Marvel Superheroes – Page 87

May 23, 2012May 22, 2012

Essential Avengers volume 6

By Steve Englehart, Roy Thomas, Jim Starlin, Gerry Conway, Bob Brown,
Don Heck, Dave Cockrum, Joe Staton, Rich Buckler, John Buscema, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3058-1

The Avengers have always proved that putting all one’s star eggs in a single basket pays off big-time: even when all Marvel’s classic all-stars such as Thor, Captain America and Iron Man are absent, it merely allows the team’s lesser lights to shine more brightly.

Of course all the founding stars were regularly featured due to the rotating, open door policy which means that most issues includes somebody’s fave-rave – and the boldly grand-scale impressive stories and artwork are no hindrance either.

This monolithic and monumental sixth tome, collecting the ever-amazing Avengers‘ world-saving exploits (presenting in crisp, stylish monochrome the astounding contents of issues #120-140 of their monthly comic book between March 1974 and October 1975, plus Giant-Size Avengers #1-4 and crossover appearances in Captain Marvel #33 and Fantastic Four #150), saw scripter Steve Englehart examine the outer limits of Marvel history and cosmic geography as he took readers to the ends of their universe and the beginning of timeâ€¦

Opening this epochal tome is ‘Death-Stars of the Zodiac!’ from Avengers #120, by Steve Englehart, Bob Brown & Don Heck, wherein terrorist astrological adversaries and super-criminal cartel Zodiac attacked again with a manic plan to eradicate everyone in Manhattan born under the sign of Gemini, with heroes Thor, Iron Man, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Swordsman and Mantis seemingly helpless to stop them.

In the blistering battle of #121’s ‘Houses Divided Cannot Stand!’, illustrated by John Buscema & Heck, even the added assistance of Captain America and the Black Panther is of little advantage and with Mantis injured the team begin to question her mysterious past, only to be lured to their seeming doom and ‘Trapped in Outer Space!’ (Brown & Mike Esposito) before at last turning the tables on their fearsome foes after the criminal Libra revealed a shocking secretâ€¦

Avengers #123, depicted by Brown & Heck, began a vast and ambitious saga with ‘Vengeance in Viet Nam – or – An Origin For Mantis!’ as Libra’s claim to be Mantis’ father (a story vigorously and violently denied by the Martial Arts Mistress) brought the team to Indo-China.

The criminal ex-mercenary declared that he left the baby Mantis with pacifistic Priests of Pama after running afoul of a local crime-lord, but the bewildered warrior-woman has no memory of such events, nor of being schooled in combat techniques by the Priests. Meanwhile the gravely wounded Swordsman has rushed to Saigon to confront his sadistic ex-boss Monsieur Khruul and save the Priests from being murdered by the gangster’s thugsâ€¦ but was again too late. It is the tragic story of his wasted lifeâ€¦

Issue #124 found the team stumbling upon a scene of slaughter as clerics and criminals lay dead and a monstrous planet-rending alien horror awoke in ‘Beware the Star-Stalker!’ by J. Buscema & Dave Cockrumâ€¦

Mantis was forced to accept that her own memories were not real after Avengers #125, which unleashed ‘The Power of Babel!’ when a vast alien armada attacked and, in combating it, the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes were trapped out of phase with their home-world.

This blockbuster battle bonanza was a crossover, and the penultimate episode of the spectacular Thanos War Saga that had featured in Captain Marvel, Marvel Feature and Iron Man, and included in this compendium is ‘The God Himself!’ scripted by Englehart from Captain Marvel #33 (plotted and illustrated by Jim Starlin & Klaus Janson) wherein the mad Titan Thanos finally fell in combat to the valiant Kree warrior: a stunning piece of comics storytelling which stands up remarkably well here despite being seen without benefit of the preceding ten chaptersâ€¦

It was back to business in #126 as in ‘All the Sights and Sounds of Death!’ (Brown & Cockrum) villains Klaw and Solarr attacked Avengers Mansion in a devious attempt to achieve vengeance for past indignities, after which Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler & Dan Adkins returned to the fold to delve into superhero history with ‘Nukloâ€¦ the Invader that Time Forgot!’ for the first quarterly edition of Giant-Size Avengers.

The stirring saga reintroduced 1940 Marvel sensation Bob Frank AKA The Whizzer in a tragic tale of desperation as the aged speedster begged the heroes’ help in rescuing his son: a radioactive mutant locked in stasis since the early 1950s. Unfortunately within the recently unearthed chrono-capsule the lad has grown into a terrifying atomic horrorâ€¦

Moreover while in the throes of a stress-induced heart-attack the Whizzer let slip that he was the also the father of mutant Avengers Scarlet Witch and Quicksilverâ€¦

In Avengers #127 Sal Buscema & Joe Staton signed on as regular art team with ‘Bride and Doom!’ when the team travelled to the hidden homeland of the Inhumans for the marriage of the aforementioned Quicksilver to elemental enchantress Crystal only to stumble into a uprising of the genetic slave-race known as Alpha Primitives.

Once again the robotic giant Omega had incited the revolt but this time it was controlled by an old Avengers enemy who revealed himself in the concluding chapter of the crossoverâ€¦

Fantastic Four #150 featured ‘Ultron-7: He’ll Rule the World!’ by Gerry Conway, Buckler & Joe Sinnott, in which an impossible battle of FF, Inhumans and Avengers was ended by a veritable Deus ex Machina after which, at long last ‘The Wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver’ ended events on a happy note.

But not for long: in Avengers #128’s ‘Bewitched, Bothered, and Dead!’ (Englehart, Sal Buscema & Staton) the FF‘s nanny Agatha Harkness began tutoring Wanda Frank in actual sorcery to augment her mutant power, unwittingly allowing dark mage Necrodamus access to the Mansion and their souls, whilst the increasingly troubled Mantis began making a play for the Scarlet Witch’s synthazoid boyfriend The Vision; heedless of the hurt and harm she would bring to her current lover The Swordsmanâ€¦

In #129 ‘Bid Tomorrow Goodbye!’ kicked the simmering saga into high gear when Kang the Conqueror appeared, determined to possess the legendary female figure he called the Celestial Madonna.

Apparently this anonymous creature would birth the saviour of the universe, and since no records survived disclosing which of the three women in Avengers Mansion at that crucial moment she actually was, the time-reaver was determined to abduct all three and forcibly make Kang the inevitable father of the childâ€¦

This time not even the assembled Avengers could stop him and, after crushing and enslaving them, Kang made off with Wanda, Harkness and Mantis, with only the swiftly declining Swordsman free to contest himâ€¦

The tale continued into Giant-Size Avengers #2 with ‘A Blast from the Past!’ (illustrated by Cockrum) as reluctant returnee Hawkeye rushed to the team’s rescue, reuniting with old adversary Swordsman and an enigmatic entity named Rama-Tut who claimed to be Kang’s reformed future selfâ€¦

Against all odds the merely mortal heroes managed to free the enslaved Avengers and rout the unrepentant Kang – but only at the cost of the Swordsman’s lifeâ€¦

Avengers #130’s ‘The Reality Problem!’ (Sal Buscema & Staton) found the heartbroken and much chastened Mantis joining the team in Vietnam to investigate her mysteriously clouded past, only to be drawn into pointless combat with Communist exiles Titanium Man, Radioactive Man and Crimson Dynamo, thanks to the petty manipulations of sneak thiefÂ The Slasherâ€¦

The brief battle concluded and the trail then led to ‘A Quiet Half-hour in Saigon!’ during which the American Adventurers were again attacked by Kang who trapped them in Limbo and unleashed a Legion of the Unliving against themâ€¦

With another time-villain Immortus added to the mix, ‘Kang War II’ saw temporarily resurrected heroes and villains Wonder Man, 1940’s android Human Torch, the Monster of Frankenstein, martial arts assassin Midnight, the ghostly Flying Dutchman and Baron Zemo decimate the Avengers and the trauma and tragedy were further exacerbated as Mantis kept seeing the spectre of her deceased loverâ€¦

This absorbing thriller by Englehart, Thomas Sal Buscema & Staton segued inexorably into Giant-Size Avengers #3’s ‘â€¦What Time Hath put Asunder!’ illustrated by Cockrum & Joe Giella, which saw Earth’s Mightiest Heroes pull victory from the ashes of defeat and receive a unique gift from one of the assembled Masters of Timeâ€¦

Avengers #133 began ‘Yesterday and Beyondâ€¦’ (Englehart, S. Buscema & Staton) as the team followed Mantis to the beginnings of recorded Galactic history and the unravelling of her true past, whilst Vision was dispatched to glimpse his own obscure and complex origins; a double quest which encompassed the Kree and Skrull empires, the defeated Star-Stalker and deceased Priests of Pama and Thanos, and the telepathic Titan dubbed Moondragon, as well as a goodly portion of classic superhero history in ‘The Times That Bind!’ before #135 revealed that ‘The Torch is Passed!’ (illustrated by George Tuska & Frank Chiaramonte) and brought all the disparate elements together in Giant-Size Avengers #4.

‘â€¦Let All Men Bring Together’ (art by Heck & Tartaglione) climaxed the long-standing romance between the Scarlet Witch and Vision and another far more cosmic union with a brace of weddings and the ultimate ascension of the Celestial Madonna – even though demonic extra-dimensional despot Dormammu did try to spoil the showâ€¦

A new era was supposed to begin in Avengers #136 but a deadline was missed and instead ‘Iron Man: DOA’ by Englehart, Tom Sutton & Mike Ploog was reprinted from Amazing Adventures #12, wherein the newly mutated and furry Hank McCoy AKA the Beast had attacked the Armoured Avenger whilst mind-controlled.

Although an excellent story in its own right, it rather gave the game away for the next issue after the painfully depleted team declared ‘We Do Seek Out New Avengers!!’ (art by Tuska & Vince Colletta) and amongst the applicants – which included Moondragon, Yellowjacket and the Wasp – was an athletic, enigmatic guy bundled up in a raincoatâ€¦

No sooner had the introductions begun than a cosmic interloper attacked, hunting for the honeymooning Witch and Vision, but the ‘Stranger in a Strange Man!’ was far from his expected level of puissance and the heroes soon smelled a rat – unfortunately not before the Wasp was gravely injuredâ€¦

After all the intergalactic hyper-cosmic extravaganzas and extended epic-ing, Avengers #139 ‘Prescription: Violence!’ and #140’s ‘A Journey to the Center of the Ant’ end this volume on a comfortingly down-to-Earth scale as the malevolent Whirlwind tried to murder the bed-ridden Wasp and her devoted defender Yellowjacket succumbed to a growing affliction which doomed him to exponentially expand to his death until the refreshed, returned Vision and the bludgeoning Beast saved the dayâ€¦

Roy Thomas and Steve Englehart were at the forefront of Marvel’s second generation of story-makers, brilliantly building on and consolidating the compelling creation of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko: spearheading and constructing a logical, fully functioning wonder-machine of places and events that so many others were inspired by and could add to. In this volume, between them they also showed how much more graphic narratives could become and these terrific tales are perfect examples of superhero sagas done just right.

Although not to every reader’s taste these fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tights masterpieces can still boggle the mind and take the breath away, so no lovers of Costumed Dramas can afford to ignore this superbly bombastic book.
Â© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

May 17, 2012May 16, 2012

Essential Spider-Man volume 5

By Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Gil Kane, John Romita & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1865-7

The Amazing Spider-Man was always a comic-book that matured with or perhaps just slightly ahead of its fan-base.

This fifth exceptionally economical monochrome volume of chronological web-spinning adventures sees the World’s Most Misunderstood Hero through another rocky period of transformation as the great second era of Amazing Arachnid artists moved inevitably to a close. Although the elder John Romita would remain closely connected to the Wall-Crawler’s adventures for a little time yet, these tales would be his last long run as lead illustrator on the series.

Stan Lee’s scripts were completely in tune with the times – as glimpsed by a lot of kid’s parents at least – and the burgeoning use of pure soap opera plots kept older readers glued to the series even if the bombastic battle sequences didn’t.

Thematically, there’s still a large percentage of old-fashioned crime and gangsterism and a dependence on mystery plots. The balance of costumed super-antagonists was finely balanced with thugs, hoods and mob-bosses, but these were not the individual gangs of the Ditko days.

Now Organised Crime and Mafia analogue The Maggia were the big criminal-cultural touchstone as comics caught up with modern movies and the headlines. Moreover during this period Lee finally defied Comics Code Authority mandates to tell a powerful tale of drug abuse which would (along with DC’s Green Lantern tales dealing with the same issue) force the industry’s censoring body to expunge the ludicrous dictat that comics could never mention narcotics under any circumstancesâ€¦

This volume, reprinting Amazing Spider-Man #90-113, spans November 1970 to October 1972 and even includes some stunning art-in-progress and unfinished Gil Kane pages from issues #98 and 102 to edify and astound the readers, so be prepared to be utterly amazedâ€¦

Following directly on from ‘Doc Ock Lives!’ – which ended the previous Essential Edition on a cataclysmic cliffhanger – the action here opens with ‘And Death Shall Come!’ by Stan Lee, pencilled by Gil Kane & inked by John Romita Sr., wherein the multi-limbed menace ran riot in the city and Peter Parker’s attempts to stop him led to the death of a beloved cast memberâ€¦

With the tragic demise, Spider-Man became a wanted fugitive and Jonah Jameson began backing â€œLaw and Orderâ€ election hopeful Sam Bullitt in a campaign ‘To Smash the Spider!’, utterly unaware of the politician’s disreputable past, but the secret came out in #92’s ‘When Iceman Attacks’.

The ambitious demagogue convinced the youngest X-Man that Spider-Man had kidnapped Parker’s paramour Gwen Stacy but the Wondrous Wall-Crawler’s explosive battle against the mutant exposed the corrupt and explicitly racist Bullit in an all-out action extravaganza featuring some of the best action art of the decade by two of the industry’s greatest names.

Romita resumed pencilling with issue #93, which saw the return of a forgotten foe in ‘The Lady andâ€¦ The Prowler!’. Hobie Brown was a super-burglar gone straight, but when he saw that the Amazing Arachnid was wanted, he too was all to ready to believe the media hype and not his old benefactorâ€¦

Amazing Spider-Man #94 (Lee, Romita & Sal Buscema) offered a new glimpse of the fabled origin of the hero as part of a dynamic dust-up with the Beetle ‘On Wings of Death!’ after which Peter headed for London to woo his estranged girlfriend Gwen, who had fled the manic violence of America.

Sadly ‘Trap for a Terrorist’ found the city under threat of destruction from radical bombers, which only Spider-Man could handle, so she returned home, never knowing Parker had come after her. Everything was forgotten in the next issue when deeply disturbed and partially amnesiac industrialist Norman Osborn remembered he was the Green Goblin and once more attacked Peter in #96’s ‘â€¦And Now, the Goblin!’ by Lee, Kane & Romita.

Lee had long wanted to address the contemporary drugs situation in his stories but was forbidden by Comics Code strictures. When the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare approached him to tackle the issue he produced the three-part Goblin tale. When it was declined Code approval he went ahead and published it anywayâ€¦

Although the return of the madman who knew all Spider-Man’s secrets was the big fan-draw the real meat of the tale was how Osborn’s son Harry – a perfectly normal rich white kid – could be drawn into a web of addiction, abuse and toxic overdoseâ€¦

Frank Giacoia began inking Kane with the second instalment ‘In the Grip of the Goblin!’ as the elder Osborn ran riot, almost killing the wall-crawler and preparing for his final deadly assault even as his son lay dying, before the saga spectacularly concluded with ‘The Goblin’s Last Gasp!’ wherein the villain’s deeply buried paternal love proved his undoing and Parker’s salvationâ€¦

Amazing Spider-Man #99 ‘A Day in the Life ofâ€¦’ was an action-packed palate-cleanser with Peter and Gwen finally getting their love-life back on track, only marginally marred by a prison breakout which was easily quelled by the Arachnid Avenger, but the anniversary 100^th issue ‘The Spider or the Man?’ proved to be a game-changing shocker as, determined to retire and marry, Peter attempts to destroy his powers with an untested serum.

The result was a hallucinogenic trip wherein Kane & Giacoia got to draw an all-out battle between Spidey and a host of old enemies and a waking nightmare when Peter regained consciousness and discovered he had grown four extra armsâ€¦

With #101 Roy Thomas stepped in as scripter for ‘A Monster Calledâ€¦ Morbius!’, as the eight-limbed Parker desperately sought a way to reverse his condition and stumbled across a murderous costumed horror who drank human blood. To make matters worse old foe The Lizard turned up, determined to kill them bothâ€¦

Amongst the many things banned by the Comics Code in 1954 were horror staples vampires and werewolves, but the changing comics tastes and rising costs of the early 1970s were seeing Superhero titles dropping like flies in snowstorm. With interest in suspense and the supernatural growing, all companies were pushing to re-establish scary comics again and the covert introduction of a â€œLiving Vampireâ€ here led to another challenge to the CCA, the eventually revision of the horror section of the Code and the resurgent rise of supernatural heroes and titles.

For one month Marvel also experimented with double-sized comicbooks (DC’s switch to 52-page issues lasted almost a year: August 1971-June 1972 cover-dates) and Amazing Spider-Man #102 featured an immense, three-chapter blockbuster beginning with ‘Vampire at Large!’ as octo-webspinner and anthropoid reptile joined forces to hunt the bloodsucker after discovering a factor in the vampire’s saliva which could cure both part-time monsters’ respective conditions.

‘The Way it Began’ diverged from the tale to present the tragic secret origin of Nobel Prize winning biologist Michael Morbius and how be turned himself into a haunted night horror before ‘The Curse and the Cure!’ brought the tale to a blistering conclusion and restored the status quo.

Designed as another extra-long epic, ‘Walk the Savage Land!’ began in the now conventional sized #103 but was sliced in half and finished as #104 ‘The Beauty and the Brute’ in #104. When the Daily Bugle suffered a financial crisis, Jameson took Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy on a monster hunt to the Lost World under the Antarctic, encountering not only dinosaurs and cavemen but also noble savage Ka-Zar, perfidious villain Kraven the Hunter and even terrifying alien baby Gog in a fabulous pastiche and homage to Willis O’Brien’s King Kong from Thomas, Kane & Giacoia.

Capitalising on an era rife with social unrest and political protest, Stan Lee returned in #105 with ‘The Spider Slayer!’ as the New York City police put spy cameras on every rooftop and discredited technologist Spencer Smythe resurfaced with an even more formidable anti-Spider-Man robot for Jamison to set against the Wall-crawler. The story also featured the release of Harry Osborn from drug rehab and old Parker gadfly Flash Thompson came back from Vietnam, but the big shock was discovering the once beneficent Smythe had gone bonkersâ€¦

Responsible for the Police spy-eyes too, Smythe had photographed Spidey without his mask and in ‘Squash! Goes the Spider!’ (triumphantly pencilled by the returning Romita) the Professor sold out old employer Jameson, allied with criminal gangs and attempted to plunder the city. When the Amazing Arachnid tried to stop the banditry he found himself facing the ultimate Spider-Slayer before valiantly battling his way to victory in ‘Spidey Smashes Thru!’

The secret of Flash Thompson began to unravel in issue #108’s ‘Vengeance from Vietnam!’ (with Romita inking his own pencils) as the troubled war hero revealed an American war atrocity which had left a peaceful in-country village devastated, a benign mystic comatose and set a vengeful cult upon the saddened soldier’s guilt-ridden heels, which even all Spider-Man’s best efforts could not deflect or deter.

The campaign of terror was only concluded in #109 when ‘Enter: Dr. Strange!’ saw the Master of the Mystic Arts divine the truth and set things aright, after which #110’s ‘The Birth ofâ€¦ the Gibbon!’ found the world-weary wall-crawler battling shunned and lonely outcast Martin Blank, whose anthropoid frame and lack of friends had made his life a living hellâ€¦

The Gibbon was back a month later when Kraven brainwashed the hapless outcast ‘To Stalk a Spider!’ in a tale which saw the beginning of young Gerry Conway’s tenure on the title, whilst #112 saw another periodic crisis of faith for Peter Parker when ‘Spidey Cops Out!’ found the hero ready to chuck it all in until another nightmarish old adversary resurfaced as part of a burgeoning gang warâ€¦

We end as we began with #113 and ‘They Call the Doctorâ€¦ Octopus!’ (Conway & Romita with art assistance from Tony Mortellaro and Jim Starlin) as the city is plunged into chaos when the multi-limbed madman squares off against the mysterious gang-boss Hammerhead with a rededicated but fearfully overmatched Spider-Man caught in the middleâ€¦

For the cataclysmic outcome you’ll need to see volume 6â€¦

Despite that major qualification this is still a fantastic book about an increasingly relevant teen icon and symbol. Spider-Man at this time became a crucial part of many youngsters’ lives and did so by living a life as close to theirs as social mores and the Comics Code would allow.

Blending cultural veracity with stunning art and making a dramatic virtue of the awkwardness, confusion and sense of powerlessness that most of the readership experienced daily resulted in an irresistibly intoxicating read, delivered in addictive soap-opera instalments, but none of that would be relevant if the stories weren’t so compellingly entertaining. This intoxicating transitional book is Stan Lee’s Spider-Man at his very best and also shows the way in which the hero began to finally outgrow his (co)creator.
Â© 1970, 1971, 1972, 2011 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

May 11, 2012May 8, 2012

The Fantastic Four Collectors Album & The Fantastic Four Return (Paperbacks)

By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & various (Lancer)
â€œISBNsâ€ 72-111 and 72-169

Here’s a final brace of Swinging Sixties â€œPop-Artâ€ compendia celebrating the meteoric rise of the Little House that Stan, Jack and Steve Built, which will probably be of interest only to inky-fingered nostalgics, fan fanatics collectors and historical obsessive pickers, but as I’m all of them and it’s my party:

Far more than a writer or Editor; Stan Lee was also a master of entrepreneurial publicity generation and his tireless schmoozing and exhaustive attention-seeking was as crucial as the actual characters and stories in promoting his burgeoning line of superstars.

In the 1960s most adults, especially many of the professionals who worked in the field, considered comic-books a ghetto. Some disguised their identities whilst others were â€œjust there until they caught a breakâ€. Stan and creative lynchpins Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko had another idea – change the perception.

Whilst Kirby and Ditko pursued their respective creative credos and craft, waiting for the quality of the work to be noticed, Stan pursued every opportunity to break down the ghetto walls: college lecture tours, animated shows (of frankly dubious quality at the start, but always improving), foreign franchising and of course getting their product onto mainstream bookshelves in real book shops.

There had been a revolution in popular fiction during the 1950s with a huge expansion of affordable paperback books, and companies developed extensive genre niche-markets, such as war, western, romance, science-fiction and fantasy.

Always hungry for more product for their cheap ubiquitous lines, many old novels and short stories collections were republished, introducing new generations to fantastic pulp authors like Robert E. Howard, Otis Adelbert Kline, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and many others.

In 1955, spurred on by the huge parallel success of cartoon and gag book collections, Bill Gaines began releasing paperback compendiums culling the best strips and features from his landmark humour magazine Mad, and comics’ Silver Age was mirrored in popular publishing by an insatiable hunger for escapist fantasy fiction.

In 1964 Bantam Books began reprinting the earliest pulp adventures of Doc Savage, triggering a revival of pulp prose superheroes, and seemed the ideal partner when Marvel began a short-lived attempt to â€œnoveliseâ€ their comicbook stable with The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker and Captain America in the Great Gold Steal.

Although growing commercially by leaps and bounds, Marvel in the early 1960s was still hampered by a crippling distribution deal limiting the company to 16 titles (which would curtail their output until 1968), so each new comicbook had to fill the revenue-generating slot (however small) of an existing title. Even though the costumed characters were selling well, each new title would limit the company’s breadth of genres (horror, western, war, etc) and comics were still a very broad field at that time. It was putting a lot of eggs in one basket and superheroes had failed twice before for Marvel.

As Lee cautiously replaced a spectrum of genre titles and specialised in superheroes, a most fortunate event occurred with the advent of the Batman TV show in January 1966. Almost overnight the world went costumed-hero crazy and many publishers repackaged their old comics stories in cheap and cheerful, digest-sized monochrome paperbacks, and it’s easy to assume that Marvel’s resized book collections were just another company cash-cow, part of their perennial â€œflood the marketplaceâ€ sales strategy, but it’s just not true.

Lee’s deal with Lancer to publish selected adventures in handy paperback editions had begun a year earlier with The Fantastic Four Collectors Album. Other comics publishers – National/DC, Tower Comics and Archie – were just as keen to add some credibility and even literary legitimacy to their efforts, but were caught playing catch-up in the fresh new marketplace.Â Moreover, when Lancer began releasing Marvel’s Mightiest in potent and portable little collections it was simple to negotiate British iterations of those editions.

Except for the FF – as far as I can ascertain neither of the books on display here ever had a UK edition.

A word about artwork here: modern comics are almost universally full-coloured in Britain and America, but for over a century black and white was the only real choice for most mass market publishers – additional (colour) plates being just too expensive for shoe-string operations to indulge in. Even the colour of 1960s comics was cheap, and primitive and solid black line, expertly applied by master artists, was the very life-force of sequential narrative.

These days computer enhanced art can hide a multitude of weaknesses – if not actual pictorial sins – but back then companies lived or died on the illustrating skills of their artists: so even in basic black and white (and the printing of paperbacks was as basic as the accountants and bean-counters could get it) the Kirbys and Ditkos of the industry exploded out of those little pages and electrified the readership.

I can’t see that happening with many modern artists deprived of their slick paper and multi-million hued colour palettesâ€¦

This first stellar volume from the utterly on-form Lee, Kirby & Dick Ayers opened with a couple of second appearances as the deadly Doctor Doom allied with a reluctant but gullible Sub-Mariner to attack our quirky quartet in ‘Captives of the Deadly Duo!’ (FF #6, 1962)

In this first Marvel super-villain team up Prince Namor‘s growing affection for the team’s female member forced the sub-sea stalwart to save his foes from dire death in outer space – but only after Doom tried to kill him tooâ€¦

That superb classic was actually split into two sections and interrupted by a quick recap of the origin, cobbled together from #1 and #11â€¦

The Fantastic Four saw maverick scientist Reed Richards summon his girl-friend Sue Storm, their friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother Johnny before heading off on their first mission. In a flashback we discover they are driven survivors of a private space-shot which went horribly wrong when Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding. They crashed back to Earth where they found that they’d all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks…

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible, Johnny Storm could turn into living flame and tragic Ben turned into a shambling, rocky freak. Shaken but unbowed they vow to dedicate their new abilities to benefiting mankindâ€¦

After a series of stunning solo pin-ups by Kirby & Joe Sinnott, ‘The Impossible Man’ also from #11 (February 1963) followed; depicting a bizarre, baddie-free yet compellingly light-hearted tale about a fun-seeking but obnoxiously omnipotent visitor from the stars who only wants to have fun, and could only be â€œdefeatedâ€ by boredomâ€¦

Following Super Skrull and Molecule Man pin-ups, ‘The Mad Menace of the Macabre Mole Man!’ (Lee, Kirby & Chic Stone from issue #31, October 1964) saw the uncanny underground outcast try once more to conquer the surface world in a stunning tale which balanced a loopy plan to steal entire streets of New York City with a portentous sub-plot featuring a mysterious man from Sue’s past. Presumably to avoid confusion a rather fractious spat over jurisdiction with the Mighty Avengers was excised from this edition…

To complete the graphic wonderment this initial outing ends with pin-ups of the Hate Monger and the dastardly Diablo as well as a house ad for the burgeoning Marvel Comics Lineâ€¦

The Fantastic Four Return (Guest Star Sub-Mariner) was the penultimate Marvel/Lancer edition, released in 1967 and opening with ‘The Final Victory of Dr. Doom!’ from Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1964, by Lee, Kirby & Stone) and saw the mysterious monarch of Latveria brazenly attack the quartet only to suffer his most galling defeat, after which ‘Side-by-Side with Sub-Mariner!’ brought the aquatic anti-hero one step closer to his own series when the team lent surreptitious aid to the embattled undersea monarch against the hordes of deadly sub-sea barbarian Attuma in a blistering battle yarn by Lee, Kirby & Stone from FF #33 (December 1964).

‘Calamity on the Campus!’ (FF #35 February 1965 by the same creative team) saw the heroes visit Reed Richard’s old Alma Mater in a tale designed to pander to the burgeoning college fan-base Marvel was cultivating, but the rousing yarn that brought back Diablo and introduced the monstrous homunculus Dragon Man easily stands up as a classic on its own merits, full of spectacular action and even advancing the moribund romance between Reed and Sue to the point that he would actually propose in the months to comeâ€¦

This superb book only boasts one pin-up but it is a classic shot of the mighty and regal Sub-Mariner by Kirby & Stoneâ€¦

As someone who bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years – including the constantly recycled reprints in British weeklies from the mid-sixties to the 1980s – I have to admit that the classy classic paperback editions have a charm and attraction all their own even if they are heavily edited and abridged and rather disturbingly printed in both portrait and landscape formatâ€¦

If you’ve not read these tales before then there are certainly better places to do so (such as the pertinent Essential or Marvel Masterwork volumes) but even with all the archaic and just plain dumb bits these books are still fabulous super-hero sagas with beautiful art that will never stale or wither, and for us backward-looking Baby-boomers these nostalgic pocket tomes have an incomprehensible allure that logic just can’t tarnish or taintâ€¦
Â© 1966 and 1967 Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved.

May 8, 2012May 8, 2012

Avengers: The Children’s Crusade

By Allan Heinberg, Jim Cheung, Alan Davis, Olivier Coipel & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-485-0

As the new Avengers film screens across the world, Marvel has again released a bunch of tie-in books and trade paperback collections to maximise exposure and cater to those movie fans wanting to follow up the cinematic exposure with a comics experience.

This stunning yarn is every bit as epic as any big screen extravaganza but does depend a bit too much on a thorough grounding in Avengers lore so newbies might struggle a bit with the minutiaeâ€¦

Once upon a time the mutant Scarlet Witch married the android Vision and they had – through the agency of magic and Wanda’s unsuspected ability to reshape reality – twin boys. Over the course of time it was revealed that the boys were not real (for further details see Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Avengers) and as the years passed the tragedy drove the Scarlet Witch to insanity.

When Wanda tipped completely over the edge and destroyed at least three of her team-mates, the â€œWorld’s Mightiest Heroesâ€ were shut down and rebooted in a highly publicised event known as Avengers Disassembled. Of course it was only to replace them with both The New and Young Avengers. The event also spilled over into the regular titles of current team members, and affiliated comic-books such as the Fantastic Four and Spectacular Spider-Man ran parallel but not necessarily interconnected story-arcs to accompany the Big Show.

Said Big Show consisted of the worst day in the team’s history as the Witch manipulated people and events: betraying her oldest, closest friends and causing the destruction of everything they held dear.

In the later company crossover event House of M reality was rewritten (yes, again!) when she had another breakdown and altered Earth continuity so that Magneto’s mutants ruled a society where normal humans (â€œsapiensâ€) were an acknowledged evolutionary dead-end living out their lives and destined for extinction within two generations. It took every hero on Earth and a great deal of luck to put that genie back in a bottle and in the aftermath almost no mutants were left on Earthâ€¦

Needless to say in recent time Wanda Maximoff has not been anybody’s favourite person so it’s perhaps lucky that no one on Earth seems to know her current whereaboutsâ€¦

This compilation collects portions of Uncanny X-Men #526, Avengers: the Children’s Crusade #1-9 and Avengers: the Children’s Crusade – Young Avengers issue #1 (published in comicbook form from October 2011 to March 2012) which comprised the core-story for the latest relaunch of the constantly-changing grim and gritty alternate universe.

This gripping but convoluted tale opens with ‘Rebuilding’ (from X-Men #526 by author Allan Heinberg and artists Olivier Coipel & Mark Morales) as the aging Magneto, now loosely aligned with the remaining mutants in the semi-autonomous enclave â€œUtopiaâ€, learns that two members of the teen superhero team Young Avengers bear an impossible similarity to the twins his daughter conjured up years ago.

Moreover, the ultra-swift Speed and sorcerous Wiccan bear an uncanny resemblance to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch at the same ageâ€¦

Can these superhero twins possibly be his grandchildren? When he decides to investigate, X-Man and Avenger Wolverine warns the master of Magnetism to leave them aloneâ€¦ or elseâ€¦

The story proper begins with Young Avengers Stature, Vision, Hulkling, Hawkeye, Patriot, Speed and Wiccan battling the racist terrorists Sons of the Serpent just as the elder Avengers arrive. When the child sorcerer displays a terrifying burst of power, alarm bells start ringing for Captain America, Iron Man and Ms. Marvel who have also noticed the startling similarities to their crazed and deadly former memberâ€¦

In a world where the impossible happens every day and twice on Sundays, Wiccan has always suspected that Wanda was his true mother, and as the veteran heroes seek to curb his rapidly developing powers the boy mage convinces his team-mates to accompany him on a search for the missing Scarlet Witch and the true story of how and why she went badâ€¦

Every Young Avenger has a different motive for the quest: for Speed it’s a chance to prove his annoying twin wrong, whilst Hulkling sees a chance to give his boyfriend Wiccan a sense of peace and closure. For Stature it’s the remote possibility of resurrecting the father Wanda murderedâ€¦

As the kids break out of Avenger custody they are joined by Magneto, sparking a clash with Wolverine and the rest of the â€œAâ€ Teamâ€¦

Bloodshed is avoided only by Wiccan transporting his friends and the Mutant Mastermind to the Balkan nation of Transia where Wanda and her brother Pietro grew up. Here they discover that Quicksilver – who blames his father and the Avengers in equal part for his beloved sister’s fate – is waiting.

â€¦And so is Wanda herselfâ€¦

Except that it’s only a carefully constructed android facsimile, but one which takes the reluctant and inimical fellow questers to the door of one the world’s most dangerous men, who has been harbouring the Scarlet Witch ever since the cataclysmic events following her magical decimation of the planet’s mutant populationâ€¦

Meanwhile the Avengers have recruited Wonder Man – who was brought back from the dead by Wanda – but he proves to be an unreliable ally once he realises that the World’s Mightiest Heroes intend to kill the Witch at the first sign of troubleâ€¦

In Avengers: the Children’s Crusade – Young Avengers issue #1, illustrated by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, founding member Iron Lad returns to finish the mission he gathered the young heroes for.

The futuristic technologist is the teen iteration of Kang the Conqueror and formed the Young Avengers to prevent himself growing into the merciless Master of Time, but as this pithy behind-the-scenes and out of continuity saga shows, history and destiny are not easily cheatedâ€¦

Back in Avengers: the Children’s Crusade #5 the chaos builds and the fabric of reality itself begins to unravel as Wanda and her notional boys are reunited and discover the true nature of her powers.

All Wanda wants to do is make amends whilst the man who claims to have caused all her breakdowns is prepared to keep her at all costs. Just as the Avengers arrive, determined to save the world from their former comrade, all hell breaks loose. When Iron Lad rejoins his team in real time he changes the recent past and the situation escalates to a catastrophic crescendo when the X-Men turn up, seeking justice for all the mutants â€œWandaâ€ destroyed in her crazy daysâ€¦

With the dead rising, history unmaking itself and the true villain seizing control of all creation the stage is set for a truly tragic and spectacular climaxâ€¦

Bombastic and cosmically broad in scope, this impressive tale by Allan (Wonder Woman, JLA, Sex and the City, The O.C., Gilmore Girls, Grey’s Anatomy) Heinberg seeks to undo and reset key milestones of Marvel history with boldness and generally succeeds in all his goals, aided by the impressive art of Jim Cheung and inkers Mark Morales, John Livesay, David Meikis & Dexter Vimes, but although this yarn will delight long-time fans I fear casual and new readers will struggle to pick up the nuances or even follow the plot. Still, the spectacular alternate cover gallery by Cheung, Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic, Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, Travis Charest and Art Adams will enthrall art fans and the impetus afforded by the film release will certainly draw new followers to this extremely attractive package with many small and big screen connections.

May 6, 2012May 7, 2012

Ultimate Comics X-Men: Reborn

By Nick Spencer, Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-506-2

Marvel’s Ultimates imprint launched in 2000 with major characters and concepts re-imagined to bring them into line with the presumed different tastes of modern readers.

Eventually the alternate, darkly nihilistic universe became as continuity-constricted as its predecessor, and in 2008 the cleansing event â€œUltimatumâ€ culminated in a reign of terror which apparently (this is still comics, after all) killed dozens of super-humans and millions of lesser mortals.

The era-ending event was a colossal tsunami triggered by Magneto which inundated the superhero-heavy island of Manhattan and utterly devastated the world’s mutant population. The X-Men as well as many other superhuman heroes and villains died and in the aftermath anybody classed as ‘â€Homo Superiorâ€ had to surrender to the authorities or be shot on sight. Understandably most survivors as well any newly emergent X-people kept themselves well hiddenâ€¦

Mutants had always been feared and despised: as the indisputable inheritors of Earth, the often lethally-empowered and wildly uncontrollable creatures were seen by many as an alien, inimical species; a new race destined to take the world from humanity the way we took it from the Neanderthalsâ€¦

This compilation continues to describe the gradual return of mutants to the post-deluge public gaze which began in Ultimate X: Origins by collecting Ultimate Comics: X-Men #1-6 and pertinent portions of Ultimate Comics: Fallout #4 (published in comicbook form from September 2011 to March 2012) which provided a game-changing new reality and status quo for the latest relaunch of the constantly-changing, grim and gritty alternate universe.

In a stunning story-arc by writer Nick Spencer, artists Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco and colourist Marte Gracia, the slow descent into uncontrolled chaos begins when Presidential Special Advisor on Superhuman and Mutant Affairs Valerie Cooper is forced to admit to the entire world that – rather than a result of inexorable evolution and natural selection – Mutants are the result of a fifty year old American covert program of genetic manipulation which got out of controlâ€¦

In a world where Homo Superior are registered like guns, kept in internment camps and where good, God-fearing folk would rather execute their children than have them grow up afflicted with the sin of â€œmutant-nessâ€, the news instantly causes uproar and riot across the nation and around the planetâ€¦

Former X-Man Karen Grant (nee Jean Grey) has been continuing Charles Xavier‘s dream of fostering Human/Mutant co-existence but the news not only rips the rug out from under her; it also proves intolerable for her young charge Jimmy Hudson, who hears on National TV that his dead father Wolverine was the US Military’s ‘Mutant Zero’ and from his initial escape five decades ago has stemmed all the pain and horror and super-powered proliferationâ€¦

With a downtrodden, oppressed emergent species suddenly reduced to a virus or failed science experiment, global tensions are explosively high, and when renegade X-survivor Rogue very publicly battles American Nimrod Sentinels, the US President is faced with a civil crisis like no otherâ€¦

Meanwhile hunted â€œMutant Terroristâ€ Kitty Pryde is holed-up with fellow fugitives Iceman and the Human Torch, all on the run since their friend and fellow teen Peter Parker was murdered in his Spider-Man guise.

With the entire world in crisis (see Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye and The Ultimates: The Republic is Burning), the President consults S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury but is also approached by the deceased Magneto’s son Pietro Lensherr who has since inherited control of the terrorist group known as the Brotherhood of Mutants. The super-swift master manipulator has an arcane Faustian Bargain for the severely embattled Leader of the Free Worldâ€¦

Soon after the deluge hit, fundamentalist preacher Reverend William Stryker seized Sentinel technology and attacked the Xavier School, murdering many of the mutants Magneto’s flood had missed. Now he has returned, intent on capitalising on the troubled times and expediting his genocidal crusade.

Acting as a new X-team and against Pryde’s best judgment Iceman and the Torch rescue Rogue, but are horrified to discover that the fugitive powerhouse has literally â€œseen Godâ€.

However, as they all hide in subterranean tunnels beneath New York, picking up stray mutant children as they flee, the young misfits have no idea just how far their former comrade has fallen or what lengths Rogue will go to in order to fulfil her divinely ordained missionâ€¦

With the nation in chaos Stryker plans a massive event in Times Square, offering a cure for mutantcy and a final solution to the crisis, but his true plan is to ambush the gathered deviants and end their blasphemous existence foreverâ€¦

In the White House Quicksilver has his own scheme: he knows the secret Stryker is concealing and intends to use it for his own ends, but when the Reverend takes control of the entire Sentinel program and sends every killer robot in America’s arsenal to hunt down all the remaining mutants still in hiding, the cataclysmic battles leads to a stunning series of revelations and a breathtaking cliffhangerâ€¦

This welcome return to the bleak and cynical Ultimate fare, with the trademark post-modernity, sharp abrasive humour and darkly brutal action, still delivers the grim ‘n’ gritty punch fans crave, but with so much backstory to absorb Reborn might not be the best book for anybody thinking on jumping on to decidedly different world of Wonder. Nevertheless the striking drama and returning cast-favourites will certainly please those older readers who love this trenchant iteration of superhero sagas and any casual readers who are more familiar with the company’s movies than the comic-books.

April 26, 2012April 25, 2012

Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Avengers

By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Neal Adams, John Byrne, Kurt Busiek, George PÃ©rez, Brian Michael Bendis & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-507-9

The Avengers have always proved that putting all one’s star eggs in one single basket pays off big-time: even when all Marvel’s all-stars such as Thor, Captain America and Iron Man were absent, it merely allowed the team’s lesser lights to shine more brightly.

Of course all the founding stars regularly featured due to the rotating, open-door policy which meant most issues included somebody’s fave-rave – and the boldly grand-scale impressive stories and artwork were no hindrance either.

Under the Marvel Platinum/Definitive Editions umbrella, this treasury of tales reprints some obvious landmarks from the pantheon’s serried history, specifically Avengers volume 1 #1, 4, 57, 93, Avengers West Coast #51-52, Avengers volume 3, #10-11, Avengers volume 1 #503, Avengers Finale and New Avengers #3 which, whilst not all absolutely â€œdefinitiveâ€ epics, certainly offer a sublime snapshot of just how very great the ever-shifting team of titans can be.

During the Marvel Renaissance of the early 1960’s Stan Lee and Jack Kirby aped the tactic which had worked so tellingly for DC Comics, but with mixed results. Julie Schwartz had incredible success with revised and modernised versions of the company’s Golden Age greats, so it seemed natural to try and revive the characters that had dominated Timely/Atlas in those halcyon days. The JLA inspired Fantastic Four featured a new Human Torch and before long Sub-Mariner was back tooâ€¦

As the costumed hero revival brought continuing success, the next stage was obvious and is covered here at then end of the volume by historian Mike Conroy’s informative essay ‘The True Origin of the Avengers’â€¦

The concept of combining individual stars into a group had already made the Justice League of America a commercial winner and inspired the moribund Atlas outfit of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to invent many â€œsuper-charactersâ€ after the Fantastic Four. Nearly 18 months later the fledgling House of Ideas had a viable stable of leading men (but only sidekick women) so Lee & Kirby assembled a handful of them and moulded them into a force for justice and even higher salesâ€¦

After a period of meteoric expansion, in 1963 the burgeoning Marvel Universe was finally ready to emulate the successful DC concept that had truly kick-started the Silver Age of comics and this stunning historical retrospective begins as it should with two stories from the groundbreaking Lee/Kirby run which graced the first eight issues of the World’s Mightiest Heroes.

Seldom has it ever been done with such style and sheer exuberance. Cover-dated September, The Avengers #1 launched as part of an expansion package which also included Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos and The X-Menâ€¦

‘The Coming of the Avengers’ is one of the cannier origin tales in comics. Instead of starting at a zero point and acting as if the reader knew nothing, Stan & Jack (plus inker Dick Ayers) assumed readers had at least a passing familiarity with their other efforts and wasted very little time or energy on introductions.

In Asgard Loki, god of evil, was imprisoned on a dank isle, hungry for vengeance on his half-brother Thor. Observing Earth he espied the monstrous, misunderstood Hulk and engineered a situation wherein the man-brute seemingly went berserk to trick the Thunder God into battling the monster. When the Hulk’s sidekick Rick Jones radioed the Fantastic Four for assistance, Loki diverted the transmission and smugly waited for the mayhem to manifest.

Unfortunately for him, Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp also picked up the SOSâ€¦.

As the heroes converged in the American Southwest to search for the Jade Giant they realized that something was oddly amissâ€¦

This terse, epic, compelling and wide-ranging yarn (New York, New Mexico, Detroit and Asgard in 22 pages) is Lee & Kirby at their bombastic best and one of the greatest adventure stories of the Silver Age and is followed by the long-awaited return of the last of the â€œBig Threeâ€â€¦

Avengers #4 (March 1964) was a true landmark of the genre as Marvel’s greatest Golden Age sensation was revived. ‘Captain America Joins the Avengers!’ has everything that made the company’s early tales so fresh and vital. The majesty of a legendary warrior (that most of the readers had never heard of!) returned in our time of greatest need, stark tragedy in the loss of his boon companion Bucky, aliens, gangsters, Sub-Mariner and even wry social commentary. This story by Lee, Kirby & George Roussos just cannot be bettered.

In #57 (October 1968) Roy Thomas, John Buscema & George Klein produced a Golden Age revival of their own as ‘Beholdâ€¦ the Vision!’ introduced a terrifying android apparition designed by arch-foe Ultron to destroy the heroes. Sadly not appearing here is the conclusion wherein the eerie, amnesiac, artificial man with complete control of his mass and density discovered a fraction of his origins and joined the human heroesâ€¦.

Avengers #89-97 comprised perhaps the most ambitious and certainly boldest saga in Marvel’s early history: an astounding epic of tremendous scope which dumped Earth into a cosmic war the likes of which comics fans had never before seen and creating the template for all multi-part crossovers and publishing events ever since.

The Kree-Skull War captivated a generation of comics readers and from that epic comes the extra-long ‘This Beachhead Earth’ (Avengers #93 November 1972, by Thomas, Neal Adams & Tom Palmer) as the Vision was almost destroyed by alien invaders and Ant-Man was forced to undertake ‘A Journey to the Center of the Android!’ to save the android’s unconventional life. Thereafter the Avengers became aware of not one but two alien presences on Earth: bellicose Kree and sneaky shape-shifting Skrulls, beginning a ‘War of the Weirds!’ on our fragile globe.

Acting too late, the assembled team were unable to prevent the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Captain Marvel from being abducted by the Skrullsâ€¦

That cliff-hanging drama is followed by a revelatory two-part tale from Avengers West Coast #51-52 (November and December 1989) by John Byrne & Mike Machlan which opens with ‘I Sing of Arms and Heroesâ€¦’ wherein the Scarlet Witch hunted for her missing children only to discover some horrifying truths about them and her own powers. The tragedy was only resolved when demonic foe Master Pandemonium and supernal arch-tempter Mephisto deprived her of everything she had ever believed, wanted or loved in ‘Fragments of a Greater Darkness’â€¦

Avengers volume 3, #10-11 (November and December 1998) by Kurt Busiek, George PÃ©rez, Al Vey & Bob Wiacek) recaps the history and celebrates the team’s anniversary with a parade in ‘Pomp and Pageantry’ until the ghostly Grim Reaper hijacked the affair and attacked them through the medium of their own dead yet resurrected members Wonder Man, Mockingbird, Swordsman, Hellcat, Dr. Druid, Thunderstrike and Captain Marvel. At the same time the increasingly unstable Scarlet Witch learned the true nature of her reality-altering powers in the catastrophic concluding clash ‘â€¦Always an Avenger!’

A few years later the â€œWorld’s Mightiest Heroesâ€ were shut down and rebooted in a highly publicised event known as Avengers Disassembled. Of course it was only to replace them with both The New and The Young Avengers. Affiliated comic-books Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Spectacular Spider-Man ran parallel but not necessarily interconnected story-arcs to accompany the Big Show.

Said Show consisted of the worst day in the team’s history as a trusted comrade betrayed the World’s Mightiest Superteam resulting in the destruction of everything they held dear and the death of several members, all of which originally appeared in issues #500-503 plus the one-shot Avengers Finale.

From that epic event comes the closing chapter ‘Chaos part four’ (#503, December 2004, by Brian Michael Bendis, David Finch, Olivier Coipel & Danny Miki) wherein the uncomprehending, surviving heroes discovered and reluctantly despatched the true author of all their woes and losses, after which the moody and elegiac Avengers Finale signalled the end of an era in a powerful tribute by a host of creators including Bendis and artists Finch, Miki, Frank D’Armata, Alex Maleev, Steve Epting, Lee Weeks, Brian Reber, Michael Gaydos, Eric Powell, Darick Robertson, Mike Mayhew, Andy Troy, David Mack, Gary Frank, Mike Avon Oeming, Pete Patanzis, Jim Cheung, Mark Morales, Justin Ponsor, Steve McNiven, George PÃ©rez, Mike Perkins, Neal Adams & Laura Martin.

It is undeniably one of the best superhero â€œLast Battlesâ€ ever created, and loses little impact whether it was your five hundredth or first experience with these tragic heroes.

Shocking and beautiful, there was a genuine feeling of an â€œEnd of Daysâ€ to this epic Armageddon.

The final comics tale in this sturdy volume comes from New Avengers #3 (March 2005) as, in the aftermath of a massive breakout of super-villains, Captain America and Iron Man tried to put the band back together with a whole new generation including Luke Cage, Spider-Woman and the Amazing Spider-Man.

‘Breakout Part 3’ is just a fraction of a longer epic by Bendis, Finch, Allen Martinez, Miki & Victor Olazaba, but ends this action-adventure compendium on a solid note indicating that the best is still yet to comeâ€¦

Also contained herein is an extensive prose feature covering the history of the team, the aforementioned ‘true origin’ piece and a raft of classic covers to tantalise and temptâ€¦

This book is one of the very best of these perennial supplements to cinema spectacle, but more importantly it is a supremely well-tailored device to turn curious movie-goers into fans of the comic incarnation too. If there’s a movie sequel, I’m sure Marvel has plans for reprinting much of the masterful material necessarily omitted here, but at least until then we have a superb selection to entice newcomers and charm the veteran American Dreamers.
â„¢ and Â© 1963, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1989, 1998, 2004, 2005, 2012 Marvel & subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A, Italy. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

April 25, 2012April 24, 2012

Essential Fantastic Four volume 6

By Stan Lee, Archie Goodwin, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, John Buscema, Joe Sinnott & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2162-6

With the sixth collection of tales from â€œThe World’s Greatest Comics Magazineâ€ a new kind of FF style was established. With Jack Kirby’s departure the staggeringly inventive imagination and High-Concept rollercoaster of mind-bending ideas gave way to more traditional tales of character, with soap-opera leanings and super-villain dominated Fights ‘n’ Tights dramas.

This volume covers Fantastic Four #111-137 (June 1971- August 1973) and includes a few pertinent Marvel Universe Handbook pages delivering crucial background data on super-foes Diabolo, Air-Walker, Over-Mind and Thundra.

At the end of the previous collection an experiment to allow Ben Grimm to switch between human and monster forms went tragically awry and the action commences here with ‘The Thingâ€¦ Amok’ by Stan Lee, John Buscema & Joe Sinnott) as Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch tried to minimise the damage their deranged friend inflicted on the city whilst the increasingly marginalised Sue Richards was packed off to tend baby Franklin with eldritch governess Agatha Harkness.

With all of New York seemingly against them, the embattled heroes were on the ropes when the Incredible Hulk joined the fracas in #112’s ‘Battle of the Behemoths!’. As Sue finally returned, The Thing appeared to have perished but once more Reed Richards saved – and cured – his best friend just as another menace materialised in ‘The Power ofâ€¦ the Over-Mind!’: another insidious cosmic menace presaged by an ominous warning from alien voyeur The Watcher.

The psionic super-menace further incited civilian antipathy towards the FF in ‘But Who Shall Stop the Over-Mind?’ (inked by Frank Giacoia) before physically trouncing the team.

With #115 Stan Lee surrendered the scripting role to Archie Goodwin, who revealed ‘The Secret of the Eternals’ (not the earthly proto-gods created by Kirby, but an ancient alien race) in a visually stunning sequence limned by Buscema & Sinnott which culminated in Reed being taken over by the Over-Mind and attacking his erstwhile comradesâ€¦

Double-sized Fantastic Four #116 featured ‘The Alien, the Ally, andâ€¦ Armageddon!’ as the desperate heroes, unable to access any superhero assistance, recruited deadly foe Doctor Doom to lead them in the final battle against the unbeatable Over-Mind. They were nonetheless crushed and only saved at the crucial moment by an unexpected saviour in ‘Now Falls the Final Hour!’

With the world saved and order restored, the heartsick Human Torch headed for the Himalayas and a long-delayed rapprochement with his lost girlfriend Crystal of the Uncanny Inhumans in FF #117.

Months previously she had been forced to leave civilisation because modern pollutants had poisoned her system, but when Johnny Storm battled his way into her homeland in ‘The Flame and the Quest!’ he was horrified to discover that she had never arrived back in Attilan’s Great Refugeâ€¦

Blazing his way back to New York, Johnny used Agatha Harkness to track Crystal down and found her the mesmerised slave of arcane alchemist Diabolo who was using her to conquer a South American country in ‘Thunder in the Ruins!’ (inked by Jim Mooney). That issue also included an intriguing short piece starring the Thing in ‘What Mad World?’ wherein the Tragic Titan got a glimpse at an alternative Earth where an even greater mishap occurred after the fateful spaceflight which created the Fantastic Fourâ€¦

The Black Panther – renamed Black Leopard for political reasons – guest-starred in #119’s ‘Three Stood Together!’ as inker Sinnott returned and Roy Thomas scripted a damning indictment of South African apartheid. When the heroic ruler of jungle wonderland Wakanda was interned in the white-ruled state of Rudyarda, Ben and Johnny flew in to bust him out and only incidentally recapture a deadly super-weapon…

Fantastic Four #120 heralded an extended and overlong epic by Stan Lee which began with ‘The Horror that Walks on Air!’ as an invader claiming to be an angel scoured the Earth and declared humanity doomed. The tale laboriously continued in ‘The Mysterious Mind-Blowing Secret of Gabriel!’ with the utterly overmatched FF rescued by the Silver Surfer before facing off against the world-devouring ‘Galactus Unleashed’ whilst Reed again outsmarted the cosmic god to prevent the consumption of ‘This World Enslaved!’

Although beautifully illustrated, the hackneyed saga was a series low-point, but Lee was back on solid dramatic ground with #124’s ‘The Return of the Monster’ and concluding episode ‘The Monster’s Secret!’ wherein the mystery menace Reed had once dubbed ‘the Monster from the Lost Lagoon’ resurfaced to haunt a hospital, steal drugs and kidnap Sueâ€¦ but only for the best and most noble of reasons.

Roy Thomas became writer/editor with #126, revisiting the classic origin and first clash with the Mole Man in ‘The Way it Began!’

This reverie prompted the Thing to invade the sub-surface despot’s realm in search of a cure for the blindness which afflicted his girlfriend Alicia in ‘Where the Sun Dares Not Shine!’ and soon the embattled brute foundÂ himself embroiled in a three-way war between Mole Man, Kala, Empress of the Netherworld and immortal dictator Tyrannus.

When his comrades came after Ben they were duped into attacking him in ‘Death in a Dark and Lonely Place!’â€¦

After four pages of pin-ups by Buscema & Sinnott featuring a host of friends and foes ‘The Frightful Fourâ€¦ Plus One!’ saw the Torch again visit Attilan, whilst in New York the Thing was ambushed by The Sandman, Wizard, Trapster and their newest ally the super-strong Amazon Thundra.

Happily, Crystal’s Inhuman sister Medusa was there to pitch in as the clash escalated and spread to ‘Battleground: the Baxter Building!’ where baby Franklin began to exhibit terrifying abilities. Always left holding the baby and fed up with her husband’s neglect, Sue finally left Reed, whilst in the Himalayas Johnny forced his way to Crystal’s side only to find his worst nightmares realisedâ€¦

Fantastic Four #131 described a ‘Revolt in Paradise!’ (Thomas, Ross Andru & Sinnott) as Crystal, her brand new fiancÃ© Quicksilver, and the rest of the Inhumans were attacked by their genetically-programmed slave-race the Alpha Primitives.

At first it seemed that insane usurper Maximus was again responsible for the strife but there was a deeper secret behind the deadly danger of ‘Omega! The Ultimate Enemy!’ and when the rest of the FF arrived Reed soon ferreted it outâ€¦

Issue #133 celebrated Christmas with ‘Thundra at Dawn!’ as the mysterious Femizon returned to battle Ben again, courtesy of Gerry Conway, Ramona Fradon & Sinnott, whilst ‘A Dragon Stalks the Sky!’ in #134 (Conway, Buscema & Sinnott) found Reed, Johnny, Ben and Medusa fighting forgotten foe Gregory Gideon and his latest acquisition the Dragon Man; a bombastic battle which concluded in a struggle to possess ‘The Eternity Machine’â€¦

The secret of that reality-warping device was revealed in the two-part thriller which ends this edition as the cosmic entity Shaper of Worlds created a horrific and paranoid pastiche of 1950s America; re-running the conflicts between rebellious youth and doctrinaire, paternalistic authority in ‘Rock Around the Cosmos!’ and the surreal conclusion ‘Rumble on Planet 3’â€¦

Although Kirby had taken the explosive 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 served to carry the series for years afterwards and these admittedly erratic and inconsistent stories kept the Fantastic Four ticking over until bolder hands could once again take the World’s Greatest Comics Magazine Heroes back to the stratospheric heights where they belonged.

Solid, honest and creditable efforts, these tales are probably best seen by dedicated superhero fans and continuity freaks like me, but could still thrill and enthral the generous and forgiving casual browser looking for an undemanding slice of graphic narrative excitement.
Â© 1971, 1972, 1973, 2012 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

April 20, 2012April 19, 2012

Avengers Origins

By Roberto Aguirre-Sarcasa, Mike Benson, Adam Glass, Sean McKeever,
Kathryn Immonen, Kyle Higgins, Alex Siegel & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-508-6

One of the most momentous events in Marvel Comics history occurred in 1963 when a disparate array of individual heroes banded together to stop the Incredible Hulk. The Mighty Avengers combined most of the company’s fledgling superhero line in one bright, shiny and highly commercial package and over the years the roster has waxed and waned until almost every character in their universe has appeared within those hallowed pages.

Now fifty years later with a blockbuster live-action movie about to bust wide open and the franchise set to go global, the classic backstories of five of the Assembled Avengers get a 21^st century make-over to compliment those already afforded to film favourites Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man and the Hulk.

These captivating re-interpretations and updatings originally appeared as 5 individual one-shots at the end of 2011 and are collected here as a superb primer and introduction to the deluge of Avengers material still to comeâ€¦

The revelations begin with ‘Ant-Man & the Wasp’ (by writer Roberto Aguirre-Sarcasa and artist Stephanie Hans) as, with the murder of his wife still fresh in mind, research scientist Henry Pym discovers how to shrink and is befriended by a very special ant. Soon the fringe theorist is expiating his grief by battling crooks and monsters as the Astonishing Ant-Man until flighty design student Janet Van Dyne sets her cap for him. When her father is killed by a horror from space she finally understands Pym and forces him to use his technological wizardry to transform her into an avenging human Waspâ€¦

‘The Vision’ – scripted by Kyle Higgins & Alex Siegel with art by Stephane PergerÂ – is set a few years later when the Avengers are fully established and follows the moral struggle of the eerie android who believes he was built by robotic tyrant Ultron to destroy the World’s Mightiest Heroes. That programming only lasted until his first clash with his targets after which something uniquely human grips the artificial assassinâ€¦

Mike Benson, Adam Glass and artist Dalibor Talajic retell the formative events which turned young gangsta Carl Lucas into ‘Luke Cage’: how the street punk was framed for drug running by his best friend, sent to federal lock-up, and survived an unsanctioned medical experiment which turned him into a human tank. Adding to the classic origin tale of vengeance that saw the fugitive con become a Hero for Hire is the pivotal life-changing tragedy which turned that desperate bad-man into a true champion of justiceâ€¦

‘Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver’ by Sean McKeever & Mirco Pierfederici follows the teen-aged gypsy twins as they flee human superstition and bigotry and fall into the hands of mutant terrorist Magneto. When their interminable battles against the X-Men and the increasing instability of their terrifying master proves too much they make a bold jump and apply for membership with a true band of brothersâ€¦

This captivating chronicle concludes with the boyhood of ‘Thor’ (by Kathryn Immonen & Al Barrionuevo, with additional art by Michel Lancombe & Jeff Huet) as the wild and unruly heir of Odin is drawn into constant mischief by his half-brother Loki. Their treatment of child-goddess Sif finally prompts the All-Father to take steps and Thor’s life changes forever when he is charged with overseeing the creation of the Hammer Mjolnir.

Once he proves worthy of wielding it the Thunderer-to-be immediately oversteps his bounds and Odin is compelled to teach his arrogant first-born a lesson that will change the destiny of Asgard and Earth foreverâ€¦

By wisely leaving the established canon largely unchanged, concentrating on infilling moments and addressing only the most glaringly outdated attitudes of the originals, these new stories successfully tread that fine line which means that readers completely unaware of the characters’ histories can enjoy the fundamental core of the Avengers appeal without old-timers like me feeling too alienated or patronised.

And of course, should you want to, all of those original masterpieces are readily available to enjoy in numerous reprint collections, such as the relevant Essential Editions or Marvel Masterworks series, and I strongly urge you to read those tooâ€¦

As a rule I’m always cautious about updates and reboots of classic comics material but I must admit that such things are a necessary evil as the years roll on, and when the deed is done with sensitivity and imagination (not to mention dynamic, spectacular aplomb) I can only applaud and commend the effort.
â„¢ & Â© 2012 Marvel & subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A, Italy. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

April 16, 2012April 14, 2012

Bishop: The Mountjoy Crisis

By John Ostrander, Carlos Pacheco & Cam Smith (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0211-3

The Uncanny X-Men draw their members from a wide variety of places but none more striking than the home of moody, monolithic Bishop, an energy-manipulating mutant super-cop who fell into our world from a dystopian alternate future.

He and his partners Randall and Malcolm first came to this era to eradicate a band of time-hopping evil mutants led by the malevolent maniac Fitzroy. In a cataclysmic final clash his comrades sacrificed themselves to stop the future-marauders and now only Bishop remains; trapped, traumatised and continually questioning his current status as a member of the mythical team of champions who inspired his own era’s â€œXavier’s Security Enforcersâ€.

Whilst desperate to fit in, Bishop carries a lot of baggage. He is particularly obsessed with his failure to save Malcolm and Randall, haunted by the death of his sister Shard and conflicted about the historical knowledge he cannot share: how the X-Men are fated to be betrayed and murdered by one of their ownâ€¦

This gripping and fast-paced thriller (originally released as a four-issue miniseries from December 1994 to March 1995) opens with ‘Escape from Tomorrow’ as the brooding Ã©migrÃ© from Eternity constantly and fruitlessly runs through Danger Room simulations, looking for the mistake that cost his friends’ lives.

Eventually convinced by Professor X to let it go for one night, the bluff giant accompanies Storm into the city and is accosted by the only survivor of Fitzroy’s band – an inconsequential little nothing named Bantam.

The cowering future fugitive has been hiding a terrible secret: on the fateful night of the trip back to now, Bantam had been the unwilling vessel of lethal mutant parasite Mountjoy, a psychotic predator who merges with, absorbs and eventually consumes his victims. Now Mountjoy is loose and keen on tying up loose ends – such as anyone who knows of his existenceâ€¦

Ambushed by the leech, Storm is taken over and Bishop is forced to beat the beast out of her before total absorption occursâ€¦

When the life-jacker critically wounds the XSE man, ‘One-Man Posse’ finds Bishop fighting for survival whilst plagued by memories and hallucinations as he chases Mountjoy from body to body and battle to battle, his only advantage an interactive hologram of Shard.

After the parasite kills a number of cops and civilians in spectacular but inconclusive clashes, the tension escalates in ‘Future Intense’ as Mountjoy attacks the X-Men, stealing the bodies and powers of Gambit, Psylocke, Archangel and Bishop himself; intending to destroy his most hated enemy’s soul by making him the long-dreaded betrayer of his life-long heroes in the climactic ‘Final Reckonings’â€¦

Mercifully there’s far more to the hologram of Shard than anybody suspectedâ€¦

Affording tantalising glimpses of the charismatic Bishop’s secret history whilst delivering a fast and furious, scary action-epic The Mountjoy Crisis offers a full-on frantic Fights ‘n’ Tights experience no dedicated devotee of Costumed Dramas can afford to miss.
Â© 1996 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

April 15, 2012April 17, 2012

The Mighty Thor! Collector’s Album – US and UK editions

By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & various (Lancer/Four Square)
â€œISBNsâ€ 72-125 (Lancer) & 1918 (Four Square)

Here’s another brace of Swinging Sixties â€œPop-Artâ€ compendiums celebrating the meteoric rise of the Little House that Stan, Jack and Steve Built which will probably be of interest only to incurable nostalgics, consumed collectors and historical nit-pickers, but as I’m all of them and it’s my dimeâ€¦

There had been a revolution in popular fiction during the 1950s with a huge expansion of affordable paperback books and companies developed extensive genre niche-markets, such as war, western, romance, science-fiction and fantasy.

In 1955, spurred on by the huge parallel success of cartoon and gag book collections, Bill Gaines began releasing paperback compendiums culling the best strips and features from his landmark humour magazine Mad and comics’ Silver Age was mirrored in popular publishing by an insatiable hunger for escapist fantasy fiction.

Lee’s deal with Lancer to publish selected adventures in handy paperback editions had begun a year earlier and the other funnybook publishers – including National/DC, Tower Comics and Archie – also desperate to add some credibility and even literary legitimacy to their efforts as well as increased profits these forays onto the world’s bookshelves – were caught playing catch-up in the fresh new marketplace.

Moreover, when Lancer began releasing Marvel’s Mightiest in potent and portable little collections it was simple to negotiate British iterations of those editions – although they were not as cheap and had far shorter page-counts – since thanks to Lee’s international expansion drive the characters, creators and stories were already very familiar to British readers, appearing both in Odhams‘ weekly comics Wham!, Pow!, Smash!, Fantastic and Terrific, but also (since 1959) in black and white monthly anthologies comicbooks published by Alan Class which had been bundling up reprinted material from a variety of American companies including Charlton, Tower, I.W., Gold Key, Archie, ACG and others.

As I’ve already mentioned US and UK editions vary significantly. Although both re-present – in truncated, resized monochrome – early Marvel tales, the British Four Square editions are a measly 128 pages, as opposed to the 176 page Lancer editions: necessitating missing stories and odd filler pages. Moreover the UK books are fronted by deliberately garish and poorly drawn â€œcartoony coversâ€ instead of the American art by Ditko and Kirby, as if the publishers were embarrassed by the contentâ€¦

Still, considering how many different prose publishing houses have chance their arm on such projects over the years, their editors must also have believed there was money to be made from comics tooâ€¦

Also it’s impossible to deny that the book editions were fun, thrilling and just, plain coolâ€¦

In 1966 The Mighty Thor! Collectors Album was the fourth release from Lancer, with the British edition debuting a year later and although the US and UK editions are quite similar the latter frustrating omits an entire story – the concluding chapter of a two-part story!

Also glaringly omitted from both editions was the origin so in case you’re not au fait with the modern legend here’s a quick recap just for youâ€¦

Lonely, crippled American doctor Donald Blake took a vacation in Norway only to encounter the vanguard of an alien invasion. Trapped in a cave, Blake found a gnarled old walking stick, which when struck against the ground turned him into the Norse God of Thunder!

Within moments Thor was defending the weak and smiting the wicked and as the months swiftly passed rapacious extraterrestrials, Commie dictators, costumed crazies and cheap thugs gradually gave way to a terrifying parade of fantastic worlds and incredible, mythic menacesâ€¦

A word about artwork here: modern comics are almost universally full-coloured in Britain and America, but for over a century black and white was the only real choice for most mass market publishers – additional (colour) plates being just too expensive for shoe-string operations to indulge in. Even the colour of 1960s comics was cheap and primitive and solid black line, expertly applied by master artists, was the very life-force of sequential narrative.

These days computer enhanced art can hide a multitude of weaknesses â€“ if not actual pictorial sins â€“ but back then companies lived or died on the illustrating skills of their artists: so even in basic black and white (and the printing of paperbacks was as basic as the accountants and bean-counters could get it) the Kirbys and Ditkos of the industry exploded out of those little pages and electrified the readership.

I can’t see that happening with many modern artists deprived of their slick paper and multi-million hued colour palettesâ€¦

The mystic mayhem opens with ‘The Mighty Thor Battlesâ€¦ The Lava Man!’ (from the landmark Journey into Mystery #97, October 1963, by Lee, Kirby and Don Heck) wherein an invader from the core of the planet invades the surface world just as a rift between Thor and his father Odin was established when the Lord of Asgard refused to allow his son to love Blake’s mortal nurse Jane Foster.

This acrimonious triangle was a perennial sub-plot that fuelled many attempts to humanise Thor, because already he was a hero too powerful for most villains to cope withâ€¦

That titanic tussle was followed by ‘Giants Walk the Earth!’ (Lee, Kirby & Chic Stone, from Journey into Mystery #104, May 1964) the revolutionary saga where, for the first time, Kirby’s imagination was given full play as trickster god and wicked step-brother Loki tricked Odin into visiting Earth, only to release ancient elemental foes Surtur and Skagg, the Storm Giant from Asgardian bondage and bid them kill the All-Fatherâ€¦.

This staggering cosmic clash saw noble gods bestriding the Earth, battling demonic evil in a new Heroic Age and this greater role for the Asgardian supporting cast set the scene for a far grander, more epic feel.

Also from JiM #97 comes the premiere instalment of a spectacular back-up series. ‘Tales of Asgard – Home of the mighty Norse Gods’ gave Kirby a place to indulge his fascination with legends. Initially adapting classic tales but eventually with all-new material particular to the Marvel pantheon, he built his own cosmos and mythology, which underpinned the company’s entire continuity. This first saga, scripted by Lee and inked by George Bell (AKA George Roussos) outlined the birth of the gods, the origin of the world and the creation of the World Tree Yggdrasil.

The British edition then concludes with ‘The Stronger I Am, the Sooner I Die!’ from JiM #114, March 1965, which began a two-part tale introducing a new villain of the sort Kirby excelled at, a vicious thug who suddenly lucked into overwhelming power, courtesy of the ever-scheming God of Evil.

Crafted by Lee, Kirby & Stone it saw Loki imbue hardened felon Crusher Creel with the magical ability to duplicate the strength and attributes of anything he touched and subsequently go on a brutal and frenzied rampageâ€¦

However, if you’d stuck with the American edition you’d also enjoy the senses-shattering finale as Thor demonstrated not just his power but also his wits in a blockbusting demonstration of ‘The Vengeance of the Thunder God’ (inked by Frank Giacoia as the pseudonymous Frankie Ray, which originally appeared in issue #115 from April 1965)â€¦

As someone who bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years – including the constantly recycled reprints in British weeklies from the mid-sixties to the 1980s – I have to admit that the glossy classic paperback editions have a charm and attraction all their own even if they are heavily edited and abridged and rather disturbingly printed in both portrait and landscape formatâ€¦

If you’ve not read these tales before then there are certainly better places to do so (such as the pertinent Essential or Marvel Masterwork volumes) but even with all the archaic and just plain dumb bits these books are still fabulous super-hero sagas with beautiful art that will never stale or wither, and for us backward looking Baby-boomers these nostalgic pocket tomes have an incomprehensible allure that logic just can’t tarnish or taintâ€¦
Â© 1966 and 1967 Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved.

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