Category: Marvel Superheroes

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X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back


By Kathryn Immonen & Sara Pichelli (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4676-6

Pixie is Megan Gwynn, a purportedly Welsh mutant with fairy wings, a sparkly dust which causes hallucinations, a talent for mass teleportation and an affinity for sorcery. In her earlier appearances she battled necromantic monster Belasco and former New Mutant Magik and gained an eldritch super-weapon called the Souldagger which usually reposes safely inside her chest.

Originally something of a minor pest and a perennial X-Man-in-training, she has become a key player in the fortunes of the World’s Most Harried sub-species, having survived the numerous slaughters which have decimated her classmates, perpetual mystic attacks from assorted devils and elder gods such as the N’Garai and repeated assaults by mutant-hunters of all description.

That’s pretty much all you need to know (although the rest of her immensely convoluted back-story does make for interesting and entertaining reading) to enjoy this delightful, game-changing tale – originally released as a 4-part miniseries in 2010 – which set up the elfin X-Man for a far bigger role in the madcap mutant multiverse.

Written by Kathryn Immonen in a breezy, sassy girl-power style and superbly illustrated by Sara Pichelli, the action kicks off with Megan and BFFs Ruth Aldine, Laura Kinney, Hisako Ichiki and Cessily Kincaid strutting their stuff as the most popular girls in High School – as usual.

Only thing is Pixie, Blindfold, X-23, Armor and Mercury aren’t simple spoiled human brats but mutant warriors in training, and none of them particularly like the fairy dust flinger anyway…

Megan is in some distress: the comforting reality of a normal – if appallingly obnoxious and privileged – life is constantly unravelling and revealing glimpses of demons, monsters and excessive violence. Why is she constantly seeing such things?

Meanwhile on Utopia Island, isolated enclave of Earth’s few remaining Homo Superior, Pixie’s mother – and a genuine Faerie elder – has come looking for her daughter with the news that her father wasn’t actually the man who sired her…

Moreover a headcount reveals Mercury, Armor, X-23 and Pixie are missing, leaving Blindfold and classmates Rockslide and Anole to reluctantly seek help from baffled and harassed teachers Psylocke and Nightcrawler…

The missing girls have been abducted by an ambitious and overreaching demon dubbed Saturnine who is feeding them all tailored illusions powered by Megan’s own hallucinogenic dust. The foul hell-beast had a plan to achieve ultimate power by bringing Megan’s dark side out and capturing her Fey mother, but increasingly, Pixie is reshaping the unreal fantasy world to suit her own tastes and everything is slowly sliding out of his control…

Back on Utopia, Nightcrawler and the kids have called in snarky headmistress Emma Frost, and the White Queen is extremely unhappy to be bothered with such trifles. Only when the precognitive Blindfold begins experiencing terrible future-flashes does Frost take executive action in her own draconian manner…

In the otherworldly demon-dungeon Pixie is beginning to turn, attacking her friends with the eldritch Souldagger just as her still-searching mother tracks down Megan’s siblings: equally aberrant daughters of her beguiling mutant birth-father.

It appears Megan is the child of one of the X-Men’s most insidious enemies…

In Saturnine’s lair things are not going well. Pixie’s resistance is threatening to overturn all his multifarious plans. Moreover, the mutant maid’s distress should have drawn her puissant mother into his trap but “Mrs. Gwynn” is still conspicuously absent. To cap it all, the X-Girls Pixie stabbed with her Souldagger have been cleansed of her mystic glamours and are attempting to break free…

It all hits the fan at once as Pixie rejects Saturnine’s illusions just as X-23, Mercury and Armor bust loose at the very instant Mrs. Gwynn and Megan’s extremely wicked step-sisters arrive. Hard on their heels are an extremely upset Emma Frost with a squad of X-Men and the chaotic battle lines are drawn for apocalyptic confrontation…

His plans all in tatters and resorting to mindless violence at last, the demonic guardian of the Road of Lost Souls and his unholy hordes are astounded when Pixie seemingly turns on her rescuers and allies before giving Saturnine a mighty soulsword all of his own and the key to ultimate power…

Fast-paced, action-packed but still laced with devilishly clever sharp-clawed humour, this is a uncomplicated Fights ‘n’ Tights thriller that should appeal as much to casual girl readers as died-in-the-spandex aging X-Fans.

© 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Stan Lee Presents the Amazing Spider-Man volume 2


By Stan Lee & Steve Ditko, with Jack Kirby (Marvel/Pocket Books)
ISBN: 978-0-67181-444-1

Perhaps I have a tendency to over-think things regarding the world of graphic narrative, but it seems to me that the medium, as much as the message, radically affects the way we interpret our loves and fascinations. Take this pint-sized full-colour treat from 1978.

It’s easy to assume that a quickly resized, repackaged paperback book collection of the early comics extravaganzas was just another Marvel cash-cow in their perennial “flood the marketplace” sales strategy – and maybe it was – but as someone who bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years I have to admit that this compact version has a distinct charm and attraction all its own…

During the Marvel Renaissance of the early 1960’s Stan Lee & Jack Kirby followed the same path which had worked so tellingly for DC Comics, but with less obviously successful results.

This is another brilliant glimpse at how our industry’s gradual inclusion into mainstream literature began and is one more breathtaking paperback package for action fans and nostalgia lovers, offering yet another chance to enjoy some of the best and most influential comics stories of all time.

After a few abortive attempts in the 1960s to storm the shelves of bookstores and libraries, from the mid-1970s Marvel made a concerted and comprehensive effort to get their wares into more socially acceptable formats. As the decade closed, purpose-built graphic collections and a string of new prose adventures tailored to feed into their all-encompassing continuity began oh, so slowly to appear.

Whereas the merits of the latter are a matter for a different review, the company’s careful reformatting of classic comics adventures were generally excellent; a superb and recurring effort to generate back-history primers and a perfect – if perilous – alternative venue to introduce fresh readers to their unique worlds.

The dream project was never better represented than in this classy little crime-busting collection. Marvel was frequently described as “the House that Jack Built” and King Kirby’s contributions are undeniable and inescapable in the creation of a new kind of comicbook story-telling, but there was another unique visionary toiling at Atlas-Comics-as-was: one whose creativity and even philosophy seemed diametrically opposed to the bludgeoning power, vast imaginative scope and clean, broad lines of Kirby’s ever-expanding search for the external and infinite.

Steve Ditko was quiet and unassuming, voluntarily diffident to the point of invisibility, though his work was both subtle and striking.

Innovative, meticulously polished, and often displaying genuine warmth and affection, Ditko’s art and storytelling always managed to capture minute human detail as he ever explored the man within. He found heroism, humour and ultimate evil; all contained within the frail but noble confines of humanity’s scope and consciousness. His drawing could be oddly disquieting… and, when he wanted, certainly scary.

Drawing extremely well-received monster and mystery tales for Stan Lee, Ditko had been given his own title. Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy featured a subtler brand of yarn than Rampaging Aliens and Furry Underpants Monsters which, though individually entertaining, had been slowly losing traction in the world of comics ever since National/DC had successfully reintroduced costumed heroes.

Lee & Kirby had responded with Fantastic Four and the ahead-of-its-time Incredible Hulk but there was no indication of the renaissance to come when the already cancelled Amazing Fantasy #15 cover-featured a brand new and somewhat eerie adventure character.

Of course, by now you’re all aware of how outcast, geeky school kid Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and, after seeking to cash-in on the astonishing abilities he developed, suffered an irreconcilable personal tragedy and determined henceforward to always use his powers to help those in dire need…

After a shaky start The Amazing Spider-Man quickly became a popular sensation with kids of all ages, rivalling the creative powerhouse that was Lee & Kirby’s Fantastic Four and soon the quirky, charming action-packed comics soap-opera would become the model for an entire generation of younger heroes elbowing aside the staid, (relatively) old costumed-crimebusters of previous publications.

This second resized, repackaged Fights ‘n’ Tights bonanza (reprising Amazing Spider-Man #7-13 from 1963-1964) opens, after the mandatory Stan Lee Prologue, with an encore appearance of the Wall-crawler’s first super-powered foe, as a murderous septuagenarian flying bandit at first defeated his juvenile nemesis before falling to the Web-spinner’s boundless bravery and ingenuity in a spectacular duel above the city in ‘The Return of the Vulture’.

Fun and youthful hi-jinks were a signature feature of the series, as was Parker’s budding romance with “older woman” Betty Brant, a secretary at the Daily Bugle where Peter Parker worked part-time.

Such “Salad days” exuberance was the underlying drive in #8′s lead tale ‘The Living Brain!’ when an ambulatory robot calculator threatened to expose Spider-Man’s secret identity before running amok at beleaguered Midtown High, just as Parker was finally beating the stuffings out of school bully and personal gadfly Flash Thompson.

This riotous romp was accompanied by ‘Spiderman Tackles the Torch!’ (a short and sweet vignette drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Ditko) wherein a boisterous wall-crawler gate-crashed a beach party thrown by the flaming hero’s girlfriend… with explosive consequences.

Amazing Spider-Man #9 was a qualitative step-up in dramatic terms as Peter’s aged Aunt May was revealed to be chronically ill – adding to the lad’s financial woes – and the action was supplied by ‘The Man Called Electro!’ a super-criminal with grand aspirations.

Spider-Man was always a loner, never far from the dark, grimy streets filled with small-time thugs and criminals and with this tale, wherein he also quells a prison riot single handed, Ditko’s preference for tales of gangersterism began to show through; a predilection confirmed in #10′s ‘The Enforcers!’, a classy mystery where a masked mastermind known as the Big Man used a position of trust at the Bugle to organize all the New York mobs into one unbeatable army against decency.

Longer plot-strands were also introduced as Betty mysteriously vanished (her fate to be revealed in the next issue and here the next chapter), but most fans remember this one for the spectacularly climactic seven-page fight scene in an underworld chop-shop that has still never been topped for action-choreography.

The taint of tragedy again touched Parker with a magical two-part adventure ‘Turning Point’ and ‘Unmasked by Dr. Octopus!’ which saw the return of the lethally deranged and deformed scientist – complete with formidable mentally-controlled metal tentacles – and the disclosure of a long-hidden secret which had haunted poor Betty Brant for years.

The dark, doom-filled tale of extortion and excoriating tension stretched from Philadelphia to the Bronx Zoo and cannily tempered the trenchant melodrama with stunning fight scenes in unusual and exotic locations, before culminating in a truly staggering super-powered duel as only the masterful Ditko could orchestrate it.

This tension-drenched tiny tome concludes with the introduction of a new super-threat and ‘The Menace of Mysterio!’ as a seemingly eldritch bounty-hunter hired by Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson to capture Spider-Man eventually revealed his own dark agenda.

Of course the menace was only ended after another mind-boggling battle, this time through the various exotic sets and props of a TV studio…

These mini-masterpieces of drama, action and suspense immaculately demonstrated the indomitable nature of this perfect American hero, and I suppose in the final reckoning how you come to the material is largely irrelevant; just as long as you do…

These immortal epics are available in numerous formats.
© 1978 Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved.

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Rogue


By Howard Mackie & Mike Wieringo (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0171-0

The mutant mystery woman known as Rogue began life as a super-villain and member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: a disturbed young girl cursed with a power that stole traits, abilities and memories from anybody who touched her skin.

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

After doing just such to Ms. Marvel whilst a member of the Brotherhood, Rogue joined the X-Men in sheer desperation and slowly became a trusted team-player, but she still had her secrets…

Played as a “bad-girl” and mystery woman for years, Rogue grew to become one of the most popular characters in the excessively large cast, and in 1995 won her own beautifully illustrated 4-issue miniseries which at last revealed a few more tantalising secrets, whilst dragging her through a very personal crisis that struck right to the heart of the burgeoning and increasingly convoluted X-franchise continuity…

Written by Howard Mackie, beautifully drawn by the late and much-missed Mike Wieringo and inked by X-Men veteran Terry Austin, the tale opens with ‘An Affair to Remember’ as the mighty, mysterious mutant is called to Mississippi and the bedside of a comatose boy named Cody.

Meanwhile in New Orleans the deadly External Candra attends a funeral for the recently deceased ruler of the Assassins’ Guild. The all-powerful mutant goddess bears the X-Men a grudge and wants to use leader-elect Bella Donna to exact her vengeance…

Donna’s ex-husband is Remy Lebeau and the Assassin-mistress has her own scores to settle with the man now known as Gambit and his new paramour…

Suffering from a love that cannot be realised, Gambit and Rogue have grown close. Now she reveals how, as kids, Cody was the first boy to kiss her and how her burgeoning power stole his entire vitality in that first tender moment, plunging him into an irreversible slumber and locking his memories within her…

Now Cody’s body is failing, but as Rogue visits him super-powered assassins attack and steal his inert body. Bella Donna, herself a victim of Rogue’s memory-stealing curse, appears as the assassins flee and warns the heartbroken mutant that everything she cares for will be taken from her…

In ‘Choices’ Rogue gets a much-needed heads-up from creole witch-woman Tante Mattie – currently the only thing keeping Cody from lingering death – and a warning to rush to Gambit’s side, whilst in New Orleans the Mistress of Death begins to realise the folly of her relationship with the autocratic External…

When Gambit is ambushed by Bella Donna’s agents, Rogue spectacularly saves his bacon but cannot bring herself to accept his help in finding Cody.

Flying alone to “The Big Easy” she plunges straight into an army of Bella Donna’s most lethal guildsmen, all powerfully augmented by Candra’s unlimited mutant might…

‘The Gauntlet’ finds Rogue battling hard and hopelessly, with Gambit frantically rushing to her aid, despite an injunction over his head. When he married Bella, Lebeau was an heir of the Thieves Guild and their union was intended to end a centuries-old rivalry, but his wilful nature scotched those plans and now he is forbidden from entering New Orleans on pain of death.

Despite one last warning from an old comrade, Gambit plunges heedlessly into the fray and is quickly overcome, but against all odds Rogue has battled her way through and is looking for a final confrontation…

One the double-dealing Candra is eager to facilitate, as she transports the exhausted Rogue to Bella Donna’s lair, before neutralising the frenzied foes’ amazing abilities and forcing them to battle with nothing more than fists and nails and mortal muscles…

The end comes brutally in ‘Back to Life!’ as, on the edge of victory, the Mistress of Assassins is again betrayed by the ruthlessly manipulative External, whose true interest all along has been Gambit…

Meanwhile the severely-wounded Rogue has finally overcome Bella Donna and still found determination enough to face and thwart Candra…

…And in the still and silent aftermath the battered but unbowed Southern Siren is granted one final moving moment with Cody…

Furiously fast-paced and action-stuffed, this gloriously illustrated, mile-a-minute mutant mayhem – with a crazed cod-Cajun flavour to it – is a fearsomely full-on Fights ‘n’ Tights thriller that will astound and delight all fans of the genre.
© 1995 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Wolverine and the X-Men: Regenesis


By Jason Aaron, Chris Bachalo, Duncan Rouleau, Matteo Scalera, Nick Bradshaw & others (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-513-0

Radical revision – or at least the appearance of such – is a cornerstone of modern comics. There must be a constant changing of the guard, a shifting of scene and milieu and, in latter times, a regular diet of death, resurrection and rebirth. However, with such regular re-fitting, even getting back to basics can be just as new and fresh as completely starting over…

A case in point is this wonderfully fun and frolicsome return to the old days, set immediately after the catastrophic events of X-Men Schism.

What You’ll Need To Know…

When the world’s mutant population was reduced to a couple of hundred desperate souls, most of them banded together in self-imposed exile on Utopia Island in San Francisco Bay, in a defensive enclave led and defended by the X-Men. Although generally welcomed by most of the easygoing residents of the city, tensions were high and leader Cyclops ran the colony in an increasingly draconian and military manner.

His relationship with war-weary second-in-command Wolverine was slowly, inexorably deteriorating as they squabbled over the methods and ideology of the X-nation, each interpreting the idealistic, Cooperative Co-existence dream of Professor Charles Xavier in increasingly different ways…

Matters came to head after Logan refused to train the latest batch of mutant children as warriors, concerned that they were being cheated of their childhoods. Then 16-year old anarchist telepath Quentin Quire – who called himself Kid Omega – provoked a terrified armed response from humanity by disrupting an arms-limitation conference intended to convince Homo Sapiens to abandon their “defensive” anti-mutant weapons – giant robotic Sentinels. All hell broke loose…

With the world once again panicked into insanity and individual nations declaring war on Homo Superior, the assembled mutants and assorted superheroes are kept busy saving humans from their own bellicose paranoid folly, allowing a bunch of very human, sociopathic rich kids to make a lethal power-play against their own parents.

The greedy, remorseless, ambitious and impatient scions of munitions millionaires, human traffickers and deranged scientists had waited too long for what they considered theirs and, after murdering their adult guardians, took over the Hellfire Club to initiate a bold scheme of ruling the Earth before they hit puberty…

Their cynical, vicious plan involved using the threat of mutants to stampede humans into buying the Club’s new, outrageously expensive Super-Sentinels, profiting from death and terror as the wisely wealthy always had…

In a devastating, if brief, war the embattled Utopians become the unwitting target of increasingly bloody attacks and Cyclops and Wolverine catastrophically clashed over the role of the super-powered children in their care, and although Utopia was ultimately saved in the nick of time, the policy-split led to a sundering of the Mutants as Wolverine took many of the youngest kids and some of Cyclops’ oldest, but most disappointed and disaffected, friends to a place where they could attempt to rekindle Xavier’s first endeavour – a school where mutants could live relatively normal lives…

The separation hopefully left Utopia Island as the highly visible fortress against and target for human aggression; populated by warriors and militaristic genocide-survivors ready to take the Race – or perhaps more correctly, Species – War to the oppressors, with the kids allowed to grow up in peace and safety…

Of course it didn’t work out that way…

Following on from the epochal events of X-Men Schism, this utterly engrossing tome (collecting Wolverine and the X-Men #1-7, from 2011) returns to the far lighter, fun-laced thrills of the 1960s Merry Mutants and opens with a 3-part epic in ‘Welcome to the X-Men… Now Die!’

Reluctant and decidedly unsure headmaster Wolverine is getting a much needed pep-talk from Professor X as the new Jean Grey School for Higher Learning opens on the site of the old X-Mansion…

Nervously occupying a daily evolving super-scientific facility, the faculty staff includes the Beast, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Husk, Cyclops’ telepathic daughter Rachel Grey and other former X-Men, whilst the ever-growing student population comprises a number of earthly mutants old and new and even selected aliens such as a gentle and compassionate Brood and the obnoxious, troublesome, belligerent spoiled-brat heir to the star-spanning Shi’ar.

Admittedly Lord Kubark was only grudgingly accepted in return for past favours and cutting-edge alien tech…

Even as Chief administrator Kitty desperately attempts to convince the local School Board Inspectors that the institution poses no threat to the community or kids, the first crisis erupts as Kade Kilgore, Black King of the pre-pubescent Hellfire Club, launches an attack on the school, which he considers a personal affront to his plans.

Launching an attack by his lab-grown army of Frankenstein’s Monsters, Kade mischievously transforms the inspectors into ravening horrors. With the very land under the establishment turned into a colossal monster determined to eradicate everything above it, things look bleak until Iceman leads the other teachers in a spirited counterattack.

Quire is deemed an “Omega-level threat” by the Avengers, so Wolverine’s plans to turn him into a socialised asset are being closely scrutinised by Captain America, but when Rachel – with the unsuspected aid of Kid Omega – divines that the tectonic assault is being perpetrated by a cloned and brainwashed seed of Krakoa the Living Island (see Marvel Masterworks volume 11) the tide begins to turn…

With a little deft psychic surgery by the arrogant anarchist – for reasons even he can’t really explain – the all-terrain terror becomes the latest addition to the student body and repulses the other attacks after which Wolverine and cameo-star Matt “Daredevil” Murdock retaliate in a way little Kade least expects…

In a tale delightfully depicted by Nick Bradshaw and with the scene firmly set, the tone switches to raucous, action-packed hilarity as the long-suffering faculty come to grips with the unique daily challenges presented by their charges. The cyborg assassin and guest lecturer Deathlok foreshadows horrors to come when he demonstrates his Tachyon vision on the class. Broodling Broo, Shi’ar Student Prince Kid Gladiator and particularly Genesis (a boyish clone of arch-horror Apocalypse) hear predictions that give everyone cause for concern…

Meanwhile, another First-Class X-Man returns to the fold; but Warren Worthington is not the Angel of old and gives old friends Iceman and the Beast extreme cause for concern…

Of course the one with most cause for concern is celibate headmistress Kitty Pryde who went to bed with a headache and woke up eight months pregnant…

Trouble is mounting and the school is close to bankruptcy. Desperate for funds, Wolverine takes Kid Omega to an alien gambling station in a dubious ploy to win billions through Quire’s psionic abilities, whilst at the school the Beast diagnoses the true cause of Kitty’s condition. Somehow she’s been infected by a horde of microscopic Brood (the real, ghastly, voracious body-stealing, egg-implanting cosmic horror kind utterly unlike the erudite, genteel freak Broo), and after the headstrong Kid Gladiator invades her body via shrinking technology, the Beast has no choice but to follow, leading a determined team of students on a Fantastic Voyage into the Headmistress’ bloodstream…

Meanwhile, in space a deadly alien hunter who uses Brood as hunting dogs is hurtling towards Earth and the School…

On Planet Sin, Wolverine and Quentin are making millions but have underestimated the casino owners’ ingenuity and determination to discourage cheating, whilst within Kitty’s circulatory system, the mutants’ school field trip is slowly eradicating the micro-Brood infestation. However, when full-sized Brood-warriors invade the School, young Broo and Kitty are forced into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse simply to survive before über-alien Xanto Starblood reveals himself as the cause of all their woes…

An Extreme Xeno-Zoolologist, Starblood’s entire universe-view is offended by the existence of a benign Broodling and he’s taken drastic measures to correct the Cosmos’ mistake, but even as the micro-students finish cleaning up Kitty’s small parasite problem Broo, pushed to far, suddenly proves to the alien academic that he’s not that far removed from his mercilessly marauding forebears…

And in deep space, Quire pilots the ship back from Planet Sin. He and Wolverine have escaped the Gambler’s wrath… but hardly intact…

Fast, furious, funny and fulfilling, the whole splendid affair was scripted by the wickedly sharp Jason Aaron, illustrated by Chris Bachalo, Duncan Rouleau, Matteo Scalera and Nick Bradshaw with additional inking from Jaime Mendoza, Tim Townsend, Al Vey, Mark Irwin, Victor Olazaba, Walden Wong, Norman Lee, Jay Leisten & Cam Smith. As always there’s a glorious gallery of covers and variants from the likes of Bachalo, Townsend, Bradshaw, Frank Cho, Ed McGuinness and Mark Brooks.

If you crave full-on, uncomplicated yet witty and rewarding Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction this is another near-perfect one-stop shop for your edification and delectation.

™ & © 2011, 2012 Marvel and subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A, Italy. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

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Captain America: Two Americas


By Ed Brubaker, Luke Ross, Butch Guice, Rick Magyar, Dean White & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4511-0

The Star Spangled Avenger was created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby at the end of 1940 and launched in his own title (Captain America Comics, #1 cover-dated March 1941) with overwhelming success. He was the absolute and undisputed star of Timely (now Marvel) Comics’ “Big Three” – the other two being the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner. He was also among the very first to fade at the end of the Golden Age.

When the Korean War and Communist aggression dominated the American psyche in the early 1950s he was briefly revived – with the Torch and Sub-Mariner – in 1953 before sinking once more into obscurity until a resurgent Marvel Comics once more brought him back in Avengers #4.

It was March 1964 and the Vietnam conflict was just beginning to pervade the minds of the American public…

This time he stuck around. Whilst perpetually agonising over the death of his young sidekick (James Buchanan Barnes AKA Bucky) in the final days of the war, the resurrected Steve Rogers first stole the show in the Avengers, then promptly graduated to his own series and title as well. He waxed and waned through the most turbulent period of social change in US history, but always struggled to find an ideological niche and stable footing in the modern world.

Eventually, whilst another morally suspect war raged in the real world, during the Marvel event known as Civil War he became an anti-government rebel and was assassinated on the steps of a Federal Courthouse.

Over the course of three volumes he was replaced by that always assumed-dead sidekick. In fact Bucky had been captured by the Soviets and turned into their own super-agent, The Winter Soldier.

Once rescued from his unwanted spy-role the artificially youthful and part-cyborg Barnes reluctantly stepped into his mentor’s big crimson boots…

This politically-charged thriller written by Ed Brubaker collects the one-shot Captain America: Who Will Wield the Shield? and issues #602-605 of the monthly comicbook, set squarely in the immediate aftermath of the original Star-Spangled Avenger’s return from the dead (details of which can be found in Captain America Reborn)…

The rabble-rousing tale of ideology and patriotism begins with that one-shot (illustrated by Luke Ross and Butch Guice), as the former Winter Soldier ponders his future in the wake of the “real” Captain America’s resurrection and considers returning the role and unique Star-emblazoned disc to its rightful owner.

Meanwhile Steve Rogers, fresh from a timeless suspension where he perpetually relived his life over and again, combats the haunting memories by taking to the snow-bound streets where he encounters his replacement and super-spy Black Widow battling the ferociously brutal Mr. Hyde.

Content to merely observe his old partner at first, he is soon invited to join the fray and, after the dust settles, the comrades-in-arms come to an understanding. Bucky Barnes will stay as the one and only Sentinel of Liberty: the President of the USA has a far more strategic role in mind for his mentor Steven Rogers…

One that will have to wait for another tale as this tome jumps directly to the eponymous ‘Two Americas’ (with art by Ross, Guice & Rick Magyar) and picks up the trail of the deranged duplicate who briefly played Captain America in the 1950s whilst the original languished in icy hibernation in the arctic.

William Burnside was a student from Boise, Idaho, obsessed with Captain America. The lad had ferreted out the hero’s true name, rediscovered most of the super-soldier serum which had created the Star-Spangled Avenger and even had his name and features changed to perfectly mimic the Missing-In-Action Steve Rogers.

Volunteering his services to the FBI, then conducting a nationwide war on spies, subversives and suspected commies, Burnside and impressionable youngster Jack Monroe briefly became Captain America and Bucky; crushing every perceived threat to the nation.

Sadly it soon became apparent that their definition of such included not just criminals but also non-whites, independent women and anybody who disagreed with the government…

After a few short months the reactionary patriot had to be forcibly “retired” as the super-soldier serum he and Monroe used turned them into super-strong, raving, racist paranoids.

Years later when the fascistic facsimiles escaped their suspended animation in Federal prison they attacked the real Sentinel of Liberty only to be defeated by Cap, his partner Sam Wilson (AKA the Falcon) and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter. Although Monroe was eventually cured, Burnside’s psychosis was too deeply rooted and he returned many times to tangle with the man he felt had betrayed the real America…

Used most recently as a pawn of the Red Skull, malign psychologist Dr. Faustus and genetic trickster Arnim Zola in a plot to plant a Nazi stooge in the Oval Office, the dark Captain America had escaped and fled to the nation’s heartland.

When police in Idaho raided a den of reactionary separatist fanatics the Watchdogs, they were slaughtered by the delusional Sentinel of Liberty who had aligned himself with them in a crazed bid to take back the nation for right-thinking ordinary people like himself.

Alerted by rogue agent Nick Fury, Barnes and the Falcon head for the economically depressed Midwest where the crumbling economy and lack of prospects has driven hard-pressed hardworking folk into the open arms of the seditionists.

Intending to infiltrate the movement now led by the faux Captain America, things go badly wrong when Burnside recognises Barnes from his college researches…

Intent on starting a second American Revolution, the crazed patriot ambushes the newest Cap and the Falcon and, whilst planning to set off the biggest bomb in history against the Hoover Dam, demands that Barnes returns to his first and proper heroic identity to become the Bucky to Burnside’s one-and-only Captain America…

Determined to convince the equally time-lost Winter Soldier that modern America must be destroyed and the Good Old Days restored, Burnside is still savvy enough to use the hostage Falcon to achieve his ends, but far too prejudiced to accept that a mere black man – a flunky sidekick – could be competent enough to foil his plans…

Imprisoned on a train packed with explosives, Sam busts free and trashes his Watchdog jailers and with the aid of a simple working Joe (yes, a proper “ordinary American”) diverts the runaway bomb, whilst Burnside and his fanatics invade Hoover Dam with an even more devastating device, ready to send a message that will spell the end of the country and signal the return of the madman’s cherished if illusory idealised America.

However when Bucky overhears that the Falcon is safe he immediately lashes out, tackling the old world warrior head-on and stopping the insane incursion with ruthless efficiency…

This thoroughly readable and exceedingly pretty collection also includes a cover and variant gallery from Gerald Parel, Alan Davis, Mark Farmer and Javier Rodriguez for art lovers.

A fascinating examination of political idealism and the mutability of patriotism, this sharp and scary saga avoids the usual trap of depending too much upon a working knowledge of Marvel continuity and provides in situ what little back-story new readers might need, fairly thundering along to its climactic conclusion, providing thrills, spills and chills in full measure for all fans of Fights ‘n’ Tights action.
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Avengers: X Sanction


By Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness & Dexter Vines (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-514-7

As the new Avengers film screens across the world, Marvel has released more books and trade paperback collections to maximise exposure and cater to those movie fans wanting to follow up the cinematic exposure with a comicbook experience.

This particular short and sweet saga from megastar scripter Jeph Loeb & the art team supreme Ed McGuinness & Dexter Vines engagingly entangles two filmic franchises as the World’s Mightiest Superheroes and Marvel’s misunderstood mutants clash in a time-busting tale originally released at the end of 2011 as the 4-part miniseries Avengers: X Sanction.

And that was merely the prologue to a summer-long publishing event which pitted Avengers against X-Men in a catastrophic all-out war…

Superbly self-contained, this epic encounter opens with Captain America, Iron Man, Red Hulk, Wolverine, Spider-Man and other heroes responding to a mass-escape by super-villains from the Lethal Legion when the Falcon is shot by a hidden sniper and spirited away…

Only the Sentinel of Liberty notices something amiss and follows the abductor to a freighter in the harbour, where he finds his friend trapped in a containment tube and wired to a colossal cache of explosives. The sniper is revealed as sometime-ally Nathan Summers AKA Cable, a mutant warrior from the far future possessing awesome psionic abilities yet cursed with an incurable, progressive techno-organic virus which is inexorably consuming his flesh and only held in check by the victim’s indomitable force of will…

In temporally tantalising forward flashbacks it is revealed that Cable is at last succumbing to his infection. He has a day to live and has travelled back from the end of time to unmake history and save his daughter Hope (destined to prevent the planet’s doom) from being killed. Unfortunately that can only be achieved by murdering the Avengers…

After a spectacular battle Cable also subdues Captain America just as Iron Man notices his missing comrades and tracks them to the Hudson River. Plagued by half memories and lost moments with Hope, Cable attacks and after a shattering struggle also overwhelms the Armoured Avenger, only to be ambushed by the brutally efficient Red Hulk…

Wracked by the final stages of his fleshly consumption, Cable is vastly overmatched, even with the timely martial assistance of his future mentor Blaquesmith, but Summers’ handicap becomes an advantage when the techno-organic contagion abandons his dying frame and infects the Crimson Colossus…

As Cable prepares to execute his targets, X-Men Cyclops and Hope burst in, intent on talking him down. Faced with his father and imminently endangered daughter (an outrageously long and overly-complicated time travel story which isn’t germane or necessary to know here: just Google it afterwards, ok?), Cable falters but can’t be dissuaded…

Just as he prepares to save the future by killing everyone present, the final players arrive when Spider-Man and Wolverine crash in…

Unable to stop and mere minutes from his own end, Cable attacks again knowing that no sacrifice is too great to prevent the death of Hope and the salvation of Earth…

Fast, furious and wickedly compelling, this time-twisting all-action thriller delivers a mighty punch without any real necessity to study beforehand that comics-continuity veterans and film-fed newbies alike will relish.

The comicbooks in this short series also sported a host of variant covers and the extensive gallery at the back includes simply stunning images from McGuinness, Bryan Hitch, Joe Quesada, Carlo Pagulayan, Stephen Platt, Ian Churchill, Steve Skroce and four from Leinil Francis Yu to delight and astound the artistically astute amongst you.

™ & © 2012 Marvel and subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A, Italy. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

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Hulk: Skaar, Son of Hulk


By Greg Pak, Ron Garney, Jackson Guice & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851- (hb)   978-0-7851-2714-7 (tpb)

Once upon a time, Bruce Banner was a military scientist accidentally caught in a gamma bomb blast of his own devising. As a result, stress or other factors caused him to regularly transform into a gigantic green monster of unstoppable strength and fury. As both occasional hero and mindless monster he has rampaged across the Marvel Universe for decades, becoming one of Marvel’s most popular comicbook features and multi-media titans.

As such, he has often undergone radical changes in scope and format to keep his stories fresh and his exploits explosively compelling…

In recent years the number of Gamma-mutated monsters rampaging across the Marvel landscape has proliferated to inconceivable proportions. The days of Banner getting angry and going Green at the drop of a hat are long gone, so anybody taking their cues from the TV or movie incarnations will be wise to assume a level of unavoidable confusion. There are now numerous assorted Hulks, She-Hulks, Abominations and all kinds of ancillary atomic berserkers roaming the planet, so be prepared to experience a little confusion if you’re coming to this particular character cold. Nevertheless these always epic stories are generally worth the effort so persist if you can.

During the more than year-long ‘Planet Hulk’ storyline of 2006-2007, the Jade Juggernaut was exiled in space and crashed on the distant, brutally primitive world Sakarr, where he was enslaved as a gladiator before rising to briefly become messiah-king of the entire place by defeating the terrifying Red King.

He married an incredibly powerful once-enemy with ancient, ancestral tectonic gifts dubbed Caiera the Oldstrong, unknowingly spawned a son, and lost his new wife when the ship that brought him to Sakaar exploded…

Bereft and enraged he returned to Earth, oblivious of what he had left behind…

This collection gathers the first six issues of the spin-off series Skaar, Son of Hulk, the one -shot Savage World of Sakaar and a short piece from the anthology Hulk Family: Green Genes covering August 2008 – February 2009, written in its entirety by film director and screenwriter Greg Pak. Each issue of Son of Hulk was divided into a main feature illustrated by Ron Garney and/or Jackson “Butch” Guice and an ancillary back-up ‘Shadow Tales’ with Guice supplying all the drawing, and everything was lavishly coloured by Paul Mounts.

The blockbusting barbarian action begins with a quick and ominous recap before the gestating egg of the interplanetary lovers, left to quicken in a lake of fire when the shuttle exploded, gives violent birth to a monstrous green child that easily defeats the myriad horrors and beasts of the burning swamps. Already fast, tough and durable, the bestial boy screams its name and can apparently hear the voice of his deceased Oldstrong mother as he battles his way out of his ‘Cradle of Fire’…

Within a month, the rapidly maturing waif he has saved a group of survivors from the Red King’s successor, Axeman Bone, who has ordered his armies to kill every newborn they can find, acting on prophecies offered by the enigmatic shadow-priests he has enslaved…

A year later the Son of Hulk is finally assassinated by the dragon-riding Bone and a messianic movement begun by the re-enslaved masses falters. But if Skaar is dead then who or what is the approximately teen-aged, mute, green-skinned youth who attacks the bloody tyrant’s camp..?

Elderly ex-slave Old Sam claims that it’s only a beast from the swamps, but he’s been secretly educating the creature for his own ends. When Skaar crushes Bone and his cohort of war-reptiles, the dictator’s imperial rival Princess Omaka senses a potential threat – or ally – in ‘Blood of the Dragon’…

‘Shadow Tales part 1’ takes a sidebar look at Bones’ defeat from the tyrant’s camp and through the eyes of slaves who have survived three different rulers in short succession, but although long gone, the Hulk’s unique legacy remains. As the Green King he freed the different peoples of Sakaar and his blood even reinvigorated new plant growth in arid deserts. Of course those fresh and sustaining vines now consume anybody who comes near them…

‘The Princess and the Beast’ finds Omaka and Old Sam discussing their plans for the brutish boy before Bone attacks again and the Princess decides to kill the emerald distraction. However as the armies and deadly cybernetic wildebots close in, Skaar reveals his greatest secret: he is both smart and able to talk, as he proves when routing Bones’ forces with strength of arm and savage strategy…

The sorely wounded Axeman takes centre stage in ‘Shadow Tales part 2’ remembering when he was merely chief general in the armies of the ruthless potentates Omaka and the Red King, after which Savage World of Sakaar provides a selection of short tales fleshing out the ferocious history and culture of Planet Hulk.

With art from Carlo Pagulayan, Timothy Truman, Timothy Green II, Gabriel Hardman & Jason Paz, campfire stories told by the wandering rebels reveal the birth and childhood of Axeman Bone, Omaka’s defeat by Skaar’s mother Caiera whilst they both served the Red King, and how the still-infant Son of Hulk befriended the giant swamp-bugs and won his characteristic battle tattoos, before closing with a Moses-like miracle as the Green Teen leads the salvation-hungry hordes who follow him through the deadly garden grown from his father’s spilled blood…

And at every turn Skaar tells them he is not their messiah, he just wants the Old Power…

Skaar, Son of Hulk #4 finds the Boy Behemoth still following Old Sam’s guidance and millennial footsteps as he retraces ‘The Prophet’s Walk’, overcoming elemental weather and appalling monsters – with his unwelcome followers more than ever convinced that he is the Second Coming – before confronting one of Bones’ Shadow Priest slaves, as steeped in the ancient Oldstrong power as his mother Caiera had been; a phenomenon expanded upon in ‘Shadow Tales part 3’…

‘Fall of the Prophet’ sees the Green Pretender on the edge of defeat against Oldstrong Hiro-Amin – even despite the unwanted aid of Omaka – until Old Sam reveals the astonishing true history and nature of the world-shaking genetic gifts Skaar has inherited, and ghostly advice from Caiera enables her embattled son to defeat the Axeman’s unbeatable, fanatical living weapon…

‘Shadow Tales part 4’ focuses on the broken Hiro-Amin as he reveals the story behind the boy passed off as Skaar and long-ago executed by Bones. His audience is a child-slave named Hiro-Kala – a boy with an unsuspected connection to both Skaar and the Incredible Hulk…

This saga rushes to a cataclysmic cliffhanger in ‘Heroes and Monsters’ as Skaar marches to a final confrontation with Axeman Bone whilst the planet reels from the devastating disturbances caused by his battle with the Oldstrong slave. With the Jade Juvenile’s followers unable to decide if he is saviour Sakaarson or ultimate destroyer Worldbreaker, Old Sam finally discloses the origins of all that savage world’s myths and legends just as a revitalised Red King and Skaar meet face to face…

With the Old Power in his grasp Skaar then turns to see herald of planetary disaster, the Silver Surfer, waiting to confront him…

The comicbook carnage concludes with a glimpse of Skaar’s early days with Old Sam in ‘School for Savages’ (from Hulk Family: Green Genes and illustrated by Jheremy Raapack & Greg Adams),wherein the untutored wild-child displays the first hints of his destiny by routing a barbarian cannibal horde and finally mastering the wearing of pants all in one day…

This collection also includes a cover and variant gallery by Garney, Carlo Pagulayan, Julie Bell, David Yardin & Francis Tsai, plus character designs and cover sketches and pencils by Pagulayan and Garney.

Although painfully short on plot, depending too much on a working familiarity with what’s come before and insufferably ending on a trenchant cliffhanger which means you’d be well advised to have the sequel at hand before you start, there’s still a lot to recommend this blistering, all-action rollercoaster if you’re a fan of magnificent mindless graphic mayhem – and what follower of the Hulk isn’t?
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Silver Surfer: In Thy Name


By Simon Spurrier & Tan Eng Huat (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2749-9

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 and subtext in the Swinging 1960s Marvel Universe, and one character Stan Lee kept as his own personal toy for many years.

Tasked with finding planets for space-god Galactus to consume, 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. In 1968, after increasingly frequent guest-shots and even a solo adventure in the back of Fantastic Four Annual #5, the Surfer finally got his own (initially double-sized) title at long last.

The last questing, vital soul of a soft and decadent civilisation, Norrin Radd allowed himself to be transformed into gleaming herald in a Faustian bargain with Galactus to save his home-world Zenn-La from the planet-devouring cosmic entity. His eventual emancipation never gave him the opportunity to permanently return to his place of birth, nor settle down with his lost love Shalla Bal, whom he had forsaken for a life of service to the Great Destroyer.

The Silver Surfer was always a pristine and iconic character when handled well – and sparingly – yet once he gained and sustained a regular comic book presence in the 1980s he became somewhat diminished; less… special.

After a strong start his adventures became formulaic and even dull. In reworking the character for the modern market, a huge amount of the mystique that made the critically beloved but commercially disastrous Christ allegory from the Stars a cause celebre was lost.

In recent times the Space-bound Scout has been used more sparingly and with greater innovation as in this fanciful fable from scripter Simon Spurrier, artist Tan Eng Huat and colourist Jose Villarrubia, originally released as a four-part miniseries in 2007.

Adrift and aimless, the Silver Surfer glides through the trackless void, pondering the nature of life and how vastly varied but fundamentally similar it seems throughout creation, when he is suddenly attacked by organ-pirates determined to reduce him to saleable spare parts…

When a colossal starship drives off the grisly bandits the sky-rider meets the sublimely civilised Explorocrat Ruqtar Koil, urbane envoy-at-large and dutiful Minister Plenipotentiary of the star-spanning Ama Collective.

Norrin is extremely impressed with the grandiose, genteel and winningly cultured fellow voyager and the vast peacefully utopian alliance of scholars and explorers he represents, as epitomised by their holy credo the Binarc – “to improve ourselves, and seek others who wish the same”…

However, after accepting an invitation to visit Ama-Prime, the Surfer experiences a few nagging doubts after meeting the autocratic and far too unctuous Empress, but is easily assuaged by the calm serenity of her manifested paradise world.

Some time later his peaceful reveries are interrupted when Koil begs a small favour…

Brekknis is a poor and primitive “ripening world” whose unhappy natives are currently under threat from a ravening demon apparently made from old ghosts. Dispatched to assist the lowly aborigines, the Explorocrat felt the Surfer’s power might be beneficial, but when the Silver Sentinel sees how the Ama envoy treats the poverty-stricken people his suspicions return.

Brekk leader Accordite Tol-Wes paints a very different picture of the Collective: one of haughty disdain, galling paternalism and enforced cultural solidarity. To ensure right and rational thinking, the Ama long ago closed all the Brekk churches and temples…

When the demon manifests it is revealed as a monstrous monolith of rage comprised of broken war-machines and slaughtered soldier’s spirits screaming “vengeance for genocide”…

After the Surfer’s incredible Cosmic Power dispatches the creature, a strange thing happens: the stunned and grateful primitives fall to their knees and declare Norrin to be their promised messiah the Lightlord…

When the Empress visits her troubled and uncivilised Brekknian children, her offhand manner and an assassination attempt – quickly thwarted by the Surfer – inexorably ramps up festering tensions and the Star-born Scout clandestinely confers with Tol-Wes for the other side of the story.

Long ago the Brekk were a militant and warlike people who found a measure of peace in a new religion which united their world. However when they tried to take their gospel to other worlds, they quickly encountered the atheistic Ama Collective who took them into their star-girdling fold and made them quit their extreme and foolishly fanatical ideas of Faith and higher powers…

Now with the Lightlord’s long promised return, the Brekk will rise and throw off the yoke of the impious invaders…

Refusing the ridiculous role of messiah, Norrin attempts to defuse the escalating situation, but is attacked again by organ pirates and succumbs to a force even greater than his own…

Koil and the pirates are working together and the Sky-Rider is simply an expendable piece in a vast Machiavellian game. Crucified on Brekknis, the Surfer realises that the Ama want a final war with the Brekk, but he has tragically underestimated the fanatical missionary zeal of the equally blood-hungry, faith-fuelled fundamentalists…

Refusing to be a figurehead for the forthcoming madness, Norrin flies away but discovers a horrific secret: the Ama are holding hostage the offspring of a sublime trans-dimensional being, forcing its “mother” to reshape events in ways that will make the outcome of desired conflict a brutal certainty…

Confronted at last by a truly innocent victim in this sorry affair, the Surfer tries once more to broker a ceasefire but, with both rationalist autocrats and religious maniacs determined to exterminate each other, is at last forced to combat the bloodshed with his own brand of overwhelming firepower and desperate duplicity…

Sadly, some things, such as prejudice, hatred and fanaticism are beyond physical force or reasoned argument…

This is a sharp, cynical political allegory of colonial expansionism and callous manipulation delivered with classic British wit, dry understatement and heartfelt, bitter resignation, cloaked in the gleaming armour of a spectacular cosmic action-clash, courtesy of the splendidly imaginative art and colours.

This slim but beguiling tome also includes a cover gallery by Michael Turner & Peter Steigerwald and a sketch section featuring Tan Eng Huat’s remarkable concept designs for the many and varied aliens populating the tale.
© 2007, 2008 Marvel Characters Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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The Death of Captain America: The Man who Bought America


By Ed Brubaker, Steve Epting, Fabio Laguna, Luke Ross & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2971-4

I’m usually a little at odds and uneasy with today’s all-pervasive, consumer-crazed “Have it First! Have it Now!” philosophy. I generally prefer to see things working well and a bit worn in before I commit myself to an opinion or risk time and/or money on an item.

I also find that this policy pays dividends when looking at comics and graphic novels. Something you love at first sight often palls and pales into insignificance on re-reading, whilst often a little mellowing and maturation offers insights into material that might not have impressed on initial inspection…

A perfect case in point is the unceasing cacophony of collections which poured out of Marvel during their headline-grabbing stunt of having legendary patriotic icon Captain America assassinated as the climax of the publishing event Civil War. Despite being superbly crafted and gripping material, the sheer manic hyperbole of the press machine involved at the time turned many folks off and I quickly turned my attention elsewhere…

The Star Spangled Avenger was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby at the end of 1940 and launched in his own title (Captain America Comics, #1 cover-dated March 1941) with overwhelming success. He was the absolute and undisputed star of Timely (Marvel’s early predecessor) Comics’ “Big Three” – the other two being the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner. He was also the first to fall from popularity at the end of the Golden Age.

When the Korean War and Communist aggression dominated the American psyche in the early 1950s he was briefly revived – with the Torch and Sub-Mariner – in 1953 before sinking once more into obscurity until a resurgent Marvel Comics once more brought him back in Avengers #4.

It was March 1964 and the Vietnam conflict was just beginning to pervade the minds of the American public…

This time he stuck around.

Whilst perpetually agonising over the death of his young sidekick (James Buchanan Barnes AKA Bucky) in the final days of the war, the resurrected Steve Rogers first stole the show in the Avengers, then promptly graduated to his own series and title as well. He waxed and waned through the most turbulent period of social change in US history, but always struggled to find an ideological niche and stable footing in the modern world.

Eventually, whilst another morally suspect war raged in the real world, during the Marvel event known as Civil War he became an anti-government rebel and was ambushed on the steps of a Federal Courthouse.

Naturally, nobody really believed he was dead…

Over the course of three volumes he was replaced by that dead sidekick. Years previously Bucky had been captured by the Soviets and used as their own super-assassin – The Winter Soldier. There’s no truer maxim than “nobody stays dead in comics”, however, and after being rescued from his unwanted spy-role the artificially youthful and part cyborg Barnes reluctantly stepped into his mentor’s boots…

Whilst Bucky was coming to terms with his inheritance; still largely unknown and unwelcome to the general public, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter – pregnant with Steve’s baby and a prisoner of Nazi über-menace the Red Skull – was undergoing a subtle program of brainwashing by perfidious psychologist Dr. Johan Faustus.

Although the mind-bending had succeeded in making her shoot Captain America on the Courthouse steps, the doped and duped operative was slowly clawing her way back to sanity, but received a huge shock after she discovered a comatose Steve alive and in captive in an underground cell…

The Skull – a disembodied malign consciousness trapped in the head of ex-Soviet General Aleksander Lukin – is well on the way to conquering the USA at last and also determined to have a new perfect body of his own again. Closeted with his body-swapping, gene-warping wizard Arnim Zola, a mysterious plan for Sharon’s baby and the body in the basement are coming to fruition…

Marvel’s extended publicity stunt was building to a blockbusting, revelatory close in this third volume (collecting issues #37-42 of Captain America volume 5 from 2008) written by master planner Ed Brubaker with art from Steve Epting, Mike Perkins, Luke Ross, Fabio Laguna, Rick Magyar & Roberto De La Torre, with the promise of a new Captain America in situ at the close…

In a close-fought election year, the sudden rise of independent candidate Senator Gordon Wright and his Third Wing Party takes America by storm. Backed by corporate colossus Kronas and monolithic security division Kane-Myer and very publicly targeted by conservatives, radicals, liberals and nut-jobs alike, Wright seems the perfect and only candidate for the sensible ordinary man-in-the-street…

Whilst S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Tony Stark orders The Falcon to partner up with the still reluctant Bucky and track down Faustus, in Lukin’s lair Sharon has escaped again and gone searching for Steve…

What she finds is the deranged duplicate who briefly played Captain America in the 1950s. After a few short months the reactionary patriot had been forcibly “retired” when the super-soldier serum he’d used soured and turned him into a raving, racist paranoid. The fascistic facsimile had a tenuous grip on reality at best and attacked the real Sentinel of Liberty many times after escaping government custody…

Before she can shoot the horrific travesty of the man she loved, the Skull and Faustus recapture Sharon. Taking careful steps not to harm her, they restrain the dazed agent in the infirmary. Meanwhile Falcon and the new Captain America clash with Zola and agents of Advanced Idea Mechanics, destroying one of the Skull’s hidden facilities. Despite the heroes’ stunning triumph the Skull’s overall progress seems unchecked and unstoppable…

His next move is to release the reconditioned 1950s Cap and convince the public that the replica is their real fallen hero miraculously returned. When the Avenger then endorses Wright on live TV the political outsider suddenly seems a certainty for the White House, but things go awry when the Cap impostor clashes with Barnes and the young replacement defeats the veteran fake.

His nerve and spirit broken, the ersatz Avenger disappears, just as another disaster strikes at the plotters, when the Skull’s deeply disturbed daughter Sin attacks Sharon and causes her to lose the baby she’s carrying…

When AIM agents recapture the counterfeit Cap, Barnes and the Falcon are watching and get an unexpected hand from Faustus, who knows exactly when to leave a sinking ship. After triggering Sharon’s long disabled GPS chip the sinister shrink also makes a few last-minute adjustments to her memory and programming…

The disparate paths converge at a televised Presidential Debate – which now includes Wright – where, the Senator believes, one of his rivals will be assassinated and the Third Wing’s National Security stance will make him a shoo-in for the Oval Office. However the Skull has never played straight in his life and has agendas within schemes inside his plot…

As Falcon and Russian super-spy Black Widow spearhead a devastating rescue raid on the Nazi’s base, the new Captain America saves all the candidates on live TV before spectacularly capturing the assassins. In the midst of yet another Götterdämmerung the Skull and Zola play their final card and attempt to transfer the Machiavellian maniac’s mind out of Lukin’s body, but gravely underestimate the paranoid rage of their fake Cap and Sharon’s sheer determination to stop them at any cost…

In the shattering aftermath, Sharon is recuperating with S.H.I.E.L.D., Wright is disgraced, and Bucky Barnes is publicly acclaimed as the only Captain America, but although defeated the Red Skull is not dead.

Zola, it seems, has saved his master again, but the process has not met with approval and might be seen more as a punishment than salvation by the bitterly frustrated fascist overlord…

With covers and variants from Epting, Jackson Guice and Frank Cho, this concluding tome in The Death of Captain America triptych is a dark, tension-packed action-extravaganza that probably depends a little too much upon a working knowledge of Marvel continuity but, for those willing to eschew subtext or able to ignore seeming incongruities and go with the flow, this sinister conspiracy-thriller epic with guest-shots from Avengers luminaries Nick Fury, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Tony Stark is genuinely enthralling and well worth the effort.

The saga of the new Sentinel of Liberty resumed in Captain America: the Man with No Face and if you’re a full-on fan of the Fights ‘n’ Tights genre you’re assured of a thoroughly grand time there too.
© 2008 Marvel Characters Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Fantastic Four: The New Fantastic Four


By Dwayne McDuffie, Paul Pelletier, Rick Magyar & Scott Hanna (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2483-2

If you’re new to the first family of comic books, or worse yet returning after a sustained absence, you might have a few problems with this otherwise superb selection of high-concept hi-jinks featuring Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Thing and the Human Torch. However if you’re prepared to ignore a lot of unexplained references to stuff you’ve missed there’s a magically enthralling epic on offer in this terrific tome.

The Fantastic Four were – usually – maverick scientist Reed Richards, his fianceé and later wife Sue Storm, their friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother Johnny, driven survivors of a private space-shot which went horribly wrong when Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

When they crashed back to Earth the quartet found that they had all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks. Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible and project force-fields, Johnny could turn into living flame, and tragic Ben was trapped as a shambling, rocky freak. Shaken but unbowed they vowed to dedicate their new abilities to benefiting mankind.

After years of stunning adventures the close-knit fantastic family came to a parting after the Federal Superhuman Registration Act put the team on opposing sides of the costumed heroes’ Civil War, when Reed sided with the Government and his wife and brother-in-law joined the rebels. Ben, appalled at the entire situation, dodged the issue by moving to France…

This volume collects Fantastic Four #544-550 (June-November 2007 and originally running as the story-arc ‘Reconstruction’) and picks up in the aftermath of a group reconciliation, with temperaments still frayed and emotional wounds barely scabbed over…

The witty drama begins with ‘From the Ridiculous to the Sublime’ as, in an attempt to repair their damaged marriage, Reed and Sue take a second honeymoon to the moon of Titan courtesy of the Eternal demi-gods who inhabit the artificial paradise, whilst on Earth, Ben and Johnny are joined by temporary houseguests Black Panther and his wife Ororo, the former X-Man Storm.

The royal couple of Wakanda have only recently been forced to leave their palatial New York embassy after it was bombed…

No sooner have they settled in than old ally Michael Collins – formerly the cyborg Deathlok – comes asking a favour…

When a young hero code-named Gravity sacrificed his life to save Collins and a host of other heroes, his body was laid to rest with full honours. But now, his grave has been desecrated and the remains stolen. When the appalled New Fantastic Four investigate, the trail leads directly into intergalactic space…

After visiting the Moon and eliciting information from pan-galactic voyeur Uatu the Watcher, the quartet travel to the ends of the universe where cosmic entity Epoch is resurrecting Gravity to become the latest “Protector of the Universe”.

Unfortunately she might not finish as the Silver Surfer and Galactus’ new herald Stardust are preparing the sidereal monolith to be the World-Eater’s latest snack…

‘Don’t Make Me Embarrass You in Front of Your Friends’ finds Reed and Sue nearing Titan and beginning their break as, in another corner of the Cosmos, the FF battle the gleaming invaders in a desperate holding action. Whilst the Panther and Collins return to Earth for a Deus ex Machina weapon, ‘Aw, That’s Just Crude’ sees Gravity revived just as Galactus himself shows up, ravenous and ready to eat everything…

As the new universal protector shows his mettle by defeating the planet-devourer, Reed is forced to put the honeymoon on pause when his idle examination of an interstellar probe makes him suspect that the entire solar system might well be in danger…

‘Never Ask Her if she’s Wearing Colored Contact Lenses’ finds Reed back on Earth, with Sue simply sunning herself on Titan. However, whilst Mr. Fantastic’s suspicions are confirmed by fellow heroic super-scientist Hank Pym, The Wizard and a host of super-villains from previously iterations the Frightful Four attack and capture the Invisible Woman, but only after a truly cataclysmic clash…

Already distracted by the revelation that an alien race on the verge of extinction had sent the probe as a warning and that an all-consuming horde of marauders dubbed Contrasepsis was heading earthward, Richards flies off the handle when the Wizard boasts of Sue’s plight via long range radio beam. However when he rushes to return to Titan, Reed’s ship explodes…

Luckily the wily Panther had suspected a trap and ‘Kind of an Expensive Test’ finds the heroes hurtling towards the outer moon and a Battle Royale with the despicable scum who had tortured the Invisible Woman.

Even though the Wizard had a terrifying hidden ally, the devastating duel eventually ends in the good guys favour, but not before Sue displays why she is the scariest member of the FF and not one to ever be pushed around, after which ‘So I Guess You’re Saying the Honeymoon’s Over’ finds the Fantastic Six hurtling into deeper space where the Contrasepsis are massing. What they find is a violent degradation in the fabric of reality and a massing of the Watchers, all gathered to observe the end of everything…

It all comes together in a spectacular anniversary romp wherein the assembled heroes, Gravity, Stardust and the Silver Surfer and master of magic Doctor Strange unite to solve a cosmic mystery and save the conceptual being who is the very personification of life in ‘Should Eternity Perish’…

Also including a cover gallery from fan-favourite Michael Turner and pencilled pages from the penciller, this brilliantly scripted yarn by Dwayne McDuffie, with captivating art from Paul Pelletier, Rick Magyar & Scott Hanna, perfectly blends high-concept action with dazzling wit and razor-sharp comedy moments to create a perfectly wonderful Fights ‘n’ Tights extravaganza no clued-in, space freak comics fan could possibly find fault with.

Fantastic Fun. Get it.
© 2007 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.