terrified to be in the â€œBig Leaguesâ€ amongst the X-Men, but her first day too soon takes a giant step into pure weirdness when the Beast blazes by her, chasing teleporting imps – known as â€œBamfsâ€ – who have been stealing his technology. Now, by purloining his coffeemaker, they have finally gone too farâ€¦

Caught up in the chase, she is astonished to discover the little blue packrats have constructed a bizarre glowing portal in the basement. When Iceman, Angel, Northstar, Rachel Grey, Wolverine and Storm join her, the Beast and the Bamfs, they are all attacked by malicious red Bamfs and sucked through the gateway into the afterlife where Azazel is attempting to conquer the eternal realms in flying pirate galleonsâ€¦

The journey has divided the team. Transported to the golden fields of Elysium, Wolverine and Northstar are soon boldly battling Azazel’s demonic buccaneers but Storm, Iceman and Firestar are having the devil’s own time surviving the very Pit of Hell they have materialised inâ€¦

The war in heaven is starting to go badly until the sprit of Charles Xavier turns up to offer some sage advice, sending Wolverine plunging from Paradise to find and save Nightcrawler, who is set on stopping his devilish daddy at any costâ€¦

The Beast has meanwhile landed on Azazel’s flagship, far beyond the Realm of the Flesh, and found himself severely overmatched against the hellish hordes aboard. He looks to be doomed, as is Storm who has â€œescapedâ€ onto another of the perfidious black freighters, but when the situation is at its most dire, in a crack of brimstone sound and fury, Nightcrawler arrives, sword swingingâ€¦

With Wolverine and Northstar now trapped in a frozen perdition whilst Firestar and Iceman languish in the Inferno, Kurt leads the missions to rescue them all and, whilst revealing the incredible truth about the perpetually proliferating Bamfs, finally takes the fight to his fiendish father.

The struggle takes everybody back to Earth but, by defeating the demon-lord and manifesting once more on the physical plane, has Nightcrawler forever lost his place in Heaven and locked the lethal, lascivious Lord of Lies in the land of the living?

Peppered with telling and trenchant flashbacks showing why Wagner was so beloved by his fellow X-Men, the dauntless drama concludes with ‘All in the Family’ (illustrated by Cameron Stewart) which sees the majority of the surviving X-Men – now split into warring ideological camps – turn up at Kurt’s Welcome Home party to pay their respects.

The only one missing is Nightcrawler himself, occupied as he is with confronting his malign mother (evil mutant Mystique) and subsequently spectacularly failing to prevent her breaking recently incarcerated Daddy Dearest out of super-villain jailâ€¦

This bright and breezy tale of light-hearted triumph and tragedy comes with a legion of covers-&-variants (15 actually) by McGuinness & Vines, Milo Manara, Moore, Kevin Nowlan, Dale Keown, Skottie Young and Salvador Larroca, and is one of the most enjoyable X-epics of recent years: a boundless buccaneering romp trading angst for boundless action and nihilistic gloom for thrills and frolics.

June 18, 2014June 18, 2014

Indestructible Hulk volume 4: Humanity Bomb

By Mark Waid, Mahmud Asrar, Clayton Mann & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-620-5

Once upon a time, Bruce Banner was merely a military scientist accidentally caught in a Gamma-bomb blast of his own devising. As a result, any undue stress could cause him to transform into a gigantic green monster of unimaginable strength and fury.

As both occasional hero and bombastic brute he rampaged across the landscape for decades, becoming one of comics’ most popular characters and most enduring multi-media titans.

Over the years he has undergone numerous radical changes in scope, character and format to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling whilst the number of Gamma-galvanised grotesqueries crashing about the Marvel Universe has proliferated to inconceivable proportions.

The days of Bruce going green with anger at the drop of a hat are long gone, so anybody taking their cues from TV or movie incarnations would be wise to anticipate a smidgen of unavoidable confusionâ€¦

In a world of numerous Hulks, She-Hulks, Abominations and every kind of ancillary colour-swatched atomic berserker, the MarvelNOW! event saw the Jade Giant reinvented in a stripped-down, back-to-basics but startlingly original manner which energised new and old fans alike.

The big change in his fortunes occurred after S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill was persuaded to provide perennial fugitive Banner with resources and funding in order to sanitise his devastated scientific reputation. In return Hill could call on the Hulk as a living weapon of last resortâ€¦

One of the smartest men on Earth, Banner had lost years of success, progress and peer renown whilst trying to cure himself of the Hulk. Concerned about his legacy, the fugitive genius had at last decided to make his future headlines as a scientist, not a shattering force of nature – for as long as he could possible manage – rather than fruitlessly seek to cure his affliction. Additionally, in return for S.H.I.E.L.D. science labs and trained assistants, the beleaguered boffin would give the spy agency first use of his discoveries and inventionsâ€¦

This volume details the final days of this cataclysmic chapter in the ever-eventful life of Dr. Banner and his angry green alter ego (collecting Indestructible Hulk #16, 17.INH, 18.INH, 19.INH, 20 and Indestructible Hulk Annual #1, spanning January-March 2014) with scripter Mark Waid going out on a unforgettable high.

These days comics are all about the next Big Publishing Event and this latest Hulk collection capitalises on the tide of Inhumanity to bring this particular iteration to a spectacular climax â€¦

During earlier mega-blockbuster Infinity, mad Titan Thanos invaded Earth and battled the Inhumans’ ruler Black Bolt to a standstill. As a last resort the embattled king released the Hidden People’s mutagenic Terrigen Mist into the atmosphere where it triggered mutation in millions, proving that human and Inhuman were not necessarily different racesâ€¦

After being marooned in mystical ice-hell Jotunheim and then having to outwit Zarrko the Tomorrow Man and repair the fracturing time-stream, Banner and his team are way behind the greenly envious genius’ schedule to prove himself smarter than Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Hank Pym and all the other assorted big-brains who have outshone and pitied him over the years of his afflictionâ€¦

Thus in ‘Humanity Bomb: Prelude’ (by Waid & Mahmud Asrar)Banner is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to get back on track. After blackmailing the Military-Industrial complex for â€œblack bagâ€ funds, the inventor goes on a spree of tinkering only to be beaten to the patent office post over and over again by his oblivious intellectual rivals.

With his temper fraying, only calm, cool assistant Randall Jessup seems able to keep him from â€œHulking Outâ€, so it’s with some relief that Banner hears of a rushed – and highly suspect – S.H.I.E.L.D. mission to an ancient Meso-American pyramid in Mexico where he can exorcise some pent-up frustrationâ€¦

They only want Renewable Energy expert Jessup on-site, but Banner is not a man to take â€œnoâ€ for an answer anymore – which is lucky considering the original purpose of the monolith and the things waiting insideâ€¦

Indestructible Hulk Annual #1 then offers a look into Banner’s – and Tony Stark’s – boyhood via a ‘Journey into Science’ (Jeff Parker & Asrar) as Dr. Derenik Zadian – the charismatic but mercenary scientific genius who taught and then advised the two prodigies to go into weapons research – returns as a threat to the entire world. Iron Man and the Hulk must reluctantly invade the monster-stuffed island their renegade mentor is now literally part-and-parcel ofâ€¦

‘Humanity Bomb’ (by Waid, Clay Mann, Seth Mann, Miguel Sepulveda, Jheremy Raapack, Tom Grummett, Joe Bennett, Karl Kesel, Ruy JosÃ©, Andrew Hennessy & Scott Hanna) then opens as Stark and Pym meddle with Banner’s proposed solution for the still-propagating clouds of airborne Terrigen Mistâ€¦

Already under relentless, self-induced pressure to succeed, the unwelcome intervention stresses Banner, but not as much as the S.H.I.E.L.D. edict that his entire research team are to be held in â€œlock-downâ€ since one of them has tested positive for the genes that react to Terrigen exposureâ€¦

Thus, when Iron Man, Giant-Man and The Beast arrive, insultingly demanding to check his work before proceeding, Banner goes ballistic. To be fair though, his quick fix is a bomb and everybody is painfully aware of how well his last radical radioactive explosive device turned outâ€¦

When the physicist goes green and crazy the assembled Avengers are unable to stop him stealing the bomb and escaping into the unsuspecting worldâ€¦

The resulting chase and cataclysmic clash causes the bomb to detonate over Tulsa, Oklahoma with horrific and astounding results. In the aftermath the now pacified physicist’s solution is deconstructed and the reason for its failure to end the spread of â€œTerrigenesisâ€ determined.

Banner is blithely unaware that his team have broken out of custody and flown after him. They are unaware that the cure hasn’t worked – until one of them suddenly turns into a monster that feeds on rageâ€¦

Inevitably the fresh new travesty of nature clashes spectacularly with the Hulk but, even after a seeming solution reverses the Terrigen transformation, the danger is not over. Elsewhere, maverick scientist Ted Goodrich has rebuilt and reactivated the rogue think tank dubbed The Enclave (which numbered growing the first artificial godling Him/Adam Warlock amongst its numerous wonders and breakthroughs) and has targeted Banner’s recently reverted aideâ€¦

That bombastic battle apparently goes the Good Guys’ way but after reporting back to Maria Hill one more shock and another impossible tragedy awaits the understandably at-the-end-of-his tether Bruce Bannerâ€¦

Sporting a stack of AR icons (Marvel’s Augmented Reality App featuring printed portals to online story bonuses and extras for everyone who downloaded the free software from marvel.com onto a smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet) and a stunning cover gallery by Asrar & Dave McCaig, this sharp, action-packed and astonishingly compelling read offers a fun-filled, fury-fuelled shocking end to the epic which brilliantly mixes incredible adventure with clever characterisation and an addictive excess of furious Fights ‘n’ Tights action that no comics fan could possibly resist.

June 16, 2014June 18, 2014

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars: 30th Anniversary Edition

By Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck, Bob Layton, John Beatty & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-589-5

Has it been thirty years? Cripes!: stir the Horlicks and break out the Zimmer framesâ€¦

The â€œmaxi-seriesâ€ which started the seemingly insatiable modern passion for vast, braided mega-crossover publishing events originally came about because of an impending action figures licensing deal with toy manufacturing monolith Mattel.

Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, a great advocate of tales accessible to new, younger readers as well as the dedicated fan-base, apparently concocted the rather simplistic but amazingly engaging saga starring the House of Ideas’ top characters as a result of urgings from a potential major licensor. He then built his tale around a torrent of unsolicited, inspirational mail from readers, all begging for one huge dust-up between all the heroes and villainsâ€¦

The 12-issue Limited Series launched with a May 1984 cover-date and closed (April 1985) with a double-sized blockbusting battle that left many characters changed forever – or as least as â€œForeverâ€ as comics getâ€¦

The premise of the secret saga was that an all-powerful force calling itself The Beyonder abducted an army of Earth heroes and villains – and the most dreaded destroyer in the universe – in its quest to understand the emotion of desireâ€¦

The enigmatic, almighty entity dumped them all on a colossal purpose-built Battleworld created from and populated with fragments of other planets as a vast arena in which to prove which was better â€“ self-gratification or sacrificeâ€¦

In his introductory reminiscence ‘The War to End All Wars’, Shooter recounts the concatenation of circumstances which led to the creation of the series, after which an tantalising page clipped from the Daily Bugle outlines the mounting mystery of a seemingly unconnected legion of missing heroes before the furious Fights ‘n’ Tights epic opensâ€¦

As crafted by Shooter, Mike Zeck & John Beatty, ‘The War Begins’ found the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four, Magneto, the Hulk and utterly out-of-his-depth Spider-Man all teleported into the deep unknown to see a galaxy destroyed and a world constructed before their astounded eyes. This was achieved purely so that a cosmic force could determine which of two philosophies was correct.

Arrayed against them were Doctor Doom, Molecule Man, Ultron, Dr. Octopus, the Lizard, the Enchantress, Absorbing Man, Kang the Conqueror, the Wrecking Crew and Galactus, all of whom had no problem with a disembodied voice telling them â€œslay your enemies and all you desire shall be yoursâ€â€¦

Whilst the villains instantly turn on each other, the Devourer of Worlds doesn’t care for the offer and attacks the disembodied force, only to be smashed casually and unceremoniously onto the brand new world below. The heroes too touch ground but dissent starts to split them into suspicious factions. The mere presence of mutant supremacist Magneto on their â€œteamâ€ divides the champions along human and mutant linesâ€¦

Elsewhere Doctor Doom tries to explain the underlying threat to his fellow villains in the huge super-scientific citadel they have commandeered, but the rogues refuse to listen.

Exasperated, the Monarch of Latveria decides to swallow his pride and consult with despised rival Mr. Fantastic but is blasted out of the skies by his greedy, treacherous companions before he finds the heroes’ camp. The bushwhackers then rashly go on to attack the gathered Good Guysâ€¦ and The War beginsâ€¦

‘Prisoners of War!’ sees the first of many pitched battles, but as the cataclysmic conflict proceeds, elsewhere Doom, having survived the sneak attack, is on site to see Galactus revive and ominously repair to a mountain top to begin his own unique responseâ€¦

Leaving the cosmic glutton to his own devices, the Iron Tyrant returns to the fortress of evil; dubbing it Doombase as he reprograms the dormant AI Ultron to be his slave.

He is waiting when the thoroughly trounced malefactors limp home, having lost the Lizard, Enchantress, Kang and Thunderball, Bulldozer and Piledriver of the Wrecking Crew to the heroes.

The triumphant yet troubled victors have occupied their own city-sized futuristic castle-complex where, after imprisoning their captives, they soon return to bickering with each other. The suspicions of some human heroes quickly drives Magneto away – taking the Wasp as a hostage – but even as the remaining mutants begin to feel the weight of prejudice, bigger problems manifest.

As the rocky Thing unexpectedly reverts to merely mortal Ben Grimm, on his distant mountain top Galactus is preparing to consume Battleworldâ€¦

The suspense builds in ‘Tempest Without, Crisis Within!’

As the master of magnetism discusses a truce with the Wasp, in the hero citadel Spider-Man misconstrues an overheard conversation and accidentally sparks a schism between human and mutants.

Whilst the webslinger and Hulk remain with Reed Richards, The Thing, Human Torch, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man (unknown to all Jim Rhodes not Tony Stark), Hawkeye, Captain Marvel and She-Hulk, the much-aggrieved X-Men Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Wolverine and diminutive space-dragon Lockheed follow increasingly doctrinaire Charles Xavier’s demands to separate from the assemblage and join Magnetoâ€¦

Doom meanwhile has used his fortress’ alien technology to turn two mysteriously-arrived earth girls into super-powered allies. When his remaining forces attack the heroes at dawn, the power of Volcana and Titania tips the balance against the defenders, deprived as they are of the might of the now-missing mutantsâ€¦

Thor too is gone. Having journeyed with the captive Enchantress to a pocket dimension – hoping to persuade her to switch sides – he returns too late to stop the felons freeing their comrades and crippling the Torch and Captain Marvelâ€¦

Bob Layton stepped in to pencil the next two chapters, beginning with ‘Situation: Hopeless!’ wherein the resurgent rogues move to end the war by having Molecule Man drop an entire mountain range on the already-reeling heroes. Trapped under 50 billion tons of rock – only barely held up by the Atlas-like Hulk – the heroes are rallied to hold on by Captain America whilst Reed and Iron Man devise a technological solution to their dilemma.

Outside, Thor’s unexpected return almost overwhelms the exultant evildoers, but he too is eventually destroyedâ€¦

As the dust settles, Doom kills the newly liberated Kang (for shooting him down as he flew to confer with Richards), blithely unaware that Thor has survived and escaped to rescue his buried comradesâ€¦

In another quadrant, as the X-Men arrive at Magneto’s bastion – giving the Wasp a chance to escape – the recently disinterred heroes find an alien village in the shadow of Galactus’ peak where a comely healer named Zsaji uses her empathic abilities to heal the battered, wounded warriors from Earthâ€¦

However even as Ben unpredictably becomes the Thing again, Galactus makes his next moveâ€¦

Above the skies of Battleworld, the Devourer’s solar system sized starship materialises, signalling ‘The Battle of Four Armies!’ At Doombase meek, socially inept Molecule Man Owen Reece is starting to blossom under the romantic attentions of Marsha Rosenberg AKA Volcana and, after being teased and bullied by the Wrecking Crew, smashes them all and flies off to be alone with her.

Whilst Magneto and Xavier attempt to communicate with the disdainfully oblivious Galactus, the X-Men speed to assist the human heroes against an outlaw assault on Zsaji’s village. In the melee Colossus is gravely injured and only saved by the healer’s intervention.

For him it is true love at first sightâ€¦

Oblivious to the conflict Doom, meanwhile, has again accomplished the impossible and invaded Galactus’ shipâ€¦

Zeck returned for ‘A Little Deathâ€¦’ in which the Wasp, frantically making her way back to her friends, encounters and befriends the savage, confused Lizard.

Thousand of miles above her, Doom’s explorations have led him to find and restore sonic scourge Klaw. The malign, sentient sound wave had been trapped in the system-ship for months but although reconstituted in a solid-vibrational body construct, the Master of Sound is completely crazyâ€¦.

Xavier’s confrontational leadership style is causing contention amongst his students and Colossus is having his heart broken every time he sees Zsaji fawn and simper over the shallow, lustful – human – Torchâ€¦

As Captain America and the big brains strategise ways to stop Galactus, Cyclops, Wolverine and Rogue unexpectedly rout a pack of bad guys on a mission for Doom which leaves the nigh-omnipotent Molecule bleeding out. Elsewhere, however, the fates are less kind when the Wasp, still cosying up to the Lizard, is ambushed and murdered by the Wrecking Crew.

The primordial predator is unable to save her, but his vengeance is terrible to beholdâ€¦

And back at the Healer’s village a new player is about to enter the frayâ€¦

‘Berserker!’ introduces a new Spider-Woman and reveals where Titania and Volcana came from. Whilst assembling his war world The Beyonder appropriated segments of many other planets, including an entire suburb of Denver, Colorado from Earthâ€¦

Before the enigmatic arachnid can explain further the Wreckers blaze in to dump the Wasp’s corpse and gloat, but the Star Spangled Avenger refuses to let his enraged comrades pursue the killers. He needs everyone to stay ready for the moment when Galactus starts to eat the planet and the billions of kidnapped innocents unhappily inhabiting itâ€¦

As the villains retreat with the wounded Molecule Man they are ambushed by the rest of the X-Men and Magneto, resulting in another savage yet inconclusive battle, whilst high above them all Doom continues to plunder Galactus’ home. When the World Eater finally notices him, the Master of Latveria is casually expelled and sent crashing like a bug to the planet below â€¦

Back at Doombase She-Hulk, filled with righteous rage and ignoring Cap’s orders, attacks the amassed murderers alone. After a ferocious fight she eventually succumbs to their greater force and ruthless brutalityâ€¦

So when Xavier informs the heroes that his mutants will stand guard over Galactus, the Sentinel of Liberty at last lets his enraged comrades loose to take on the killers and live up to the name â€œAvengersâ€â€¦

She-Hulk is near death when ‘Invasion!’ (inked by Beatty & Jack Abel) opens, as the champions of justice thrash their enemies with great enthusiasm, especially the enigmatic new Spider-Woman. In the course of the spectacular melee, Spider-Man single-handedly beats the impossibly strong Titania and his costume is destroyed.

As they imprison the crushed criminals, Captain America finds Doom, slumped in defeat and despair. Whilst the triumphant heroes use matter-shaping machines to repair their clothing and uniforms, the Wall-crawler accidentally uses a different device and receives a new all-black costume similar to Spider-Woman’sâ€¦

His, however, can change shape, colour and design, is thought-activated and somehow produces an inexhaustible supply of webbing. In the days to come on Earth he will learn to deeply regret his errorâ€¦

Back in the village Zsaji has pulled out all the stops and resurrected the seemingly dead Wasp, but any joy the victors might feel is instantly erased as Professor X broadcasts a desperate telepathic alarm: Galactus is at last beginning to consume the planetâ€¦

As the X-Men begin their ‘Assault on Galactus!’ the human heroes rush back to assist them, but Reed Richards – the greatest intellect on Earth – suddenly has a flash of insight and vanishes as the Devourer teleports him to a private conference.

At that moment Doom rouses himself from his despondent funk, having conceived a grand plan of his own to conquer both Galactus and The Beyonder, erasing forever the humiliation of his ignominious defeatâ€¦

Due in part to his discussion with Reed, the Cosmic Carnivore abandons Battleworld and instead absorbs his own system-shipâ€¦

In the confusion Doom makes his move, using a hastily constructed device to absorb all the omnipotent instigator’s power and deal out ‘Death to the Beyonder!’

Despite being all but incinerated in the struggle, the Iron Tyrant uses the stolen energies to rebuild himself and declare the Secret War over with Doom the sole victorâ€¦

In ‘â€¦And Dust to Dust!’, having successfully stolen the Beyonder’s power, he exults in the joys of becoming omnipotent. However the troubled new god finds it hard to hang on to lust for conquest, or even personal ambition after achieving all-consuming divinity, and his benign acts and vapid indolence betray a certain lack of drive and ambitionâ€¦

With heroes and villains nervously awaiting the new supreme one’s next move, events take a subtly disturbing turn as a strange energy wisp begins to possess a succession of heroes as it makes its way ever closer to the Doom Deityâ€¦

The other do-gooders remain deep in conference, debating their response to the self-proclaimed saviour of the universe. At the moment they finally decide to oppose him they are all vaporised by a bolt of energyâ€¦

Of course it doesn’t end there as the resurgent Beyonder battles through heroic and villainous proxies to reclaim his purloined power and put everything to rights – sort of – in the blockbusting finale ‘â€¦Nothing to Fear!’

Although perhaps a little dated and rather straightforward – although peppered with plenty of convoluted and clever plot twists – this bombastic box of delights still reads exceedingly well (especially for younger readers) and this commemorative edition also includes a couple of added extras.

‘The Toys’ features many of the action figures, packaging and ads for all us kids to salivate over and the whole show concludes with scholarly overview ‘The Birth and Legacy of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars’ which rounds off the cosmic nostalgia-fest by discussing the secret origins of mega-crossovers from crucial prototype Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions to a few of the more memorable descendants such as Civil War, Age of Ultron and Infinityâ€¦

Fast-paced, pretty-looking and impressively action-packed, Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars was – and still is – sheer comicbook magic that no true aficionado of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction can do without.

â„¢ & Â© 1984, 1985, 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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