Category: Sub-Mariner

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Fantastic Four Marvel Masterworks volume


By Doug Moench & Bill Sienkiewicz, John Byrne, Roger Stern, Joe Sinnott, Al Milgrom, George Pérez, Tom Sutton, Jerome Moore, Chic Stone, Jon D’Agostino, Mike Esposito, Pablo Marcos, Frank Giacoia, George Roussos, Jim Novak, Irving Watanabe & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1027-3 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

For Marvel everything started with The Fantastic Four.

Monolithic modern Marvel truly began with eccentric monster ‘n’ alien filled adventures of a compact superteam as much squabbling family as coolly capable costumed champions. All that Modern Marvel is, company and brand, stems from that quirky quartet and the inspired, inspirational, groundbreaking efforts of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby…

Cautiously bi-monthly and cover-dated November 1961, Fantastic Four #1 – by Stan, Jack, George Klein and/or Christopher Rule – was raw and crude even by the ailing publisher’s standards; but it seethed with rough, passionate, uncontrolled excitement. Thrill-hungry kids pounced on its dynamic storytelling and caught a wave of change beginning to build in America. It and every succeeding issue changed comics a little bit more… and forever. As revealed in that premier issue, maverick scientist Reed Richards, fiancée Sue Storm, close friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s bratty teen brother survived an ill-starred private spaceshot after cosmic rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

All were permanently mutated: Richards’ body became elastic, diffident Sue became (even more) invisible, Johnny Storm burst into living flame and tragic Ben shockingly devolved into a shambling, rocky freak. After the initial revulsion and trauma passed, they solemnly agreed to use their abilities to benefit mankind. Throughout the 1960s The Fantastic Four was indisputably the key title and most consistently groundbreaking series of Marvel’s ever-unfolding web of cosmic creation: a forge for new concepts and characters.

Kirby was approaching his creative peak: unleashing his vast imagination on plot after spectacular plot, and intense, incredible new characters whilst Lee scripted some of the most passionate superhero sagas ever seen. Both were on an unstoppable roll, at the height of their powers and full of the confidence only success brings, with The King particularly eager to see how far the genre and the medium could be pushed… which is rather ironic since it was the company’s reticence to give the artist more creative freedom that led to Kirby’s moving to National/DC in the 1970s.

Without Kirby’s soaring imagination the rollercoaster of mindbending High Concepts lost out to traditional tales of characters in conflict, with soap opera leanings and supervillain-heavy Fights ‘n’ Tights forays abounding. With Lee & Kirby long gone but their mark very much still stamped onto every page of the still-prestigious title, this full-colour luxury compendium collects Fantastic Four #219-231 and Annual #15, spanning June 1980-June 1981, wherein editor Jim Salicrup sanctioned a bold new look and direction for the Hallowed team. The call for and upshot of all that is discussed by incoming writer Doug Moench who recalls fan-fright paralysis and jumping in full throttle in his Introduction ‘The Big-Kid Stuff Cold Turkey Fail’ prior to a distinctly spookily toned and frequently supernaturally themed change of pace commencing.

What You Should Know: After being rejuvenated and repowered in an extended space-spanning saga, the Family FF are getting used to being back on earth even with supervillains all over the place. Now Read On…

Penciller John Byrne, having served out his first term of duty on the series he was to soon make his alone was officially and ostensibly only temporarily replaced for FF #219. Ably augmented by Joe Sinnott, stalwart “Guest-Team” Doug Moench & Bill Sienkiewicz were parachuted in for monster mash-up ‘Leviathans’, on the back of huge success and acclaim for their vigilante thriller Moon Knight, bringing with them a whole new look and sensibility, as well as far faster pace to the stories.

Here, modern day pirate Cap’n Barracuda steal the fabled Horn of Proteus from Atlantis and unleashes a wave of giant monsters on New York City. Thankfully, this is a subject the mighty Sub-Mariner and Mr. Fantastic can agree on and their combined forces are soon stomping beasties and taking names (like Giganto!) to restore order and stop a piratical plunder ploy without peer…

Byrne was back writing & pencilling in #220 as ‘…And the Lights Went Out All Over the World!’ sees the Avengers call in Reed and his team when all of Earth suffers a catastrophic power-outage. Science! soon sends the explorers to the arctic where they encounter an astounding and unbelievable obelisk being constructed by beings of utterly alien appearance…

The story includes an updated origin for the quartet and guest shot for Canada’s finest (that’s Vindicator of Alpha Flight in case you were wondering) and the issue halts with a pinup/possible rejected cover by inker Sinnott (the Torch battling a flaming Skrull) before #221’s concluding chapter ‘Tower of Glass… Dreams of Glass!’ – after the usual misconceptions and rash clashes reveal three aliens shipwrecked for half a million years who just need their myriad mobile mechanisms to reverse the planet’s magnetic poles so that they can return home at last. Thankfully, Reed has a less end of human civilisation-y solution that leaves everyone involved happy and safe…

Now officially the latest regular creative team, Moench & Sienkiewicz return to prep for Halloween in FF #222’s ‘The Possession of Franklin Richards!’ as the kid is targeted from beyond the unknown by the exiled soul of Nicholas Scratch, son of Agatha Harkness and the kind of warlock who gives witchcraft a bad name. Having made the boy his conduit back to reality, Scratch terrorises and tortures his hated enemies, who with Doctor Strange unavailable, must call on the dubious gifts of self-doubting failed horror hero Gabriel the Devil Hunter and his sexy morally ambiguous familiar Desadia (as mostly seen in the Marvel monochrome magazine line such as Haunt of Horror and Monsters Unleashed).

Apparently acquiescing, the team agree to liberate the dead diabolist’s minions of magical cult Salem’s Seven in ‘That a Child May Live…’ but their instant assaults on humanity are an acceptable risk and consequence in a long plan that sets the worlds to rights for all but the defeated devil…

Fantastic Four Annual #15 swiftly follows, wherein Moench & George Pérez, abetted by Chic Stone, Jon D’Agostino & Mike Esposito, renew hostilities between the FF and the Skrull empire when the shapeshifters target Reed’s latest energy-casting breakthrough in ‘Time for the Prime Ten!’ Infiltrating the Baxter Building, negating his teammates and almost banishing Mr. Fantastic to the tender mercies of Annihilus in the Negative Zone, the sneaky killers are actually seeking to end their millennial war against stellar rivals The Kree, but have underestimated Reed’s brilliance, his team’s tenacity and the sheer power and cosmic awareness of Earth-loving Kree Exile Captain Mar-Vell…

A back-up tale by Moench & Tom Sutton takes us to recently liberated Latveria for the opening of proposed series ‘The Return of Doctor Doom!’ with only episode ‘The Power of the People!’ showing how restored monarch King Zorba failing to live up to his democratic promise and discovering how excessive taxation really upsets subjects, at around the same moment crazed and catatonic Victor von Doom goes missing from the most secure dungeon in Doomstadt…

Sadly, the impending crisis never materialised and was only addressed by John Byrne in Fantastic Four #247…

Over in FF #224 & 225, fresh calamity unfolds in Moench, Sienkiewicz & Pablo Marcos’ ‘The Darkfield Illumination’ as an eerie radioactive red mist blankets Manhattan and plays hob with the team’s powers. Tracing the cloud’s origin point to an icy dome in the Arctic, the FF discover a lost colony of technologically advanced Vikings utterly dependent upon a mutated immortal giant. ‘The Blind God’s Tears’ supply heat, light, food materials from the outside world and immortality, but now Korgon is dying and demands the explorers save him and the people who worship him…

Always eager to help, the team strive hard and succeed in saving the God, only to see him betrayed by his most trusted ally. As Korgon rages madly in response, the situation escalates as Thor arrives to investigate Viking worshippers who have abandoned their true god for a false one…

Bruce Patterson joins Marcos inking Sienkiewicz as Moench takes the opportunity to bring closure to fans of his old Shogun Warriors series next. In their own title the former pilots of monster-fighting mega-mecha Dangard Ace, Raydeen and Combatra had been recruited by an ancient order to defend humanity, but had ultimately retired when their machines were destroyed. That epic sacrifice had come when evil enemy Maur-Kon had targeted the Fantastic Four and attempted to kill Reed.

Now a new giant mecha rampages and robs and the teams reunite with Ilongo Savage, Richard Carson and Genji Odashu aiding the battle against ‘The Samurai Destroyer’ and the unworthy soul exploiting its power for profit….

Movie-toned terror in the heartland follows as a meteor crashes in rural Pennsylvania resort Lost Lake just as the FF head out to the Boonies for a break. Their encounter with ‘The Brain Parasites’ infesting hosts and reverting them to earlier evolutionary forms is by-the-books horror fun from Moench, Sienkiewicz & Patterson, and readily fixed by little Franklin’s unreliable mental powers. This sets the scene for the next issue where further tests by professional head shrinkers and brain benders only unleash uncontrollable chaos, possessing bystanders and an adult super-powered version of the lad. Thankfully loving parents and uncles allow Franklin to exorcise his deadly ‘Ego-Spawn’ (Sinnott inks)…

The experiment in alternative tale-telling ends on a 3-part saga that opens with #229’s ‘The Thing From the Black Hole’. After it homes in on Reed’s latest invention, Earth soon totters on the edge of destruction as a living, sentient singularity made of antimatter disrupts physical laws. Desperate Richards makes contact with its cosmic equivalent and uncovers a tale of love lost in service to scientific exploration. The mobile extinction event was once a sentient being whose love for a fellow astronaut turned them both into creatures of uncanny forces. Thankfully ‘Firefrost and the Ebon Seeker’ reach an understanding that saves the world, but as a consequence a section of Manhattan – including the Baxter Building – is marooned inside the Negative Zone.

With panic amongst the hordes of abducted New Yorkers barely suppressed, the FF search for a solution ‘In All the Gathered Gloom!’ (by Moench & Roger Stern with art from Sienkienwisz, Jerome Moore, Sinnott, & Frank Giacoia) even as new antimatter menace Stygorr zeroes in on the intruding enclave. The last thing the FF need is bullying big business plutocrat Lew Shiner telling everyone his money puts him in charge. After his posturing triggers a riot, tragedy is guaranteed, and the heroes barely beat the alien invader in time to return everyone surviving back home…

With covers by Sienkienwicz, Byrne Sinnott & Bob McLeod, the extras here include a Sinnott Thing pinup from FF #219, Sienkievich’s rejected cover-turned-pinup as printed in #224 original art pages/covers inked by Marcos, Bruce Patterson, Sinnott, and original colour-guides painted by George Roussos.

Although never quite returning to the stratospheric heights of the Kirby era, this truly different collection represents a closing of the First Act for the “World’s Greatest Comics Magazine”, and palate cleansing preparation for the second groundbreaking run by an inspired John Byrne. These extremely capable efforts are probably most welcome to dedicated superhero fans and continuity freaks like me, but will still thrill and delight casual browsers looking for an undemanding slice of graphic narrative excitement – especially if this time the movie continues to deliver on its promise…
© 2018 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

To Be Continued…

Today in 1918 artist John Forte was born. He’s most fondly remembered for costumed charm, as best seen in Legion of Super-Heroes: The Silver Age volume 1 . We don’t have nearly enough collected material for UK visionary comics stalwart Ron Embleton who was born today in 1930. If you think you’re old enough, you could look at Oh, Wicked Wanda!.

Indomitable weekly anthology Valiant began its stellar 712 issue run today in 1962. Inside was the magnificent Steel Claw whom we comprehensively covered in The Steel Claw: Invisible Man. Yes. Well done, the modern invisible man could be seen from the start…

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Fantastic Four Epic Collection volume 11: Four No More (1978-1980)


By Marv Wolfman, Bill Mantlo, Len Wein, Keith Pollard, Roger Slifer, John Byrne, Sal Buscema, George Pérez, Bob Hall, John Buscema, Joe Sinnott, Pablo Marcos, Bob Wiacek, Dave Hunt, Diverse Hands (Al Milgrom, Frank Giacoia, Frank Springer, Marie Severin), Bob Budiansky, Jack Kirby & various (MARVEL
ISBN: 978-1-3029-6055-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content from less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Utter Acme of All-Ages Adventure… 8/10

For Marvel everything started with The Fantastic Four.

Monolithic modern Marvel truly began with the eccentric monster ‘n’ alien filled adventures of a compact superteam as much squabbling family as coolly capable costumed champions. Everything the company and brand is now stems from that quirky quartet and the inspired, inspirational, groundbreaking efforts of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby…

Cautiously bi-monthly and cover-dated November 1961, Fantastic Four #1 – by Stan, Jack, George Klein & Christopher Rule – was raw and crude even by the ailing outfit’s standards; but it seethed with rough, passionate, uncontrolled excitement. Thrill-hungry kids pounced on its dynamic storytelling and caught a wave of change beginning to build in America. It and every succeeding issue changed comics a little bit more… and forever. As seen in the premier issue, maverick scientist Reed Richards, his fiancée Sue Storm, their close friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s bratty teenaged brother survived an ill-starred private spaceshot after cosmic rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

All four were permanently mutated: Richards’ body became elastic, diffident Sue became (even more) invisible, Johnny Storm burst into sentient living flame and poor tragic Ben shockingly devolved into a shambling, rocky freak. After initial revulsion and trauma passed, they solemnly agreed to use their abilities to benefit mankind. Thus was born The Fantastic Four.

Throughout the 1960s it was indisputably the key title and most consistently groundbreaking series of Marvel’s ever-unfolding web of cosmic creation: a forge for new concepts and characters. Kirby was approaching his creative peak: unleashing his vast imagination on plot after spectacular plot, and intense, incredible new characters whilst Lee scripted some of the most passionate superhero sagas ever seen. Both were on an unstoppable roll, at the height of their powers and full of the confidence only success brings, with The King particularly eager to see how far the genre and the medium could be pushed… which is rather ironic since it was the company’s reticence to give the artist more creative freedom that led to Kirby moving to National/DC in the 1970s.

Without Kirby’s soaring imagination the rollercoaster of mindbending High Concepts gave way to more traditional tales of characters in conflict, as soap opera schtick and supervillain-tirades dominated Fights ‘n’ Tights dramas. With Lee & Kirby long gone but their mark very much stamped onto every page of the still-prestigious title, this full-colour compendium reruns Fantastic Four #192-214 and Annuals #12-13, spanning March 1978-January 1980.

What You Should Know: After facing his own Counter Earth counterpart Reed Richards lost his stretching powers. With menaces like Salem’s Seven, Klaw and Molecule Man still coming for him and his family, weary and devoid of solutions, Richards made the only logical decision and called it a day for the team…

Incoming writer/editor Marv Wolfman, brought a new direction which closely referenced the good old days with #192 proclaiming ‘He Who Soweth the Wind…!’ (illustrated by George Pérez & Joe Sinnott), as newly independent, fancy-free Johnny heads west to revisit his childhood dream of being a race car driver and unexpectedly meets old pal Wyatt Wingfoot.

Back East, Ben and girlfriend Alicia Masters ponder options as Reed gets a pretty spectacular job offer from a mystery backer. Suddenly, though, Johnny’s race career is upended when superpowered mercenary Texas Twister attacks at the behest of a sinister but unspecified stalker with a grudge to settle…

The admittedly half-hearted assault fails, but when Ben offers his services to NASA a pattern begins to emerge after he and Alicia are ambushed by old foe Darkoth in ‘Day of the Death-Demon!’ (plotted by Len Wein & Keith Pollard, scripted by Bill Mantlo, and illustrated by Pollard & Sinnott). The near-forgotten cyborg terror is determined to destroy an experimental solar shuttle, but doesn’t really know why, and as Ben ponders the inexplicable incident, in Hollywood, Susan Storm-Richards’ return to acting is inadvertently paused because alien shapeshifting loon the Impossible Man pays a visit. The delay gives Sue a little time to consider just how she got such a prestigious, dream-fulfilling offer so completely out of the blue at just the right moment…

At NASA, when Darkoth strikes again his silent partner is exposed as scheming alchemist Diablo, whilst in upstate New York, Reed slowly discovers his dreams of unlimited research time and facilities is nothing like he imagined. Finally, launch day comes and The Thing pilots the Solar Shuttle into space, only to have it catastrophically crash in the desert…

Joined by additional inker Dave Hunt, the creative pinch-hitters conclude the saga with ‘Vengeance is Mine!’ as Ben survives impact and searing sandstorms, tracks down his foes and delivers a crushing defeat to Diablo and Darkoth, whilst in FF #195 Sue learns who sponsored her revived Tinseltown ambitions when Prince Namor, The Sub-Mariner renews his amorous pursuit of her. Embittered and lonely, he has fully forsaken Atlantis and the overwhelming demands of his people and state. Sadly, they have not done with him and despatch robotic warriors to drag him back to his duties in ‘Beware the Ravaging Retrievers!’ (Wolfman, Pollard & Pablo Marcos). Like everybody else, the metal myrmidons have utterly underestimated The Invisible Girl and pay the price, allowing the once-&-future prince to reassess his position and make a momentous decision…

As Johnny links up with Ben & Alicia, strands of a complex scheme begin to appear. In #196 they gel for self-deceiving Reed Richards as ‘Who in the World is the Invincible Man?’ depicts the enigmatic Man with the Plan secretly subjecting Reed to the mind-bending powers of the Pyscho-Man, just as Sue rejoins Ben & Johnny in New York City before being impossibly ambushed by a former FF foe. This time the man under the hood is not her father, but someone she loves even more…

Reunited with Reed, the horrified heroes are confronted by their greatest, most implacable enemy and the complicated plot to restore Reed’s powers finally unfolds. Victor Von Doom craves revenge but refuses to triumph over a diminished foe, but his efforts to re-expose Richards to cosmic rays is secretly hijacked by a rival madman in ‘The Riotous Return of the Red Ghost!’ (Wolfman, Pollard & Sinnott). Of course there’s more at stake, as Doom also seeks to legitimise his rule through a proxy son: planning to abdicate in his scion’s favour and have Junior take Latveria into the UN and inevitably to the forefront of nations…

Fully restored and invigorated, Mister Fantastic defeats an equally resurgent Red Ghost before linking up with Nick Fury (senior) and S.H.I.E.L.D. to lead an ‘Invasion!’ of Doom’s captive kingdom. Beside Latverian freedom fighter/legal heir to the throne Prince Zorba Fortunov, Richards storms into Doomstadt, defeating all in his path and foiling the secondary scheme of imbuing the ‘The Son of Doctor Doom!’ with the powers of the (now) entire FF and exposing the incredible secret of Victor von Doom II…

Months of deft planning (from Wolfman, Pollard & Sinnott) culminate in epic confrontation ‘When Titans Clash!’, as Doom and Richards indulge in their ultimate battle (thus far), with the result that the villain is destroyed and the kingdom liberated. For now…

A post-Doom era opens in FF #201 (December 1978) as the celebrated and honoured foursome return to America and take possession of empty former HQ the Baxter Building. Unfortunately, so does something else, attacking the family through their own electronic installations and turning the towering “des res” into ‘Home Sweet Deadly Home!’: a mystery solved in the next issue when it subsequently seizes control of Tony Stark’s armour to attack the FF again in ‘There’s One Iron Man Too Many!’, with John Buscema filling in for penciller Pollard. The monthly mayhem pauses after #203’s ‘…And a Child Shall Slay Them!’ wherein Wolfman, Pollard & Sinnott reveal the incredible powers possessed by dying cosmic ray-mutated child Willie Evans Jr.

When the foremost authority on the phenomenon is called in to consult, Dr. Reed Richards and his associates – and all of Manhattan – face savage duplicates of themselves manifested from FF devotee Willie’s fevered imagination…

Although the regular fun pauses here, two chronologically adrift King-Size specials follow, beginning with Fantastic Four Annual #12’s ‘The End of the Inhumans… and the Fantastic Four’ (Wolfman, Bob Hall, Pollard, Bob Wiacek & Marie Severin. When Johnny’s former flame Crystal – and gigantic Good Boi Lockjaw – teleport in seeking aid in finding the abducted Inhuman Royal Family, the team confronts ruthless Inhuman supremacist Thraxon the Schemer before exposing that megalomaniac’s secret master: the immortal unconquerable Sphinx. Despite his god-like powers, the united force of the FF plus Blackbolt, Medusa, Gorgon, Triton, Crystal and former Avenger Quicksilver proves sufficient to temporarily defeat their foe… or does it?

A year later, Annual #13 offered a more intimate and human tale from Mantlo, Sal Buscema & Sinnott as ‘Nightlife’ revealed how New York’s lost underclass was systematically being disappeared from the hovels and streets they frequented. With cameos from Daredevil and witch queen Agatha Harkness, the tale reveals a softer side to the FF’s oldest enemy and a return to addressing social issues for the team.

In monthly FF #204, Wolfman, Pollard & Sinnott detail ‘The Andromeda Attack!’ as Johnny goes out gallivanting and governess/guardian Agatha Harkness picks up little Franklin Richards, just as – with only grown-ups in residence – the building’s supercomputers pick up an astral anomaly, and materialise an alien princess in the lab. She’s instantly followed by a Super-Skrull who blasts her before falling to the FF’s counterattack. Interrogating the wounded woman, they learn she has come seeking help for her shattered world and near-extinct civilisation of Xandar…

Already illicitly supported by a Watcher breaking his oath of non-intervention, the last survivors of Andromeda’s most benign culture have been reduced to a quartet of domed stations linked together and careening through space, defended only by the last of their peacekeeper Nova Corps. Now the fugitives are being targeted for extinction by rapacious Skrulls and desperately need someone’s… anyone’s… assistance…

The FF are keen to help Suzerain Queen Adora return and happy to help the Xandarians, but the Human Torch has a new girlfriend and opts to stay behind for now to woo enigmatic Frankie Raye. He’s also set on finally following up on his long-postponed higher education commitments and has enrolled in specialist academic institution Security College. Naturally, Johnny promises to catch up later, but no sooner do his partners beam out to the stars than he’s attacked on campus by an old foe…

For #205, ‘When Worlds Die!’, Reed, Sue & Ben’s arrive with Adora at New Xandar finds the planetary remnants under attack by a Skrull war fleet, they join the Nova Corps to repel the assault, consequently driving closely-monitoring Skrull Emperor Dorrek insane with fury. Although Xandar’s physical resources are almost gone, he actually wants their greatest asset and treasure – a repository of their knowledge and power stored in an awesome array of superprocessors linking countless generations of expired citizens together: the Living Computers of Xandar! Chief administrator Prime Thoran and severely wounded Nova Centurion Tanak have been holding back the storm with ever-diminishing forces, but now need the FF to turn the tide, while back at Security College, Johnny has stumbled into mystery and peril too, as a strange force seizes control of the students…

In Andromeda, his family’s first foray against the Skrulls leads to their defeat and capture. Humiliated, tortured and put on display in a cruel show trial, they are ultimately blasted with a ray that will inescapably result in ‘The Death of… The Fantastic Four!’, rapidly aging them to the end of their natural lifespans in a matter of days. Dorrek’s gleeful gloating is spoiled, however, by the arrival of his terrifying, ambitious wife Empress R’kylll, the increased resistance of the Xandarians and, inevitably, the escape of the fast-aging Fantastic Four…

Ordering all-out assaults on the battered prey, Dorrek is further frustrated by Prime Thoran who gains astounding power by merging with the Living Computers of Xandar and the arrival of a colossal ship from Earth…

Here the saga dovetails with another Wolfman series that had recently ended its run on a cliffhanger. The Man Called Nova was in fact a boy named Richard Rider, a working-class nebbish in the tradition of Peter Parker, except he was good at sports and bad at learning, attending Harry S. Truman High School, where his strict dad was the principal. His mom worked as a police dispatcher and he had a younger brother, Robert, who was a bit of a genius. There were many more superficial similarities and cosmetic differences to Spider-Man. For more, you can either check out our numerous reviews or better yet, the actual comics tales, best seen in Nova Classic volumes #1-3. The 2-year saga culminated with Nova joining despised enemies The Sphinx (last seen battling the FF and Inhumans in Annual #12), Chinese superbrain-in-a-robot-body Doctor Sun, dastardly thug Diamondhead and hero-team The New Champions (The Comet, Crime-Buster and Xandarian refugee Powerhouse) aboard a pre-programmed, out-of-control spaceship hurtling towards Andromeda. Nova volume 1 ended with #25, with the unhappy crew lost in space and attacked by very angry Skrulls…

Meanwhile back at this review, those newcomers’ arrival piled on the pressure and concatenated the chaos as both the magical ancient immortal and futuristic Sino-cyborg abandoned ship, each determined to take the limitless power of Xandar’s Living Computer network for their own. Back on Earth for #207, Wolfman, Sal Buscema & Sinnott tune in on the Torch and favourite frenemy Spider-Man as they unite to expose the scandals of Security College, deprogram its students and almost fall foul of the sheer destructive ‘Might of the Monocle!’, after which the Torch joins his team in Andromeda. Aghast at the ongoing death sentence they’re enduring, Johnny is just as helpless before ‘The Power of The Sphinx!’ (Sal B & inking cavalry “D Hands” AKA Al Milgrom and Franks Giacoia & Springer) is boosted even further by stealing all the wisdom of the Living Computer system. With hyper-energised Prime Thoran busy battling Skrulls, the Sphinx soon solves the eternal secrets of the universe and heads back to Earth, resolved to turn back time and prevent his agonising eons of existence even happening, whilst seeing all reality endangered, increasingly elderly Reed has only one gambit to try…

John Byrne began his first tenure on the Fantastic Four with #209 (August 1979) as the reunited quartet seek to enlist the aid of cosmic devourer Galactus, pausing only long enough for Reed to construct – with Xandarian aid and resources – an all-purpose assistant. The result is the Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-type, Integrated Electronics (latterly, Highly Engineered Robot Built for Interdimensional Exploration; don’cha just love nominative deterministic acronymics?).

At this time, an FF cartoon show had rejected fire hazard Johnny for a cutely telegenic robot, and Wolfman cheekily made that commercial rejection in-world canon here, dividing fans forever after, as the bleeping bot is pure Marmite in most readers eyes…

Riding the mile-long starship Nova & Co arrived in, the FF’s search takes them across the universe before leaving them ‘Trapped in the Sargasso of Space!’ to face murderous aliens determined to use the new vessel to escape their stasis hell. Meanwhile, the New Champions and Xandar’s forces prepare to face their final battle, just as impatient R’kylll divorces her husband with a single ray gun blast and changes the course of history…

Despite odd, inexplicable increasingly hazardous incidences, the FF continue ‘In Search of Galactus!’ and at last locate him, causing chaos in his colossal world-ship. Ultimately, they convince the Devourer to stop the Sphinx, but only by rescinding the vow that prevents Galactus from consuming Earth, and if the humans first bring him a new herald…

That occurs in ‘If This Be Terrax’, on a distant world enslaved by brutal despot Tyros, when the pitiless killer is painfully subdued by the heroes and converted by Galactus into a being who will rejoice in finding worlds to consume irrespective of whether civilisations will be consumed with them…

In #212, Earth trembles as the Devourer unleashes his herald to cow humanity whilst his master faces The Sphinx, but ‘The Battle of the Titans!’ is subject to mission creep when the immortal Egyptian wizard sees his new knowledge as a way to restore his own past glories. With his master fully occupied in cosmic combat, Terrax the Tamer seeks to settle scores with the humans who toppled Tyros’ kingdom, only to fall ‘In Final Battle!’ for a ploy devised by Reed and executed by H.E.R.B.I.E. It’s the last hurrah and a massive “Hail Mary” ploy as Reed joins Sue and Ben in cryo-suspension, seconds from death, and barely aware that Galactus has triumphed, but at immense cost…

Tragedy becomes triumph in closing episode ‘…And Then There Was… One!’ (FF #214, January 1980) as Johnny frantically seeks a cure for his family. When S.H.I.E.L.D., The Avengers and any others all prove helpless, a fortuitous attack by vengeful cyborg Skrull-X offers a grain of hope, but one necessitating a huge gamble: defrosting Reed and hoping he can use what the defeated alien revealed before rampant decrepitude ends the Smartest Man on Earth…

Of course, it all works out, but for what comes next you’ll need the next volume…

Here the compilation concludes with bonus material supplementing all those fabulous covers by Pérez, Sinnott, Giacoia, Pollard, Marcos, John Buscema, Steve Leialoha, Kirby, Milgrom, Dave Cockrum, Walter Simonson, Byrne, Ron Wilson, Joe Rubinstein and Rich Buckler. It includes House ads for comics and the TV cartoon; editorial corrections; Cockrum’s cover rough for #197; Kirby & Sinnott’s original cover art for #200 and the covers for Marvel Treasury Edition #21 by Bobs Budiansky & McLeod.

Also on view are Budiansky’s pencils for the cover of F.O.O.M. #22 and the printed final result from Autumn 1978 as inked by Sinnott, plus interior features ‘HERBIE the Robot Blueprints!’ and ‘Stan Lee Presents: The Fantastic Four Cartoon Show’…

Although the “World’s Greatest Comics Magazine” never quite returned to the stratospheric heights of the Kirby era, this collection offers an appreciative and tantalising taste-echo of those heady heights and a potent promise of fresher thrills to come. These extremely capable efforts are probably most welcome to dedicated superhero fans and continuity freaks like me, but will still thrill and delight the generous and forgiving casual browser looking for an undemanding slice of graphic narrative excitement.
© 2025 MARVEL.

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The Marvel Comics Covers of Jack Kirby volume 1: 1961-1964


By Jack Kirby, with Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, Paul Reinman, Bill Everett, George Roussos, Joe Sinnott, Chic Stone, Vince Colletta, George Klein, Sol Brodsky, Al Hartley, Stan Goldberg, Art Simek, Sam Rosen & various, Introduction by Patrick McDonnell (Dark Horse Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-50673-246-6 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-50673-247-3

Today in 1917 on New York’s Lower East Side, Jacob Kurtzberg was born to Jewish-Austrian parents. He grew up to be one of the most influential and recognised artists in world history. The reason why can be read here.

The Marvel Comics Covers of Jack Kirby chronologically collects The King’s superhero cover art in a spectacular hardcover coffee table book which simultaneously preserves the wonderment in a digital edition, thus allowing instant enlargements of any and all bits you might have glossed over or missed before…

Preceding the massive and momentous art attack comes heartfelt appreciation from Patrick McDonnell (Mutts) in his Introduction and via collector memory ‘Echoes of the King’ by Vincent Iadevaia. At the far end of the collection there’s a succinct biography and appreciation of Jack for those of you who don’t know him as well as we declining comics stalwarts do.

In between those points reside a torrent of those visual highpoints that served to introduce new and revolutionary ways of seeing and enjoying comic books. These collectively span cover-dates November 1961 to December 1964 as seen on The Avengers #1-11; Fantastic Four #1-33; Incredible Hulk #1-5; Journey into Mystery #83-111; Strange Tales #90, 101-127; Tales to Astonish #25, 27, 35-62; Tales of Suspense #39-56, 58-60; X-Men #1-8; Amazing Fantasy #15; Amazing Spider-Man #1; Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #1-13; Daredevil # 1-4 plus Strange Tales Annual #2, Marvel Tales Annual #1, Fantastic Four Annuals #1-2, a few (far too few!) pre-Marvel genre covers including combat classic Battle #65, and a selection of monster book covers…

Inkers, colourists and letterers are not credited here, but that oversight is hopefully covered by us in the great big shopping list under the title…

Despite the too-tight brief – where are all the war, romance and particularly western and sci fi covers!? – this is a magnificent meander around the things that literally drew most of us into comics… that eye-grabbing first image. Jack Kirby was a master of electric storytelling, but he was also the god of the perfect moment and single pictures worth a thousand words. Look here and learn how and why…

© 2025 MARVEL.

Win’s First Christmas Gift Recommendation of the year!: Utter Acme of Visual Iconography… 9/10

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Silver Surfer: Parable


By Stan Lee & Möebius; with Keith Pollard & Tom DeFalco, Josef Rubinstein, José Marzan, Chris Ivy, Paul Mounts, Michael Heisler & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-6209-4 (HB) 978-0-7851-0656-2 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As Marvel’s cinematic arm tries once again to get it right with their founding concept and by extension ultimate allegory of God and Jesus, you can safely anticipate revisiting a selection of fabulous FF and associated material as well as new collections all culled from their prodigious paginated days…

The most eclectic and enigmatic of comic book cult figures, the Silver Surfer’s saga began with the deservedly lauded and legendary introductory story. Although pretty much a last-minute addition to Lee’s plot for Fantastic Four #48-50’s Galactus Trilogy, Jack Kirby’s gleaming god-adjacent creation became a watchword for depth and subtext in the Marvel Universe, and one Lee kept as his own personal toy for many years.

Sent to find planets for star god Galactus to consume, the Silver Surfer discovers Earth, where the latent nobility of humanity reawakens his own suppressed morality. He then rebels against his master, helping the FF save the world. As punishment, Galactus exiles the star-soaring Surfer to Earth, the ultimate outsider on a planet remarkably ungrateful for his sacrifice.

The Galactus Saga was a creative highlight in a period where the Kirby/Lee partnership was utterly on fire: an adventure with all the power and grandeur of a true epic and one which has never been surpassed for drama, thrills and sheer entertainment.

That one’s not here, but it can be found in many, many other compilations. Sorry.

In 1988-1989, ‘Parable’ was released as an Epic Comics micro-series. It featured an all-new interpretation of Galactus’ initial assault on our backwards world, illustrated by legendary French artist Jean Giraud/Möebius. As with the 1978 Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster Silver Surfer by Lee & Kirby, the story was removed from general Marvel continuity, allowing a focus on the unique philosophical nature of the Surfer and his ravenous master without the added distraction of hundreds of superheroes disrupting the flow.

It’s a beautiful piece of work and another one you really should read.

Basically, when Galactus reaches Earth in search of his absconded servant and herald – a spectacular exercise in scale and visual wonder – the Silver Surfer is hiding amongst us: a vagrant living on the streets and well aware of humanity’s many failings. However, when the star-god arrives and demands (like a huge cosmic TACO-PotUS) that everyone bows down and worships him, the solitary nomad is forced to confront his creator for the sake of beings who despise him.

Driven to extreme actions by his intimate knowledge of earthlings good and bad, the Surfer instigates a conceptual and spiritual fightback which soon devolves into blistering battle against his maker. With the sky literally falling, soon the tempted and terrified world rallies as Norrin Radd exposes the cosmic blowhard as a petty opportunist and inspires humanity to reject what seems like another deal too good to be true…

Isn’t it odd how fiction so often anticipates fact?

Tacked onto the ethereal, unmissable episode – one far more in tune with Möebius’ beliefs and interests than Stan’s – is an early Marvel Graphic Novel of the regulation Marvel Universe. The Enslavers is a rather self-indulgent but oddly entertaining slice of intergalactic eye-candy featuring the legendary icon of the counter-culture generation, and once again it depicts the ex-herald of planet-devourer Galactus as a tragic saviour and Christ metaphor. Now, though, it’s not our troubled humanity but the overwhelming power of slavers from space that threatens, and there’s a lot less breast-beating and soul-searching and far more cosmic action.

The story by Stan Lee (and Keith Pollard) has a rather odd genesis. Commissioned in the early 1980s by Jim Shooter, Lee’s original plot was apparently much transformed in the eight years it took to draw. By the time it was dialogued, it was a far different beast and Lee almost jokingly disowns it in his Afterword. Nevertheless, there’s lots to enjoy for fans who don’t expect too much in this tale of love and death in the great beyond. It’s inked by Josef Rubinstein, José Marzan & Chris Ivy, coloured by Paul Mounts and lettered by Michael Heisler.

Here, after a frantic rush through cosmic gulfs, Silver Surfer Norrin Radd crashes into the home of Reed & Sue Richards, just ahead of the colossal invasion craft of monstrous Mrrungo-Mu, who has been drawn to our world by the well-intentioned but naive Nasa probe Voyager III. Norrin’s homeworld Zenn-La has already been depopulated by the pitiless space slaver and Earth is next…

Moving swiftly, and exploiting the good intentions of an Earth scientist, the Enslavers incapacitate all our world’s superbeings and prepare to enjoy their latest conquest, but they have not accounted for the vengeful resistance of the Surfer or the debilitating power of the love Mrrungo-Mu is himself slave to: for the unconquerable alien warlord is weak and helpless before the haughty aloofness and emotional distance of his supposed chattel Tnneya…

Despite being – in far too many places – dafter than a bag of photonic space-weasels jonesing for disco lights, there’s still an obvious love of old, classic Marvel tales delivered at an enthusiastic pace informing these beautifully drawn pages, and the action sequences are a joy to behold. If you love cosmic adventure and can swallow a lot of silliness, this might just be worth a little of your time and money.

Altogether a very strange marriage, this is a compelling tome spanning the vast divide of comics from the ethereal and worthy to the exuberant and fun: a proper twofer you can get your teeth into…
© 1988, 1989, 1990, 2012 Marvel Entertainment Group/Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Captain America Epic Collection volume 7: The Swine (1976-1978)


By Jack Kirby, Don Glut, Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, Scott Edelman, David Anthony Kraft, Sal Buscema, John Buscema, George Tuska, Steve Leialoha, Dave Cockrum, Frank Giacoia, Mike Royer, John Tartaglione, John Verpoorten, Pablo Marcos, Mike Esposito, Dan Green, Joe Sinnott, Al Gordon & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-6052-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

These days, Captain America is more a global symbol of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave than Uncle Sam or Apple Pie ever were. Thus, I’m again exploiting a lazy obvious way to celebrate the prelude to Independence Day (for them and whichever of so many prospects TangoTacoPotUS is shopping as the next candidate for the nation’s 51st State) by recommending this blockbuster book highlighting material first seen in 1976 and beyond as said States commenced a third century of existence and still felt relatively United and travelling in generally the same direction…

Created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby in an era of frantic patriotic fervour, Captain America was a dynamic, highly visible response to the horrors of Nazism and the threat of Liberty’s loss. However, he quickly lost focus and popularity after hostilities ceased: fading away during post-war reconstruction. He briefly reappeared after the Korean War: a harder, darker sentinel ferreting out monsters, subversives and the “commies” who lurked under every American bed. Then he vanished once more until the burgeoning Marvel Age resurrected him just in time to experience the Land of the Free’s most turbulent and culturally divisive era.

“Cap” quickly became a mainstay of the Marvel Revolution across the Swinging Sixties, but lost his own way somewhat after that, except for a glittering period under scripter Steve Englehart. Eventually, however, he too moved on and out in the middle of the 1970s.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, after nearly a decade drafting almost all of Marvel’s successes, Jack Kirby had jumped ship to arch-rival DC in 1970, creating a whole new mythology and dynamically inspiring pantheon for the opposition. Eventually, The King accepted that even he could never win against any publishing company’s excessive pressure to produce whilst enduring micro-managing editorial interference.

Seeing which way the winds were blowing, Kirby exploded back into the Marvel Universe in 1976 with a signed promise of free rein, concocting another stunning wave of iconic creations – 2001: a Space Odyssey, Machine Man, The Eternals, Devil Dinosaur (plus – so nearly – seminal TV paranoia-fest The Prisoner) – as well as drafting a wealth of bombastic covers for almost every title in the company. He was also granted control of two of his previous co-creations – firmly established characters Black Panther and Captain America – to do with as he wished. The return was much hyped at the time but swiftly became controversial since Jack’s intensely personal visions paid little lip service to company continuity. Jack always went his own bombastic way and whilst those new works quickly found many friends, his tenure on those earlier inventions drastically divided the fan base.

Kirby was never slavishly wedded to tight continuity and preferred, in many ways, to treat his stints on Cap and the Panther as creative “Day Ones”. This was never more apparent than in the pages of the Star-Spangled Sentinel of Liberty…

This sterling collection reprints Captain America and the Falcon #201-221 and Captain America Annuals #3 & 4 cumulatively spanning September 1976 – May 1978, as the King eventually moved on and a horde of lesser lights sought to shepherd the hero back to Marvel mainstream continuity…

At the end of the previous volume Kirby’s original Fighting American had saved the nation from a conclave of aristocratic oligarchs attempting to undo two hundred years of freedom and progress with their “Madbomb” (and don’t forget to check out Washington DC for the effects still extant today…). After saving the nation, the Star-Spangled Avenger reunited with his partner Sam Wilson for CA&TF #201, set in the aftermath of their struggle…

Inked by Frank Giacoia, the tone shifts to malevolent moodiness and uncanny mystery with the introduction of ‘The Night People!’: a street-full of maladjusted maniacs who periodically phase into and out of “normal” New York City, creating terror and chaos with every sunset. When Falcon and girlfriend Leila are abducted by the eerie encroachers, they are quickly converted to their crazed cause by exposure to the ‘Mad, Mad Dimension!’ the vile visitors inhabit during daylight hours. This leaves Cap and folksy new not-evil millionaire colleague Texas Jack Muldoon hopelessly outgunned when their last-ditch rescue attempt results in them all battling an invasion of brutally berserk other-dimensional beasts in ‘Alamo II!’

On bludgeoning, battle-hardened top-form, the Star-Spangled Avenger saves the day once more, but no sooner are the erstwhile inhabitants of Zero Street safely re-integrated on Earth than ‘The Unburied One!’ finds our indefatigable champions clashing with a corpse who won’t play dead. The concluding chapter reveals the cadaver has become home to an energy-being from the far future as (inked by John Verpoorten) ‘Agron Walks the Earth!’ Thankfully, not even his/its pulsating power and rage can long baulk the indomitable spirit and ability of America’s Ultimate Fighting Man…

Non-stop nightmares resume in #206 as ‘Face to Face with the Swine!’ (Giacoia inks) sees the Star-Spangled Sensation illegally renditioned by secret police to deepest Central America. Here he subsequently topples the private kingdom and personal torture ground of psychotic sadist Comandante Hector Santiago, unchallenged monarch of the prison of Rio del Muerte. Never one to go anywhere meekly, Cap escapes and begins engineering the brute’s downfall in ‘The Tiger and the Swine!!’ but soon finds the jungles conceal actual monsters. When they exact primal justice on the tormentors, Cap’s escape with the Swine’s cousin Donna Maria down ‘The River of Death!’ is interrupted by the advent of another astounding “Kirby Kreation”:‘Arnim Zola… the Bio-Fanatic!!’

Abducting Cap and Donna Maria to his living castle, the former Nazi geneticist and absolute master of radical biology inflicts upon them a horde of diabolical homunculi at the behest of a mysterious sponsor, even as elsewhere, Falcon closes in on his long-missing pal. Indomitable against every kind of shapeshifting horror, Cap strives on, enduring a terrible ‘Showdown Day!’ (with Mike W. Royer taking over inking), whilst back home Steve Rogers’ girlfriend Sharon Carter uses her resources as SHIELD’s Agent 13 to investigate wealthy Cyrus Fenton and exposes ‘Nazi “X”!’ as Zola’s sponsor and the Sentinel of Liberty’s greatest nemesis.

With his time on the title counting down, Kirby ramped up the tension in #212 as ‘The Face of a Hero! Yours!!’ sees Zola preparing to surgically insert the Red Skull into Cap’s form, triggering a cataclysmic clash which leaves America’s hero bloodied, blind, but ultimately victorious…

With the hero recuperating in a US hospital, Dan Green inked #213 as ultimate assassin ‘The Night Flyer!’ targets the recuperating Cap at the behest of unfettered capitalist villain Kligger – of the insidious Corporation – inadvertently restoring his victim’s vision in time for spectacular if abrupt, Royer-inked conclusion ‘The Power’…

Narratively and chronologically adrift – and thus reading slightly out of sequence here – Captain America Annual #3 and 4 follow: wrapping up Kirby’s contributions to the career of the Star-Spangled Avenger beginning with his abruptly diverting back to business basics in a feature-length science fiction shocker which eschewed convoluted backstory and cultural soul-searching to simply pit the valiant hero against a cosmic vampire.

‘The Thing From the Black Hole Star!’ is a complication-free riot of rampaging action and end-of-the-world wonderment featuring a fallible but fiercely determined fighting man free of doubt and determined to defend humanity at all costs. It begins when farmer Jim Hendricks finds a UFO on his land and calls in a specialist he knows he can trust…

A year passes like magic in comics and one year later but immediately following here, Kirby recruits one of his earliest villain creations for ‘The Great Mutant Massacre!’: a feature- length super-shocker which again rejects accumulated history and the career confusion which typified Cap before and after Jack’s tenure for instant gratification. Here America’s Super Soldier strives against humanity’s nemesis Magneto and his latest mutant recruits Burner, Smasher, Lifter, Shocker, Slither and Peeper. This riot of rampaging action and end-of-the-world bombastic bravado pits the Sentinel of Liberty against a Homo Superior hit-squad aiming to take possession of a superpowered being whose origins are far stranger than anybody could conceive…

When Kirby moved on it left a desperate gap in the schedules. Captain America #215 saw Roy Thomas, George Tuska & Pablo Marcos respond by revisiting the hallowed origin story for the current generation with ‘The Way it Really Was!’: reiterating simultaneously the history of the heroes who had inherited the red, white & blue uniform whilst Steve Rogers was entombed in ice, and ending with our hero desperately wondering who the man beneath his mask might truly be.

For all that, #216 was a deadline-filling reprint of November 1963’s Strange Tales #114, represented here by Gil Kane’s cover and a single page framing sequence by Thomas, Dave Cockrum & Frank Giacoia. Thomas, Don Glut, John Buscema & Marcos actually began ‘The Search for Steve Rogers!’ in #217 with S.H.I.EL.D.’s record division, where the Falcon is distracted by a surprising job offer. Nick Fury (I), busy with the hunt for capitalist cabal The Corporation, asks Cap’s partner to supervise the agency’s newest project: the S.H.I.E.L.D. Super-Agents. These wonders-in-training consist of Texas Twister, Blue Streak, The Vamp and a rather mature-seeming Marvel Boy, but the squad are already deeply flawed and fatally compromised…

Issue #218 finds Cap targeted by a Corporation agent and fed data which bends his legendarily-fragmented memory back to his first thawing from the ice. Heading north to retrace his original journey, Cap spends ‘One Day in Newfoundland!’ (Glut, Sal Buscema & John Tartaglione), uncovering a secret army, an unremembered old foe and a colossal robotic facsimile of himself. One month later, ‘The Adventures of Captain America’ (Glut, Sal B & Joe Sinnott) reveals how, during WWII, Cap and junior partner Bucky were ordered to investigate skulduggery on the set of a movie serial about them, thereby exposing special effects wizard Lyle Dekker as a highly-placed Nazi spy. Now in modern-day Newfoundland, that warped and unforgiving genius has built a clandestine organisation with one incredible purpose: revealed in ‘The Ameridroid Lives!’ (inked by Tartaglione & Mike Esposito) as the captive crusader is mind-probed and dredges up shocking submerged memories.

In 1945, when he and Bucky chased a swiftly-launched secret weapon, the boy (apparently) died and Rogers fell into the North Atlantic: frozen in a block of ice until found and thawed by The Avengers. At least, he always thought that’s how it happened…

Now as the probe does its devilish work, Captain America finds that he was in fact picked up by Dekker after the spy was punished by the Red Skull and exiled for his failures. Deciding to work only for his own interests, Dekker then attempted to transfer Cap’s power to himself and it was only in escaping the Newfoundland base that Rogers crashed into the sea and fully froze…

In the Now, the vile scheme is finally accomplished: Cap’s energies are replicated in a 15-foot-tall super-android, with aging Dekker’s consciousness permanently embedded in its metal and plastic brain. However only at the peak of triumph does the fanatic realise he’s made himself into a monster at once unique, solitary and utterly apart from humanity…

The deadline problems still hadn’t eased and this episode was chopped in half, with the remainder of the issue affording Falcon a short solo outing as Scott Edelman, Bob Budiansky & Al Gordon’s ‘…On a Wing and a Prayer!’ portrays the Pinioned Paladin hunting a mad archer who has kidnapped his avian ally Redwing. The remainder of the Ameridroid saga came in #221 where Steve Gerber &David Kraft co-scripted ‘Cul-De-Sac!’, wherein the marauding mechanoid is finally foiled – by reason, not force of arms – whilst ‘The Coming of Captain Avenger!’ (Edelman, Steve Leialoha & Gordon) provides one last space-filling vignette with former sidekick Rick Jones given a tantalising glimpse of his most cherished dreams…

To Be Continued…

This tome then concludes with contemporary media moments, including John Romita’s July image from the Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar 1976 and Kirby & Giacoia’s contribution to Marvel Comics Memory Album Calendar 1977 plus a sublime covers and interior pages original art gallery by Kirby, Giacoia, Romita & Verpoorten for fans to drool over.

The King’s commitment to wholesome adventure, breakneck action and breathless wonder, combined with his absolute mastery of the comic page and unceasing quest for the Next Big Thrill, always make for a captivating read and this stuff is as good as anything Jack crafted over his decades of creative brilliance.

Fast-paced, action-packed, totally engrossing Fights ‘n’ Tights masterpieces no fan should ignore and, above all else, fabulously fun tales of a truly American Dream…
© 2025 MARVEL.

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Marvel Masters: The Art of John Romita Sr.


By John Romita Sr. with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Denny O’Neil, Gary Friedrich, Gerry Conway, Peter David, Roger Stern, J.M. DeMatteis, Frank Giacoia, Mike Esposito, John Verpoorten, Paul Reinman & Tony Mortellaro, Fred Fredericks, Al Milgrom, Dan Green & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-403-4 (TPB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Hard to believe that it’s exactly two years since John Romita died. As I wallow in melancholy over the passing of Brian Wilson, and listen to old Beach Boys classics, I can’t help but recall so many summers spent revelling in Romita’s clean cut graphic mastery, tracing his drawings with Pet Sounds and Smiley Smile playing – and especially grooving in my juvenile way to Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains…

That kind of nostalgia grips like a vice and can only be indulged until something supplants it, so here’s a look at an old British compilation that encapsulates all that whilst reminding us all how much poorer we’ve become in recent time…

One of the industry’s most polished stylists and a true cornerstone of the Marvel Comics phenomenon, the elder John Romita began his comics career in the late 1940s (ghosting for other artists) before striking out under his own colours, eventually illustrating horror and other anthology tales for Stan Lee at Timely/Atlas.

John Victor Romita was Brooklyn born and bred, entering the world on January 24th1930. From Brooklyn Junior High School he moved to the famed Manhattan School of Industrial Art, and graduated in 1947. After spending six months creating a medical exhibit for Manhattan General Hospital in 1949 he moved into comics, working for Famous Funnies. A “day job” working with Forbes Lithograph was abandoned after a friend found him inking and ghosting assignments. Romita was drafted in 1951, and, showing his portfolio to a US army art director, after boot camp at Fort Dix New Jersey, was promoted to corporal, stationed on Governors Island in New York Bay crafting recruitment posters and allowed to live off-base… in Brooklyn. During that period he started doing the rounds and struck up a freelancing acquaintance with Stan Lee at Atlas Comics…

He illustrated horror, science fiction, war stories, westerns, Waku, Prince of the Bantu (in Jungle Tales), a superb run of cowboy adventures starring The Western Kid and 1954’s brief abortive revival of Captain America and more, before an industry implosion derailed his career – and many others. Romita eventually found himself trapped in DC’s romance comics division – a job he hated – before making the reluctant jump again to the resurgent House of Ideas in 1965. As well as steering the career of the wallcrawler and many other Marvel stars, his greatest influence was felt when he official became Art Director in July 1973 – a role he had been doing in all but name since 1968. Romita had a definitive hand in creating or shaping many key characters, such as Mary Jane Watson, Peggy Carter, The Kingpin, The Punisher, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Satana, ad infinitum.

After a brief stint as an inker, Romita took over Daredevil with #12, following on from Wally Wood and Bob Powell. Initially, Jack Kirby provided layouts to help Romita assimilate the style and pacing of Marvel tales but he was soon in full control of his pages. He drew DD until #19, by which time he had been handed the assignment of a lifetime…

We open here with the Captain America story from Tales of Suspense # 77 (May 1966). ‘If a Hostage Should Die!’ was written by Lee, with Kirby layouts and inks from Frank Giacoia (AKA Frank Ray), recounting a moment from the hero’s wartime exploits involving a mysterious woman he had loved and lost, and is followed by a classic Daredevil thriller from #18. ‘There Shall Come a Gladiator!’ introduced an armoured, buzzsaw wielding psychopath in a gripping tale of mistaken identity, by Lee and office junior Denny O’Neil with Giacoia once more handling the pens and brushes.

Up next is that aforementioned Big Break. By 1966 Stan Lee and Steve Ditko could no longer work together on their greatest creation. After increasingly fraught months the artist resigned, leaving the Spider-Man without an illustrator. The new kid was handed the ball and told to run. ‘How Green was my Goblin!’ and ‘Spidey Saves the Day!’ (“Featuring the End of the Green Goblin!” as it so facetiously and unconvincingly proclaimed) was the climactic battle fans had been clamouring for since the viridian villain’s first appearance. It didn’t disappoint and still doesn’t to this day.

Reprinted from issues #39 & 40 (August and September 1966, and inked by old DC colleague Mike Esposito under the pseudonym Mickey Demeo) this is still one of the best Spider-Man yarns ever, and heralded a run of classic sagas by the Lee/Romita team that saw sales actually rise, even after the departure of seemingly irreplaceable Ditko. Another such was the contents of Amazing Spider-Man #47-49.

‘In the Hands of the Hunter!’, ‘The Wings of the Vulture!’ and ‘From the Depths of Defeat!’ saw Romita finally provide pencils and inks (April, May and June 1967), comprising a complex, engrossing thriller featuring Kraven the Hunter and both the old and a new Vultures, as well as detailing a tension building subplot about the gone-but-not-forgotten Green Goblin.

Stan Lee considered Romita a safe pair of hands and “go-to-guy”. When Kirby left to create his incredible Fourth World for DC, Romita was handed the company’s other flagship title – and in the middle of an on-going storyline. Fantastic Four #103 (October 1970) ‘At War With Atlantis!’ is the second chapter in a gripping invasion tale where Magneto blackmails the Sub-Mariner into conquering the surface world with his Atlantean legions (as is so often the case, the first part is not included here, but there are recaps aplenty to bring you up to speed) and with the conclusion ‘Our World.. Enslaved!’ Inked with angular, brittle brilliance by John Verpoorten, they form the first non-Kirby classic of the super-team’s illustrious history. Sadly, the title began a gradual decline soon after…

Romita returned to the Star-Spangled Avenger in the early 1970s and ‘Power to the People’  is the culmination of an extended storyline very much of its time with the Falcon and Nick Fury helping to once again stop the insidious Red Skull. Gary Friedrich scripted Captain America #143 (November 1971) and another new kid was writing the web-spinner when Romita returned. Next comes ‘The Master-Plan of the Molten Man!’ (Amazing Spider-Man #132, May 1974), scripted by Gerry Conway, but the increasingly busy Romita, art directing all Marvel’s titles and projects, was here uncomfortably assisted by Paul Reinman & Tony Mortellaro in the inking of this two-fisted interlude.

Scripted by Peter David with Fred Fredericks inks, ‘Vicious Cycle’ is a quirky, moving short tale from Incredible Hulk Annual #17 (1991), followed by an adventure of Peter Parker’s parents seen in Untold Tales of Spider-Man #-1 (July 1997, and part of the company’s Flashback publishing event). Written by Roger Stern and inked by Al Milgrom, ‘The Amazing Parkers’ pitted the married secret agents against the deadly Baroness and guest-starred a pre-Weapon-X Wolverine in a delightful pacy spy-romp.

In 1997 the Wallcrawler and Daredevil teamed up in Spider-Man/Kingpin: To the Death: a one-shot reuniting Lee & Romita (plus inker Dan Green) for an old fashioned countdown caper to delight older fans, before this book’s narrative delights end with ‘The Kiss’: a trip down memory lane with a much younger Peter Parker still in the throes of first love with Gwen Stacy. Triggering those tears is writer J.M. DeMatteis, and the content proves to me, at least, that Romita’s detested romance stories must be something to see, all his protestations notwithstanding. With a superbly informative biography section from Mike Conroy to close out the volume, this is one of the most cohesive and satisfactory compilations in this series of Marvel Masters. If only they could all be as good…
© 2008 Marvel Entertainment, Inc. and its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. (A BRITISH EDITION BY PANINI UK LTD)

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Sub-Mariner Marvel Masterworks volume 7


By Bill Everett, Mike Friedrich, Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, Dan Adkins, Alan Weiss, Sam Kweskin, John Tartaglione, Jim Mooney & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9915-1 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

In his most primal incarnation (other origins are available but may differ due to timeslips, circumstance and screen dimensions) Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner is the proud, noble and generally upset offspring of the union of a water-breathing Atlantean princess and an American polar explorer. That doomed romance resulted in a hybrid being of immense strength and extreme resistance to physical harm, able to fly and thrive above and below the waves.

Over the years, a wealth of creators have played with the fishy tale and today’s Namor is frequently hailed as Marvel’s First Mutant as well as the original “bad boy Good Guy”. What remains unchallenged is that he was created by young, talented Bill Everett, for non-starter cinema premium Motion Picture Weekly Funnies: #1 (October 1939) so – technically – Namor predates Marvel, Atlas and Timely Comics. The Marine Miracleman first caught the public’s avid attention as part of an elementally appealing fire vs. water headlining team-up in the October 1939 Marvel Comics #1 (which renamed itself Marvel Mystery Comics from #2 onwards). The amphibian antihero shared honours and top billing with The Human Torch, having debuted (albeit in a truncated, monochrome version) in the aforementioned promotional booklet designed to be handed out to moviegoers earlier in the year.

Our late-starter antihero rapidly emerged as one of the industry’s biggest draws, winning his own title at the end of 1940 (cover-dated Spring 1941). His appeal was baffling but solid and he was one of the last super-characters to vanish at the end of the first heroic age. In 1954, when Atlas (as the company then was) briefly revived its “Big Three” line-up – the Torch and Captain America being the other two – Everett returned for an extended run of superbly dark, mordantly moody, creepily contemporary fantasy fables. Even so, his input wasn’t sufficient to keep the title afloat and eventually Sub-Mariner sank again.

In 1961, as Stan Lee & Jack Kirby were reinventing superheroes with their Fantastic Four, they revived and reimagined the awesome, all-but-forgotten aquanaut as a troubled, angry semi-amnesiac. Decidedly more bombastic, regal and grandiose, this returnee despised humanity: embittered and broken by the loss of his subsea kingdom… which had been (seemingly) destroyed by American atomic testing. His urge for rightful revenge was infinitely complicated after he became utterly besotted with the FF’s Susan Storm…

Namor knocked around the budding Marvel universe for years, squabbling with star turns such as The Hulk, Avengers, X-Men and Daredevil before securing his own series as one half of Tales to Astonish. From there he graduated in 1968 to his own solo title again.

Cumulatively spanning cover-dates June 1972 – April 1973, this seventh subsea selection trawls Sub-Mariner #50-60, and sees the triumphant return of originator Everett in salty sagas preceded by a heartfelt appreciation and more creative secret-sharing from Roy Thomas in his Introduction before the dry land dramas and thrill-soaked yarns recommence…

Previously, Namor had endured months of escalating horror as old enemies such as Prince Byrrah, Warlord Krang, Attuma, Dr. Dorcas and sinister shapeshifter Llyra constantly assaulted his sunken kingdom. They were soundly defeated, but the constant battles led to the murder of Namor’s lifelong companion and bride-to-be Lady Dorma. The prince had been betrayed by his most trusted ally and, heartsick, angry and despondent, he abdicated the throne, choosing to pursue the human half of his hybrid heritage as a surface dweller…

The decision was fraught with more potential grief, leading to perpetual battles with surface world authorities, deranged psionic hermit Stephan Tuval, mind-tyrant Turalla, monster-maker Aunt Serr, M.O.D.O.K. and AIM. Namor seldom fought alone and initial clashes with old friends such as Diane Arliss and Walt Newell (part-time undersea Avenger Stingray), Spider-Man, Daredevil and Human Torch Johnny Storm, led to refreshed alliances, before culminating in a poignant but so-brief reunion with his long-lost father Leonard McKenzie, a man Namor had for his entire life believed killed by Atlanteans in 1920.

When that tragic hostage to fortune was murdered by post-human horror Tiger Shark and Llyra, doubly orphaned, traumatised Namor lost his memory again, and was used as cannon fodder by Doctor Doom before eventually breaking free and retrenching in confusion to ponder his obscured future…

A fresh start begins in #50 as Bill Everett resurfaces to ask ‘Who Am I?’, with the bewildered amphibian reeling in confusion at the beach until his heroic instincts kick in and he saves a drowning teenager from seaweed and pollution. His actions are completely misunderstood and she savagely attacks him, before swimming off… right out to sea…

Lesson learned, Namor concentrates on his own woes and sets off for Antarctica, eventually fetching up in the Ross Sea to explore the crumbling remains of Atlantis. His reveries are shattered when he is attacked by mutant crab creatures guarding the tomb of his beloved long-lost cousin and WWII partner in crimefighting Namora…

Confronting sinister leader Salamar the Sustainer, Namor is apprised of a bizarre plot to exploit the vast oil reserves under the ocean floor, but soon uncovers old foes shaping events: treacherous cousin Byrrah and Llyra. He also meets again that abrasive teenager and discovers she is Namora’s wayward daughter…

As all hell breaks loose, former prince and newfound cousin Namorita make a break for it in a hail of weapons fire as ‘Armageddon… at Fifty Fathoms Full!’ (scripted by Mike Friedrich) exposes a scaly hidden hand behind the carnage. Byrrah is in league with the alien Brotherhood of Baddoon, who want the – radioactive – oil reserves, albeit not for the reasons they share with the usurper. Ultimately, the aliens, Byrrah, and Salamar’s savage crab people can’t agree and the seagoing cousins are participants in a Battle Royale that ends in environmental catastrophe…

Seeking to confirm Namorita’s account of how Namora died and fob her off on his old girlfriend Betty Dean Prentiss, Sub-Mariner cruises into a clash with ultra-nationalist Japanese mutant and future X-Man Sunfire as ‘The Atomic Samurai!’ – ever receptive to deranged patriotic ranting – falls under the sway of war criminal Dragon-Lord, last of the samurai who plans to unleash his new Nipponese army and deadly defoliants upon America; a tactic that could destroy the oceans…

After a spectacular new incidence of the classic Golden Age fire vs water duel, Everett takes full creative command for the follow-up ‘…And the Rising Sun Shall Fall!’ as Sunfire sees sense and switches sides to save the seas, resulting in all-out war in concluding half-chapter ‘Now Comes… the Decision!’, a brief battle that leaves room in #54 for a “Mighty Marvel Mini Classic!” as Friedrich & Alan Weiss detail how ‘Namor the First, Prince of Atlantis battles The Mer-Mutants’: a light but lovely puff piece involving a mermaid acting as a subsea honey trap for her hungry kin…

Issue #55 sees Namor at last wave goodbye to “Nita” and Betty, before heading back to Antarctica and an unexpected and brutal encounter with a scavenging wrecker dubbed ‘The Abominable Snow-King!’ The literally monstrous Torg’s ambition is to hurl enslaved sea life against humanity but soon sinks once the Sub-Mariner gets involved, after which Friedrich & veteran illustrator Dan Adkins steer the abdicated Prince back to his forsaken kingdom in ‘Atlantis, Mon Amour!’ Sadly, he’s too late to stop his former subjects making a fear fuelled mistake that results in atrocity and genocide when refugee aliens come begging for aid…

When Everett returned he deftly opened the doors to Marvel’s Atlas era-past with a tempestuous yarn that would eventually affect the entire continuity. ‘…In the Lap of the Gods’ reintroduces pliable 1950s sensation Venus whose impact would ripple out across the MU and ultimately reveal a hidden history as part of the Agents of Atlas sub-franchise. It begins in a shattering storm as Namor rescues a lovely mystery woman stranded on a rock and stumbles into a long-running grudge match between the Hellenic gods of Love and War. A contemporary tale of dissent and unrest, the story reunites him with Namorita, who, in his absence, has become a college student and activist. Moreover, her favourite lecturer – Humanities Professor Victoria N. Starr – also has a concealed alter ego and lethal stalker: malign divinity and former pantheon mate Ares…

Having held at bay one angry god, Namor returns to Atlantis, resolved to restore the undersea nation to forefront of civilisation but his program of changes is stalled when ‘Hands Across the Waters, Hands Across the Skies…’ (Everett supervising, steering – and inking – dialoguer Steve Gerber & layout artist Sam Kweskin) uncover a survivor and witness to the recent massacre of alien ambassadors by Atlanteans. Tamara of the Sisterhood claims to offer forgiveness and seek understanding, but many of the original perpetrators would rather there were no witnesses or recriminations to deal with. Most tellingly, the superstrong survivor and her pet monster have their own plans and soon the prince is sucked into more pointless battle…

With John Tartaglione now inking Everett’s plot, Gerber & Kweskin forecast ‘Thunder Over the Seas!’: a tale of tragic miscomprehension as Namor again clashes with the surface world. Now the Sub-Mariner’s new advisor, Tamara is targeted by Atlantean scout Lorvex who is driven wild by her exotic beauty and rarity. Obsessively stalking and assaulting her, Lorvex drives her into Russian trawler nets and the refugee soon becomes a prized possession after the vessel and its contents are impounded by the US Coast Guard. Soon she is a cause célèbre and topic of heated debate at the United Nations…

Having dealt with Lorvex, Namor goes looking for his new friend, crashing into chaos as the war of words over the alien mermaid triggers the usual bellicose response amongst humans. By the time surface-dwelling Namorita summons her cousin to rescue Tamara, Avenger Thor has stepped in to keep the peace. Sadly it’s far too late to prevent ‘The Invasion of New York!’ (Everett, Gerber, Kweskin & Jim Mooney), with Lorvex exploiting the campaign to regain position and secretly abduct Tamara from UN custody. Enraged and resigned, Sub-Mariner acts decisively and violently to end the crisis, and accepts at last the fate he has been really fighting, finally accepting again the throne and responsibilities of ruling Atlantis.

To Be Continued and Concluded…

During these later issue Everett’s steadily declining health increasingly limited his output. As part of the Bonus features the cover and first 4 pages of Sub-Mariner #61 are included here, as drawn by the old master with Win Mortimer & Mooney. He plotted two further issues and died on February 27th 1973. Those will be seen in the final collection of this sequence. Here, however, follows a visual memorial from editor and friend Thomas, limned by Marie Severin & Frank Giacoia that appeared in Sub-Mariner #65 (cover-dated September 1973).

With covers throughout by Gil Kane, Everett, Vince Colletta, Giacoia, Joe Sinnott, Sal Buscema, Weiss, John Romita, Jim Starlin & Rich Buckler, other sunken treasures salvaged here include a watercolour and pen & ink pinup by Bill, a Venus pinup from Marvel Spotlight #2 (February 1972) and 7 original art pages and covers by Everett and assorted collaborators.

Many Marvel Comics are more exuberant than qualitative, but this volume, especially from an art-lover’s point of view, is a wonderful exception: historical treasures with narrative bite and indescribable style and panache that fans will delight in forever.
© 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Defenders Epic Collection volume 2 – Enter: the Headmen (1974-1975)


By Len Wein, Steve Gerber, Tony Isabella, Chris Claremont, Jim Starlin, Stan Lee, Bill Everett, Steve Ditko, Dennis O’Neil, Larry Lieber, Paul S. Newman, Sal Buscema, Gil Kane, George Tuska, Don Heck, Jack Kirby, Bob Powell, Angelo Torres, Doug Wildey, Klaus Janson, Mike Esposito, Vince Colletta, Jack Abel, Al Milgrom, Dan Green, Sal Trapani, Dan Adkins, Jim Mooney, Don Newton, Bob McLeod, Dick Ayers & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5531-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

For kids – of any and all ages – there is a simple response to and primal fascination with increased stature, brute strength and feeling dangerous. It surely goes some way towards explaining the perennial interest in angry tough guys who break stuff… as best exemplified by Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner and The Incredible Hulk. When you add the mystery and magic of Doctor Strange, the recipe for thrills, spills & chills becomes utterly irresistible…

Last of the big star conglomerate super-groups, The Defenders would eventually number amongst its membership almost every hero – and quite a few villains – of Marvel’s Universe. No real surprise there then, as initially they were the company’s bad-boy antiheroes: misunderstood, outcast, often mad and actually dangerous to know. For Marvel, the outsider supergroup must have seemed a conceptual inevitability… once they’d finally published it. Back then, apart from Spider-Man and Daredevil, their superstars regularly teamed up in various mob-handed assemblages and, in the wake of the Defenders, even more superteams comprising pre-existing characters were rapidly mustered. These included the Champions, Invaders, New Warriors and more – but none of them had any Really Big Guns…

They never won the fame or acceptance of other teams, but that simply left creators open to taking more chances and playing the occasional narrative wild cards. The genesis of the team derived from their status as publicly distrusted villains, threats or menaces. This scintillating selection offers in whole or in part Defenders #12-25, Giant-Size Defenders #1-4, Marvel Two-in-One #6-7, and material originally from Mystery Tales #21, World of Fantasy #11 and Tales of Suspense #9 as itself reprinted in Weird Wonder Tales #7 (December 1975): stories spanning February 1974 to July 1975…

Coming off a groundbreaking team up saga now known as the Avengers/Defenders War, the first tale here signals a major change in direction as new writer Len Wein joined resident illustrator Sal Buscema & inker Jack Abel for a return clash with an insidious alien enemy. Beginning a run of more traditional costumed capers, mindbending Xemnu sought again to repopulate his barren homeworld with abducted earthlings in ‘The Titan Strikes Back!’, but flopped even against the pared-back cast of Stephen Strange, Valkyrie and Hulk.

A bona fide hit, the “non-team” were part of a grand expansionist experiment in extra-value comics that began with Giant Sized Defenders #1 (July1974): a stunning combination of highly readable reprints wrapped in a classy framing sequence by Tony Isabella, Jim Starlin & Al Milgrom and co-starring Strange, disciple Clea and major domo Wong. The vintage thrills commence with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers’ ‘Banished to Outer Space’ from Incredible Hulk #3, followed by amagnificent 1950s Bill Everett Sub-Mariner horror-tinged fantasy-feast entutled‘Bird of Prey!’ From there focus switches to Dr. Strange and Denny O’Neil/Steve Ditko’s mini-masterpiece ‘To Catch a Magician!’ (Strange Tales #145) before the concoction concludes with a blockbusting battle as the star trio, sorcerer’s apprentice and valiant Valkyrie dispatch a self-inflicted mystic menace. The treat is topped with Roy Thomas’ editorial extract ‘Good Evening! This is the Eleventh-Hour Bullpen’ and contemporary ads prior to a splendid double-page pin-up by Sal B, before the regular epics resume in a spectacular Saves-the-World struggle.

Defenders #13 found the obscure assiciates battling against the villainous Squadron Sinister (The Whizzer, Doctor Spectrum & Hyperion) in ‘For Sale: One Planet… Slightly Used!’ (featuring an early inking job for Klaus Janson) before concluding in the Dan Green-embellished ‘And Who Shall Inherit the Earth?’ as Marvel’s Batman-analogue Nighthawk turns traitor and unites with the Defenders to defeat his murderous former teammates and their aquatic overlord/alien marauder Nebulon, the Celestial Man.

Courtesy of Wein, Buscema & Janson, #15 initiated a 2-part duel with manic mutant messiah Magneto,who first institutes a ‘Panic Beneath the Earth!’ prompting the X-Men’s mentor Charles Xavier to enlist the unsung heroes’ aid. The concluding clash envelopes the insidious Brotherhood of Evil and ‘Alpha, the Ultimate Mutant’ (inked by Mike Esposito) as well as the apparent end of a true master of evil…

Giant Sized Defenders #2 (October 1974) delivers a superb supernatural thriller from Wein, fabulously limned by master craftsman Gil Kane and rising star inker Janson. ‘H… as in Hulk… Hell… and Holocaust!’ pits the eternally-embattled Jade Giant against sinister cult the Sons of Satanish and their currently-dead leader Asmodeus, before the Defenders (core-group Doctor Stephen Strange, Valkyrie and reformed Nighthawk) call on Daimon Hellstrom AKA the Son of Satan for some highly specialised assistance…

In Defenders #17 the heroes set up housekeeping in a converted Long Island Riding Stables, courtesy of billionaire Nighthawk’s civilian alter ego Kyle Richmond, just as displaced Asgardian soul Valkyrie leaves in search of the truth about the human body she is trapped in. The main plot of ‘Power Play!’ (Wein, Sal B & Dan Green) sees the remaining heroes engage with and then enlist the aid of Hero for Hire/Power Man Luke Cage, as superstrong Asgardian enhanced thugs The Wrecking Crew topple a number of Richmond’s New York buildings. whilst hunting for a hidden superweapon. The spectacular ‘Rampage!’ reveals their object to be a pocket gamma bomb, with the search finishing in a furious finale from Chris Claremont, Wein, Buscema & Janson, as everybody frantically ferrets out the location of a deadly ‘Doomball!’ that has already been whisked away by some foolish bystander…

Immediately afterwards Strange, Clea and Fantastic Four lynchpin The Thing chance upon a disharmonious cosmic challenge in Marvel Two-In-One #6’s ‘Death-Song of Destiny!’ (by Steve Gerber, George Tuska & Esposito) which concludes in MTIO #7 with ‘Name That Doom!’ (Sal Buscema pencils) wherein Valkyrie joins the melee just in time to cross swords with egregious Asgardian exiles Enchantress and The Executioner, who are behind a cosmic scheme to reorder the universe…

The aftermath of that eldritch encounter spills over into Defenders #20 as Gerber took on the non team as regular scripter, beginning a landmark run of stories. ‘The Woman She Was…!’ (art by Sal B & Vince Colletta) begins unravelling the torturous backstory of Valkyrie’s human host Barbara Norris during a breathtakingly bombastic battle that also reanimates the diabolical threat of the Undying Ones. Late arriving, Strange & Nighthawk almost perish at the hands of the demons’ human worshippers…

Steve Gerber was a uniquely gifted writer who combined a deep love of Marvel’s continuity minutiae with irrepressible wit, dark introspection and immeasurable imagination, all leavened with enticing surreality. His stories always occurred at the extreme edge of the company’s intellectual canon and never failed to deliver surprise and satisfaction. With Defenders #21, he commenced a long, intricate and epically peculiar saga as ‘Enter: The Headman!’ (illustrated by Buscema & Sal Trapani) exposed a trio of thematically linked scientists/savants, all originating in Marvel’s pre-superhero fantasy anthologies, and opened an insidious campaign of conquest and vengeance by driving New York city briefly insane (… arguably and more correctly, more insane…).

Before the next chapter, however, a brace of extended sagas play chronological catch-up: firstly, for Giant-Size Defenders #3 Gerber, Jim Starlin & Wein (with art from Starlin, Dan Adkins, Don Newton & Jim Mooney) detail ‘Games Godlings Play!’ as Daredevil joins Strange, Valkyrie, and Prince Namor in saving the world from Elder of the Universe The Grandmaster: a cosmic games-player whose obsession with gladiatorial combats pitches the heroes into deadly contests with intergalactic menaces from infinity… and beyond. Next follows a more down-to-Earth tale as occasional Avenger Yellowjacket (AKA Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath et al) pops by to help crush insane criminal genius Egghead and Nighthawk’s old gang the Squadron Sinister on ‘Too Cold a Night for Dying!’ (Giant Sized Defenders #4, by Gerber, Don Heck & Colletta).

The return to monthly action resumes with Gerber, Sal Buscema & Esposito in Defenders #22’s ‘Fangs of Fire and Blood!’, with sinister white supremacist secret society the Sons of the Serpent launching another hate-fuelled, racist terror-pogrom, and forcing the outcast champions into an uncomfortably public response. Stakes are raised in ‘The Snakes Shall Inherit the Earth!’ with Hank Pym – still in his Yellowjacket persona – rejoining the Defenders to confront his most reviled old enemies. Even with his aid, the Defenders are defeated in combat and left ‘…In the Jaws of the Serpent!’ (inked by Bob McLeod inks), necessitating a nick-of-time rescue by Daredevil, Luke Cage, Clea and the Son of Satan before the epic ends with a stunning and still sickeningly realistic twist as Jack Abel inks ‘The Serpent Sheds its Skin!’…

For the longest time The Defenders was the best and weirdest superhero comic book in the business, and this bitty, unwieldy collection was where that all started. The next volume will see that inspirational unconventionality reach even greater heights of drama and lunacy, but before that this compendium concludes with the Atlas Era short tales that originally introduced Gorilla Man Arthur Nagan, human horror Dr. Jerold Morgan and Chondu the Mystic who comprise the heinous Headmen tantalisingly introduced in Defenders #21. The vignettes had all been recently reprinted in horror anthology Weird Wonder Tales #7 (December 1974) and the cover of that issue opens a selection of added extras…

Nagan debuted in ‘It Walks Erect!’ by Paul S. Newman & Bob Powell from Mystery Tales #21, September 1954: a obsessive surgeon driven by ambition to perform appalling transplant research on gorillas who ultimately took unholy revenge upon him, whilst biologist Jerry Morgan’s matter compression experiments terrified – but saved – a city in ‘Prisoner of the Fantastic Fog’ (by an unknown writer & Angelo Torres from World of Fantasy #11, April 19580). Tales of Suspense #9 (May 1960) then revealed how stage magician Chondu – AKA Harvey Schlemerman – was far more than he seemed in mini-thriller by Stan Lee & Larry Lieber, wonderfully rendered by the miraculous Doug Wildey.

Other extras include a full cover gallery by by John Romita, Gil Kane, Sal Buscema, Jim Starlin, Frank Giacoia, Joe Sinnott, Ron Wilson, Al Milgrom, Dave Cockrum & Janson, more house ads, relevant sections of the Mighty Marvel Calendar for 1975 by Roy Thomas amd artists Frank Brunner, Romita, Sal B & Janson and original art pages/covers by Kane, Giacoia, Romita, Sals Buscema & Trapani.

If you love superheroes but crave something just a little different these yarns are for you… and the best is still to come.
© 2024 MARVEL.

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Fantastic Four: Extended Family


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, John Byrne, Steve Englehart, Walter Simonson, Dwayne McDuffie, Tom DeFalco, Carlos Pacheco, Rafael Marin, Jeph Loeb, John Buscema, Rich Buckler, Arthur Adams, Paul Ryan, Stuart Immonen, Paul Pelletier, George Klein, Sol Brodsky, Chris Rule, Joe Sinnott, Art Thibert, Danny Bulanadi, Wade von Grawbadger, Rick Mounts & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5303-0 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

With only 67 days (but who’s counting?) to the premiere of Fantastic Four: First Steps, let’s activate our public service to newcomers option and start looking at the immense and critically important history and legacy of the fourth most important moment in US comic books – the creation of “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine”…

Of course, whatever is up on screen won’t be what has gone before but try to remember it’s NOT REAL. It’s not even the comics you purport to love. It’s just another movie designed to appeal to the largest number of movie fans possessing only rudimentary knowledge of what involved. If you genuinely want to uphold the purity of the comics incarnations, buy a book like this one. Heck, buy a bunch and hand them out to people you’d like to impress and convert. This one would be a good place to start…

The Fantastic Four is considered by many the most pivotal series in modern comic book history, introducing both a new style of storytelling and a decidedly different manner of engaging the readers’ passionate attention. Regarded more as a family than a team, the line-up changed constantly over the years and this examination from 2011 gathered a selection of those comings and goings in a fascinating primer for new fans looking for a quick catch-up class.

I strongly suspect that it also performed a similar function for doddering old devotees such as me, always looking for a salutary refresher session…

If you’re absolutely new to the first family of superhero fantasy, or returning after a sustained hiatus, you might have a few problems with this otherwise superb selection of clannish classics featuring not only Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, The Thing and The Human Torch, but also many of the other Marvel stalwarts who have stuck a big “4” on their chests (or thereabouts) and forged ahead into the annals of four-colour heroic history. However, if you’re prepared to ignore a lot of unexplained references to stuff you’ve missed (but will enjoy subsequently tracking down), there’s a still a magically enthralling treat on offer in this terrific tome.

The Fantastic Four are – usually – maverick genius Reed Richards, his fiancée – and later wife – Susan Storm, their trusty college friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother Johnny: moral, brave, decent, philanthropic and driven survivors of a privately-funded space-shot which went horribly wrong after cosmic rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

After crashing back to Earth, the quartet found they had all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks.

This compilation gathers Fantastic Four #1, 81, 132, 168, 265, 307, 384 & 544, plus #42 of the third volume which began in 1998. Confusingly, the title resumed original numbering with this tale, so it’s also #471 of the overall canon.

Everything began with the premier release (cover-dated November 1961 and on sale from August 8th of that year) which introduced Lee & Kirby’s ‘The Fantastic Four’ (with inkers George Klein, Sol Brodsky, Chris Rule and others, plus Artie Simek lettering and Stan Goldberg colouring) depicting mysterious mad scientist Dr. Richards summoning helpful helpmeet Sue, burly buddy Ben and Sue’s brother Johnny before heading off on their first mission. Via flashback we discover their incredible origins and how the uncanny cosmos made them all into outlandish freaks…

Richards’ body had become impossibly pliable and elastic, Sue could fade away as a living phantom, Johnny would briefly blaze like a star and fly like a rocket whilst poor, tormented Ben devolved into a horrifying brute who, unlike his comrades, could not return to a semblance of normality on command. Shaken but unbowed, the valiant quartet vowed to dedicate their new abilities to benefiting all mankind. In second chapter ‘The Fantastic Four meet the Mole Man’ they foil a sinister scheme by another hideous outcast who controls a legion of monsters and army of subhuman slaves from far beneath the Earth by uncovering ‘The Moleman’s Secret!’

This summation of the admittedly mediocre plot cannot do justice to the engrossing wonder of that breakthrough issue; we really have no grasp today of just how different in tone, how utterly shocking it all was.

“Different” doesn’t always mean “better”, but the FF was like no other comic on the market at the time and buyers responded to it hungrily. Throughout the turbulent 1960s, Lee & Kirby’s astonishing ongoing collaboration rewrote all the rules on what comics could be and introduced fresh characters and astounding concepts on a monthly basis. One such was The Inhumans. Conceived as a lost civilisation and debuting in 1965 (Fantastic Four #44-48) during Stan & Jack’s most fertile and productive creative period, they were a race of disparate (generally) humanoid beings, genetically altered by aliens in Earth’s distant pre-history, who consequently became technologically advanced far ahead of emergent Homo Sapiens.

Few in numbers, they isolated themselves from barbarous dawn-age humans, firstly on an island and latterly in a hidden Himalayan valley, voluntarily confined to their fabulous city Attilan – until a civil war and a deranged usurper brought them into humanity’s gaze. Old foe and charter member of the villainous Frightful Four, Madame Medusa was revealed as a fugitive member Attilan’s Royal Family, on the run ever since a coup deposed her lover: the true king Black Bolt.

With her cousins Triton, Karnak and Gorgon, the rest would quickly become mainstays of the Marvel Universe, but Medusa’s bewitching teenaged sister Crystal and her giant teleporting dog Lockjaw were the real stars of the show. For young Johnny, it was love at first sight, and Crystal’s eventual fate would greatly change his character, giving him a hint of angst-ridden tragedy that resonated greatly with the generation of young readers who were growing up with the comic…

Crystal stuck around for many adventures and eventually when the now-married Sue had a baby and began “taking things easy”, the Inhuman Princess became the team’s first official replacement. FF #81 (December 1968 by Lee, Kirby & Joe Sinnott) announced ‘Enter – the Exquisite Elemental’ as the devastatingly powerful slip of a girl joined Reed, Ben & Johnny just as incorrigible technological terror The Wizard attacked the team. In blisteringly short order Crystal promptly pulverized the murderous maniac and began a long combat career with the heroes.

After untold centuries in seclusion, increasing global pollution levels began to attack the Inhumans’ elevated biological systems and eventually Crystal had to abandon Johnny and return to Attilan. By the time of Fantastic Four #132 (March 1973) Lee & Kirby had also split up and Roy Thomas, John Buscema & Sinnott were in charge of the show. The concluding chapter of a 2-part tale, ‘Omega! The Ultimate Enemy!’ described how Crystal, her brand new fiancé Quicksilver and the rest of the Inhumans were attacked by their own genetically-programmed slave-race (!!) the Alpha Primitives, seemingly at the behest of Black Bolt’s diabolical brother Maximus the Mad. The truth was far stranger but the strife and struggle resulted in Medusa returning to America with the team…

The more things changed the more they stayed the same, however, and by FF #168 (March 1976) Sue was back but the Thing was forcibly retired. In ‘Where Have All the Powers Gone?’, Thomas, Rich Buckler & Sinnott revealed how Ben had been cured of his condition. Reverted to normal, pedestrian humanity thanks to radiation exposure and a blockbusting battle with The Hulk, Ben was apparently forever deprived of the Thing’s sheer power, and Reed had enlisted Hero for Hire Luke Cage as his replacement. However, the embittered Grimm simply couldn’t adjust to a life on the sidelines and when brutal bludgeoning super-thug Wrecker went on a rampage, merely mortal Ben risked life and limb to prove he could still play with the big boys…

After years in creative doldrums the FF were dynamically revitalised when John Byrne took over scripting and illustrating the feature. Following a sequence of bold innovations, he used companywide crossover Secret Wars to radically overhaul the team. In #265 (April 1984) he revealed the big change in a brace of short tales re-presented here. Firstly, ‘The House That Reed Built’ sees the group’s Baxter Building HQ as the star when the automated marvel diligently deals with a sinister home-invasion by Frightful Four alumnus The Trapster, after which Sue Richards is introduced to the Thing’s replacement (Ben having remained on the distant planet of The Beyonder for personal reasons) as the green-&-glam She-Hulk joins up in ‘Home Are the Heroes’.

Jumping to October 1987, Fantastic Four #307 offered the most radical change yet as Reed & Sue retired to the suburbs to raise their terrifyingly powered omega-mutant son Franklin, leaving the long-returned Thing leading a team consisting of the Human Torch, old flame Crystal and super-strong but emotionally damaged Amazon Sharon Ventura initially employing the sobriquet Ms Marvel. However, before they even have a chance to shake hands, the new team is battling arcane alchemist Diablo in the Steve Englehart, John Buscema & Sinnott gripping thriller ‘Good Bye!’

An even bigger shake-up occurred during Walter Simonson’s run in the gimmick-crazed 1990s. In an era of dwindling sales, high-profile stunts were the norm in comics as companies – realizing that a large sector of the buying public thought of themselves as canny “Investors” – began exploiting the readership’s greed and credulity. A plot twist, a costume change, a different format or shiny cover (or better yet covers: plural): anything, just so long as The Press got hold of it, translated directly into extra units moved. There are many stories and concepts from that era which (mercifully) may never make it into collections, but there are some that deserved to, did, and really still should be.

Simonson was writing (and usually drawing) the venerable flagship title with the original cast happily back in harness and abruptly interrupted his high-tech, high-tension saga with a gloriously tongue-in-cheek graphic digression. Over three issues – #347-349 – he poked gentle fun at trendmeisters and speculators, consequently crafting some of the “hottest” comics of that year. Reprinted from FF #347 (December 1990) is splendid first chapter ‘Big Trouble on Little Earth’ (illustrated by Arthur Adams & Art Thibert, assisted by Gracine Tanaka) revealing how a Skrull outlaw invades Earth, with her own people hot on her viridian high heels. Evading heavy pursuit she attacks the FF and seemingly kills them. Disguised as a mourning Sue Richards she then recruits the four bestselling heroes in the Marvel Universe – Spider-Man, The Hulk, Wolverine & Ghost Rider – to hunt down their “murderers” as The NEW Fantastic Four! The hunt takes them to the bowels of the Earth and battle with the Mole Man, revealing fascinating background into the origins of monsters and supernormal life on Earth…

What could so easily have died as a cheap stunt is elevated not only by the phenomenal art but also a lovingly reverential script, referencing all those goofy old “Furry-Underpants Monsters” of immediate pre-FF vintage, and is packed with traditional action and fun besides. Sadly, only the first pulse-pounding chapter is here so you should track down the entire tale as seen in Fantastic Four: Monsters Unleashed.

Roster change was a constant during that desperate decade. When Tom DeFalco, Paul Ryan & Danny Bulandi took over the series, they tried every trick to drive up sales but the title was in a spiral of commercial decline. Reed was dead – although Sue refused to believe it – and Franklin had been abducted. Her traumatised fellow survivors had their own problems. Johnny discovered his wife Alicia was in fact Skrull infiltrator Lyja, Sharon Ventura was missing and Ben had been mutilated in battle and was obsessively wearing a full-face helmet at all times.

In #384’s (January 1994) ‘My Enemy, My Son!’, Sue hired Scott Lang AKA Ant-Man as the team’s science officer whilst she led an increasingly compulsive search for her lost love. No sooner has the new guy arrived than Franklin reappears, grown to manhood and determined to save the world from his mother, whom he believes to be possessed by malign spirit Malice.

Following crossover event Onslaught the FF were excised from Marvel’s continuity for a year. When they returned rebooted and revitalised in 1998, it was as Stan & Jack first envisioned them, and in a brand-spanking new volume. Always more explorer than traditional crimebuster team, the FF were constantly voyaging to other worlds and dimensions. In Volume 3, #42 (June 2001 and double-numbered as #471) Carlos Pacheco, Rafael Marin, Jeff Loeb, Stuart Immonen & Wade von Grawbadger offered a blistering battle between the Torch and old frenemy Namor the Sub-Mariner which rages through New York City whilst Reed, Sue & Ben are lost in the Negative Zone. Strapped for allies, the torrid two form an alliance against mutual foe Gideon, with Johnny re-recruiting Ant-Man and She-Hulk prior to accepting the Atlantean’s cousin Namorita as the latest Fantastic Four part-timer.

This meander down memory lane concludes with another major overhaul, this one stemming from 2007’s publishing event The Initiative. Crafted by Dwayne McDuffie, Paul Pelletier & Rick Magyar, Fantastic Four #544 (March of that year) featured ‘Reconstruction: Chapter One – From the Ridiculous to the Sublime’, with Marvel’s first family bitterly divided after the events of the superhero Civil War. After years of stunning adventures, the closeknit clan split up over the Federal Superhuman Registration Act. Insolubly divided, Reed sides with the Government and his wife and brother-in-law join the rebels. Ben, appalled at the entire situation, dodges the whole issue by moving to France…

A story-arc from FF #544-550 (originally running as ‘Reconstruction’) began in the aftermath in the group’s inevitable reconciliation. However, temperaments are still frayed and emotional wounds have barely scabbed over. When Reed & Sue attempt to repair their dented marriage by way of a second honeymoon (because the first was just so memorable!) they head to the moon of Titan; courtesy of the Eternal demi-gods who inhabited that artificial paradise. On Earth, Ben & Johnny are joined by temporary houseguests Black Panther and his new wife Ororo, the former/part-time X-Man called Storm. The royal couple of Wakanda are forced to leave their palatial New York embassy after it is bombed, but no sooner have they settled in than old ally Michael Collins – formerly cyborg hero Deathlok – comes asking for a favour.

A new hero named Gravity had sacrificed his life to save Collins and a host of other heroes, and his body was laid to rest with full honours. Now, that grave has been desecrated and the remains stolen. When the appalled New FF investigate, the trail leads directly to intergalactic space. After visiting the Moon and eliciting information from pan-galactic voyeur Uatu the Watcher, the new questing quartet travel to the ends of the universe where cosmic entity Epoch is covertly resurrecting Gravity to become her latest “Protector of the Universe”. Unfortunately, she isn’t likely to finish her magic as the Silver Surfer and Galactus’ new herald Stardust are attacking the sidereal monolith, preparatory to her becoming the World-Eater’s next meal…

For the rest of that epic you’ll need to seek out Fantastic Four: the New Fantastic Four.

With a full gallery of covers by Kirby, Sinnott, Steranko, Marie Severin, Buckler, Byrne, Ron Frenz, Arthur Adams & Thibert, Ryan, Pacheco, Michael Turner & more plus pin-ups by Steve Epting & Paul Mounts, this power-packed primer and all-action snapshot album is a great way to reacquaint yourself with or better yet discover for the first time the comicbook magic of a truly ideal invention: the Family that Fights Together…
© 2018 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Thunderbolts Epic Collection volume 1: Justice, Like Lightning (1997-1998)


By Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern, Peter David, John Ostrander, Mark Bagley, Mark Deodato Jr., Sal Buscema, Steve Epting, Jeff Johnson, Pasqual Ferry, Bob McLeod, Tom Grummett, Ron Randall, Gene Colan, Darick Robertson, George Pérez, Chris Marrinan, Ron Frenz & various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-5205-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

It’s going to be a busy year for comics-based movies, so let’s properly start the ball rolling with some context and a look at a Thunderbolts team definitely not coming anywhere close to a cinema near you soon…

At the end of 1996, Marvel’s Onslaught publishing event removed the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man and the Avengers from the Marvel Universe and its long-established shared continuity. The House of Ideas ceded creative control to Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee for a year and at first the iconoclastic Image style comics got all the attention. However, a new title created to fill the gap in the “old” universe proved to be the true star sensation of the period. Thunderbolts was initially promoted as a replacement team book: brand new, untried heroes pitching in because the beloved big guns were dead and gone. Chronologically, they debuted in Incredible Hulk # 449 (cover-dated January 1997), a standard exhibition of “heroes-stomp-monster”, but the seemingly mediocre tale is perhaps excusable in retrospect…

With judicious teaser guest-shots abounding, Thunderbolts #1 premiered with an April cover-date and was an instant mega-hit, with a second print and rapid-reprint collection of the first two issues also selling out in days. This classy compendium gathers all those early appearances of the neophyte team between from January 1997 to March 1998: introductory teaser tale in Incredible Hulk #449 and parts of 450; Thunderbolts #1-12, Thunderbolts: Distant Rumblings #-1 special, Annual ‘97, plus their portion of Tales of the Marvel Universe, Spider-Man Team-Up Featuring… #7 and Heroes for Hire #7. Sadly although the stories are still immensely enjoyable this book simply won’t be able to recapture the furore the series caused in its early periodical days, because Thunderbolts was a sneakily high-concept series with a big twist: one which – almost unprecedentedly for comics – didn’t get spilled before the carefully calculated “big reveal”.

Here the action starts with issue #1 (cover-dated April 1997) and ‘Justice… Like Lightning’ as Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley & Vince Russell introduce a new superhero team to a world which has lost its champions. The mysterious Thunderbolts begin to clear New York’s devastated, post-Onslaught streets of resurgent supervillains and thugs making the most of the hero-free environment. Amongst their triumphs is the resounding defeat of scavenger gang The Rat Pack, but although the looters are routed and rounded up, their leader escapes with his real prize: homeless children…

Golden Age Captain America tribute/knock off Citizen V leads these valiant newcomers – size-shifting Atlas, super-armoured Mach-1, beam-throwing amazon Meteorite, sonic siren Songbird and human toybox Techno – and the terrified, traumatised citizenry instantly take them to their hearts. But these heroes share a huge secret: they’re all supervillains from the sinister Masters of Evil in disguise, and Citizen V – or Baron Helmut Zemo as he truly prefers – has major Machiavellian long-term plans…

When unsuspecting readers got to the end of that first story the reaction was instantaneous shock and jubilation.

Anachronistically, the aforementioned Hulk teaser tale (cover-dated January 1997, but on sale at the end of 1996) appears next, as Peter David, Mike Deodato Jr. & Tom Wegrzyn pit a neophyte super-team against the Jade Juggernaut in ‘Introducing the Thunderbolts!’: the opening step of their campaign to win the hearts and minds of the World. That clash spilled over into the next issue and the pertinent section is also included here, promptly followed by Tales of the Marvel Universe tale ‘The Dawn of a New Age of Heroes!’ as the team continue doing good deeds for bad reasons, readily winning the approval of cynical New Yorkers.

Thunderbolts #2 (May 1997 by Busiek, Bagley & Russell) offers ‘Deceiving Appearances’ as they garner official recognition and their first tangible reward. After defeating The Mad Thinker at an FF/Avengers memorial service and rescuing “orphan” Franklin Richards, the Mayor hands over the FF’s Baxter Building HQ for the T-Bolts’ new base of operations…

Busiek, Sal Buscema & Dick Giordano’s Spider-Man Team-Up Featuring… #7 yarn ‘Old Scores’ sees them even fool the spider-senses of everybody’s favourite wallcrawler whilst clearing him of a fiendish frame-up and taking down the super-scientific Enclave. However the first cracks in the plan begin to appear as Mach-1 and Songbird (AKA The Beetle and Screaming Mimi) begin falling for each other and dare to dream of a better life, even as Atlas/ Goliath starts to enjoy the delights and rewards of actually doing good deeds.

… And whilst Techno (The Fixer) is content to follow orders for the moment, Meteorite – or Moonstone – is laying plans to further her own personal agenda…

Thunderbolts #3 finds the team facing ‘Too Many Masters’ (Bagley & Russell art) as dissension creeps into the ranks. The action comes from rounding up old allies and potential rivals Klaw, Flying Tiger, Cyclone, Man-Killer and Tiger-Shark, who were arrogant enough to trade on the un-earned reputation as new Masters of Evil.

One of the abducted kids in Thunderbolts #1 resurfaces in #4’s ‘A Shock to the System’. Hallie Takahama was taken by the Rat Pack, and her new owner has since subjected her to assorted procedures which resulted in her gaining superpowers. Her subsequent escape leads to her joining the Thunderbolts as they invade Dr. Doom’s apparently vacant castle to save the other captives from the monstrous creations and scientific depredations of rogue geneticist Arnim Zola. However, the highly publicised victory forces Citizen V to grudgingly accept the utterly oblivious and innocent Hallie onto the team as trainee recruit Jolt…

Thunderbolts Annual 1997 follows: a massive revelatory jam session written by Busiek with art from Bagley, Bob McLeod, Tom Grummett, Ron Randall, Gene Colan, Darick Robertson, George Pérez, Chris Marrinan, Al Milgrom, Will Blyberg, Scott Koblish, Jim Sanders, Tom Palmer, Bruce Patterson, Karl Kesel & Andrew Pepoy, which could only be called ‘The Origin of the Thunderbolts!’ In brief instalments Jolt asks ‘Awkward Questions’ of V and Zemo offers a tissue of lies regarding the member’s individual origins…

Beginning with V’s ostensible intentions in ‘The Search Begins’, gaining ‘Technical Support’ from Fixer, examining Songbird’s past in  ‘Screams of Anguish’, obscuring the Beetle’s ‘Shell-Shocked!’ transformation and revealing how ‘Onslaught’ brought them all together, the fabrications continue as ‘To Defy a Kosmos’ discloses to everyone but Jolt how ionic colossus Goliath was snatched from incarceration in another dimension before ‘Showdown at the Vault’ brought Moonstone into the mix with untrustworthy and dangerous men she had previously betrayed…

The revelatory events also includes the Annual’s Thunderbolts Fact File text feature.

Thunderbolts: Distant Rumblings #-1 (July 1997) was part of a company-wide event detailing the lives of heroes and villains before they started their costumed careers. Illustrated by Steve Epting & Bob Wiacek, ‘Distant Rumblings!’, examines key events in the lives of two Baron Zemos, mercenary Erik (Atlas) Josten, corrupt psychiatrist Karla (Moonstone) Sofen, trailer-trash kid and future Songbird Melissa Gold, frustrated engineer Abner Jenkins AKA Beetle and gadgeteering psychopath P. Norbert Ebersol, who parleyed a clash with an amnesiac Sub-Mariner into a thrilling life as Hydra’s prime technician and Fixer…

Back in the now, Thunderbolts #5 delivers more ‘Growing Pains’ as the team take a personal day as civvies in Manhattan, only to be targeted and attacked by Baron Strucker of Hydra, employing one of Kang the Conqueror’s Growing Man AI automatons…

By this stage the grand plan was truly unravelling and in #6 ‘Unstable Elements’ sees Citizen V/Zemo incensed that his team still don’t have the security clearances the Avengers and FF used to enjoy. Unable to further his plans without them, he tidies up details, seeking to quash a budding romance between Atlas and their Mayor’s Liaison/former cop Dallas Riordan whilst “suggesting” Meteorite might arrange an accident for increasing prying, questioning and just plain annoying Jolt…

Opportunity arises and tensions escalate when a sentient and malign periodic table of elemental beings attack New York. Requesting help, the Mayor’s office is refused and rebuffed by Citizen V before his own minions reject him and rush off to save lives beside the city’s remaining superheroes such as Daredevil, Power Man & Iron Fist, Darkhawk and the New Warriors. ‘The Revolt Within’ (Busiek & Roger Stern, limned by Jeff Johnson, Will Blyberg, Eric Cannon, Larry Mahlstadt, Greg Adams & Keith Williams) signals the beginning of the end as the rebel Thunderbolts are quickly captured by the “Elements of Doom” and Zemo refuses to save them, leaving ‘Songbird: Alone!’ to save the day in #8 (Busiek, Stern, Bagley & Russell). Although Zemo manages to finagle his way back into the ’Bolts’ good books, he has what he wants: access to all the world’s secrets after SHIELD chief G.W. Bridge grants him top security clearance…

A brief diversion follows in Heroes for Hire #7 (January 1998 by John Ostrander, Pasqual Ferry & Jaime Mendoza) as the troubled team stumble into an ongoing clash between Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Black Knight and Ant-Man, The Eternals and assorted monstrous Deviants, before ‘The Thunderbolts Take Over!’, uniting with the HFH squad to save the shrinking man’s daughter Cassie Lang from a Super-Adaptoid. In Thunderbolts #9 (Busiek, Bagley & Russell) the Black Widow comes calling with advice and ‘Life Lessons’ for Songbird and Mach-1, delivered as an untold tale of “Cap’s Kookie Quartet” – Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch – and related via a flashback crafted by Stern, Ron Frenz, Blyberg & Milgrom, before the main event commences…

After more than a year away, company publishing event Heroes Reborn/Heroes Return restored the martyrs believed killed by Onslaught to the Marvel Universe. That happy miracle sparked a new beginning for The FF and Avengers’ stars and titles and began in an extended epic covering Thunderbolts #10-12: scripted as ever by Busiek and illustrated by Bagley, Russell, Scott Hanna, Larry Mahlstadt & Greg Adams.

It opens with ‘Heroes Reward’ as whilst the Thunderbolts are being officially honoured, their greatest enemies – real superheroes – start reappearing. When G.W. Bridge raids the press briefing, having divined that Citizen V is wanted criminal Helmut Zemo, suddenly the aspiring (semi) reformed squad are fugitives all over again, hunted by every real hero in town…

Fleeing into space and occupying an abandoned AIM space station, the Thunderbolts finally learn what Zemo’s been after all along in ‘The High Ground’ and face a shattering decision to go along or pursue new redeemed lives. However, as the former allies deliberate, prevaricate, and inevitably clash, the choice becomes even harder as the base is invaded by an army of extremely angry Superheroes, including Avengers, Fantastic Four and every recent ally they so callously fooled…

It all concludes in ‘Endgame’, but not the way anyone anticipates, especially once Zemo mind controls and enslaves all the incoming champions before turning them on his outraged dupes. The conclusion is spectacular and rewarding but only promises more and better to come…

Bonus features here include a full gallery of covers and variants – including second printings and the many collected editions the series spawned in its first year – by Bagley & Russell, Deodato Jr., Carlos Pacheco & Scott Koblish, Steve Lightle, Sott Hanna, original art, a golden Age ad for the original Citizen V, promotional pieces, retailer solicitation art, text essays and introductions from earlier editions as well as 12 pages of Bagley’s character designs tracing the metamorphosis from second-string villains into first rung heroes, and even faux ads. Also included are articles from in-house promotional magazine Marvel Vision #13, 14, 18, 19 & 27 providing context and behind the scenes insights for fans who just couldn’t get enough.

This is a solid superhero romp that managed to briefly revitalise a lot of jaded old fan-boys, but more importantly this remains a strong set of tales that still pushes all the buttons it’s meant to nearly 3 decades after all the hoopla has faded. Well worth a moment of your time and a bit of your hard-earned cash. Be warned though, if you’re reading this because of the new movie, these ARE NOT Your Thunderbolts…
© 2023 MARVEL.