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May 30, 2014May 29, 2014

Superman: Phantom Zone

By Steve Gerber, Gene Colan, Rick Veitch, Tony DeZuniga & Bob Smith (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4051-6

For fans and comics creators alike continuity can be a harsh mistress. These days, when maintaining a faux-historical cloak of rational integrity for the made-up worlds we inhabit is paramount, the greatest casualty of the semi-regular sweeping changes, rationalisations and reboots is the terrific tales which suddenly â€œnever happenedâ€.

The most painful example of this – for me at least – was the wholesale binning of the entire charm-drenched mythology that had evolved around Superman’s birthworld in the wonder years between 1948 and 1986.

Thankfully DC is not as slavishly wedded to continuity as its readership and understands that a good story is worth cherishing. This slim, trim spectral selection gathers the superb 4-issue miniseries The Phantom Zone from January-April 1982 and the very last pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Zone yarn from DC Comics Presents #97 (September 1986), whilst simultaneously celebrating the stylish and enthralling scripting of unique comics voice Steve Gerber.

The riotous recapitulation of all that lost Man of Tomorrow mythology begins in ‘The Haunting of Charlie Kweskill!’ when the eponymous Daily Planet paste-up artist collapses at work. The solitary little dweeb has been sleeping badly, plagued by nightmares of a life on the long-gone world of Krypton.

His dreams reveal how brilliant scientist Jor-El devised a non-lethal way to deal with Krypton’s most incorrigible criminals: human monsters such as Jax-Ur, Professor Va-Kox, Dr. Xadu, sadistic psycho-killer Faora Hu-Ul, potential dictator General Dru-Zod and even Jor’s own crazy cousin Kru-Elâ€¦

Many lesser menaces such as psionic aberrants Az-Rel and Nadira were also banished to the twilight realm, as well as stranger outcasts like callous biological experimenter Nam-Ek, but the one who most catches Charlie’s attention is convicted fraudster Quex-Ul; a Kryptonian who was Charlie’s doppelgangerâ€¦

The dreams are all true, telepathic broadcasts beamed at Charlie by the Zone inmates from within the plane of timeless intangibility. Quex-Ul had been one of them, surviving long after Krypton died, but was innocent of his crimes. He had been framed and mind-controlled by a mastermind who had deservedly perished when the Red Sun world detonated.

After Superman corrected the injustice and released the poor dupe, Qwex-Ul had saved the Man of Steel from a Gold Kryptonite trap, losing all his inherent Kryptonian abilities and memory in the process. The grateful, heartsick Action Ace had found the amnesiac a job at the Planet and almost forgot his alien origins in the years since. Charlie’s former fellows had notâ€¦

Their telepathic onslaught has turned Kweskill into a somnambulistic slave, unknowingly spending his nights breaking into labs and stealing high-tech components. Superman, slowly putting the puzzle pieces together, is just too late to thwart the stealthy scheme and as he bursts into Charlie’s apartment a hastily cobbled together Phantom Zone device hurls him and the hapless mind-slave into the ghostly region, whilst simultaneously freeing a legion of the cruellest criminals in existenceâ€¦

The saga continues with ‘Earth Under Siege!’ as Superman and Charlie helplessly watch Zod, Jax-Ur, Va-Kox, Faora and Kru-El immediately take off to undertake the next stage of their plan, leaving passively nihilistic Az-Rel and Nadira to negligently torture monstrous Nam-Ek with their psychic talents and mock the ranting liturgies of religious zealot Jer-Em, whose manic bigotry and fundamentalist isolationism caused the death of every person in Argo Cityâ€¦

Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El had been born on the city-sized fragment of Krypton, hurled intact into space when the planet detonated. Eventually Argo turned to Green Kryptonite like most of the detonated world’s debris, and her dying parents, observing Earth through their scopes, sent their daughter to safety as they perished.

On Earth, the teenager met the Man of Steel who created for her the identities of Linda Lee and Supergirl, concealing her from the world whilst she learned about her new home and how to use her astounding new abilities in secrecy and safety.

As the emotionally disconnected, disaffected and doubly alienated youths laconically saunter through Metropolis; casually slaughtering cops and citizens, Zod’s far more motivated cronies have reached Superman’s Fortress of Solitude and destroyed the only means of returning them to their extra-dimensional dungeon.

The next move is to attack the Justice League satellite, hurling it and occupants Flash, Zatanna, Red Tornado, Black Canary, Elongated Man, Firestorm and Aquaman on a non-stop trajectory out of the Solar System. When the rampant Kryptonians destroy all Earth’s communications satellites and trigger a mass launch of nuclear missiles, Wonder Woman and Supergirl narrowly avert atomic Armageddon whilst the frantic Man of Tomorrow can only watch in horrorâ€¦

Not every Zone inhabitant is a criminal. For instance the Daxamite Mon-El was exposed to common lead in ‘Superboy’s Big Brother’ (by Robert Bernstein & Papp from Superboy #89, June 1961) and his lingering, inexorable death was only forestalled by depositing the dying alien in the Zone until a cure could be foundâ€¦

Now, as Green Lantern confronts the Zod Squad on Earth only to be soundly beaten and have his Power Battery stolen, Mon-El informs Charlie and Superman of a possible back way out of the realm of hellish nullityâ€¦

On Earth, as Wonder Woman subdues Nam-Ek, Supergirl checks in with Batman, desperately trying to ascertain where her cousin Superman has gone. As the Dark Knight heads to Metropolis to investigate, Kara returns to the Fortress only to be ambushed by the Kryptonian escapees and beaten near to deathâ€¦

With no other choice, Charlie and Superman reluctantly pass through a dimensional portal even the obsessed villains were too scared to risk and encounter surreal madness in ‘The Terror Beyond Twilight!’â€¦

Back in the physical world of touch and time, Supergirl saves herself from ghastly atomic disintegration as Charlie and Superman pass through stormy turbulence and a tedious waiting-room-realm before arriving on a peculiar plane where they are confronted by luscious sirens with impossible riddles and exploding heads.

Their narrow escape from the Priestesses of the Crimson Sun only leads them to Kryptonian wizard Thul-Kar who magicked himself into the Zone in ages past and now slavishly serves an erratic and malevolent sentient universe named Aethyr.

It wants to consume Charlie and Superman but only by passing through it can they reach the physical world againâ€¦

On Earth, chaos reigns. Batman is utterly unable to pacify the extremist Jer-Em, who deems the planet impure, unclean and unholy. He would rather die than soil his Kryptonian purity here.

â€¦And high above the planet, the other freed villains have their own plan to fix the situation: a gigantic Phantom Zone Cannon which will inexorably and eternally banish Earth into the twilight dimension in the course of one full rotationâ€¦

The drama comes to a tragic conclusion in ‘The Phantom Planet!’ as Az-Rel and Nadira, having found kindred spirits amongst Metropolis’ disenfranchised Punk Rock counter culture – and killed them – encounter Jer-Em in martyr mode. The now suicidal cleric is quite keen on taking the rest of the apostate Kryptonians with himâ€¦

As the world turns into intangibility, in France Faora has briefly resumed her passion for murdering males – before they’re all gone – whilst in Aethyr’s universe an appalling sacrifice enables Superman to return to physicality in time to lead a last desperate charge, saving the day and puttingÂ the villains back where they belongâ€¦ those still alive, that isâ€¦

The remainder of the fantastic chronicle recounts the tying up of all those intriguing concepts and loose ends in a spectacular sidebar to the end of DC’s original universe.

In 1986 the company celebrated its fiftieth year with the groundbreaking Crisis on Infinite Earths: radically overhauling its convoluted multiversal continuity and starting afresh. All the Superman titles were cancelled or suspended pending this back-to-basics reboot courtesy of John Byrne, allowing the opportunity for a number of very special farewells to the old mythology.

One of the most intriguing and challenging came in the last issue of DC Comics Presents(#97) wherein ‘Phantom Zone: the Final Chapter’ by Gerber, Rick Veitch & Bob Smith offered a creepy adieu to a number of Superman’s greatest foesâ€¦

Tracing Jor-El’s discovery of the Phantom Zone through to the imminent end of the multiverse, this dark yarn built on Gerber’s landmark miniseries and revealed that the dread region of nothingness was in fact the sentient echo of a dead universe which had always regarded the creatures deposited within it as irritants and agonising intruders.

Now as cosmic carnage reigned Aethyr, still served by Kryptonian mage Thul-Kar, caused the destruction of the Bizarro World and the deification and corruption of Fifth Dimensional pest Mr. Mxyzptlk as well as the subsequent crashing of Argo City on Metropolis.

As a result Zod and his fellow immaterial inmates were freed to wreak havoc upon Earth – but only until the now-crystalline pocket dimension merged with and absorbed the felons before implausibly abandoning Superman to face his uncertain future as the very Last Son of Kryptonâ€¦

Superman has proven to be all things to all fans over his decades of existence and these timeless tales of charm, joy and wholesome wit are more necessary than ever: not just as a reminder of great tales of the past but as an all-ages primer of the wonders still to comeâ€¦
Â© 1982, 1986, 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

May 29, 2014May 28, 2014

Mighty Avengers volume 2: Venom Bomb

By Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Marko Djurdjevic, Danny Miki, Allen Martinez, Victor Olazaba & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2369-9

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

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

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

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

Following the divisive and brutal Civil War, Tony Stark (a staunch advocate of the SRA) formed a squad of registered, Government-sanctioned heroes. His S.H.I.E.L.D.-backed Mighty Avengers were designed to take care of business whilst he worked on his â€œFifty States Initiativeâ€, the objective of which was to eventually field teams of trained and licensed superheroes in every State of the Union.

Firstly, though, he had to restore public confidence, especially as the unregistered, rogue New Avengers continued to defy his orders to surrender to government authority: saving lives and crushing evil without his permissionâ€¦

This second scintillating volume, gathering Mighty Avengers #7-11 (March-July 2008) is written throughout by Brian Michael Bendis and primarily illustrated by Mark Bagley, Danny Miki, Allen Martinez & Victor Olazaba, and begins with an opening shot in the then-forthcoming company event Secret Invasion.

‘Venom Bomb Part One’ finds New Avenger Spider-Woman switching sides to bring Stark the corpse of a Skrull who had replaced ninja assassin Elektra. Her own team thought they could handle the prospect – and feared Stark and/or his squad might also be alien infiltrators – but Jessica Drew, a triple agent simultaneously working for S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra and the rebel Avengers felt that only by going to the Nation’s security chief could the situation be successfully handledâ€¦

Stark keeps the corpse secret but invites Drew to join his team in hopes that her presence will cause any Skrulls in his Avengers to betray themselves. However, no sooner has Stark officially inducted the Arachnid Amazon to the squad (field leader Ms. Marvel, Black Widow, Wonder Man, the Wasp, Sentry and Grecian war god Ares), over their very strident protests, than a tiny ball of stellar debris crashes into New York City and unleashes an horrific, highly communicable plagueâ€¦

The capsule contains a voracious iteration of the alien Symbiote Spider-Man inadvertently brought back from The Beyonder‘s Battleworld and contact instantly transforms any organism into a voracious duplicate Venom.

Soon the city is a seething mass of rampaging, shapeshifting monsters – which is almost a relief for Stark as his constant scrutiny has detected no impostors. More worrying though is a desperate snatched conversation with Sentry’s wife Lindy, who begs the genius to find a way to de-power or kill her husband before his growing mental instability makes him a threat to the entire planetâ€¦

As the team deploys to the infection site the Wasp is pondering her last meeting with size-changing ex-husband Henry Pym (formerly Ant-Man, Giant Man, Goliath and Yellowjacket) when the erratic genius upgraded her powers. Unfortunately the ability to become a giant only makes her a bigger target and lethal liability when the rabid Venoms attack and infect herâ€¦

Thankfully Iron Man and the more or less than human Wonder Man, Ares, Sentry and Ms. Marvel are immune to the transformative terrors but then they encounter Hawkeye and Wolverine‘s New Avengers already on scene, and see that the outlaw heroes have succumbed to the contagion, becoming â€œVenomisedâ€ versions of their former selvesâ€¦

Using all his scientific resources, Stark synthesises a cure for the plague whilst his comrades hold the line, but in the aftermath the restored Hawkeye accuses him of being responsible for the murder of Captain America and the parlous state of the world.

Still reeling with guilt, Iron Man rockets into orbit to discover more weaponised venom bombs, and Ms. Marvel chooses not to arrest the SRA-resistors, allowing the New Avengers make their escapeâ€¦

In space Iron Man examines the bomb’s point of origin and discovers the satellite was built by Doctor Doom. Enraged and determined to make a political point Stark then deploys his team to invade the sovereign state of Latveriaâ€¦

With additional art from Marko Djurdjevic ‘Doom’s Castle’ opens with the Iron Tyrant indulging his passions with volatile sorceress Morgana Le Fey in the distant past, but his dangerous dalliance is soon forgotten when he returns to his own citadel to discover that his Venom satellite has prematurely triggered and a battalion of angry Avengers are attempting to kick his portcullis inâ€¦

The earth-shattering battle which follows sees the dictator soundly beaten but, on the verge of defeat, his Time Platform is damaged and the temporal malfunction causes the Golden Avenger, Sentry and Doom to plunge helplessly into the pastâ€¦

Presented as a visual pastiche of 1970’s Marvel Comics stories, ‘Time is on No One’s Side’ picks up the tale as Sentry discovers that his history is not as he remembers whilst watching his younger self battling dark mastermind The Void. Elsewhere in old New York, time-lost Tony Stark and Victor Von Doom resume their deadly duel until the panicking Sentry finds them and forces a truceâ€¦

Realising at last the incredible danger inherent in Sentry losing it, Doom leads his fellow chronal castaways to the era’s only known location of a time machine.

Unfortunately that’s Doom’s own device, confiscated by the Fantastic Four and cached in the Baxter Building and the bid to use it is interrupted by a fighting mad Thing named Ben Grimmâ€¦

Eventually however the trio triumph and travel back to their own Now, but only Iron Man and Sentry actually arrive, just in time to be caught in a monumental explosionâ€¦

This cataclysmic clash concludes as, in the Dark Ages, Doom and Le Fey collude and the witch-queen teaches her amorous pupil how to construct an army of demons.

Thus reinforced Doom returns to the 21^st century before Iron Man and Sentry and unleashes his horde of horrors on the rest of the Mighty Avengers. Crushed by the unholy horrors the team are soon trussed up as trophies of the devil doctor but nobody expected Spider-Woman to display an unprecedented power, disrupting Doom’s devices, freeing the team and demolishing his castle.

By the time Iron Man and Sentry pop back into reality it’s all over bar a colossal (and previously seen) detonation and the resounding defeat of the master of Latveria who subsequently becomes the most famous international terrorist ever arrested by S.H.I.E.L.Dâ€¦.

With covers by Bagley and Frank Cho and a selection of astounding inked cover samples by Cho, Danny Miki & John Dell, Venom Bomb offers another slick and stylish slice of breathtaking all-action entertainment which soundly sets the scene for the startling Secret Invasion main event which followed, but also reads astounding well on its own merits.

This is another Fights ‘n’ Tights â€œmust-readâ€ for insatiable thrill-chasers everywhere.
Â© 2007, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

May 28, 2014May 27, 2014

Batman – Streets of Gotham volume 2: Leviathan

By Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen & Derek Fridolfs (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2906-1

With all the furore and hype surrounding the death and inevitable resurrection of Batman cunningly orchestrated by Grant Morrison, everybody seemed so concerned with what was going to happen next that they apparently ignored what was actually occurring in the monthly comicbooks in their hands.

Now with the dust long settled let’s take a look at one of the better satellite-series to come out of the braided Batman R.I.P./Final Crisis/Last Rites/Batman Reborn/Return of Bruce Wayne publishing eventsâ€¦

In the aftermath of the epochal loss of the Gotham Guardian, a sustained and epic Battle for the Cowl ensued amongst the fallen hero’s closest allies. Eventually Dick Grayson succeeded his lost mentor, carrying on the tradition if not the methodology of the Dark Knight, with Bruce Wayne’s League of Assassins-trained son Damian continuing as the headstrong and potentially lethal latest iteration of Robin, the Boy Wonderâ€¦

This sterling submission, illustrated throughout by Dustin Nguyen & Derek Fridolfs, collects the contents of the monthly Batman: Streets of Gotham # 5-11 (October 2009-April 2010) and offers grim glances at the hellish everyday lives of citizens in the worst city on Earth, beginning with the 2-part ‘Leviathan’ – scripted by Chris Yost – wherein the life of a young, hope-filled Gotham priest is examined and tested over painful years before a calamitous crisis of conscience bloodily eruptsâ€¦

As his faith falters, the unpredictable Huntress frantically stalks Man-Bat Kirk Langstrom, convinced the self-mutated manhunter has finally slipped into carnivorous madness. Ignoring orders from Birds of Prey leader Barbara â€œOracleâ€ Gordon to merely subdue her quarry, the ruthless vigilante is determined to end forever the leather-winged horror’s attacks on Gotham’s citizens before eventually their ferocious extended struggle sends them smashing through the skylight of St. Aloysius‘ to land at the feet of troubled Father Mark.

â€¦And that’s when the poor padre hears the voice in his ear telling him to kill both â€œThe Beastâ€ and â€œThe Harlotâ€â€¦

As Batman and Robin track new esoteric stealth weaponry being sold to premier gang boss Black Mask, in the church’s vault Father Mark struggles to carry out the Word of God. The order keeps coming, somehow further infuriating the already rabid Man-Bat, and Huntress at last realises that rather than going rogue Langstrom has been reacting to a threat only his bat-like super-senses can detect.

As the invisible killer forgoes cunning enticement for heavy ordinances the Dark Knight crashes in to save the day, but it’s Father Mark who actually executes a benison of salvation and finds redemptionâ€¦

Scripted by the superb Paul Dini, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ then offers a dark Seasonal treat as Batman and Robin track demented tinkerer and part-time Santa Humpty Dumpty to his lair and discover a dormitory full of dead children.

However, as monstrous vigilante Abuse has already found, the tragic felon isn’t a killer, but instead is simply trying to â€œfixâ€ the broken creatures he keeps finding floating in the riverâ€¦

The discovery deeply affects the usually cocksure Boy Wonder, who is as determined as orphan Colin Wilkes, who escapes the nuns’ scrutiny every night to hunt adults who hurt children as the hulking, mutated Abuseâ€¦

And further upriver, psychopathic serial killer Mr. Zsasz puts his latest acquisitions to work, duelling to the death for the appreciative viewers and bettors of his underground juvenile gladiatorial boutsâ€¦

The case goes onto the backburner in the 2-part ‘Hardcore Nights’ (written by Mike Benson) when Jim Gordon alerts Batman to a spate of savage killings. Every victim is a career criminal and the Commissioner’s thoughts naturally tend to another vigilante in town, but the Gotham Gangbuster uncovers a link to a certain sex club worker and a darkly devious web of deceit, jealousy and murderâ€¦

Dini returns to script the last two tales in this compilation as ‘Heroes’ reveals how frail Colin gained his strange powers and abiding passion to punish abusers after the fear-mongering Scarecrow used the boy as a guinea pig for the madman’s terror-toxins and doses of super-steroid Venom.

Origin over, the tale returns to the present day as the lad uses himself as bait for whoever is snatching kids and runs into the scarily intense Damian trying the same stratagemâ€¦

Soon shanghaied by Zsasz, the over-confident boys are soon fighting for their lives in the mass-murderer’s ghastly arena, but by the time Batman arrives for the ‘Final Cut’ they have already demolished the foul fight club and one of them had to talk the other out of taking vengeance Old Testament styleâ€¦

Bleak, ominously poignant and powerfully downbeat, Streets of Gotham is a visceral, imaginative and deliciously off-balance stage for the varied bat-cast to display their efficacy in frantic psycho-thrillers and moody crime capers set on the darkest avenues in all of comicsâ€¦
Â© 2009, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

May 27, 2014

The Chimpanzee Complex volume 2: The Sons of Ares

By Richard Marazano & Jean-Michel Ponzio, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-015-3

Cinebook began publishing The Chimpanzee Complex in 2009 (and we reviewed it here) with the beguiling and enigmatic ‘Paradox’ which introduced the world of tomorrow to a bizarre and baffling cosmic conundrum.

When, six and a half decades after it first returned, the Apollo 11 Command Module splashed down in the Indian Ocean in February 2035, redundant NASA astronaut Helen Freeman was dragooned into joining a top-secret investigation of the incredible passengers, leaving behind in Florida her troubled and too-often neglected daughter Sofia.

Legendary heroes Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon, and nobody – including them – had any idea where they’d been for sixty-five years. For the baffled starmen it was only days since their mission beganâ€¦

On learning that history recorded their triumphant return and unremarkable deaths years later they went ballistic: exhibiting what Freeman described as the traumatic shock response peculiar to space voyagers categorised by NASA as â€œthe Chimpanzee Complexâ€â€¦

The spacers don’t know what happened to â€œtheirâ€ third astronaut Michael Collins (if he ever existed). Three heroes landed to be fÃªted by the world in 1969, but now two of them sit as prisoners in a world that terrified them.

Nobody can explain who or what they might be and no tests science can devise are sufficient to disprove their incredible storyâ€¦

Compelled to work under Presidential favourite and Top Brass Military Spook Konrad Stealberg, Freeman uncovered even more questions but no answers in her subsequent interviews, until the enigma-nauts finally began to exhibit gaps in memory.

As her best friend NASA bureaucrat Robert Conway struggled to look after the increasingly wayward Sofia, Konrad’s questioning team were presented with another shocking mystery after Armstrong and Aldrin suddenly expired: somehow becoming deteriorated cadavers overnightâ€¦

Soon Helen was (only partially) reluctantly piloting a mission to the moon in the mothballed and hastily reconditioned shuttle meant for Mars until budget cuts scotched the project. Her trusted comrades and fellow unemployed astronauts Kurt, Alex and Aleksa were just as delighted to be back in space, but as unhappy and apprehensive as Helen with the military presence and top-secret paraphernalia piled aboard. They were even less sanguine when Stealberg and his creepy elite commandos replaced the regular crew.

En route they discovered the secret history of the 1960s Space Race: America’s black ops space program and the USSR’s clandestine and apparently failed mission to Mars.

Even bigger shocks materialised on the lunar surface when the modern astronauts found the pressure-suited corpses of Aldrin and Armstrong deep in a concealed fissure even as, high above, a vintage Command Module was intercepted by their converted shuttle.

The stellar relic contained Collins’ corpse and an intercepted, decades-old Russian distress call the mission pilot had recorded. The message had been sent by Commies from Marsâ€¦

It transpired that NASA has never had the American monopoly on spaceflight: the military had been running a clandestine, parallel program from the very start, funded by siphoning a portion of NASA’s operating budget at the personal instigation of ex-Nazi rocket pioneer Werner von Braunâ€¦

Moreover, the 66-year old Russian distress message in the capsule’s primitive computers proved that the Soviets had also been far more committed to space exploration than history books had recordedâ€¦

Stealberg took charge, unveiling interplanetary hibernation chambers and turning the now-militarised shuttle-mission towards the Red Planet. Amidst fears of what awaited them, Helen fell into cold sleep, agonising that she had again abandoned and betrayed Sophia as her ship slowly voyaged to Mars and an appointment with the truth, whatever it might beâ€¦

The drama recommences in The Sons of Ares as, in October 2035, an increasingly off-the-rails Sophia argues and acts out with Robert Conway whilst in interplanetary space the fourth month of the journey finds American astronauts Paul Dupree and Mark Lawrence taking their boring turn awake for monitor duty whilst their comrades endure resource-saving but life-shortening hibernationâ€¦

The monotony is suddenly broken by a freak radiation storm and only one of the terrified explorers makes it to the ship’s shielded area in timeâ€¦

In Florida Robert is acutely conscious of his failings as a surrogate parent to Sophia, but Helen is blissfully unaware of the personal crisis when the slumbering crew rouse from cold sleep to find Paul insane and Mark missingâ€¦

In reporting the situation to Earth, Helen again misses – or perhaps avoids – a chance to speak to Sophia who is gradually coming to terms with the possibility that she might never see her mother againâ€¦

As the shuttle at last establishes Mars orbit, Paul is locked up for his own safety and the suspicious voyagers’ peace of mind. Konrad then shares the intel gathered by his agents on Earth whilst they slept. The Soviet clandestine Cosmonaut project began in 1963, headed by space pioneer Yuri Gagarin – whose death had been faked to facilitate his smooth transition to commander of their Mars shot.

Expecting a monumental propaganda coup, the Kremlin simply said nothing when contact was lost with Gagarin’s mission, preferring stolid rhetoric to incontrovertible proof of failure. Now with so many inexplicable events inevitably leading to the Red Planet, Stealberg expects Helen and her team to find all the answers with the Russians’ bodies on the dust surface.

He couldn’t be more wrongâ€¦

Locating a base at the polar cap, Konrad dispatches the heavily armed crew to the site even as on Earth, Sophia runs away from home. However even whilst experiencing her greatest desire – walking on another world – Helen can’t help but worry about Paul, doped up and locked into the isolation chamber of the otherwise empty Shuttleâ€¦

Whilst Robert frantically searches for Sophia on Earth, the astronauts are astounded to discover the primitive landing site and corpses they expected are, in actuality, a thriving, efficient facility, stuffed with botanical wonders and manned by the very strong and vital cosmonauts who had landed there in the1960s.

After an initial exchange of hostilities – and gunfire – friendly contact is established and another incredible saga unfolds. Russians Vladimir and Borislav have lost all sense of time in the â€œtwelve yearsâ€ since they landed and Commander Gargarin, having discovered a strange tunnel in a Martian glacier, has been absent for most of that period. They only know he’s still alive because food keeps vanishingâ€¦

Stealberg, seeing uncomfortable similarities in the agelessness of the cosmonauts and the duplicate Armstrong and Aldrin on Earth, sedates the Russians, who constantly ramble about the nature of reality, but Helen’s interest is piqued and, with Kurt’s assistance, she sneaks off into the glacier tunnel to find Gagarinâ€¦

When she succeeds it only leads to more baffling conundrums. The First Man in Space perpetually stares into the unyielding ice-wall, seemingly unsurprised by Helen’s reports on the Apollo returnees, the impossible time-differentials and the fall of the Soviet Union.

He merely ruminates on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and whether such a subatomic phenomenon could apply to larger constructs – such as human beings – in a constant and simultaneous state of being and non-being: a â€œprobability of presenceâ€â€¦

They also talk about children they will probably never see againâ€¦

As Helen returns to the greenhouse module, the Russians are planning more armed resistance but Stealberg has an even more pressing problem. Much to Helen’s astonished disbelief, he’s found Gagarin’s sixty-years-dead corpseâ€¦

As Vladimir and Borislav attack, setting fire to the modules, the Americans fall back to their vehicle, dragging the hysterical Helen, who had promised her very much alive Yuri Gagarin a ride homeâ€¦

The tension increases when they re-enter the orbiting Shuttle: Paul has vanished and no trace can be found of him. Thoroughly rattled, Konrad orders an immediate return to Earth, with increased watches for every day of the trip.

May 2036: on Earth Robert has tracked down Sophia and they both eagerly await Helen’s return at Cape Canaveral. However as the Shuttle nears Earth it suddenly vanishes from all tracking systems. Aboard the vessel Helen and Kurt experience the horror of seeing their home planet vanish. Unable to brake the shuttle and with no world in view, they rejoin the others in cold sleep, not knowing when they will next awaken or even if they will still be in their solar system when they do.

Helen’s last conscious thoughts are of the daughter she may never see againâ€¦

This astounding hard-science mystery tale steps boldly and confidently into the realm of chilling metaphysics, as the human wide-eyed wonderment gives way to uncanny uncertainty if not outright terror, as Marazano’s pared-down-to-the-bone script is realised with stunning clarity by Ponzio to produce a soaring amalgam of passion, intrigue, and paranoia.

The Chimpanzee Complex is a tale no lover of fantasy and suspense must miss.
Â© Darguad, Paris, 2008 by Marazano& Ponzio. All rights reserved. English translation Â© 2009 Cinebook Ltd.

May 26, 2014May 27, 2014

Iznogoud and the Magic Computer

By Goscinny & Tabary, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge(Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-79-3

During his too-short lifetime (1926-1977) RenÃ© Goscinny was one of the most prolific, most read writers of comic strips the world has ever seen.

He still is.

Among his most popular comic collaborations are Lucky Luke, Le Petit Nicolas and, of course Asterix the Gaul, but there were so many others.

Scant years after the Suez crisis, the French returned to the deserts when Goscinny teamed with the sublimely gifted Swede Jean Tabary (1930-2011 and numbering Richard et Charlie, Grabadu et Gabaliouchtou, Totoche, Corinne et Jeannot and Valentin le Vagabond amongst his other hit strips) to produce imbecilic Arabian (im)potentate Haroun el-Poussah. However it was the strip’s villainous foil, power-hungry vizier Iznogoud, who stole the show – possibly the conniving little devil’s only successful scheme.

Les Aventures du Calife Haroun el Poussah was created for Record, with the first instalment appearing in the January 15^th issue in1962. A minor hit, it jumped ship to Pilote – a magazine created and edited by Goscinny – where it was refashioned into a starring vehicle for the devious little rat-bag who had increasingly hogged all the laughs and limelight.

Like all the best storytelling, Iznogoud works on two levels: as a comedic romp with sneaky baddies coming a cropper for younger readers, and as a pun-filled, witty satire for older, wiser heads, much like its more famous cousin Asterix – and also translated here by the master translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge who made the indomitable little Gaul so very palatable to the English tongue. Moreover the deliciously malicious whimsy is always heavily laden with manic absurdity and brilliantly applied creative anachronism to keep the plots bizarrely fresh and inventive.

Our insidious anti-hero is Grand Vizier to affable, easy-going Haroun Al Plassid, Caliph of Ancient Baghdad, but the sneaky little toad has loftier ambitions, or as he is always shouting â€œI want to be Caliph instead of the Caliph!â€

The revamped series launched in Pilote in 1968, quickly becoming a huge European hit, with 29 albums so far (carried on by Tabary’s children StÃ©phane, Muriel and Nicolas), his own solo comic, a TV cartoon show and even a live action movie.

When Goscinny died in 1977 Tabary assumed the scripting as well as the superbly stylish illustration from the 13^th album, moving to book-length complete tales, rather than the compilations of short punchy stories that typified their collaborations.

This fourth Cinebook album was actually the sixth French album (released in 1970 as L’ordinateur magique) and features a clenched and grasping fistful of short, sharp salutary tales beginning, after a handy catch-up profile page, with ‘A Calculated Risk’, wherein the cunning conniver, desperate to forestall a pact between the Caliph and mighty military neighbour Sultan Pullmankar, hires forward-thinking I-Bee’Em and his ponderous problem-solving â€œcomputerâ€ to stop the signing of the treaty.

The big grey box might be brilliant, but it’s agonisingly slow in reaching its infallible conclusionsâ€¦

Things then get hilariously surreal when Iznogoud and his long-suffering, bumbling assistant Wa’at Alahf discover a mystic crossroads that can lead the unwary traveller onto an unending, pointless journey from which they can neither escape nor return.

Dashing back to lure the Caliph onto ‘The Road to Nowhere’ our wicked wayfarers eventually realise that they’ve been stuck on it all alongâ€¦

Back in Baghdad and itching to take over, the Vile Vizier then seeks to employ the tragic gifts of lonely hermit Ghoudas Gho’ld, a direct descendent of legendary King Midas, in ‘The Golden Handshake’. All he has to do to remove the Caliph is get the accursed involuntary metal-maker back to the palace without him touching anythingâ€¦

There’s more direct skulduggery afoot in ‘The Caliph’s Sceptre’ when Iznogoud hires a master thief to sneak him into the high-security vault where the Staff of Office is cached. If he takes it and keeps the Caliph from presenting it to the people in the annual reaffirmation of worthiness to rule ceremony, the Vizier can legally assume control of the country. Of course, it doesn’t quite play out that wayâ€¦

This fine kettle of funny fish concludes with ‘The Mysterious Ointment’ as fabled explorer Notsobad the Sailor returns to the port of Basrah and, having forgotten to bring the undetectable Occidental poisons he promised the Vizier, palms him off with a tube of â€œSchpouk toothpaste’.

Assured the container holds a lethal and undetectable toxin, poor Iznogoud embarks on an eccentrically convoluted campaign to convince the Caliph and the court that cleaning one’s choppers is the latest and most beneficial of scientific advancements. Care to guess how well that goes?

Snappy, fast-paced hi-jinks and gloriously agonising pun-ishing (see what I did there?) abound in this mirthfully infectious series which is a household name in France where â€œIznogoudâ€ is common parlance for a certain type of politician: over-ambitious, unscrupulous â€“ and often of diminutive stature.

When first released here in the 1970s, these tales made little impression, but hopefully this snappy, wonderfully affable strips can finally find an appreciative audience among today’s more internationally aware, politically jaded comics-and-cartoon savvy Kids Of All Agesâ€¦
Â© 1970 Dargaud Editeur Paris by Goscinny & Tabary. All rights reserved.

May 24, 2014May 23, 2014

Uncanny Avengers: Ragnorok Now

By Rick Remender, Steve McNiven, Daniel AcuÃ±a, Laura Martin & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-571-0

If you haven’t read the Avengers for a while then you’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

What You Need to Know: Once upon a time mutant hero Wanda Maximoff – daughter of arch-villain Magneto and known to the world as the Scarlet Witch – married android warrior The Vision and they had (through the agency of magic and her unsuspected chaos-energy fuelled ability to reshape Reality) twin boys. Over the course of time it was revealed that her beloved sons were not real and they subsequently vanished (for further details see Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Avengers).

As years passed, loss drove Wanda mad and when she finally slipped utterly over the edge her resultant slaughter-spree destroyed many of her Avenger comrades. The effects of her actions spread to reshape the entire Marvel Universe, resulting in the team’s dissolution and climactic reboot (Avengers Disassembled and New Avengers: Breakout).

The team had barely recovered from that catastrophe before she overwrote Reality again, altering recent Earth history such that mutants ruled over a society where humans or â€œsapiensâ€ were an acknowledged evolutionary dead-end, living out their lives and destined for extinction within two generations.

It took a legion of champions and a huge helping of luck to put that genie back in a bottle (in House of M), but in the aftermath less than 200 mutants existed on Earthâ€¦

The Witch was partially rehabilitated and began her quest for redemption during the Avengers versus X-Men where the World’s Mightiest Heroes strove against the remaining mutants for control of Hope Summers: a girl born to be the mortal host of implacable force of cosmic destruction and creation known as The Phoenix.

However the primal phenomenon instead possessed a quintet of X-Men, corrupting them by manifesting their dream of making Earth a paradise for besieged, beleaguered Homo Superior and hell for humanity.

At the height of Avengers versus X-Men mankind was briefly enslaved by resurgent mutants before the selfish appetites of omnipotent Phoenix Force caused those possessed by it to turn upon each other. Soon its transcendent power transformed rallying figurehead and mutant freedom-fighter Cyclops into another apparently unstoppable, insatiable â€œDark Phoenixâ€.

At that crossroads moment his beloved mentor Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men and formulator of the aspiration of peaceful mutant/human co-existence, returned – only to be killed by his most devoted discipleâ€¦

Professor X’s death united X-Men and Avengers in a joint effort to overthrow the cosmic avatar but, in the days following the departure of the Phoenix Force, progress and reconciliation stalled. The mostly human world festered with resentment even as new mutants began to manifest, and newly liberated mankind fell into its old habits of intolerance, violence and bigoted, vigilante outragesâ€¦

When undying Ã¼ber-Nazi Red Skull stole Xavier’s brain to appropriate the deceased mutant’s awesome telepathic abilities, his subsequent terrorist outrages were halted by a new team of Avengers: one formed by Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D. to counter the rising tide of inter-species hostilityâ€¦

Having been born out of one wave of genocidal race-wars, the Sentinel of Liberty was painfully aware that America’s mutant minority had been poorly served – if not actively institutionally discriminated against – and sought to make amends by publicly adopting Xavier’s utopian vision. To that end he convened the high-profile, affirmatively-active Avengers Unity Division, comprising human and mutant heroes working together.

The quintessential Avenger chose former government agent Havok (Cyclops’ brother Alex Summers) to lead the team, which consisted of himself, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Rogue, Wolverine, Sunfire, Wonder Man and the Wasp.

Later, at a press conference inducting the latter two, the group was ambushed by the Grim Reaper and the clash ended with Rogue killing the psychopath in full view of the watching world. In one shocking instant the entire enterprise seemed utterly undermined with all that hard-won pro-mutant progress wastedâ€¦

Still reeling from that setback the Unity Division were then thrust into cosmic overdrive as the bewildering rivalry between arch-nemesis Kang the Conqueror and his elder self Immortus resurfaced with the attack of future-reared mutant Dark Messiahs The Apocalypse Twinsâ€¦

It began in 11^th century Scandinavia in 1013AD as youthful rebel Thor was attacked by En Sabah Nur, undying mutant Apocalypse and agent of the all-powerful Space Gods dubbed Celestials.

The grotesque creature sought to safeguard the future by promoting the triumph of only the very strongest mutants, and his defeat of the arrogant Thunderer compelled the shamed godling to accept the aid of his malevolent half-brother Loki who â€œfoundâ€ a spell which transformed Thor’s battleaxe JarnBjorn into a weapon capable of rending even Celestial defensesâ€¦

Apocalypse was being guided in his seemingly random attacks by former enemy Pharaoh Rama-Tut (another incarnation of Kang) who advocated pre-emptive strikes on certain beings: those whose descendents would one day unite to resist the mutant advocate of Survival of the Fittest: the ancestors of a group called Avengersâ€¦

Thor’s hunt for revenge took him to medieval London just as En Sabah Nur attacked the next name on Rama-Tut’s list; a near-feral warrior named Folkbern Loganâ€¦

The Pagan soldier was battling Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen when Thor – wielding JarnBjorn – arrived. After saving Logan, destroying the servants and grievously wounding Apocalypse, Thor returned to Asgard and Odin’s fury, even as somewhere in time Apocalypse realised he has been a gulled puppet of Rama-Tutâ€¦

The real winner was Kang who quietly commandeered JarnBjorn: a weapon even Space Gods could not endureâ€¦

In our present, Apocalypse had been recently killed. Many creatures attempted to replace him as mutant messiah/exterminator of humanity and on solar-orbiting Starcore Station his son Genocide petitioned the Celestials to accept him as their new agent.

Celestials are a crucial component in the mechanics of the cosmos; their only interest being the raw, unstoppable processes of evolution. The Apocalypse Twins then exercised their claim by using JarnBjorn to achieve the impossible, executing the previously-omnipotent Celestial Gardener: thereby endangering the very fabric of existenceâ€¦

Having successfully defended Rogue from murder charges at a S.H.I.E.L.D. hearing, Havok attempted to keep her busy – and out of sight – by sending her after Magneto when news arrived that The Peak (Earth’s early warning space station) was under attack.

The Scarlet Witch’s relationship with Wonder Man had been strained ever since she killed and resurrected him, and the traumatised energy being had reacted in many odd ways. For one thing he became a pacifist, willing to help the team in every way possible except by fightingâ€¦

The Avengers were unable to save The Peak from the Twins, who crashed the station on Rio de Janeiro. Although Thor and Sunfire saved the city from utter obliteration the rest of the team were far more concerned with a secret freshly uncovered: Wolverine’s role in the death of the Twin’s birth-father, X-Man and Archangel Warren Worthingtonâ€¦

The Twins are mainly reacting to years of cruel deceit. Raised by Kang in time-warped isolation in a private concentration camp in 4145AD, Eimin and Uriel eventually deduced their patron’s motives were self-serving and resolved only to trust each other whilst saving their speciesâ€¦

To that end the adult Apocalypse Twins constituted their own squad of Horsemen to winnow humanity and its heroes. These latest heralds of Mutant Rapture and human Armageddon were not the bio-engineered living creatures Apocalypse preferred, though. Eimin and Uriel instead opted for a quartet of dead apostles – Sentry, Banshee, Daken and Grim Reaper – to pave their way to mutant ascendancyâ€¦

When Immortus informed Captain America of the plot and the ghastly consequences should the Twins win the war to control all times, spaces and realities, he also included details of Wolverine’s murderous past and the Unity team split over issues of philosophy and pragmatismâ€¦

Thus Havok was hard-pressed to keep the heroes united before the onslaught of the Twins’ zombie Horsemen, everyone a remorseless killer with deep emotional ties to the heroes who died at the hands of Avengersâ€¦

The squad split up to tackle the Apocalypse agents, but the attacks were only intended to mask the Twins’ secret agenda: compelling the reality-shredding Scarlet Witch to use her world-warping powers to bring about their long-desired ascendancy by triggering the Mutant Raptureâ€¦

Collecting Uncanny Avengers #12-17 (published November 2013 to April 2014), this timeless confection kicks everything into chaos and calamity as, following a trenchant glimpse at the twins’ harrowing formative years under Kang’s oversight, Earth’s mutant defenders experience the first rumblings of a Big Change.

On the orbiting Apocalypse Ark, Eimin and Uriel deftly work their wiles on Wanda and Simon Williams, urging her to cast a reality-warping spell to save all Homo Superior beings, utilising Wonder Man’s ionic energy to fuel the change. The guilty lovers are resolved to resist but don’t know what kind of creatures they are dealing withâ€¦

Down in the city of Socotra, Havok, Captain America and the Wasp attempt to destroy a Tachyon Dam preventing Immortus from delivering reinforcements from the corridors of history but are attacked by the revenant Banshee even as, far above them, Simon and Wanda discuss the Rapture.

All the Twins intend is to use the Witch to teleport every mutant on Earth into the ark which will then take them all to Jupiter where they can carve out their own world in peaceful isolation. Where’s the harm in that?

â€¦And in a distant future Kang’s reality starts to crumble around himâ€¦

As Cap and Co continue their struggle against Banshee, on a far distant world Thor is fully engaged in saving the inhabitants from waves of gamma lava, but whilst the Apocalypse Twins further entreat and beguile Wanda and Simon, in the bowels of their vessel undead Daken tortures his captive father Wolverine with horrific physical abuse and a crushing catalogue of the Canadian Champion’s many murderous bad decisionsâ€¦

Having left her companions to deal with Banshee, Wasp’s assault on the Tachyon Dam is interrupted by Sentry. The most powerful hero on Earth when he was alive, he is now even stronger thanks to the malign tinkering of the Twins.

Cap and Havok then uncover a possible way to defeat the seemingly unbeatable Eimin and Uriel, as Sunfire and Rogue rescue the nigh-expired Wolverine and decide that, whatever the cost, Wanda must never be allowed to alter existence againâ€¦

As waves of change unmake entire future eras, ‘The Day Nor the Hour’ finds Kang extracting key warriors from each expiring epoch, gathering his own army of retaliation, whilst in the Ark, Simon and Wanda prepare to usher in the Mutant Rapture. Hurtling towards them with death in their hearts Rogue and Sunfire have no idea that their fellow Avengers have their own secret plan to thwart the Twins and not even the last-minute arrival of Wolverine is enough to prevent a horrific triple tragedyâ€¦

With casualties mounting ‘Rapture’ begins and all over Earth mutants fade away, reintegrating in hibernation coffins deep within the Twins’ ship, revealing that Eimin and Uriel had anticipated Wanda’s duplicity and taken steps to counteract her plan.

Elsewhere the Wasp is outmanoeuvring Sentry when Thor arrives to seal the monster’s fate, whilst in space Captain America and Havok boldly attack the Twins head on before ultimate disaster arrives in the planet-sized form of Exitar, the Celestials’ official executioner and sentient Extinction Event.

When Thor and Wasp join their surviving comrades aboard ship, the sidereal colossus – reacting to the personal threat of enchanted Jarnbjorn – decrees that Earth must dieâ€¦

‘Yesterday Didn’t Exist’ opens as Immortus’ legion of heroes, still trapped on the other side of the Tachyon barrier, anxiously await their chance to reinforce the Avengers whilst on embattled Earth-in-the-now, Tony Stark, Doctor Doom and the Vision rally an army of metahumans – good and evil – to forestall Exitar’s cataclysmic death sentence.

Learning too late from the Wasp how the Twins framed mankind for killing Celestials, the assembled champions battle on with desperation as far above the Unity Avengers fight valiantly but inexorably fall to the mutant messiahs.

With grim finality everything ends as the Apocalypse Twins intended as ‘Ragnarok Now’ depicts the destruction of Earth and the heartbreak of its only survivorâ€¦

To Be Continued?

Scripted by Rick Remender and limned by Steve McNiven, John Dell, Jay Leisten & Dexter Vines (with Daniel AcuÃ±a illustrating #13) this spectacular if somewhat convoluted saga may be a bit daunting for casual readers, but dedicated followers of cosmic Costumed Dramas will no doubt adore the fantastic premise and blockbusting scope of events.

With covers-&-variants by John Cassaday & Laura Martin, Leonel Castellani, McNiven, Justin Ponsor & Davew McCaig, this titanic tome also includes a selection of extra content in the form of AR icon sections with trailers, character bios, creator commentaries and oodles more. The Marvel Augmented Reality App pages grant access to story bonuses once you download the little dickens – free from marvel.com – onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet, so for the Full Monty you should do that too, right?
â„¢ & Â© 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

May 23, 2014May 25, 2014

Iron Man: Iron Metropolitan

By Kieron Gillen, Joe Bennett, Agustin Padilla & Scott Hanna (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-595-6

Supreme survivor Tony Stark has changed his profile many times since his 1963 debut when, as a VIP visitor in Vietnam observing the efficacy of weaponry he had designed, the arch-technocrat wunderkind was critically wounded and captured by a Communist warlord.

Put to work with the spurious promise of medical assistance upon completion, Stark instead built a prototype Iron Man suit to keep his heart beating and deliver him from his oppressors. From there it was a small jump into a second career as a high-tech Knight in Shining Armourâ€¦

Ever since then the former armaments manufacturer has been a liberal capitalist, eco-warrior, space pioneer, civil servant, Statesman, and even spy-chief: Director of the world’s most scientifically advanced spy agency, the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate.

Of course, he was also a founder member of the world’s most prominent superhero assemblage, the Mighty Avengers, and affirmed Futurist; an impassioned advocate of inevitable progress by way of building better tomorrowsâ€¦

For a popular character/concept weighed down with a fifty-year pedigree, radical reboots are a painful periodic necessity. To stay fresh and contemporary, Stark’s origin and Iron Man’s continuity have been radically revised every so often, but never so drastically as during this latest revamp – the latest collected chronicle of which re-presents Iron Man volume 5, #18-22 and Inhumanity event tie-in Iron Man #20.INH, from November 2013 to March 2014.

What Just Happened: following a few notable escapades in outer space the once-jaded Armoured Avenger uncovered a few surprises in his own past (for which see the two-volume Iron Man: The Secret Origin of Tony Stark)â€¦

Rigellian Recorder 451 – one of millions of sentient automatons programmed to travel the universe acquiring knowledge – had developed a programming flaw and struck out on its own, slowly furthering its own secret agenda.

The renegade revealed to Tony that it had been watching over the Earthly inventor since before he was born, and had worked with his parents Howard and Maria to genetically alter their unborn child and make it a technological super-warrior capable of defending Earth from exponentially increasing alien attacks that were to come as the universe responded to the deadly potential of Mankindâ€¦

What 451 never knew was that Howard Stark was deeply suspicious and, after decoding the genetic alterations the Recorder had installed in the foetus, tampered with some of themâ€¦

451 claimed Tony had been designed to pilot an apocalyptic doomsday weapon left behind from the beginnings of creation when the Celestial Space Gods were at war with a rival force for control of everything. Stark’s inventiveness, aggression and fascination with armour technologies were merely programmed expressions of his ultimate purpose: to pilot world-shattering, five-mile high warsuit The Godkillerâ€¦ and there was nothing he could do to escape his awful destinyâ€¦

After a spectacular struggle Stark defeated and destroyed the deranged robot Rigellian and returned to Earth where further enquiries into his family’s shady history uncovered an astonishing, life-altering discovery kept hidden for years by his brilliantly paranoid father: Tony had an older brother who was the actual subject of 451’s genetic manipulation.

Arno Stark was a bed-ridden technological genius who was forever trapped in an Iron Lung, locked away and raised in isolation at the Maria Stark Foundation Hospice, but now the brothers were gloriously reunited. There was only one small caveat to Tony’s unbounded joy. He was no blood relation to Arno, but apparently secretly adopted as a ploy to deceive 451â€¦

Scripted by Kieron Gillen and illustrated primarily by Joe Bennett & Scott Hanna, the latest stage in the evolution of Iron Man is Iron Metropolitan which begins with an ominous glance thirty years into the future where Tony and Arno Stark proudly gloat over the completion of their super-cities and space elevator technology before their devoted AI H.E.L.E.N. rebels and sabotages everything, subsequently ripping Earth apartâ€¦

The prophecy is only a computer simulation and does not deter the present day Stark Brothers from initiating their first joint venture: saving humanity from self-inflicted extinction by building perfect cities for modern men and women to live inâ€¦

Meanwhile in London, ever-indignant radical journalist and social gadfly Abigail Burns is seduced by a sentient flaming Ring which deems her worthy to become a Mandarinâ€¦

Before introducing best friend and corporate CEO Pepper Potts to his still mainly clandestine bro Arno, Tony announces his intention of turning the deserted – except for the criminal gangs which infest it – Mandarin City into a prototype modern metropolis.

The private island off the coast of mainland China has been ignored and avoided by the nations of the world since the villain’s death and will be the perfect site on which the Starks can make their vision liveâ€¦ but only after driving out the Triads and other vermin profiting from a legally tenuous citadel no world power is confidant enough to annexeâ€¦

Whilst on a roll, Tony then upgrades his personal AI system. He calls this new electronic Major Domo H.E.L.E.N.

Soon the contentious island is a whirlwind of construction and Pepper brings aboard canny publicist Marc Kumar, whose first press conference – blathering about creating better ways to live in the technological marvel dubbed Troy – goes south when his old lover Abigail turns up.

It gets really unpleasant after she swiftly graduates from barracking the arrogant â€œhypocritical capitalistsâ€ to blasting buildings as the inflammatory Red Peril, and the disaster is further derailed when another Mandarin Ring manifests an explosive statement of destructive intentâ€¦

As Tony suits up to tackle Red Peril, from the security of his hospital bed Arno takes remote control of their city’s mechanical police force; dispatching thousands of empty Armour suits as a Trojan Guard to save lives and property.

In the aftermath, Tony calls in former War Machine pilot James Rhodes (now all decked out as the Iron Patriot) to discuss the clear and present danger of The Mandarin’s Power Rings and their quest for new hosts. Rhodes supervises S.H.I.E.L.D. Weapons Vault Omega and is appalled to discover that the ten deadly adornments he’s guarding are only an illusionâ€¦

Agustin Padilla then illustrates the Inhumanity tie-in issue Iron Man #20.INH which describes how the most recalcitrant of those missing Rings scours the Earth for the perfect host, rejecting the likes of the Hulk, Venom and Red Skull in favour of somebody more pliableâ€¦

During the blockbusting Infinity event, Thanos invaded Earth and battled the Inhumans’ ruler Black Bolt to a standstill. As a last resort the embattled king released the Hidden People’s mutagenic Terrigen Mist into the outer world’s population where it created millions more super-mortals, proving that human and Inhuman were not different racesâ€¦

When it all happened, thuggish waste of space Vic Kohl saw his despised family transformed whilst he remained pitifully normal and incorrectly deduced that he was not of their blood. Going on a self-loathing drunken bender he was targeted by the malicious Nightbringer Ring and simultaneously picked up by Iron Man’s latest Mandarin-hunting devicesâ€¦

In the resultant clash Kohl’s dormant Inhuman genes and latent Terrigen exposure finally kicked in and the drunken whiner was remade into something dark, angry and uniquely different.

Escaping the Golden Avenger but subsequently rejected and abandoned by the Inhumans’ current leader Medusa, Vic accepted his Ring’s urgings and angrily declared himself The Exileâ€¦

Back at the ongoing storyline, Tony occupies the Troy Geostationary Orbital Platform and ponders a murder campaign orchestrated by mystery Ring-wearer Lord Remaker. Although a work-in-progress, Troy now houses half a million people, 106 of whom have died in the terrorist’s hellish bomb-blasts.

When Red Peril returns to the skies over their city, the Starks are quick to react, but Abigail evades Iron Man and vanishes into the streets of Troy, seeking answers to questions nobody likes to hear. She also gets her Ring to explain what it wants, and the shocking details send her desperately seeking the other Ring-wearers active in the Iron Metropolisâ€¦

When she finds The Exile and a former gang boss using the Remaker Ring to take back the city Stark â€œstoleâ€ from him, Abigail unexpectedly allies herself with the capitalists she’s always despised rather than the murderous maniacs who think she’s on their side – but not before the monsters launch a monumental missile strike at Stark’s HQâ€¦

Moments too late, Tony watches his dream burn, and believes Arno died with it. Thus he is ecstatic to discover that his bed-bound brother had secretly constructed his own monstrous life-support Armour, which overwhelmingly joins him and Red Peril in crushing Lord Remaker and Exile.

With the Trojan Guard they drive off the malcontents, but when Abigail impetuously chases Remaker she only glimpses his mutilated corpse and missing Ring before an unknown assailant attacks and takes hersâ€¦ and her handsâ€¦

Saved by Iron Man, the still rebellious reporter angrily explains what the Rings’ agenda entails, before again lambasting Tony about his utopian arrogance. The diatribe hits home and he is forced into making a heartrending decisionâ€¦

And in another place, a sinister eldritch figure exults as he examines his three blood-soaked Rings before laying his plans to secure the remaining sevenâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

Bold, suspenseful and riotously action-packed, this expansive repositioning of the Golden Avenger comes with a cover-&-variants gallery by Paul Rivoche and Hajime Sorayama plus a photo-cover featuring the TV sensations from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as the usual digital extras accessible via the AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
â„¢ & Â© 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

May 22, 2014May 21, 2014

Asterix Versus Caesar and The Twelve Tasks of Asterix

By Goscinny and Uderzo, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Hodder/Dargaud, Hodder and Stoughton, Orion Books)
ISBN: 978-0-34039-772-0 & 978-0-34027-647-1

One of the most-read comics series in the world, the chronicles of Asterix the Gaul have been translated into more than 100 languages; with eight animated and four live-action movies, TV series, assorted toys and games and even a theme park (Parc AstÃ©rix, near Paris, naturellement).

More than 325 million copies of the 35 canonical Asterix books have sold worldwide, making Goscinny & Uderzo France’s bestselling international authors.

Their diminutive, doughty hero was created in 1959 by two of the art-form’s greatest proponents, RenÃ© Goscinny & Albert Uderzo; masters of strip narrative then at the peak of their creative powers. Although their perfect partnership ended in 1977 with the death of prolific scripter Goscinny, the creative wonderment continued with Uderzo writing and drawing the feature until his retirement in 2010.

In 2013 a new adventure – Asterix and the Picts – opened a fresh chapter in the annals as Jean-Yves Ferri & Didier Conrad began their much anticipated and dreaded continuation of the franchise.

Like everything good, the core premise works on multiple levels: ostensibly, younger readers enjoy the action-packed, lavishly illustrated comedic romps where conniving, bullying baddies get their just deserts, whilst more worldly readers enthuse over the dry, pun-filled, slyly witty satire, enhanced for English speakers by the brilliantly light touch of translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge who played no small part in making the indomitable Gaul so palatable to the Anglo-Saxon world. (Personally I still thrill to a perfectly delivered punch in the bracket as much as a painfully swingeing string of bad puns and dry cutting jibesâ€¦)

Asterix the Gaul is a cunning underdog who resists the iniquities, experiences the absurdities and observes the myriad wonders of Julius Caesar‘s Roman Empire with brains, bravery and a bit of magic potion.

The stories were alternately set on the tip of Uderzo’s beloved Brittany coast, where a small village of redoubtable warriors and their families resisted every effort of the Roman Empire to complete their conquest of Gaul or throughout the expansive Ancient World circa 50BC.

Unable to defeat this last bastion of Gallic insouciance, the mostly victorious invaders resorted to a policy of cautious containment. Thus the little seaside hamlet is permanently hemmed in by the heavily fortified garrisons of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium.

The Gauls don’t care: they daily defy the world’s greatest military machine by just going about their everyday affairs, protected by the magic potion of resident druid Getafix and the shrewd wits of a rather diminutive dynamo and his simplistic best friendâ€¦

Firmly established as a global brand and premium French export by the mid-1960s, Asterix the Gaul continued to grow in quality as Goscinny & Uderzo toiled ever onward, crafting further fabulous sagas; building a stunning legacy of graphic excellence and storytelling gold.

RenÃ© Goscinny was one of the most prolific, and remains one of the most read, writers of comic strips the world has ever seen. Born in Paris in 1926, he was raised in Argentina where his father taught mathematics. From an early age the boy showed artistic promise, and studied fine arts, graduating in 1942.

While working as junior illustrator in an ad agency in 1945 an uncle invited him to stay in America, where he found work as a translator. After his National Service in France Goscinny settled in Brooklyn and pursued an artistic career, becoming in 1948 an art assistant in a little studio which included Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Jack Davis and John Severin as well as a couple of European giants-in-waiting: Maurice de BÃ©vÃ¨re (â€œMorrisâ€, with whom he produced Lucky Luke from 1955-1977) and Joseph Gillain (JijÃ©).

He also met Georges Troisfontaines, head of the World Press Agency, the company that provided comics for the French magazine Spirou.

After contributing scripts to Belles Histoires de l’Oncle Paul and ‘Jerry Spring’ Goscinny was made head of World Press’ Paris office, where he first met his life-long creative partner Albert Uderzo (Jehan Sepoulet, Luc Junior) as well as creating Sylvie and Alain et Christine (with â€œMartialâ€- Martial Durand) and Fanfan et Polo (drawn by Dino Attanasio).

In 1955 Goscinny, Uderzo, Charlier and Jean HÃ©brard formed the independent Ã‰dipress/Ã‰difrance syndicate, creating magazines for general industry (Clairon for the factory union and Pistolin for a chocolate factory). With Uderzo he produced Bill Blanchart, Pistolet and Benjamin et Benjamine, whilst himself writing and illustrating Le Capitaine Bibobu.

Goscinny seems to have invented the 9-day week. Under the pen-name Agostini he wrote Le Petit Nicholas (drawn by Jean-Jacques SempÃ©) and in 1956 began an association with the revolutionary comics magazine Tintin, writing stories for many illustrators including Signor Spagetti (Dino Attanasio), Monsieur Tric (Bob De Moor), Prudence Petitpas (MarÃ©chal), Globule le Martien and Alphonse (both by Tibet), Modeste et Pompon (for AndrÃ© Franquin), Strapontin (Berck) as well as Oumpah-Pah with Uderzo.

He also wrote strips for the magazines Paris-Flirt and Vaillant.

In 1959 Ã‰dipress/Ã‰difrance launched Pilote and Goscinny went into overdrive. The first issue starred his and Uderzo’s instant masterpiece Asterix the Gaul, began Jacquot le Mousse and Tromblon et Bottaclou (drawn by Godard) and also re-launched Le Petit Nicolas and Jehan Pistolet/Jehan Soupolet.

When Georges Dargaud bought Pilote in 1960, Goscinny became editor-in-Chief, but still found time to add new series Les Divagations de Monsieur Sait-Tout (Martial), La Potachologie IllustrÃ©e (Cabu), Les Dingodossiers (Gotlib) and La ForÃªt de ChÃªnebeau (Mic Delinx).

He also wrote frequently for television. In his spare time he created a little strip entitled Les Aventures du Calife Haroun el Poussah for Record (first episode January 15th 1962) illustrated by a Swedish-born artist named Jean Tabary. A minor success, it was re-tooled as Iznogoud when it transferred to Pilote.

Goscinny died – probably of well-deserved pride and severe exhaustion – aged 973, in November 1977.

In the post-war rebuilding of France, Albert Uderzo returned to Paris and became a successful artist in the country’s burgeoning comics industry. His first published work, a pastiche of Aesop’s Fables, appeared in Junior, and in 1945 he was introduced to industry giant Edmond-FranÃ§ois Calvo (whose own masterpiece The Beast is Dead is long overdue for a new editionâ€¦).

The tireless Uderzo’s subsequent creations included the indomitable eccentric Clopinard, Belloy, l’InvulnÃ©rable, Prince Rollin and Arys Buck. He illustrated Em-RÃ©-Vil’s novel Flamberge, worked in animation, as a journalist and illustrator for France Dimanche, and created the vertical comicstrip ‘Le Crime ne Paie pas’ for France-Soir. In 1950 he even illustrated a few episodes of the franchised European version of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Jr. for Bravo!

An inveterate traveller, the prodigy met Rene Goscinny in 1951. Soon fast friends, they decided to work together at the new Paris office of Belgian Publishing giant World Press. Their first collaboration was in November of that year; a feature piece on savoir vivre (how to live right or gracious living) for women’s weekly Bonnes SoirÃ©e, after which an avalanche of splendid strips and serials poured forth.

Jehan Pistolet and Luc Junior were created for La Libre Junior and they produced a western starring a Red Indian (ah, simpler, if more casually racist, timesâ€¦) who eventually evolved into the delightfully infamous Oumpah-Pah. In 1955 with the formation of Ã‰difrance/Ã‰dipresse, Uderzo drew Bill Blanchart for La Libre Junior, replaced Christian Godard on Benjamin et Benjamine and in 1957 added Charlier’s Clairette to his portfolio.

The following year later, he made his debut in Tintin, as Oumpah-Pah finally found a home and a rapturous, devoted audience. Uderzo also drew Poussin et Poussif, La Famille Moutonet and La Famille Cokalane.

When Pilote launched in 1959 Uderzo was a major creative force for the new magazine collaborating with Charlier on Les Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure and launching with Goscinny a little something called Asterixâ€¦

Although Asterix was a massive hit from the start, Uderzo continued working on Tanguy et Laverdure, but soon after the first adventure was collected as AstÃ©rix le gaulois in 1961 it became clear that the series would demand most of his time – especially as the incredible Goscinny never seemed to require rest or run out of ideas.

By 1967 the strip occupied all Uderzo’s attention, so in 1974 the partners formed IdÃ©fix Studios to fully exploit their inimitable creation. When Goscinny passed away three years later, Uderzo had to be convinced to continue the adventures as writer and artist, producing a further ten volumes until he retired.

That year, after nearly 15 years as a weekly comic strip subsequently collected into compilations, the 21st tale (Asterix and Caesar’s Gift) was the first to be published as a complete original album before being serialised. Thereafter each new release was a long anticipated, eagerly awaited treat for the strip’s millions of fansâ€¦

According to UNESCO’s Index Translationum, Uderzo is the tenth most-often translated French-language author in the world and the third most-translated French language comics author – right after his old mate RenÃ© Goscinny and the grand master HergÃ©.

As one of the most popular comics on Earth, Asterix has naturally become something of a celluloid star too and, the business being what it is, some of those movie megaliths have been recycled into intriguing – if non-canonical – graphic albums in their own right.

Although technically apart from the accepted legend, those filmic tomes are well worth a look tooâ€¦

In 1976 The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (originally entitled Les Douze travaux d’AstÃ©rix) was the very first theatrical release: an animated feature written, created, Directed and Produced by Goscinny & Uderzo’s own company Studios IdÃ©fix.

Like the albums which inspired it, the tale saw Asterix and Obelix undertake a long voyage into the unknown: one packed with exotic climes, odd people and boldly surreal adventure – although the topical lampooning and satire were subtly dialled back.

More a studio-produced illustrated prose storybook than a comic strip, this â€œbook of the filmâ€ naturally introduces our bucolic cast before diving into the rather clever plot wherein the perennially bashed-up Roman Legions surrounding the village of Indomitable Gauls come to the scary conclusion that their devil-may-care foes must be godsâ€¦

When the rumours reach the Roman Senate, Julius Caesar is livid. Determined to quell the deadly talk before his power crumbles, he personally travels to the little village and challenges the Gallic resistors. If they can accomplish twelve labours as arduous as those undertaken by Hercules, they will have proved themselves gods and he will give them the entire empire and retireâ€¦

Enthralled more by the challenge than the possible outcome, chief Vitalstatistix nominates Asterix and Obelix to travel to Rome and tackles Caesar’s challenge. With diminutive scribe Caius Tiddlus accepted as official referee and recorder, the easy-going competitors set about the cunning list of labours devised by Caesar’s devious Councillors, beginning with ‘Running Faster than Asbestos, Champion of the Olympic Games‘.

Thanks to a sip of magic potion Asterix humiliatingly and hilariously outdistances the racer after which Obelix ‘Throws a Javelin Farther than Verses the Persian’.

Although the sportsman’s best effort lands in faraway undiscovered America (at the feet of Oompah-pah), Obelix’ javelin never lands at all but goes into a very, very low orbit around the Earthâ€¦

The third task – ‘Beating Cilindric, the German’ – is far harder to handle. The tiny warrior is a master martial artist who easily lobs Obelix all over the landscape but his stiff-necked formality makes him easy prey for Asterix’ guileâ€¦

Task four is to ‘Cross a Lake’ but in the centre is an Isle of Pleasure inhabited by beguiling Sirens where the affable lads are quickly enchanted. They would be there still if the lovely ladies had served Wild Boar instead of just Nectar and Ambrosiaâ€¦

In short order the Gauls ‘Survive the Hypnotic Gaze of Iris the Egyptian’ and ‘Finish a Meal made by Calorofix the Belgian’, infamous for cooking huge meals for the godly progenitors known as The Titans.

Obelix eagerly tackles the mountain of nosh and breaks the culinary wizard’s spirit by consuming every morsel and innocently asking what the main course isâ€¦

The going gets tough and weird when the pair have to ‘Survive the Cave of the Beast’ and then battle bureaucracy gone wild by ‘Finding Permit A38 in â€œThe Place That Sends You Madâ€’, thereafter ‘Crossing a Ravine on an Invisible Tightrope, over a River full of Crocodiles’, ‘Climbing a Mountain and Answering the Old Man’s Riddle’ (a task which so impresses the actual gods that Jupiter causes a thunderstorm) before the weary contestants move on to their final task of the day by ‘Spending a Night on the Haunted Plains’.

Tragically for the restless spirits, the Gauls aren’t afraid of Roman soldiers, living or deadâ€¦

Next morning Asterix and Obelix awaken outside Caesar’s Palace in Rome and learn that their Twelfth Task is simply to ‘Survive the Circus Maximus’. The emperor is taking no chances however, and has gathered all the other Gaulish villagers to share what he thinks will be their spectacular demise at the hands of his gladiators and the fangs and claws of every savage beast in the city.

It seemed such a perfect plan, but Caesar’s soldiers really should have made sure that Druid Getafix couldn’t whip up some magic potionâ€¦

AstÃ©rix et la surprise de CÃ©sar was an animated feature released in 1985, the fourth film in a burgeoning franchise. The story was cobbled together from elements of the albums Asterix the Legionary and Asterix the Gladiator by Goscinny & Uderzo’s great friend screenwriter Pierre Tchernia.

I’m not sure if the translated Asterix Versus Caesar had a full cinema release in this country, but the book certainly seemed to be everywhere in 1986: a lovely large full colour hardback wedding another peerless prose adaptation to a wealth of stills (and a few fascinating design and models sheets) from the movie into a splendid, rollicking rollercoaster rompâ€¦

When Vitalstatistix’ beautiful niece Panacea visits the village, everybody is astonished to find that oafish Obelix is off his food. The colossal simpleton is hopelessly in love with the charming girl, who typically only has eyes for hunky Tragicomix, son of neighbouring chief Dramatix.

The hopeless situation takes a turn for the very worst though when the happy couple are kidnapped by the Romans. After the enraged, potion-powered villagers register their protests in the usual manner, a battered centurion informs them Panacea and Tragicomix have already been shipped to Condatum where the boy will be sent to fight in a Foreign Legion unit.

Hard on their heels Asterix and Obelix (accompanied by noble if diminutive canine wonder Dogmatix) beat, bully and trick their way into the Roman army, following the kidnapped lovers to Arabia as full-fledged legionaries. On arrival they discover that Panacea and Tragicomix have already escaped, been captured by Bedouins and sold to unctuous functionary Caius Flabius Obtus for a proposed ceremonial Triumph for Julius Caesar.

In Rome!

As the separated lovers languish in dank Roman dungeons, Asterix and Obelix hot-foot it for the Eternal City and, after contriving to become slaves, managed to get themselves into Obtus’ Gladiatorial School before their plans suffer a setback when Asterix mislays his flask of magic potion.

With Asterix and Obelix – mostly Obelix – defeating all combative comers at Caesar’s Triumph, everything tensely culminates in a grim showdown at the Colosseum with Tragicomix about to die under the claws of massed lions until valiant Dogmatix dashes into the arena, dragging that gourd of potionâ€¦

After literally bringing the house down, the quartet of Gauls confront Caesar, who has no choice but to allow them to return to their own land and a traditional welcome home feast…

Although eschewing the sly pokes and good-natured joshing, famous caricatures and wry commentary, these gentle all-ages tales will easily charm younger readers into the raucous, bombastic, bellicose hi-jinks and fast-paced action which never fails to astound and bemuse fans of those Fantastic French Fellows who always prove that potion-powered Gallic Pride is safe in steady hands whether you’re operating a video remote or merely turning perfect pagesâ€¦

The Twelve Tasks of Asterix Â© Dargaud Editeur 1976 Goscinny-Uderzo. English translation Â© 1978 Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. All rights reserved.
Asterix Versus Caesar Â© 1985 Editions Albert RenÃ©, Goscinny & Uderzo. English translation Â© 1986 Hachette. All rights reserved.

May 20, 2014May 20, 2014

X-Men volume 2: Muertas

By Brian Wood, Terry & Rachel Dodson, Clay Man, Barry Kitson, Kris Anka, Scott Hanna, Karl Kesel, Terry Pallot & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-592-5

Since its revival in 1975 Marvel’s Mutant franchise has always strongly featured powerful and often controversial female characters, so when the fourth volume of the adjectiveless X-Men launched it was no real surprise to see that the leading line-up comprised exclusively women warriors.

This second collected chronicle, scripted by Brian Wood, re-presenting issues #7-12 (from November 2013 to March 2014) takes the conceit a stage further by introducing an all-girl gang of baddies to the mixâ€¦

The eponymous triptych ‘Muertas’ – lavishly illustrated by Terry & Rachel Dodson and Barry Kitson, Scott Hanna, Karl Kesel & Terry Pallot – commences the sinister suspense as Colombian cartel princess Ana Cortes assumes her recently deceased dad’s tenuous position at the head of the bloody table and, to consolidate her position, invites underworld tech-facilitator Reiko to implant nanites and memory downloads that will body-modify the ambitious teenager.

Her first mistake is allowing her body to become the physical host of carnage-crazed mutant-hating cyber-assassin Yuriko Oyama AKA Lady Deathstrikeâ€¦

At the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, vampire mutant Jubilation Lee is happily hearing how her official adoption of mystery baby Shogo is proceeding apace when multi-powered and recently resurrected wonder woman Monet St. Croix returns to the fold, looking for a place to rest and recuperateâ€¦

As the former Generation X team-mates verbally spar upstairs, down deep in the bowels of the school bestial scientist Hank McCoy is assessing the changes in former cop Karima Shapandar: a human friend previously infected with Omega Sentinel systems and transformed into the ultimate mutant eradicator. Apparently her lethal state was more or less cured during a horrifying battle against an ancient and malevolently sentient meteor-borne infectionâ€¦ Arkea.

When the Earth was still brand new and cooling, a pair of siblings manifested. They were immensely powerful and hated each other from the very start. They clashed and the male kicked his defeated sister loose into the cosmos while he stayed hereâ€¦

Billions of years later, John Sublime – current body of the victorious sentient bacterial life form – fought the X-Men. In various forms he had continuously survived on Earth since life began but was no friend to the subspecies Homo Superior.

Then one momentous day he surrendered himself to his enemies at the Jean Grey School in the light of an urgently manifesting mutual threatâ€¦

Sublime abides by possessing biological organisms, and he came to warn the heroes that his sister – who performs the same trick with technology and electricity as well as meat – has returned to the planet, hungry for revenge on him and wanting to control everything else in existenceâ€¦

Possessing humans and mutants alike, Arkea determined to supersede life on Earth, but her possession, upgrading and alteration of suitable organic-vehicles led to a cataclysmic confrontation (see X-Men: Primer) and she was declared destroyed – but for so many beings in the Marvel Universe, Death is neither fatal nor finalâ€¦

Back in the now Lady Deathstrike makes her move, sending an army of cartel soldiers to steal the Omega Sentinel from the X-School, but has to change her plans on the fly when Monet and the now merely-mortal Karima drive off her army of gun-toting thugs.

Forced to regroup and reassess, Ana/Yuriko opts to recruit her own super-powered gang and begins by hiring manic multiple personality mutant assassin Typhoid Mary who goes on a daring reconnaissance mission which nets Deathstrike all the files on Arkea and even a living sample of the inimical electronic nemesis.

Ana foolishly considers the specimen as the ultimate body upgrade and even the formidable Sublime cannot convince her otherwise, but after a brief battle the sample proves to be dead. Sadly during the skirmish Yuriko learned that the Arkea hive consciousness may still be alive in other meteoric shardsâ€¦

By the time Monet tracks him down, Deathstrike and Typhoid are in Norway seeking to extract a promising fallen star where they uncovered the prison of Amora the Enchantress; stripped of her Asgardian magic and locked in a force bubble by the Mighty Thor.

Seduced by the promise of her powers fully restored by the thing in the meteorite, Amora enlists in Ana’s army, a vengeful association she calls The Sisterhoodâ€¦

With the world facing imminent destruction from a new Arkea assault, Storm, Psylocke, Rachel Grey (the alternate Earth daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey dubbed Marvel Girl) and Jubilee call on Israeli mutant hero and Mossad agent Sabra who, along with mystery superman Gabriel Shepherd, track Deathstrike and new Arkea to Dubai.

Before the team can strike, however, Monet streaks in, displaying all her terrifying power, but is too late. Arkea has possessed technician Reiko and begun augmenting the othersâ€¦ not for their benefit, but her ownâ€¦

Extending her control across the planet, Arkea activates an army of broken, abandoned Sentinels, sending them marching across the Pacific sea floor to attack Americaâ€¦

The crisis grows in the second trilogy ‘Ghosts’ (art by Kris Anka & Clay Man) as, fleeing Monet’s blockbusting attack, Arkea drags her increasingly scared acolytes across the world, intent on augmenting the ranks of the Sisterhood by resurrecting two of the most lethal women ever to have faced the X-Men.

As Jubilee leads a squad of older students from the School to Catalina Island to intercept the Sentinels, in New York Arkea/Reiko uses Amora’s restored Asgardian magic to reanimate the immortal life-leeching horror Selene and Ana realises the full gravity of what she has unleashedâ€¦

As a too-late act of redemption, the repentant Cortes summons the X-Men to the Sisterhood’s location, but by the time the resurgent heroes arrive Arkea has excised Ana and similarly revived the hellish Red Queen Madelyne Pryorâ€¦

Sadly for the cocksure bacterial conqueror, her ungrateful revenants are more than happy to trade a threat to human existence in exchange for their own immediate survival, but as the X-Men spectacularly end the threat of Arkea again, more than one triumphantly weary woman warrior is forced to wonder if they the traded a greater evil for exigent salvationâ€¦

Fast-paced, action-packed and stuffed with engaging soap opera riffs, this bombastic extremely enjoyable collection is merely a prelude to greater Fights ‘n’ Tights traumas to come but is at least amply augmented by a lovely cover-and-variants gallery by the Dodsons, John Cassaday, David Marquez & Gerard.
â„¢ & Â© 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

May 19, 2014May 16, 2014

All-New X-Men volume 4: All-Different

By Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Brandon Peterson, Mahmud Asrar, Wade Von Grawbadger, Chris Claremont, Bob McLeod, Stan Lee, Louise & Walter Simonson, Roy Thomas & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-585-7

At the dawn of the Marvel Age, some very special kids were chosen by wheelchair-bound telepath Charles Xavier. Gloomy Scott Summers, ebullient Bobby Drake, trust fund brat Warren Worthington III, insular Jean Grey and simian genius Henry McCoy were gathered up by the enigmatic Professor X – a man dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between massed humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants, no matter what the cost.

To achieve his dream he educated and trained the five youngsters – codenamed Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and The Beast – for unique roles as heroes, ambassadors and living symbols in his campaign to counter the growing tide of human prejudice and fear.

Over years the struggle to integrate mutants into society resulted in constant conflict, compromise and tragedy, including Jean’s death, Warren’s mutilation, Hank’s further mutation and eventually Scott Summers’ radicalisation.

During the cataclysmic events of Avengers versus X-Men the idealistic, staunch and steadfast Cyclops killed Xavier before eventually joining with old comrade Magik and former foes Magneto and Emma Frost in a hard-line alliance devoted to preserving mutant lives at the cost, if necessary, of human ones. This new attitude appalled many of their former associates.

Abandoning Scott, his surviving team-mates Beast and Iceman sided with second generation X-Men such as Wolverine, Psylocke and Storm: staying true to Xavier’s dream. Opting to protect and train the coming X-generation of mutant kids whilst honouring Xavier’s Dream, they pursued his proven processes and methods at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning under the direction of new Head Professor Kitty Prydeâ€¦

Things got really complicated after McCoy discovered he was dying. Obsessed with the idea that the naive original First Class of X-Men might be able to sway Mutant Enemy Terrorist No. 1 back from his current path of doctrinaire madness and ideological race war insanity, the Beast used time-travel tech in a last-ditch attempt to prevent a species war.

By bringing the five youngsters back to the future he hoped to reason with the debased, potentially deranged Cyclops and fix everything before his impending deathâ€¦

The gamble paid off in all the wrong ways. Rather than shocking Scott back to his senses, the confrontation hardened the renegade’s heart and strengthened his resolve. Moreover, even after the younger McCoy miraculously cured his older self, young Henry and the rest of the X-Kids refused to go home until â€œbadâ€ Scott was stoppedâ€¦

The two sides of the mutant question clashed constantly, as the modern world experienced constant change and attacks from all quarters. Amid the rising chaos new mutants began appearing in increasing numbers, all with more impressive talents than ever before.

Through careful orchestration, brilliant media massaging and by avoiding visibly unprovoked acts of violence, Cyclops’ faction began winning the trust and respect of many oppressed sectors of humanity: the poor, the disenfranchised and rebellious, the youngâ€¦

Following a very public humiliation of the Government-sponsored human/mutant team Uncanny Avengers, the internecine mutant conflict heated up when Summers – utterly convinced of his species’ inevitable extinction at human hands – offered a place to any student wishing to join his own academy: one dedicated to training mutants to fight and survive rather than wait for mankind to turn on themâ€¦

The bold ploy succeeded in luring away Angel and the psychically conjoined, emotionally-challenged Stepford Sisters – Celeste, Mindee and Phoebe, before the situation was further muddied in X-Men: Battle of the Atom when both X-Men and Brotherhood of Mutants radicals from the future travelled back to address the issue of the time-displaced First Class.

In the resultant clashes the kids were rendered incapable of returning to their original place in historyâ€¦

In the aftermath, with the Jean Grey School forever changed, Pryde was unwilling to remain with her former colleagues and joined the Extinction Team. The First Class – now willing but unable to resume their postponed lives and tragic destinies – followed her, making Cyclops’ faction immeasurably strongerâ€¦

Scripted by Brian Michael Bendis, All–Different re-presents All-New X-Men #18-21 from January to March 2014 and also includes the contents of the celebratory anthology X-Men Gold #1, as well as a stunning cover-&-variants gallery by Brandon Peterson, Julian Totino Tedesco, Kevin Nowlan & Chris Sotomayor, Olivier Coipel, Stuart Immonen and even a photo-cover featuring the TV sensations from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Illustrated by Immonen with Wade Von Grawbadger, the tense suspense begins as Kitty renews her childhood friendship with Illyana â€œMagikâ€ Rasputin whilst the original X-class settle into the secret Extinction base.

Buried in the wilds of Canada it was once the Weapon X facility where Wolverine and so many other mutants were ruthlessly experimented upon and â€œimprovedâ€â€¦

Although heartily welcomed by Angel the newbies are experiencing a few problems. Celeste seems determined to pick a fight with rapidly-evolving telepath Jean and Henry is troubled that Magneto is so different from the raving maniac who (by his reckoning) was trying to slaughter them all mere relativistic weeks agoâ€¦

The simian supermind has some other difficulties, paramount of which is Jean’s completely ignoring their recent passionate clinch. Scott the younger is also troubled by that. He’s seen all the records and knows that he and Jean are destined to marry, but she seems determined to change that fate at all costsâ€¦

Despite all the teen tumult, Kitty continues training her charges: resolute that they will become warriors capable of surviving everything the uncertain future will throw at them. The first challenge comes almost immediately as mutant-detection system Cerebro pinpoints a potential new candidate in Miamiâ€¦

Peterson limns the second chapter as Magik warps the young X-Men in just as their target is ambushed by a band of Purifier zealots: bible-bashing fanatics who believe mutants are unholy abominations God ordered them to eradicate. A tremendous battle ensues and Jean’s still-uncontrollable telepathy gives her a peek inside the tormentors’ ugly minds, just as the police arrive.

Idealistic Scott completely misreads the situation and when he tries to hand the Purifiers over, the terrified cops open fire on the scary mutantsâ€¦

Kitty meanwhile has followed the desperate girl who was the Purifiers’ target and is shocked to see another former student. Thankfully Magik is able to shift everybody back to the hidden academy before events got too bloodyâ€¦

Laura Kinney was dubbed X-23 when she was a subject of the Weapon X sadists and it takes some time before she reconciles to being back in that now sanitised hellhole.

She is a teenaged clone grown from Wolverine’s DNA, with all his abilities and a lot of psychological problems, but as she slowly adapts to her new normal she finds herself strangely attracted to young Scott. More worrying is the fact that it might be mutualâ€¦

Nevertheless, soon after Kitty and Illyana lead the indignant, righteously enraged student team and Laura in a raid on the Florida Purifiers, only to be totally overwhelmed by their leader who possesses a metahuman power they cannot withstandâ€¦

In a telling flashback (illustrated by Mahmud Asrar and referencing the landmark X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills), it is revealed that pious bigot and demagogue Reverend William Stryker had allied with the techno-terrorists of Advanced Idea Mechanics to treat his son for an embarrassing and unwelcome â€œillnessâ€, before Peterson resumes the present-day drama with the juvenile X-Men being tormented and tortured by the now-adult and even crazier than his dad junior Stryker.

When current A.I.M. supreme scientist Monica Rappaccini answers his call, he very foolishly ignores her advice not to harm the time-displaced kids, uncaring of the potential for undoing the entire universe, but his hubristic gloating and Rappaccini’s greedy harvesting of priceless mutant DNA gives the trussed-up teens time to recover and their unified counterattack soon has the fanatic’s forces in full retreat and staring real retribution in the faceâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

This volume also collects assorted in-filling untold tales from the ever-changing team’s history, created for 50^th Anniversary one-shot X-Men Gold #1. The parade of all-star vignettes begins with an untitled novelette by Chris Claremont & Bob McLeod, set soon after Rogue joined the team and following the heroes return from Japan. Focussing on young Kitty Pryde, the tale pits the assembled mutants and freebooting Starjammers against a skyscraper-sized Sentinel and its constantly evolving progenyâ€¦

Following that is ‘The Sorrow Beneath the Sport’: a nostalgic romp by Stan Lee and Louise Simonson, riotously rendered by Walter Simonson wherein freshly inducted First Class Cyclops, Angel, Beast and Iceman spectacularly spar in an oafish contest to decide who gets to date new student Marvel Girl, after which Roy Thomas & Patrick Olliffe detail the first calamitous meeting of Banshee and Sunfire on their way to the fateful rendezvous with Professor X in Giant-Size X-Men #1â€¦

‘Options!’, by Len Wein & Jorge Molina, adds a sidebar to that landmark tale as crazy Canadian secret agent Wolverine assesses his new team-mates and calculates the best way to kill each of them should the need arise before ‘Dreams Brighten’ (Fabian Nicieza & Salvador Larroca) wraps things up with a peek at a hard-won utopia where Xavier and Magneto count the cost of achieving their Homo Superior Promised Landâ€¦

Enthralling and engaging, All-Different also includes AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
â„¢ & Â© 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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