Marvel Superheroes – Page 71

May 10, 2014May 8, 2014

X-Factor volume 7: Time and a Half

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

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

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

Setting up shop in the wake of â€œThe Decimationâ€ which had reduced the world’s mutant population to a couple of hundred empowered individuals and millions of distressingly humanised (ex) Homo Superior, he and his perpetually fluctuating team began by trying to discover why and how it had happenedâ€¦

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

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

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

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

Cooper was wounded but Theresa trumped that by going into labourâ€¦

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being self-aware, some abscond, never wanting to come back and â€œdieâ€.

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

He knows all it about only because when he reabsorbed the clone, he took on all its memoriesâ€¦ as well as the disturbing â€œMâ€ eye-brand that denotes being a mutant in that sorry tomorrowâ€¦

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

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

She might be a grown woman now, but Layla Miller still â€œknows stuffâ€: after all, isn’t it her mutant power?

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

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

Back at the church the thug has opened fire on Jamie, but when the detective turns the table on his would-be killer the assassin ends himself whilst uttering the word â€œcortexâ€â€¦

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

In the now and all at sea, Guido â€œStrong Guyâ€ Carosella, super-woman Monet St. Croix – AKA â€œMâ€ – and new recruit Armando MuÃ±oz or Darwin are enjoying themselves chasing down operatives of the Karma Project; a gang of science renegades who captured and experimented on the ever-evolving latter mutant.

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

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

Eighty years later the object of their search is coming to terms with the new normal as Ruby and Layla explain what â€œThe Summers Rebellionâ€ is and how he can help them not lose it, even as more death-laden Sentinels scream into the attackâ€¦

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Continuedâ€¦

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

May 8, 2014May 8, 2014

Essential Silver Surfer volume 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 5, 2014May 5, 2014

Wolverine: Killable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She is the last remaining being with the power to affect micro-organismsâ€¦

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The embattled mutants are also keenly aware that shapeshifting Mystique could be any one of their enemiesâ€¦ or alliesâ€¦

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

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

And when he is at his lowest ebb, Sabertooth attacksâ€¦

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

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

As Wolverine sees another bizarre vision of the cosmic observer known as The Watcher (indicating that whatever is going on it’s of significance to the entire universe), he croaks â€œNoâ€â€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

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

May 3, 2014May 5, 2014

Superior Spiderman: the Superior Venom

By Dan Slott, Christos N. Gage, Humberto Ramos & Victor Olazaba, Javier Rodriguez & Ãlvaro LÃ³pez and various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-584-0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Despite winnowing â€œParker’sâ€ personal life to a less distracting level, Ock still wanted that elusive doctorate and whilst negotiating the petty bureaucracy of Academia Parker began a romance with brilliant Anna Maria Marconi â€¦

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

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

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

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

However Carlie’s investigations alerted all the wrong people and she was abducted by the Goblin Armyâ€¦

This rocket-paced chronicle opens with ‘Hostage Crisis’ from Superior Spider-Man Annual #1, scripted by Christos N. Gage and illustrated by Javier Rodriguez & Ãlvaro LÃ³pez, which sees potential disaster stemming from the leaked (cover) story that Peter Parker is the technical wizard building all the Superior Spider-Man’s gadgets.

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

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

Sadly for the increasingly complacent Octavius, he is equally unaware that May is a witness to the ferocious punishment beating the Webslinger delivers. Thus, even though the upshot of the rescue is that the Parker clan is categorically â€œoff-limitsâ€ to every rational denizen in the criminal fraternity, May now wants Peter to sever all ties to the monstrous Spider-Manâ€¦

And even more disturbing, nobody ever accused the Green Goblin of rationalityâ€¦

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

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

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

Brock became a savage, shape-changing, dark-side version of the Wallcrawler, but after numerous spectacular clashes, the arachnid adversaries eventually reached a brooding dÃ©tente and Venom became a â€œLethal Protectorâ€, dispensing a highly individualistic brand of justice everywhere but New York City.

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

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

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

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

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

Now however Flash is risking everything for Betty, infiltrating the gang with his shapeshifting abilitiesâ€¦

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eager to introduce May and Jay to new significant other Anna Maria, â€œPeterâ€ arranges a dinner party at his apartment, but the preparations are interrupted when wheelchair-bound Flash turns up, looking to his old friend for shelterâ€¦

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

The unscrupulous technologist is happy to turn the project over to his new protÃ©gÃ© Michael O’Mara who unbeknownst to any is the temporally stranded Spider-Man of 2099â€¦

The dinner party is a disaster. Peter is obsessively concentrating on Flash and doesn’t realise how disturbed old-fashioned May is that the prospective mother of the next generation of Parkers is a â€œlittle personâ€. After all, he never once mentioned Anna Marie’s dwarfismâ€¦

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

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

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

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

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

The Parker clan’s troubles also peak when Mary Jane Watson attempts to broker a peace between May and Peter and only succeeds in forcing her ex to terrifyingly transform into Venom before everybody’s appalled eyes. Luckily Yuri arrives to drive him off, giving MJ time to call in the Avengers to take down the out of control Ã¼ber-symbioteâ€¦

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

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

Worst of all, the possession of Otto by the beast has awaked an aggravating ghost in his head he had thought long deadâ€¦â€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

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

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

May 1, 2014May 5, 2014

House of M Ultimate Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fearing the world might end at any second they frantically search until they are all consumed by a blinding lightâ€¦

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

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

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

Especially how a moment ago the world was completely differentâ€¦

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

Appalled, he leaps from the ominous floating aircraft carrier dominating New York and plunges to Earthâ€¦

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

â€œNo more Mutantsâ€â€¦

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

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

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

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

To Be Continuedâ€¦

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

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

April 30, 2014May 5, 2014

Captain America: Loose Nuke

By Rick Remender, Carlos Pacheco, Nic Klein, Klaus Janson, Mariano Taibo & various (Marvel/Panini UK)

ISBN: 978-1-84653-578-9

After spending twelve years in the hellish Dimension Z, raising a child and saving the indigenous people from the depredations of insane Hitlerian Ã¼ber-geneticist Arnim Zola, the Star Spangled Avenger finally returned Earth with the experimenter’s turncoat daughter Jet Black to discover mere hours had passed in the â€œrealâ€ world.

The extra-dimensional life sentence had cost Steve Rogers too much. As well as his boy Ian, on-again-off-again girlfriend Sharon Carter had also perished in the rescue bid which returned him to a world he barely remembered and no longer felt a part ofâ€¦

Collecting issues #11-15 of Captain America volume 7 (November 2013-March 2014), the breakthrough saga begins with ‘A Fire in the Rain’: opening in a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility where doctors work to remove the last vestiges of Zola’s pernicious poisons from Cap’s battered body.

As the hero dwells on his dying mother’s words, uttered in their Depression-era New York City hovel decades ago, the medical expertise of Henry Pym and Bruce Banner excise the final remnants of a virus which was slowly growing a clone of the Nazi’s consciousness inside Captain America: a biological Fifth Column furiously fighting for control of the weary body.

In recovery the doctors and S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill acknowledge that, despite a dozen relative years having passed, Rogers still looks like a young man. The Super Soldier serum that originally created him might well have made the Avenger immortalâ€¦

Jet meanwhile is being brutally debriefed by the new movie-compliant Nick Fury Jr. (long story short: he’s the African-American son of the original – see Battle Scars for further details) but is compelled to let her go when Cap arrives and has her remanded to his own custody.

The super-girl bred and trained for war saved his life in Dimension Z at great personal cost and he is determined to give her a decent life in the strange new world they both feel lost inâ€¦

Meanwhile in the eastern European state of Nrosvekistan normal daily commerce is grotesquely interrupted when a bare-chested madman with the Stars and Stripes on his face begins wantonly killing men, women and children. Frank Simpson, AKA Nuke, underwent many top secret procedures at the Weapon Plus program to turn him into a Captain America for the Vietnam generation.

Sadly the result was a drug-addled super-psychotic obsessed with American casualties who now wants to win all the wars his proud nation lost or walked away fromâ€¦ just like the recent peace-keeping mission to this Balkan backwaterâ€¦

In Brooklyn, Rogers moves Jet into his memento-stuffed apartment but, still unable to reconnect with his distant life, subsequently torches every scrap of his past before turning his face to the uncertain futureâ€¦

The extended ‘Loose Nuke’ saga then opens with a chilling flashback as determined devoted socialist Ran Shen literally wakes a sleeping dragon to gain the power necessary to reshape the unforgiving, disappointing world.

In the now, the Falcon calls on Captain America to learn the shocking details of his extra-dimensional odyssey and realises his closest friend is on the edge of a nervous breakdownâ€¦

In Nrosvekistan the army has been deployed but cannot match the manic ferocity of Nuke and his as yet undisclosed backers. The conflict is about to become a major political embarrassment for the USA, however, as Daily Bugle freelancer Samantha Chan – on the trail of a clique of missing billionaires – films the bloodbath and attempts to post it onlineâ€¦

And in China Ran Shen – now called the Iron Nail – plans amidst the satisfying horrors of his punishment camp: a hidden mine where greedy exploitative capitalists are made to toil and die in the conditions they have forced on billions of others across the globeâ€¦

‘Live Weapons!’ fills in some backstory as in 1969 the original Nick Fury confronts a S.H.I.E.L.D. sleeper agent who appears to have changed sides and joined Mao Zedong‘s inner circle. Moreover Ran Shen then tried to oust the Chairman and failed, making him persona non grata everywhereâ€¦

When Shan used the dragon’s power to escape S.H.I.E.L.D. custody not even the cunningly infiltrated soviet Winter Soldier was able to stop himâ€¦

Once more in the present, Falcon takes a call to get Captain America ready for action somehow. Images of a madman slaughtering civilians and planting American flags over their bodies are about to go public, and Maria Hill needs a true icon of the nation to be seen ending his rampage if her internet blocking strategy failsâ€¦

She also needs someone to stop a freelance reporter from dropping America into another potentially lethal media firestorm by any means necessaryâ€¦

The resulting battle of ideological wonder warriors further decimates the battered little country and serves to give Cap even more reason to doubt the point of his existence, especially since, after subduing the psychologically impaired and pitiable Nuke, Rogers resolves to find out what made a patriot into a monsterâ€¦

From his hidden realm, former S.H.I.E.L.D. operative Shen is pleased that his ambition to drive an Iron Nail into the heart of the West is proceeding. Thus he causes his unwitting deluded pawn to detonate like his namesake in the very heart of his hated foe’s citadel, whilst simultaneously activating the long-dormant and extremely classified Weapon Minus test warrior: an LSD-dosed, psychedelic psychological super soldier codenamed Dr. Mindbubble ready, willing and extremely able to share his terrifying sensibilities with the wider capitalist worldâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Written by Rick Remender and illustrated by Carlos Pacheco, Nic Klein, Klaus Janson & Mariano Taibo, this blockbusting battle of ideologies is augmented by a covers-and-variants gallery from Pacheco & Dean White, Jim Cheung & Laura Martin, Leonel Castellani and Francesco Mattina, plus AR icon add-on sections which allow the Marvel Augmented Reality App to grant access to story bonuses once you download the code – for free – from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

Fast, furious and ferociously controversial, this long-overdue examination of a patriotic icon with a conscience representing a nation which has increasingly sidelined its people is a welcome twist that should challenge and delight fans old and new alike.

April 23, 2014April 22, 2014

Essential Fantastic Four volume 7

By Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Chris Claremont, John Buscema, Rich Buckler, Ross Andru, Joe Sinnott & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3063-5

By this seventh collection of tales from â€œThe World’s Greatest Comics Magazineâ€ the Fantastic Four had settled into a kind of comfortable stylistic nostalgia, although the stories – no longer fuelled by Jack Kirby’s staggeringly inventive imagination and High-Concept conveyor belt of mind-bending ideas – maintained the new taste for urbane melodrama and topically-tinged new characters all wrapped up in soap-opera methodology, science fictive social speculation and super-villain-dominated Fights ‘n’ Tights romps.

It wasn’t Stan and Jack but it stood up on its own termsâ€¦

This volume covers Fantastic Four #138-159 (June 1971- August 1973) and includes FF material from Giant-Size Super-Stars #1 and Giant-Size Fantastic Four #2-4 as well as the other half of a rather significant crossover tale from Avengers #127.

In the previous collection the never-ending stress was forcing Sue Richards apart from her husband and Inhuman warrior-princess Medusa had taken her place in the team whilst the Invisible Girl (as she still was) cared for son Franklin, now a toddler with strange, undiagnosed cosmic powers and problemsâ€¦

Mr. Fantastic was not taking the trial separation well and issue #138 saw him left behind in an increasingly disturbed depressive state when old comrade Wyatt Wingfoot came looking for assistance against impossible, unimaginable disasters.

‘Madness isâ€¦ The Miracle Man’ by Gerry Conway, John Buscema & Joe Sinnott began a period when rocky everyman Ben Grimm became the de facto star of the Fantastic Four and here he, the Torch and Medusa travelled to Wingfoot’s tribal lands to battle the former hypnotist they had first seen in their third adventure.

Now, however, thanks to the charlatan’s subsequent studies under ghostly Cheemuzwa medicine men, the maniac actually could alter reality with a thoughtâ€¦

The battle concluded in the next issue wherein ‘Target: Tomorrow!’ saw the villain who could control matter but not himself spiralled frantically out of control with our heroes struggling indomitably on until the Miracle Man made a fatal errorâ€¦

Reed’s travails took a darkerturn in Fantastic Four # 140 as ‘Annihilus Revealed!’ found the insectoid Negative Zone tyrant kidnapping the ever more powerful Franklin and invading the Baxter Building in search of new worlds to ravage. In triumph the bug horror disclosed his incredible origin to the helpless Wingfoot before dragging all his enemies back to his subspace hell to engineer ‘The End of the Fantastic Four!’

And as the heroes languished in the Negative Zone, on Earth Ben’s girlfriend Alicia was lured to the Balkans by another arch enemyâ€¦

However, even though the beaten heroes counterattacked and gained an unlikely victory, Annihilus’ prior tampering with Franklin had triggered a cosmic catastrophe. As the boy’s limitless power began to spiral out of control, his tormented father was compelled to blast the boy, shutting down his mutant brain and everything else.

Appalled at the callous cold calculations needed to put his own son into a coma, Johnny and Ben joined Sue in deserting the grief-stricken Mr. Fantastic and declaring their heroic partnership defunctâ€¦

With only ruthlessly pragmatic Medusa remaining, FF #142 saw the shell-shocked Richards with ‘No Friend Beside Him!’ (by Conway & new artist Rich Buckler – whose faithful pastiche of Jack Kirby under Sinnott inking produced a wave of favourable nostalgia in fans then and now) whilst the Thing followed Alicia to Europe.

Here they were attacked by a sinister supernatural horror named Darkoth the Death-Demon even as Johnny and Wyatt headed for Metro College to see their old sports coach Sam Thorne on his way to an Alumni reunion.

Reed was another attendee, despondently dragged there by Medusa, but nobody expected that weird foreign kid who had been expelled so long ago to turn up, leading to ‘The Terrible Triumph of Doctor Doom!’ (Conway, Buckler & Frank Giacoia)â€¦

The Mad Monarch was never one to forgive a slight, real or imagined, and as he gloatingly revealed himself to be the creator of Darkoth and jailer of the Thing he also boasted to his captives of his latest scheme to eradicate human free will.

Typically, though, the Iron Dictator hadn’t considered how his death-demon might react to the news that he was an artificial puppet and the monster’s ‘Attack!’ (#144 with Buckler & Sinnott art) resulted in a cataclysmic clash and Doom’s defeatâ€¦

Back together but still disunited, the FF again parted company in #145, as the Torch then accompanied Medusa on a visit to Attilan – the hidden city of the Inhumans – only to be brought down by a lost race of ice people to endure a ‘Nightmare in the Snow!’ (art by Ross Andru & Sinnott).

The snow troglodytes’ plans to turn the world into an ice-ball only they could inhabit went bizarrely awry when the Thing joined the crashed heroes and a dissident faction trained by a Buddhist monk pitched in, leading to a happy ending all round in the concluding ‘Doomsday: 200Â° Below!’â€¦

This was period of great experimentation and expansion at Marvel and Giant-Size Super-Stars #1 (May 1974) launched as a forerunner in a line of supplementary double-sized titles starring the company’s most popular stars.

In this initial exploratory outing – the title became Giant-Size Fantastic Four with the next quarterly issue – Conway, Buckler & Sinnott crafted ‘The Mind of the Monster!’: a blockbusting battle team-up as Bruce Banner came calling, still seeking a cure for his mean green alter ego and the sympathetic and occasionally self-loathing Thing foolishly let him play with one of Reed’s devicesâ€¦

Unfortunately their mutual meddling with the Psi-Amplifier only switched their minds leaving the Rampaging Hulk trapped and running amok in the Thing’s body whilst Ben/Hulk struggled to stop him.

The situation worsened when trans-dimensional Femizon Thundra pitched in, mistakenly believing she was helping her main squeeze Ben battle a big green monster, and the violence intensified when Reed, Johnny and Medusa got involved in Â ‘Someone’s Been Sleeping in My Head’â€¦

Of course in the end it took everybody and a cunning plan to set the world to rights in the spectacular conclusion ‘â€¦And in This Corner: the Incredible Hulk’â€¦

Fantastic Four #147 continued the action-tinged melodrama with ‘The Sub-Mariner Strikes!’ (Conway, Buckler & Sinnott) as Sue started divorce proceedings whilst taking comfort from long-time stalker Prince Namor.

When Reed, Johnny and Ben tried to â€œrescueâ€ her, the Atlantean thrashed them and she sent them packingâ€¦

To add insult to injury the dejected men returned home to find the Baxter Building invaded by the Frightful Four and were forced to fight a ‘War on the Thirty-Sixth Floor!’ Sadly for The Sandman, Wizard and Trapster they had no idea their newest ally Thundra was smitten with the Thingâ€¦

Issue #149 then resolved the Sub-Mariner storyline as the undersea emperor invaded New York in ‘To Love, Honour, and Destroy!’, but his awesome attack was only a cunning plan to trick Sue into reconciling with her husbandâ€¦

Giant-Size Fantastic Four #2 then revealed a time-twisting ‘Cataclysm!’ courtesy of Conway, John Buscema & Chic Stone wherein cosmic voyeur The Watcher warned of a hapless innocent who had inadvertently altered history thanks to Dr. Doom’s confiscated time machine. Moreover the imposing extraterrestrial expected the FF to fix the problemâ€¦

With more than one temporal hot-spot, Reed and Johnny headed for Colonial America to rescue the Father of the Nation in ‘George Washington Almost Slept Here!’ whilst Ben and Medusa crashed into the â€œRoaring Twentiesâ€ and saved the time-lost wanderer from being rubbed out in ‘The Great Grimmsby’â€¦

Thinking their mission accomplished the heroes were astounded to then find themselves trapped in timeless Limbo battling a monstrous giant dubbed Tempus before escaping to their restored origin point in ‘Time Enough for Death!’

For months Johnny had been fretting that his first true love Crystal had decided to marry super-swift mutant Quicksilver but that plot-thread finally closed with a 2-part crossover tale that began in Avengers #127 as ‘Bride and Doom!’ (by Steve Englehart, Sal Buscema & Joe Staton) saw the Assemblers travel to the hidden homeland of the Inhumans for the marriage of the aforementioned Pietro to elemental enchantress and Royal Princess only to stumble into a uprising of the genetic slave-race known as Alpha Primitives.

Once again the sinister robotic colossus Omega had incited revolt but this time it wasn’t insane usurper Maximus behind the skulduggery but an old Avengers enemy who revealed himself in the concluding chapter in Fantastic Four #150.

Here ‘Ultron-7: He’ll Rule the World!’ ( Conway, Buckler & Sinnott) found both hero squads join Black Bolt‘s Inhumans against the malign A.I and only saved by a veritable Deus ex Machina after which, at long last, ‘The Wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver’ finally ended events on a happy noteâ€¦ for everybody but the Torch.

FF #151 then began revealing the truth about the mysterious Femizon as ‘Thundra and Lightning!’ introduced the male-dominated alternate Future Earth dubbed Machus and its brutal despot Mahkizmo, the Nuclear Man, who explosively invaded the Baxter Building in search of a mate to dominate and a new world to conquerâ€¦

Inked by Jim Mooney #152 revealed ‘A World of Madness Made!’ as the team were held captive in the testosterone dimension whilst Medusa seemingly fled, but actually sought reinforcements from the diametrically-opposed Femizon future alternity, resulting in two universes crashing together in the concluding ‘Worlds in Collision!’ by Tony Isabella, Buckler & Sinnott.

Reworked by Len Wein, Fantastic Four #154 featured ‘The Man in the Mystery Mask!’ – a partial reprint from Strange Tales#127 in which Stan Lee, Dick Ayers & Paul Reinman pitted Ben and Johnny against ‘The Mystery Villain!’.

Here, however, Bob Brown, Giacoia & Mike Esposito found that Reed’s early lesson in leadership had been hijacked by another old friend with explosive and annoying resultsâ€¦

The next extra-special adventure in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3 revealed ‘Where Lurks Death â€¦Ride the Four Horsemen!’ as Conway, Marv Wolfman, Buckler & Sinnott described the invasion of cosmic aliens intent on scourging the Earth. Forewarned after the team battled the first horror in ‘â€¦There Shall Come Pestilence’, the harried heroes split up with Medusa and Johnny striving against international madness in ‘â€¦And War Shall Take the Land!’ whilst Reed and Ben strove to conquer the personification of Famine in ‘â€¦And the Children Shall Hunger!’, before all reuniting to wrap up the final invader in‘â€¦All in the Valley of Death!’

A minor classic followed in Fantastic Four #155-157 as the long dormant Silver Surfer resurfaced in ‘Battle Royal!’ (by Wein, Buckler & Sinnott), apparently a murderous and willing thrall of Doctor Doom.

The dictator could command the Shining Skyrider because he held the alien’s lover Shalla Bal – had indeed threatened to take her in marriage – but as seen in ‘Middle Game!’ (with Roy Thomas joining as co-writer and Editor) the Surfer could not kill and merely delivered the FF as prisoners to the Devil Doctor’s citadel.

However there were schemes within schemes unfolding and Doom was playing a waiting game whilst he covertly stole the Skyrider’s Power Cosmic to fuel a deadly Doomsman mechanoidâ€¦

With Thomas in full authorial control ‘And Nowâ€¦ the Endgame Cometh!’ saw the heroes fight back to conquer the Lethal Latverian, but all were blithely unaware that the entire charade had been a crafty confection of malign and manipulative demon Mephistoâ€¦

Meanwhile over in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4 Wein, Chris Claremont, John Buscema, Chic Stone & Sinnott united to introduce ‘Madrox the Multiple Man’, a young mutant who had grown up on an isolated farm unaware of the incredible power he possessed.

When his parents passed away the kid was inexplicably drawn to New York but the hi-tech suit he wore to contain his condition began to malfunction and the boy became a mobile fission device that could endlessly, lethally replicate itselfâ€¦

Thankfully the FF were aided by mutant Moses Charles Xavier who took young Jamie under his wingâ€¦

This formidable high tension Fights ‘n’ Tights tome terminates with another nostalgia-tinged 2-part epic which began in FF #158’s ‘Invasion from the 5^th (Count it, 5^th!) Dimension’ by Thomas, Buckler & Sinnott, wherein one of the Torch’s earliest solo scourges returned to occupy the land of the Inhumans.

Extra-dimensional dictator Xemu began his campaign of vengeance by dispatching Quicksilver to lure Medusa back to Attilan. The intention was to make the defiant Black Bolt utilise his doomsday sonic power on the invader’s behalf, but the conqueror needed the silent king’s beloved as a bargaining chip.

However, when the FF accompanied her into the obvious trap, they brought a hidden ally who unobtrusively turned the tables on Xemu, unleashing ‘Havoc in the Hidden Land!‘ and thereby at last reuniting the First Family of comicbook fictionâ€¦

This power-packed package also includes unused cover versions for Fantastic Four #141, 155 and 156 to add to the overall Costumed Drama and delight fans everywhere.

Although Kirby had taken the unmatched imagination and questing sense of wonder with him on his departure, the sheer range of beloved characters and concepts he had created with Stan Lee carried the series for years afterwards. So once writers who shared the originators’ sensibilities were crafting the stories a mini-renaissance beganâ€¦

Although the â€œWorld’s Greatest Comics Magazineâ€ didn’t quite return to the stratospheric heights of yore, this period offered fans a tantalising taste of the glory days and these solid, honest and intriguing efforts are probably most welcome to dedicated superhero fans and continuity freaks like me, but will still thrill and enthral the generous and forgiving casual browser looking for an undemanding slice of graphic narrative excitement.
Â© 1973, 1973, 1973, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

April 17, 2014April 21, 2014

Dark Avengers: Ares

By Kieron Gillen, Michael Avon Oeming, Travel Foreman, Manuel Garcia, Stefano Gaudiano, Derek Fridolfs, Mark Pennington & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4406-9

After years of valiant, if often controversial, service to humanity, 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 and 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 Spider-Man villain had 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 menacing masterminds to divvy up the world between them. The Cabal was a Star Chamber of super-villains all working towards mutually beneficial goals, but such egomaniacal personalities could never play well together 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 subsequently sacked 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.

One of Stark’s last Avenger recruits had been the Grecian war god Ares. Although a former villain (since debuting in Thor #129 in 1966 he had repeatedly battled both Hercules and the Avengers), he was seen by Stark as a fitting replacement for Founder member Thor, providing mythic hitting power and knowledge of non-earthly lore.

Ares was content to stay on when Osborn took over. The war god was always happy to serve under a truly strong commanderâ€¦

A hard hero for harsh modern tastes, Ares is the star of this slim companion volume to the Dark Reign publishing event, gathering an eponymous initial 5-issue miniseries from 2006 by Michael Avon Oeming & Travel Foreman as well as the later 3-issue Dark Avengers: Ares run from 2009.

This myth-tinted martial chronicle opens with Oeming & Foreman’s canny reappraisal of the former foeman as the war lord, quietly living under the radar in New York and cursing all the works of his father and the Hellenic tradition of advancement through patricide, is called once more to duty for the brother-gods he despises.

Toiling as a simple builder, John Ares had dedicated himself to raising his son Alexander in a manner utter removed from the draconian, traditional manner of his own youth.

Thus when Hermes appears, demanding he return to wage war on Olympus’ latest enemies, Ares sends him packing. When his boy is abducted, all that resolve goes out the window and the Man of War is catapulted into a blistering ongoing campaign between his Hellenic brethren and invading devil-gods from the East.

Ares’ rage is initially aimed at Zeus, who has taken his own grandson as a bargaining chip, but by the time the War Lord reaches besieged Olympus, battered brothers Hercules, Apollo and Achilles regretfully admit that the boy has been taken by the unstoppable forces of undead deity Amatsu Mikaboshi – the August Star of Heaven – and held in the chill, dreary mist-lands of the Eastern Deadâ€¦

As the son of a god, Alexander has a birthright of power. Destined to become the God of Fear, the boy is plied with subtle gifts and undergoes many cunning treatments as the Japanese Death Lord endeavours to make the boy his greatest weapon in an eternal war of expansionâ€¦

In the rubble of Olympus, Ares cares nothing for cosmic politics: he wants his son back and is quite prepared to kill his own sire to achieve his aims. Nonetheless bloody years pass without progress as Alexander slowly succumbs to the blandishments of his captors and becomes the demon’s new lord of combat. Eventually even mighty Zeus goes down and the siege of Olympus staggers on until war god and son are pitted against each other on a field of the fallen.

Even with the belated and largely unwanted assistance of Japan’s Lords of Light the contest goes badly and comes down to a life or death duel between the dejected Ares and his bewitched and patricidal Alexanderâ€¦

With a classically tragic, fore-fated combat cleverly, spectacularly and comprehensively subverted, restored father and son happily return to Earth for Dark Avengers: Ares (written by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by Manuel Garcia, Stefano Gaudiano & Mark Pennington) as the War Lord of Osborn’s Avengers is personally asked by the Security Czar to train the inexperienced paramilitary legions of H.A.M.M.E.R.

Accepting the challenge of turning ordinary soft soldiers into a puissant warrior elite, Ares loses himself in the task until manipulative goddess Hera manifests to â€œwarnâ€ him that his son – her grandson – is in dangerâ€¦

On returning to earth Ares had entrusted Alexander to the care of rogue super-agent Nick Fury, but was never confident that the boy was truly secure. Now assembling his untested cadre of â€œShadesâ€, he again goes hunting and tracks the child to an abandoned base, only to realise once again why he despises his family.

The war god had sired many sons in his millennia of existence and Hera had never specifically said Alexander was the child in perilâ€¦

The family life of the Greek gods was always an open pit of horror, cruelty and tragedy, and monstrous Kyknos has somehow emerged from the forgotten corridors of the past and realm of Hades, sponsored by vile uncle Pluto to exorcise his own daddy issues through blood and pain and macabre slaughterâ€¦

As much a gritty vehicle for the poor mortal â€œred-shirtâ€ Shades as the Hellenic hero, this is another dark and turbulent tale of tension and slaughter that will sit well with lovers of grim, sardonic cosmic adventure.

Although definitely not a book for younger fans, this is a magnificently illustrated and emotionally intriguing offering, providing an engaging peek at the sinister side of antiheroes and the deadly downside of family and duty.

April 14, 2014

Secret Invasion Fantastic Four

By Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa & Barry Kitson (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851

Since Fantastic Four #2 (cover-dated January 1961) the Skrulls have been a pernicious cornerstone of the Marvel Universe. After decades of use and misuse, the insidious intergalactic infiltrators were finally made the stars of a colossal braided mega-crossover event beginning in April 2008 and running through all the company’s titles until Christmas.

The premise of Secret Invasion was simple: the former all-encompassing empire had been crippled and scourged by a devastating catastrophe which destroyed much of their power, and the race subsequently underwent a mass fundamentalist religious conversion. They became utterly resolved and dedicated to make Earth their new homeworld – just as their ancient scriptures foretoldâ€¦

To this end they gradually replaced a number of key Earth denizens – most notably superheroes and villains. When the plot was first uncovered no defender of the Earth truly knew who was on their sideâ€¦

Moreover the Skrulls had also unravelled the secrets of Earth magic and humanity’s unique genetics, creating amped-up equivalents to Earth’s mightiest heroes and villains. During this period they hid amongst us, primed, able and waiting to destroy the world’s champions in head-to-head confrontations.

Not all Skrulls were fanatics however. Earth also harboured a few dissidents opposed to the new regime or non-fanatics simply unwilling to get properly involved, and one of them became the unlikely star of the 3-issue Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four (July-September 2008) which makes up the premiere half of this tantalising tome. The rest of the book collects a triptych of her earlier appearances from Fantastic Four #300 and #357-358 (March 1987 and October-November 1991)â€¦

Scripted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, pencilled by Barry Kitson and inked by Mick Gray, Scott Hanna, Paul Neary & Kitson, the main event opens with ‘No One gets Out Alive!’ and sees Invisible Woman Susan Richards ambushed at a most intimate moment and replaced by a sinister Skrull. A little later â€œsheâ€ calmly walks into the team’s top security home/HQ and catapults the entire top of the building into the eerie sub-space Negative Zone, trapping The Thing, Human Torch and the children Franklin and Valeria in an inescapable dimension of horrorâ€¦

Stuck without their genius leader, Ben and Johnny are stuck trying to fend off the horrific, invasive beasts of the realm as at length â€œSueâ€ reveals herself to be Lyja – the Skrull agent Johnny once unwittingly marriedâ€¦

The drama continues as, after initial frantic and unresolved-issue fuelled combat Johnny and Lyja enjoy a sort of rapprochement and determine to join forces to bring everyone out of the Negative Zone. Linking up with Ben and the most formidable little kids in comics, the makeshift family battle their way across the ghastly inner cosmos to one of Reed Richards‘ ongoing experiments – a super-penitentiary for super-criminals too dangerous for incarceration on Earth – to find an evil super-genius willing to help them return to save the world from the imminent and possibly already ongoing Secret Invasionâ€¦

Fun, frolicsome, action-packed and delightfully entertaining, this slight but charming family furore is counterbalanced with a selection of earlier Lyja appearances beginning with ‘Dearly Belovedâ€¦’ (Fantastic Four #300 by Roger Stern, John & Sal Buscema), wherein the Thing returned to Earth after an extended stay in outer space to find his best friend the Torch about to marry his old girlfriend Alicia Mastersâ€¦

After understandable friction and some fist-flinging Grimm sadly accepted the situation and even stood up as Best Man for his pal, but only Alicia’s evil step-father The Puppet Master had any suspicion at the true nature of eventsâ€¦

After a further 50-odd issues of wedded bliss the truth was shockingly revealed in FF #357 with Tom DeFalco, Paul Ryan & Danny Bulanadi’s ‘The Monster Among Us!’ as Puppet Master linked up with manic mentalist Mad Thinker and inadvertently forced Mrs. Storm to reveal her true natureâ€¦

This prompted the Fantastic Four to stage a rescue bid into Skrull Space to discover ‘Whatever Happened to Alicia?!’ in the concluding #358â€¦

Heading into deadly danger the team encountered a new major menace in the super-augmented Paibok the Power Skrull but were mercifully aided by his old inamorata Lyja, who had gone native, professing to now love her human husbandâ€¦

She even claimed to be carrying Johnny’s babyâ€¦

With covers by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, Mike McKone, John & Sal Buscema, Paul Ryan & Danny Bulanadi and despite the cliff-hanging nature of the extra material, Secret Invasion Fantastic Four is a smart and slickly engaging Fights ‘n’ Tights romp that will meet every fan’s ecstatic approval.
Â© 1987, 1991, 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

April 13, 2014April 13, 2014

Mighty Avengers volume 1: The Ultron Initiative

By Brian Michael Bendis & Frank Cho (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2368-2

The Patriot Act changed America as much as the destruction of the World Trade Towers, and it’s fair to say that popular arts grow from the social climate as much as the target audience.

In post 9-11 America, creators and consumers now think different thoughts in different ways. Thus the company that first challenged the middle-class suburban status quo of the comic industry in the late 1960s made Homeland Security and the exigencies of safety and liberty the themes of a major publishing event in 2006.

After a TV reality show starring superheroes The New Warriors went hideously wrong and resulted in the deaths of hundreds in Stamford, Connecticut, popular opinion turned massively against masked crusaders.

The Federal government rushed through a scheme to licence, train and regulate all metahumans but the plan split the superhero community and a terrified and indignant merely mortal populace quivered as a significant faction of their former defenders, led by the ultimate icon of Liberty, Captain America, refused to surrender their autonomy and anonymity to the bureaucratic vicissitudes of the Superhuman Registration Act.

The Avengers and Fantastic Four, bedrock teams of the Marvel Universe, fragmented in scenes reminiscent of America’s War Between the States, with â€œbrother pitted against brotherâ€. As the conflict escalated it became clear to all involved that the increasingly bitter fighting was for souls as much as lives.

Both sides battled for love of Country and Constitution and both sides knew they were rightâ€¦

The Ultron Initiative, re-presenting the first half-dozen issues of Mighty Avengers (volume 1, May 2007-February 2008) by Brian Michael Bendis & Frank Cho, is a gloriously wry and raunchy rollercoaster ride blending blockbuster action with cocky optimism and often outrageous humour which only serves to intensify the shocks and horror of a truly terrifying scenario starring Marvel’s ultimate mechanoid monster.

Following the divisive and brutal Civil War, staunch advocate of the SRA Tony Stark constituted a new Government-approved, S.H.I.E.L.D.-backed team of Avengers to take care of business whilst he worked on his Fifty States Initiative idea.

The objective was to eventually field squads of trained and licensed superheroes in every State of the Union, but first he had to restore public confidenceâ€¦

The initial and so-sophisticated story-arc begins as he recalls recruiting Ms. Marvel, Black Widow, Wonder Man, the Wasp, Sentry and first-timer Ares, God of War just in time to tackle an invasion of monsters led by the Mole Man. Just as the new team send them packing Iron Man suddenly succumbs to a body-and-armour warping assault that apparently absorbs Stark and leaves in his place a gleaming naked metalloid reproduction of Janet Van Dyneâ€¦

Ultron was originally created by size-changing erratic genius Henry Pym AKA Ant-Man before – in a Fights ‘n’ Tights riff on the classical Oedipus myth – the manic mechanoid evolved, hating his â€œfatherâ€ and desiring his â€œmotherâ€.

Having transferred that hatred to the Avengers, here the metal maniac has usurped his mum’s form, parading around naked in a shiny metallic semblance of the Wasp, whilst boasting of collaterally wrecking the Mole Man’s kingdom in â€œherâ€ campaign to destroy the true foe.

The new Ultron easily overmatches even the most mighty Avenger and Jan is compelled to call in her estranged ex-husband to try and deal with the mess he originally created. Everybody is praying that somewhere within the gleaming murderous form Tony Stark still livesâ€¦

In Avengers Initiative training facility Camp Hammond, Pym and new girlfriend Tigra are enjoying some downtime when the call comes, and he is hustled off under close arrest by S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel just as, above New York City, Ultron hacks herself into the spy agency’s networks and shuts down all their operations. With Black Widow forced to take manual command of the organisation – everybody in earshot at least – the team begins a fresh if doomed attack only to receive a glimmer of hope in the form of an unhackable, failsafe, low-tech pre-programmed Iron Man suit with an inbuilt contingency planâ€¦

Jan-tron meanwhile has re-tasked orbiting satellites to scourge the Earth of organic life and is in the process of advertising it to terrified TV-watching humanity when Pym arrives.

Notoriously unstable, he knows the other heroes don’t trust him – he barely trusts himself – and as Wonder Man and Sentry race to destroy the chain of orbital death dealers he struggles to find a way to back door his way into his ferociously hyper-evolved invention. In retaliation, Jan-tron goes on the attack, commandeering a brigade of spare Iron Man Armours to engage the team whilst she seemingly butchers Sentry’s wife Lindyâ€¦

However with the Avengers proving more difficult to stop than calculated and the satellite ring disabled, the A.I. is forced to resort to the uninspired tactic of taking over Earth’s nuclear stockpiles even as Ares and Pym devise a way to destroy Jan-tron.

The only catch is that they have to activate it from inside her primary body – and even if it works there’s no guarantee that Stark’s physiology will survive the processâ€¦

With covers-&-variants by Cho and Francis Leinil Yu and stunning design sketches by the former included, this is a slick, sly and sublimely entertaining all-action rollercoaster romp which deliciously sets the scene for many compelling and far darker sagas to come, but also reads astounding well on its own merits.

Definitely one for inveterate thrill-chasers everywhere.

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