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The Arms of the Octopus


By Mike Costa, Chris Cosentino, Kris Anka, Jake Wyatt, Michael Dialynas & Dalibor Talajić (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-577-2

Here’s a welcome return to those (relatively) uncomplicated Good Old Days, when you could pick up a comic or book without Ph.D. level preparation and just read for the sheer fun of it.

Collecting the linked serial from 2013’s All-New X-Men Special #1, Indestructible Hulk Special and Superior Spider-Man Team-Up Special (and incongruously including the Wolverine: In the Flesh One-Shot), The Arms of the Octopus offers just such a jolly “Blast from the Past” in a gripping tale of time-banditry, courtesy of writer Mike Costa.

Illustrated by Kris Anka All-New X-Men Special #1starts the ball rolling with ‘Elegy in the Classroom’ as time-displaced mutant teenagers Hank (the Beast) Pym, Bobby (Iceman) Drake, Scott (Cyclops) Summers and Jean (Marvel Girl) Grey spend their first vacation day on a trip to Manhattan and get a full-on face-full of 21st century future shock.

Escaping the bleeping sound and blinding visual fury of the telecommunications era, the kids head for Central Park where young Hank is smitten by a poetry-reading college girl. After catching a mugger, the Beast expects her to run screaming, but she’s actually so intrigued at meeting a mutant she invites him back to see her lab.

Hank knows it well: before he and the teen X-Men were brought into their own future he studied there under Gamma-medicine radiation research pioneer David Jude. Decades later the genius is still in residence, but now his field of endeavour is Temporal Displacement…

Dr. Jude is remarkably sanguine about meeting his young-looking old student, but before any questions can be asked the lab is brutally attacked by Doctor Octopus, also oddly youthful and emitting huge amounts of Gamma rays.

As the rest of the X-Men join the bombastic battle the clash inevitably draws the attention of the Superior Spider-Man…

The Wallcrawler is astounded and furious. What the kids – or anybody else for that matter – don’t realise is that for months now the mind of Otto Octavius has inhabited the Amazing Arachnid’s frame and to see his earlier self running wild in 2013 drives the cerebral bodysnatcher into a state of unthinking outrage…

After fractiously cooperating with the mutant kids, Spider-Man defeats Doc Ock and drags him back to Jude’s time-lab, where examination of the Gamma-drenched mystery maniac leads to only one conclusion: some form of time travel…

The X-kids are living proof of concept and with some reluctance the arrogant Arachnid admits that he needs to consult with an expert…

‘For a Friend Whose Work has Come to Triumph’ (illustrated by Jake Wyatt in (Indestructible Hulk Special #1) picks up the tale as S.H.I.EL.D. Specialist Bruce Banner is helicoptered in and, after getting over his astonishment at meeting genuine time travellers, gets stuck into unravelling the enigma of the radioactive rogue.

Before too long however another distraction hits the campus: a blockbusting assault by old Hulk foe the Abomination. The Gamma-irradiated gargoyle is one of Banner’s oldest enemies, and he’s been dead for years…

As the physicist gets green and mean to tackle the threat, the theory of a temporal anomaly caused by the displaced X-teens seems confirmed. Thus the mutants take Spider-Man and Dr. Jude back to their school to check out the time machine which brought them back to the future just as the Hulk makes a shocking discovery defeating his rampaging opponent.

…And in the copter speeding to Westchester, Jude realises he’s been rumbled and makes his move…

The chronal conundrum concludes in ‘With Mercy for the Greedy’ (Superior Spider-Man Team-Up Special #1, with art by Michael Dialynas) as the Machiavellian scientist (Jude, not Ock-in-Spidey for a change) uses previously concealed gamma radiation powers to blow up the transport before heading after the coveted time machine, leaving the assorted heroes in lethal freefall…

Following a suitably spectacular cooperative save, the X-kids and Spider-Man set off on the villain’s trail whilst Banner and Pym frantically work on a method of containing the real radioactive menace. Eventually everything ends up in a ferocious fight before a measure of order is restored and grudging respect is meted out all round…

Blending sinister suspense with riotous action and devilishly clever scenes of outright hilarity, this is a marvellously accessible romp no fan of clear-cut Costumed Dramas should miss and is followed by a rather strange – and unconnected – outing for the world’s favourite mutant.

Illustrated by Dalibor Talajić, Wolverine: In the Flesh is written by – and implausibly co-stars – celebrity chef Chris Cosentino; detailing the hunt for cannibal killer the Bay Area Butcher.

The satanic serial killer’s reign of terror can only be ended after the Canadian mutant recruits his old culinary chum to offer insights into the haute cuisine methodology of cutting meat and invaluably intimate knowledge of San Francisco’s Food Truck culture.

Little do either know that their prey is fed up “serving Man” and needs just one little ingredient for his pièce de résistance: a suitably trussed, tied and marinated mutant…

Light, quirky and mordantly piquant, this one won’t be to everyone’s taste…

With covers by Alexander Lozano and Tim Seeley, The Arms of the Octopus offers casual readers and faithful fans alike a smart break from cosmic epics and should certainly whet the appetite for all the monumental Marvel madness heading our way in the months to come.
™ & © 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.

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Avengers volume 3: Infinity Prelude


By Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spencer, Mike Deodato Jr., Stefano Caselli, Marco Rudy, Marco Checchetto, Frank Martin & Edgar Delgado & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-565-9

In the aftermath of the blockbuster Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, the total reboot MarvelNOW! reformed the entire overarching continuity: a drastic reshuffle and rethink of characters, concepts and brands with an eye to winning new readers and feeding the company’s burgeoning movie blockbuster machine…

This core title of the vast Avengers franchise (which can include Uncanny Avengers, Avengers Arena, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Young Avengers, and more) conceptually links the many series and stars together, and here resumes an extended storyline which began when an incredibly ancient trio of “Gardeners” – robotic Aleph, seductive Abyss and passionate Ex Nihilo – turned Mars into the staging post for their latest project: remaking Earth into a worthy perfect world.

To attain their ends they bombarded the third rock from the sun with bio-mutational “Origin Bombs”: seeding specific locations with new, exotic and deadly life-forms. When the Avengers went after the perpetrators, the infinitely antediluvian invaders claimed to have been tasked by the first species in creation and “The Mother” (of the entire universe) to test and, whenever necessary, eradicate, recreate and replace life on other worlds.

For Earth their keystone project was growing a new form of man: a prototype Adam to supersede humanity…

The Avengers defeated them, at the second time of trying, with an expansion team comprising Wolverine, Spider-Man, Falcon, Spider-Woman, Shang-Chi, Captain Marvel, former X-mutants Cannonball and Sunspot, teleporter/reality shaper Eden Fesi (AKA Manifold), pan-dimensional superman Hyperion, cosmic crusader Captain Universe and alien mystery-woman Smasher augmenting seasoned regulars Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow.

Although thwarted, Ex Nihilo and Abyss remained on Mars after the heroes took custody of their modern Prometheus. Tony Stark set out to understand the being left in the Avengers’ care and cracked the enigma of the strange creature – now calling himself Nightmask – who predicted an imminent end to everything and the advent of another extinction-level threat…

Elsewhere, as the aliens’ bio-attacks radically transformed and evolved flora, fauna and geography at six separate strike-sites – demanding constant attention from both superheroes and S.H.I.E.L.D. – obscure elements of the Infinite aligned, with Nightmask and Captain Universe simultaneously becoming aware of a shattering “White Event”…

Reality is composed of discrete universes all held apart by an infinite crimson underspace dubbed the Superflow. Here and now that immemorial barrier was somehow fragmenting, as the timeless alien engineers who maintained it stood by, helpless…

White Events herald the ascension of a universe. Normally the cosmic process throws up Nightmask as herald, and creates a Justice, a Cipher, occasionally a Spitfire and invariably, a being of infinite power: a Starbrand. This last now happens on Earth, but in our universe the entire machinery of the multiverse has been broken…

Iron Man leads a team to a smoking, five-mile wide crater and finds traumatised teen Kevin Connor at the centre of devastation , singled out by celestial source-code and now wielding the power of a living planetary defence system…

As the confrontation devolves into catastrophic combat, Connor easily thrashes the assembled Avengers before Nightmask intervenes, arbitrarily transporting the Starbrand to Mars where Abyss and Ex Nihilo are waiting…

There Kevin learns how, after millennia of world “improvements”, utterly bored Ex Nihilo tweaked his eternal brief and did something a little different with the Origin Bombs dropped on Earth. The alien had no prior idea what results his meddling might achieve, but after billions of years and missions, at least it would be different…

Teleporting back to Earth with only the best of intentions, Connor and Adam assist the Avengers in dealing with O-Bomb biological fallout in Croatia and Saskatchewan, blithely unaware that when the mutagenic hard rain first fell there were in fact seven strikes…

In the wilds of Norway, ruthless techno-terrorists of Advanced Idea Mechanics successfully harvested the horrific result of that unnoticed Origin-strike and soon their unwise meddling will yield catastrophic results…

Collecting Avengers volume 5 #12-17 (cover-dated July-October 2013), the ongoing Big Picture series continues to set the scene for the time and space-bending crossover event Infinity. Written by Hickman and Nick Spenser, with art by Mike Deodato Jr. & Frank Martin, the breathtaking saga begins anew in ‘Evolve’ as the Avengers visit the Antarctic Savage Land strike and discover a band of fast-growing androgynous humanoid children. Happily the results of this O-strike are apparently benign and the weary heroes resolve to teach the bizarre foundlings how to live in their dinosaur paradise.

A curriculum is hard to agree upon: Thor, Hyperion, Iron Man, Spider-Woman, Hawkeye and especially Spider-Man (increasingly exhibiting the harsh, uncompromising character of Otto Octavius: see Superior Spider-Man) have very different ideas of what the kids need.

It’s certainly not basic survival skills: each child is a living power battery, not requiring sleep, food, respiration or fuel of any discernible nature…

They do respond to attention and are eager to interact, however; accepting each lesson with equanimity. They also have a strange affinity with Captain Universe, who has begun identifying herself as “The Mother”…

Lulled into an air of laxity, the heroes are caught off-guard when a wave of monstrous genetic amalgams attack, allowing an old adversary to abduct some of the incredible waifs for his own experimental program.

Only the unexpected intervention of SavageLand demi-deity Garrock, the Petrified Man allows the heroes to find the compulsively meddling High Evolutionary, disassemble his monumental Terminus robot and free the kids in the concluding ‘Strong’…

The prologue to Infinity then begins with ‘The Signal’ (illustrated by Stefano Caselli) as the remaining pockets of new life are identified as parts of a colossal cosmic mechanism. The O-bomb creatures in India and Australia both construct inexplicable beacons and beam out a message declaring “World Terminal”, whilst back in civilisation Bruce Banner sets his prodigious intellect to solving a global crisis but can find no solution.

Every six minutes, all electro-mechanical activity on Earth shuts down: electrical grids black out, nuclear power plants melt down, automatic weapons systems – such as nuclear arsenals – trigger and every plane or satellite above humanity’s heads becomes an inert, downward-plunging projectile. With all the heroes desperately deployed to offset catastrophe and perform damage control, Banner at last ascertains that the all Origin-bomb sites are components of a massive biological beacon for transmitting a message deep into space…

The call sent, the multi-faced giants spawned in India mysteriously teleport to Australia, joining huge bugs ravaging Perth, with a contingent of Avengers frantically striving to contain them as Banner searches for a still-missing part of the puzzle.

That piece is currently emerging on A.I.M. Island. The robotic horror foolishly and hubristically nurtured by the techno-terrorists responds to the activated cosmic beacon, mercilessly devastating the warrior scientists even as the Avengers at last triumph down under in ‘Sent and Received’.

As the champions take stock, Captain Universe brings Manifold to another galaxy to witness the Beginning of the End…

Far above Earth, Nightmask conscientiously schools Kevin in the subtle uses of the Starbrand as billions of light-years away on Galador, an alien scout ravages the invincible homeworld of the Space Knights. Meanwhile the thing from A.I.M. Island has fulfilled its role as protector of the signalling system, crushing the Avengers ‘To the End’…

This action-heavy, portentous collection concludes with ‘…To the Light’ as A.I.M. chief Superia attempts to regain control of her alien terror toy. As she subsequently prepares to murder the assorted unconscious and wounded Avengers fortuitously left lying around, Manifold blinks back in and savagely stops the would-be killers.

It’s almost an afterthought: he’s come back with terrifying intel and a message from The Mother…

To have even the slightest chance of surviving what’s coming, the team will need to convince Abyss and Ex Nilhilo to join the Avengers…

To Be Continued…

Utter Fights ‘n’ Tights overload that will delight fans of doom-drenched Costumed Dramas, this tome also offers a stunning covers-and-variants gallery by Francis Leinil Yu, Sunny Gho & Daniel Acuña and digitally-diverting extra content – trailers, character bios, creator video commentaries, behind the scenes features and more – for tech-savvy consumers courtesy of AR icon sections all accessible through a free digital code and the Marvel Comics app for iPhone®, iPad®, iPad Touch® & Android devices at Marvel’s Digital Comics Shop.

™ and © 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.

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Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2: Angela


By Brian Michael Bendis with Neil Gaiman, Sara Pichelli, Olivier Coipel, Valerio Schiti, Francesco Francavilla, Kevin Maguire & Mark Morales (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-570-3

Since its momentous rebirth in the early 1960s Marvel Comics was synonymous with making superheroes more realistic. However the little publisher always maintained a close connection with the fantastic space-opera and outrageous cosmic calamity that typified its pre-renaissance – as cherished by oldsters like me who grew up reading their “Hairy-underpants Monsters from Beyond” stuff.

With Space bigger than ever (a little cosmology humour there), one of the resurgent company’s earliest concepts has had a major revamp and now ranks as one of the most entertaining titles to come out of 2012’s MarvelNow! group-wide reboot.

There’s even a major blockbuster movie scheduled for release this August…

The Guardians of the Galaxy were created by Arnold Drake and Gene Colan for try-out title Marvel Super-Heroes (#18, January 1969): a band of freedom fighters dedicated to liberating star-scattered Mankind from domination by the sinister, reptilian Brotherhood of Badoon.

A rare “miss” for the creatively on-fire publisher, they then vanished into limbo until 1974, when Steve Gerber incorporated them into Marvel Two-In-One, Giant Size Defenders and The Defenders, wherein assorted 20th century champions travelled a millennium into the future to ensure humanity’s liberation and survival.

This led to the Guardians’ own short-lived series in Marvel Presents (February 1976-August 1977) before premature cancellation again left them floating around the Marvel Universe as perennial guest-stars for such cosmically-tinged titles as Thor, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One and The Avengers.

In 1990 they secured a relatively successful second series (#62 issues, annuals and spin-off miniseries) before cancellation struck again in July 1995.

This isn’t them; that Future was a Prelude…

In 2006 a monumental crossover epic involved most of Marvel’s 21st century space stars in an “Annihilation” Event, and led writing team Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning to reconfigure the Guardians concept for contemporary times and tastes.

Amongst the stalwarts initially in play were Silver Surfer, Galactus, Firelord, Quasar, Nova, Thanos, Star-Lord, Moondragon, Super-Skrull, Gamora, Ronan the Accuser, Drax the Destroyer and a host of previously established alien civilisations such as the Kree, Skrulls, Watchers, Xandarians, Shi’ar et al., all falling before a invasion of rapacious Negative Zone beasties unleashed by undying horror Annihilus.

The saga spawned specials, miniseries and new titles (subsequently collected in many volumes) and inevitably led to a follow-up event…

In Annihilation: Conquest, the cast expanded to tackle new threat, adding – and sometimes subtracting – such interstellar luminaries as Adam Warlock, the Inhumans, Kang the Conqueror, Blastaar, the Magus, Captain Universe, fallen Celestial Madonna Mantis, anamorphic adventurer Rocket Raccoon and gloriously whacky “Kirby Kritter” Groot, a walking killer tree and one-time “Monarch of Planet X”, amongst others…

I’ve covered part of that cataclysmic clash elsewhere and will get to the rest one day: suffice to say that by the end of the successive Annihilations and subsequent intergalactic War of Kings, a new, pan-species Guardian group had appointed itself to defend the recovering civilisations and prevent such calamities from ever happening again.

This isn’t them either… not so much…

A few years later and many more cosmic crises, the remnants of those many Sentinels of the Spaceways got the band back together, still determined to make the universe a safe place (for specifics you should consult Guardians of the Galaxy volume 1: Cosmic Avengers).

Thus this second compelling chronicle (collecting Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2 #4-10 from July 2013-January 2014) resumes the immensely absorbing interstellar interactions of a bunch of alien freaks and the human heroes who fight beside – when not actually with – them. Moreover, this time it all ties neatly into the overarching mainstream Marvel continuity…

Brian Michael Bendis continues the tale of Peter Jason Quill – half-breed Terran son of J’Son of Spartax: undisputed ruler of an interstellar empire but no friend of Earth – and his allies in pacifying an unruly and unforgiving universe as Drax, Rocket Racoon, Groot and Gamora (“Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy”) spend some downtime in a bar with their newest recruit, Tony Stark…

Iron Man had been spending time exploring the universe and become embroiled in the self-appointed Guardians’ ongoing trouble with a compact of major cosmic powers and principalities. A coterie of these had formed a Council of Galactic Empires and unilaterally declared Earth “off limits”: quarantined from all extraterrestrial contact.

That high-minded declaration hadn’t stopped one of the Signatories – the scurrilous reptilian Brotherhood of Badoon – from launching a sneak attack on London and being soundly thrashed by Quill, Stark and Co…

After open-minded “Ladies Man” Stark scores an amatory epic fail with Gamora (a wry episode which delivers plenty of laughs for his new comrades who can’t let it lie for the rest of the book), the viridian virago storms out to cool off and is ambushed by an alien bounty hunter.

Despite her formidable prowess she is only saved by the arrival of the Guardians who have just finished trashing a bar and the squad of Spartax soldiers who walked in on their drunken carousing…

With no information on who else now wants them dead, the disparate legion of the lost head back into space and a fateful dalliance with destiny…

Still being crushingly snubbed by Gamora, Stark occupies himself learning new ways to repair his comparatively primitive armour under the guidance of the aggravatingly disparaging racoon whilst Quill takes a secret meeting in one of the universe’s many unsavoury, unwelcoming armpits.

Starlord’s consultation with former ally Mantis about a bizarre episode (wherein he seemed to experience an inexplicable and debilitating chronal mindquake) provides no answers and he is forced to go ask the last person in creation he ever wanted to see again…

Meanwhile, Stark and the remaining Guardians have spotted an unidentifiable lifeform approaching Earth and rush to incept her before she can do any damage…

They reason they can’t identify her is because she’s from another universe and time. Angela (created by Neil Gaiman for Spawn #9 in 1993 and, after much legal foofawraw, brought under Marvel’s auspices in Age of Ultron) is lost and baffled, approaching a world her people have always considered a fairytale or religious myth when the still disgruntled Gamora smashes her into the moon, grateful for an excuse to work off her pent-up hostilities…

The satellite’s oldest inhabitant – Uatu the Watcher – is reeling from the conflict. Not because of its savage intensity but because he knows what Angela is and how she simply cannot be present in this Reality…

Quill however is pumping the mad Titan Thanos for information on his own time troubles and realises he has just poked the biggest bear in existence. The Death-Lover declares that humanity’s perpetual tampering with the time-stream has broken the universe and brought our pathetic mud-ball to the attention of races and powers that won’t let Mankind muck up Reality any longer…

Rushing back to his birthworld, Star-Lord finds his team faring very badly against the mysterious Angela and pitches in. When she is finally, spectacularly subdued, Uatu appears and proffers dire warnings for all Reality…

With uncharacteristic diplomacy Quill then coaxes the enigmatic intruder into relating her story. Apparently she’s a Hunting Angel from a place called Heven, fallen through a gaping crack in Everything That Is…

Drawn to Earth – a place her race reveres but considers a beautiful fiction – she was ambushed by Gamora, who cannot believe Star-Lord’s next move: freeing Angela and, after personally conducting her on a tour of the world, letting her go free…

At this time almost all of Marvel’s titles had been building to a big Avengers-centric crossover event dubbed Infinity, and the next two issues (#8-9, stunningly illustrated by Francesco Francavilla) form the Guardians’ contribution to the epic, in which a double crisis afflicts our particular portion of space.

As Thanos invades Earth for his own dark personal motives, an ancient spread of races from far beyond attack those stellar empires still recovering from the Annihilation outrages and the War of Kings. It’s nothing personal: this invading alien Armada is tasked with eradicating every Earth in every dimension and the Kree, Skrulls, Badoon, Galadorians, Spartax, Shi’ar and all the rest are simply guilty of associating with humans…

With all the Avengers called into space to fight beside their former enemies, Earth is helpless when enemy E.T.’s overwhelm The Peak (the planet’s orbital defence citadel) and Abigail Brand – Director of  the Sentient World Observation & Response Department – sends a desperate distress call to Star-Lord.

His affirmative answer enrages Gamora, already bristling from the knowledge Quill has been fraternising with the despised Thanos and she quits…

With Iron Man also gone, Star-Lord, Groot and the Raccoon sneakily infiltrate the station (Drax doesn’t do unobtrusive) but quickly fall foul of the superior forces and only the sudden return of Angela saves the day. When Gamora and Drax then join the fray the Guardians are magnificently triumphant… but at a terrible cost…

This volume then closes with a far-lighter “Girls Night Out-rageous” (#10, illustrated by Kevin Maguire) as Gamora and Angela enjoy a blistering bonding session and action-comedy moment whilst visiting the Badoon homeworld Moord, freeing the reptilians’ vast contingent of enslaved races and accidentally uncovering an impossible connection between the scurvy raider race and Angela’s dimensionally displaced people…

Bright, breezy, bombastic and immensely enjoyable, the Guardians of the Galaxy offer fast and furious adventure and captivating thrills, spills and chills, and this volume also includes a beautiful gallery of two dozen covers-&-variants by Pichelli & Justin Ponsor, Adi Granov, J. Scott Campbell, Julian Totino Tedesco, Brandon Peterson, Francavilla, John Tyler Christopher, Maguire, Paul Renaud, Skottie Young, Mike Deodato Jr., Terry Dodson, Milo Manara, Paolo Manuel Rivera, Mark Brooks, Leonel Castellani and Adam Kubert plus a wealth of as-standard added extras provided by a multitude of AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) offering story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.

™ & © 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.

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The Flash: The Dastardly Death of the Rogues – a Brightest Day tie-in volume


By Geoff Johns, Francis Manapul, Scott Kolins & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3195-8

In the aftermath of the intergalactic Zombie Apocalypse known as Blackest Night, a number of heroes and villains were mysteriously resurrected. Just prior to that, Barry Allen, the second Flash and scarlet herald of the Silver Age of American comicbooks, also returned from the dead to play a pivotal part in the long-prophesied Crisis.

Once back, however, his life became increasingly complicated…

This first volume of his post-revival exploits collects The Flash volume 3 #1-7 (June-December 2010) and portions of The Flash Secret Files and Origins 2010, revealing how the hero’s desire to return to a normal life proves a forlorn hope in a world still reeling from a swift succession of cosmic upheavals…

The high-octane rush begins in the six-part ‘Case One: The Dastardly Deaths of the Rogues’ by Geoff Johns & Francis Manapul, as Barry returns to his old job as a CSI at Central City‘s Crime Lab.

His old friend Captain Darryl Frye is happy he’s back and believes the returnee’s claim that he’s been in Witness Protection, but is far too busy to chat. Recently the City’s been swamped with nuisance crimes committed by the costumed crazies of Flash’s Rogues Gallery as well as lesser, more pedestrian felons …

Barry knows all about it: his trip to the office has already been interrupted stopping a bank job by the new Trickster…

Before he has a chance to settle in, and already missing his old lab partner Patty Spivot, Barry is then dispatched to examine a body in East Park. Apparently somebody has murdered the Mirror Master…

As his wife Iris joins the Press-pack behind the police tape, Barry makes a disturbing discovery: the ravaged corpse is neither of the two criminals to have operated as the Reflective Rogue but a mysterious unknown third…

This cadaver apparently appeared in a blaze of light and, when a second flare occurs, the Scarlet Speedster suits up and races across town to be greeted by five more strangers tricked out as his greatest foes…

The second issue finds Flash reeling at an incredible accusation. The costumed newcomers – Commander Cold, Weather Warlock, Top, Heatstroke and Trixster – are from the 25th century; a special law-keeping unit dubbed The Renegades come back in time to apprehend him for the murder of Mirror Monarch – an act he will commit in eighty-four days hence…

The team have been trained to tackle their own era’s greatest menace – Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash – and have no qualms about testing their tactics on his 21st century inspiration. Moreover, reasoned debate and the fact that he is still innocent of any crime are wasted on the future cops. The ensuing cataclysmic clash sees the Vizier of Velocity drive off his attackers, but only at the cost of an entire apartment building…

After diligently rebuilding the dwelling, Barry talks things over with Iris and decides to check on Zoom, currently incarcerated in the forbidding Iron Heights super-penitentiary, where at that very moment Digger Harkness – one of the dozen dead metahumans resurrected in the aftermath of the Blackest Night – is being confronted by the true Rogues.

Captain Cold and Co. have decided not to free their old ally, preferring to see if Captain Boomerang still has the necessary grit and class to be one of them…

At the harassed, stressed and over-worked Crime Lab, Barry has just annoyed his boss by reopening a cold case nobody has time for, when DNA evidence comes back that irrefutably proves that he is the murderer of the anachronistically expired Mirror Monarch…

Pressure mounts in the third chapter as Barry is understandably accused of contaminating a crime scene. His worry however, is that perhaps he is – or will be – the actual killer…

When Boomerang discovers he has returned to life with a new and deadly super power he murderously busts out of prison, arriving back in Central City just as the Renegades attack Barry and Iris.

Whether out of mistaken identity or sheer bloody-mindedness, Harkness joins the blockbusting battle, targeting the tomorrow cops and leaving Flash to frantically save the endangered bystanders…

Despite the bad odds and mounting chaos, Barry is subduing the riotous Rogue and Renegades when Top delivers a chilling warning and ultimatum. Unless Flash surrenders, Iris will die and the rest of the Rogues will unleash a horrific menace from the Mirror Dimensions…

Afetr Top apparently switches sides, the speedster is propelled into an all-out attack on Captain Cold’s crew. The battle is soon wildly out of control but is interrupted when Boomerang is contacted by the White Entity responsible for bringing back the Dead Dozen…

His response ends the street war in an unpredictable manner which allows Flash to divine the true nature and target of all the time shenanigans – and stop the real architect of all his present woes.

…At least he would have, if the Renegades hadn’t used that moment to shanghai him into the future to face trial for murder…

The epic encounter concludes with the resurgent Scarlet Speedster deducing the reason for all the temporal turmoil, foiling his secret foe and heading home to Iris, utterly unaware that a mystery rider from the unknown is heading for him bearing a warning of a coming splintering time stream and an oncoming “Flashpoint”…

The Flash #7 shifts focus to Captain Boomerang as ‘What Goes Around, Comes Around’ (with art by Scott Kolins) reveals the origins and offers career highlights of the Ozzie outlaw, culminating in portentous meeting with the incalculably dangerous Zoom and an ominous confrontation with Captain Cold’s Rogues…

Perhaps narratively parked in the wrong place, ‘Running to the Past’ – also illustrated by Scott Kolins – then offers insights into Barry Allen’s troubled past as the hero dreams again of his mother’s murder and rededicates himself to one day closing that particularly painful cold case, before being welcomed back to the fold of his Speed Force Family, whilst across town the Rogues find the final legacy of Sam Scudder, the original Mirror Master…

Also included are a 2-page preview teaser for upcoming publishing event Flashpoint (inked by Paul Neary), a selection of wry and pithy Flash Facts (‘How Does a Boomerang Work?’, ‘How Do Captain Boomerang’s Boomerangs Work?’, ‘How Does a Mirror Work?’ and ‘How Do Mirror Master’s Mirrors Work?’) plus a mesmerising covers-&-variants gallery by Manapul & Brian Buccellato, Tony Harris, Ryan Sook, Greg Horn, Kolins & Michael Atiyeh, Fernando Pasarin, Joel Gomez, Randy Mayor & Carrie Strachan, Alé Garcia, Sandra Hope & Alex Sinclair and Darwyn Cooke.

The Flash has always been the epitome and paradigm of Fights ‘n’ Tights comics adventure and this blistering – if short-lived – iteration offers so much more than the requisite dose of thrills, chills and spills to satisfy the craving of every tension tripper, suspense junkie and (super) speed freak. Catch it if you can!
© 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Snowpiercer volume 1: The Escape


By Jacques Lob & Jean-Marc Rochette translated by Virginie Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978- 1-78276-133-4

All science fiction is social commentary and, no matter when, where or how set, holds up a mirror to the concerns of the time of its creation. Many stories – in whatever medium – can go on to reshape the culture that spawned them.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, War of the Worlds, Metropolis, Brave New World, 1984, Dan Dare, Day of the Triffids, Star Trek, Thunderbirds, Dune, Star Wars, Stranger in a Strange Land, Solaris, Alien, Neuromancer and so many others escaped the ghetto of their genre to change the cognitive landscape of the world, and hundreds more such groundbreaking and worthy efforts would do the same if we could get enough people to read or see them.

There’s a reason why the Soviets proscribed many types of popular writing but actively encouraged (certain flavours of) Science Fiction…

And most importantly, when done well and with honesty, all such stories are also incredibly entertaining.

All over the world comics have always looked to the stars and voyaged to the future. Europe especially has long been producing spectacularly gripping and enthralling “Worlds of If…” and Franco-Belgian graphic storytelling in particular abounds with undiscovered treasures.

For every Blake & Mortimer, (Tintin’s) Destination Moon or Barbarella, Valérian & Laureline, The Airtight Garage, Jeremiah, Lone Sloane or Gods in Chaos there is an impossible hidden wealth of others, all perched tantalisingly out of reach for everybody unable or unwilling to read nothing but English.

Now however, with the imminent UK release of the movie Snowpiercer, Titan Comics (whose previous translated offerings include Storm, Towers of Bois-Maury, The Magician’s Wife and assorted classics by Enki Bilal and Moebius amongst others) have brought another long-overlooked masterpiece to our parochial Anglo-centric attention.

The original comics series – a stunning example of bleak Cold War paranoid fantasy – is released in a superb two-volume monochrome hardback set, the first of which is available now.

The original tale was serialised in 1982 in À Suivre and collected two years later as Le Transperceneige, written by Jacques Lob (Ténébrax, Submerman, Superdupont, Blanche Épiphanie, Roger Fringan and more) and rendered by painter/illustrator Jean-Marc Rochette (Le Dépoteur de Chrysanthèmes, Edmond le Cochon, Requiem Blanc, Carla, Les Aventures Psychotiques de Napoléon et Bonaparte, etc.) and the driving central conceit is brilliant and awesome.

In the near future life is harsh, oppressive and ferociously claustrophobic. As eternal winter almost instantaneously descended upon the Earth, fugitive remnants of humanity boarded a vast vacation super-train and began an eternal circumambulation of the iceball planet on railway tracks originally designed to offer the idle rich the ultimate pleasure cruise.

Due to lax security as the locomotive started its unceasing circuit of the globe, rogue elements of the poor managed to board the vehicle, but were forced by the military contingent aboard to inhabit the last of 1001 cars pulled by the miracle of engineering.

Now decades later the self-contained and self-sustaining Engine hurtles through unending polar gloom in a perpetual loop, carrying within a raw, fragmented and declining microcosm of the society that was lost to the new ice age…

All contact with the Tail-enders of the “Third Class” has been suspended ever since they tried to break through to better conditions of the middle and front carriages. Their frantic “Wild Rush” was repelled by armed guards and the survivors – who know that event as “the Massacre” – were kicked back to their rolling slums and sealed in to die…

The story proper begins as Lieutenant Zayim is called to an incident in a toilet. Somehow an individual has survived the minus 30 degree chill, climbed along the outside of the train and broken in to the centre carriages. The desperate refugee should be killed and ejected but the stunned officer receives instruction from his Colonel that the indigent – named Proloff – is to be interviewed by the leaders up in First Class.

Before that, however, the invader must be quarantined as the carriage doctor has no idea what contagions must proliferate in the squalor of the rear. But whilst Proloff is isolated, young idealistic activist Adeline Belleau forces her way into the car.

She is with a humanitarian Aid Group agitating to integrate the abandoned Tail-enders with the rest of the train, but is unceremoniously confined with the Tail-Rat and suffers the same appalling indignities as her unfortunate client…

After a “night” in custody Proloff and Adeline are cautiously escorted by Sergeant Briscard and his men through the strange and terrifying semi-autonomous carriages: each a disparate region of the ever-rolling city, contributing something to the survival of all. Travelling through each car during their slow walk, Proloff sees how humanity has uniquely adapted to the journey to nowhere, but that each little kingdom is filled with people scared, damaged and increasingly dangerous.

In one car they are even attacked by bandits…

He also begins to pick up things: a religion that worships the unlimited life-bestowing power of Saint Loco, rumours that the train is slowing down, reports that a plague has begun in the carriage he broke into. Even Adeline has picked up a cold from somewhere…

As they slowly approach the front, Proloff and Adeline grow closer, uniting against the antipathy of the incrementally better off passengers who all want the Powers-That-Be to jettison the dragging carriages packed with filthy Tail-enders…

When they at last reach the luxurious “Golden Cars” the outcasts are interviewed by military Top Brass and the President himself.

He confirms that the train is indeed slowing down and that the furthest carriages will be ditched, but wants Proloff to act as an emissary, facilitating the dispersal of the human dregs throughout the rest of the train.

Billeted with Al, the timidly innocuous Train Archivist, Historian and Librarian, Proloff quickly confirms his suspicion that he is being played. Whilst deftly avoiding the grilling regarding conditions at the train’s tail, he swaps some theories about how the ice age really began and just how coincidentally lucky it was that this prototype vacation super-train was set up, ready and waiting to save the rich and powerful… and only accidental selections of the rest of humanity…

Stoically taking in the decadent debauchery of the First Class cars, Proloff is ready to die before going back, and when word of plague and revolution provokes an attack by the paranoid autocrats, he and Adeline decide to go even further forward, to see the mighty Engine before they die.

What they find there changes everything for everyone, forever…

This incisive exploration of a delicately balanced ostensibly stable society in crisis is a sparkling allegory and punishing metaphor, playing Hell and poverty at the bottom against wealth in Heaven at the top, all seen through the eyes of a rebel who rejects both options in favour of a personal destiny and is long overdue for the kind of recognition bestowed on that hallowed list of SF greats cited above.

At least with this volume, even if the movie adaptation doesn’t do it, you’ll still have the comics source material to marvel at and adore…
Transperceneige/Snowpiercer and all contents are ™ and © 2013 Casterman.

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Superior Carnage


By Kevin Shinick, Stephen Segovia, Dennis Crisostomo, Don Ho & Dan Mexia (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-567-3

Back in the anything goes, desperate hurly-burly of the late 1980s and early1990s, fad-fever and spin-off madness gripped the superhero genre in America as publishers hungrily exploited every trick to bolster flagging sales. In the melee Spider-Man spawned an intractable enemy called Venom: deranged, disgraced reporter Eddie Brock who bonded with Peter Parker‘s Secret Wars costume (a semi-sentient alien parasite dubbed the Symbiote) to become a savage, shape-changing dark-side version of the Webspinner.

Eventually the arachnid adversaries reached a brooding détente and Venom became the “Lethal Protector”, dispensing his own highly individualistic brand of justice anywhere but New York City.

But then the symbiote went into breeding mode; spawning a junior version which merged with serial psycho-killer Cletus Kasady. Utterly amoral, murderously twisted and addicted to both pain and excitement, he became the terrifying metamorphic Carnage: a murder-crazy monster tearing a bloody swathe through the Big Apple before an army of superheroes caught him and his equally lethal “family” (as seen in the crossover epic Maximum Carnage).

One of the most dangerous beings on Earth, eventually Kasady was executed with his remains dumped safely into high-Earth orbit.

However, “safe” is an extremely relative word and eventually the crimson killer returned…

More recently, as part of the MarvelNow! restart event, Spider-Man underwent a startling shake-up which left arch villain Otto Octavius in control of the Wallcrawler’s body and permanently installed in Peter Parker’s brain.

The hero’s mind had been maliciously transferred and trapped in the dying body of Dr. Octopus where, despite his every desperate effort, Parker perished with and within that decrepit, expiring frame. With his final efforts he bombarded the psychic invader with his full unvarnished memories and forced Octavius to experience every ghastly moment of tragedy and sacrifice, binding Ock to living the rest of his stolen life in tribute to his enemy and earnestly endeavouring to carry on Spider-Man’s self-imposed mission. However, Octavius’ personality gradually was in control, resulting in a cold, calculating and obsessively Superior Spider-Man.

Scripted by Kevin Shinick (Avenging Spider-Man, Robot Chicken) with art from Stephen Segovia, Dennis Crisostomo, Don Ho & Dan Mexia, this slim, grim tome collects the 5-issue miniseries Superior Carnage (September 2013-January 2014), beginning in an undisclosed containment facility where the recently recaptured Kasady -lobotomised in a clash with the Scarlet Spider – has been transferred to be dumped and forgotten.

Sadly it only makes the monster available to another ruthless maniac…

The Wizard has his own problems: once one of the smartest men on Earth, a battle with Black Bolt has left him with induced and progressive dementia which will soon kill him. Desperate to prove himself to his son (who couldn’t care less), the sinister savant uses mind-control tech to release Carnage – dormant since Kasady became functionally brain-dead – and lets the bloodthirsty beast run wild amongst the prison population…

The Wizard’s goal is to revive and restock his gang The Frightful Four, but he hits a slight snag when the beast proves uncontrollable due to the simple fact that Kasady has no mind…

Lucky for the bewildered boffin his already-restored ally Klaw is still loyal. The creature is composed of solidified sound and easily subdues the rampaging Carnage, since the only vulnerabilities symbiotes possess are no tolerance for fire and extreme sonic frequencies…

With Plan A a bust, the increasingly unstable Wizard then transfers the alien parasite to his confederate Karl Malus, a wheelchair-bound rogue surgeon who is far from happy to be the monster’s new home, but upon whom the aforementioned mind-control mechanisms will work…

And all this time the Superior Spider-Man has been hunting the escapees: dedicating his vast crimefighting resources to seeking out the Wizard, even though he believes there’s little to fear from a demented ex-genius and brain-dead serial killer…

Impossibly, the impromptu tactic works and Malus’ intellect has had a transformative effect on the alien, which now augments its lethal metamorphic abilities with an arsenal of high-tech weaponry.

Delighted and delirious, the rapidly declining Wizard then leads his team in a murderous assault on City Hall, attacking New York’s controversial Mayor J. Jonah Jameson. The big brain has no intention of surviving the foray and fully intends to go out in a headline-grabbing blaze of glory…

It’s just as well, as Malus’ grip on the Carnage creature is slowly slipping…

The doomed desperadoes are just too late. Spider-Man has deployed his own mercenaries to spirit Jameson away, but has in turn severely underestimated the threat posed by the invaders.

Only after all of his men are slaughtered does the Wallcrawler realise his error, and is further shocked when the Wizard – despite his declining faculties – discerns that he’s fighting Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man’s body…

When the Wizard’s control fades Carnage then takes over its host and goes completely wild, beating Spider-Man and destroying Klaw, but as the sound-master’s body explodes, the uncontained fury blasts the Symbiote off and out of Malus…

And into the Wizard…

Shock follows shock as the tales escalates to a spectacular and fearsomely foreboding conclusion that will satisfy every Fights ‘n’ Tights fan’s wildest dreams whilst promising even nastier surprises in days to come…

Smart, sharp, fast-paced and addictively action-packed, this stand-alone saga keeps tensions high and the suspense bubbling, and this creepy chronicle also includes a covers-&-variants gallery by Clayton Crain, Marco Checchetto and Raffa Garres.
The Spider-Man has been reinvented so often it’s almost become commonplace, but this
™ & © 2013 and 2014 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. Italy. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Wolfsmund volume 3


By Mitsuhisa Kuji, translated by Ko Ransom (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1935654-96-4

Pseudonymous woman of mystery Mitsuhisa Kuji steps up the pace in this third volume (originally seen in Japanese publication Fellows! from 2009 as Ookami no Kuchi: Wolfsmund and a tankobon edition in 2011) of her gripping and chillingly fatalistic historical drama reinterpreting the legend of William Tell.

Set in 14th century Switzerland, the serial details the struggle of three conquered alpine cantons – Uri, Unterwalden and Schwyz – for freedom and independence from the cruel, oppressive and savagely rapacious Habsburg proto-Empire.

At first this interpretation centred around the monolithic fortress Wolfsmund, situated in the Sankt Gotthard Pass: an impenetrable Keep, barrier and waystation between dangerous mountain passes which dictated and controlled the population’s ability to move – or flee, find allies, gather intelligence or stockpile war materiel.

The triple-castle complex is a crucial trade bottleneck between Germany and Italy, housing a garrison of hard-hearted soldiers commanded by a human devil with an angel’s face.

Wolfram the Bailiff is a sadistic sentinel with an infallible eye for spotting resistance: slaughtering freedom fighters and crushing the people’s hopes with baroque and monstrous flair and ingenuity.

Until now no one has survived falling under his excoriating gaze, but the lust for liberty has grown strong in the hearts of a people pushed too far for too long…

The horrific murderously medieval passion play resumes with ‘Albert and Barbara Part One’ and a spectacular display of martial arts illustration as a brother and sister, creatively maimed on Wolfram’s orders, complete their training of a very special student. Elsewhere in Lugano, on the Italian side of the mountains, the rebel force of “the Eternal Alliance” lay their final plans for taking back their land. Everything depends upon a suicide mission to take the barrier fortress and Walter, the forbidding and guilt-wracked son of the fallen liberator Wilhelm Tell…

The resistance leaders have devised a scheme for the young avenger to climb across the unforgiving mountain peaks whilst his combat-teachers sacrifice themselves as living decoys. Albert and Barbara are keenly resigned to their fate, ignoring Walter’s crushing “Survivor’s Guilt”. He has to get through to coordinate the uprising within the cantons and their lives are just a fair price for victory…

The darkly uplifting parable concludes in ‘Albert and Barbara Part Two’ as the siblings boldly introduce themselves at the gates of Wolfsmund and, by sheer bravado and indomitable courage, invade the castle, chasing Wolfram deep into the bowels of his lair.

Their audacious attack leaves them dead, surrounded by a vast harvest of fallen enemies, and their greatest triumph is that the grinning bailiff’s confident poise is shaken as, in a rush of fury, he realises too late that the true blow against him has been struck elsewhere…

In ‘Walter and the Comrades in Fate’ that realisation is revealed after flashbacks disclose the siblings’ pep talks with the valiant Tell. The scene then switches to show in harrowing detail the mountaineer’s epic re-crossing of the treacherous peaks – an act of unsurpassed heroism balanced by Wolfram’s shrewd assessment that his hidden foe can only be the legendary Wilhelm… or perhaps his missing son…

The closing chapters of this excessively graphic and visually uncompromising saga at last relate a turning of the tide as ‘Hedwig and Wilhelm’ opens with a particularly shocking sequence wherein the sadistic bailiff personally tortures Walter’s mother and younger brother seeking confirmation of his mysterious foe’s identity. The interview proves fruitless and Wolfram feels his master’s growing wrath and impatience when he is summoned to report to the Emperor Leopold…

With rebellion brewing in distant Bavaria the supreme overlord is reluctantly forced to leave the Canton situation in Wolfram’s hands… but he is far from content…

Meanwhile Walter makes his way to the rebel rendezvous where he is informed of his family’s plight. Clandestinely joining the crowds rounded up to observe the macabre and grisly executions, the doom-laden wretch can only watch helplessly as the last of his family are put to death by the grinning monster. He might however draw some shred of solace if he knew the dread which secretly grips the bailiff’s heart…

This volume concludes with the climactic ‘Hilde and the Young Cowhands’ as the long-awaited uprising begins and the populace storms and destroys the barrier station’s Southern fortress. With the castle burning the surviving soldiers flee for Wolfram’s Central Keep, unaware that on the German frontier the Northern Fort is now under attack.

Whilst an enraged mob engages the defenders with a frontal assault, Walter leads another suicidal commando raid, bolstered by the jibes of a wanton woman prepared to sacrifice everything for vengeance…

Hilde is the widow of the leader of a local trades Guild. When her husband fell victim to Wolfram’s games she dedicated herself to avenging him, and with the last of his faithful retainers began a reign of horrific reprisals which earned her the nickname “the Ripper of Schwyz”. Now she and the last two cowhands, infiltrated through the roof of the North Castle by Walter’s climbing skills, grimly make their way down to the ground floor, unstoppable engines of destruction…

When the castle falls, the last Tell understands that he not alone in his guilt, but that some things are greater than human life. And now, with both wings fallen, only Wolfram’s force remains, isolated and trapped in the central keep of Wolfsmund…

To Be Continued…

Never a tale for the faint-hearted, with this volume the saga explodes into stunning savagery, forensically examining the costs of liberty in brutally uncompromising character vignettes and breathtakingly intimate portrayals of death at close quarters.

Harsh, seductively cruel and inspirationally ferocious, this unhappy saga is probably most comfortably enjoyed by older readers and those who already know that not everybody lives happy ever after…

Wolfsmund is printed in the ‘read-from-back-to-front’ manga format.
© 2011 Mitsuhisa Kuji. All rights reserved.

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Ark


By Peter Dabbene & Ryan Bayliss (Arcana Studio)
ISBN: 978-1-77135-122-5

It’s not that often that I can allow myself to be relatively succinct, but every now and then a tome turns up which is pretty much comic book perfect and I’m left with very little to say except read this by any means necessary…

The first one I’ve seen this year is a gloriously understated science fiction thriller suitable for older teens that got far too little attention (mine included) when it came out, and which is definitely worth the time for any fan of science fiction or offbeat detective stories…

This transatlantic collaboration is written by New Jersey Boy Peter Dabbene and illustrated by British artist Ryan Bayliss, who combine to tell an all too human tale which holds your interest in both the characters and concept long after the final page turns…

It begins far beyond the orbit of Pluto where Explorer, Earth’s first extra-solar colonisation ship, silently drives ever deeper through interstellar space.

The crew, whose families are also aboard, are all fatalistically dedicated to their mission – to find and settle a new world – although some still harbour suspicions and distrust of the unique passengers… even after thirteen years of watching them grow from little children into young adults.

That small select group are all civilians and all Meta-Humans: genetically engineered hybrids combining human and animal DNA, with incredible abilities still barely revealed or explored.

But now a crisis has arisen and Captain Smith is at odds with his Second-in-Command Victor Diaz about how to proceed…

As the entire ship’s company discovers next morning, all contact with Earth has stopped and the Captain wants to ask the Hybrids to join the crew in running the vessel as it continues the mission. Commander Diaz however does not like the freaks and believes it dangerous to allow them full and unfettered access to the ship.

Even the teenagers in question are undecided on the matter. Some, like chimp-form Gerry, are keen and eager to do their bit, but a small rebellious faction feels they are being drafted and exploited.

Debate rages throughout Explorer: many humans have grown close to their cargo over the years and, now the Hybrids have matured, fraternisation – if not love – has become an issue. The die-hard crewmembers draw much comfort from the fact that the freaks age faster than humans and were all designed to be sterile mules…

Most importantly, many of the crew have begun to question the very nature of the mission itself; constantly finding glaring illogicalities in the whole undertaking… Thoughts turn to the possibility that some disaster has befallen the mother planet…

Smith is more worried about the loss of signal than he lets on, however, and tasks Gerry – who is a very literal-minded mega-genius – to help communications officer Winfield  look into why Earth has gone silent.

Ever eager to please, the simian sets to, uncovering a coded message where no normal person would expect to find it and rushes to share it with Captain Smith. The next morning Gerry is gone: apparently lost in space…

Lizard-girl Darien was a silent observer of what truly happened, and although she refuses to share what she saw, mistrust and paranoia run rampant throughout the enclosed community. Nobody believes Gerry died accidentally, but was it suicide or murder?

As suspicions mount and tensions rise, a microcosmic species war erupts which only a concerted coalition of humans and Metas can quash. Throughout the crisis, however, a greater mystery and threat remains: what was in that final message from Earth and does it reveal the real true purpose of the Ark in space?

Clever, beguiling and splendidly aware that with murder what’s paramount is who dies rather than how many, Ark offers a singularly sophisticated tale of unalterable human passion that will delight readers jaded by cosmic megadeaths and overblown angsty overkill.

Perhaps a little hard to find now as a physical book, Ark is available digitally at http://www.comixology.com/ARK/comics-series/10257 but if, like me, you’re a sucker for paper and the scent of ink and glue, you can get a proper book edition from the U.S. Amazon website (http://www.amazon.com/Ark-Peter-Dabbene/dp/1771351225/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391613791&sr=8-1&keywords=ark+dabbene) Or from the publisher Arcana at http://www.arcana.com/store.php?item=633
© 2012 Arcana Studio, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers volumes 1 & 2


By Maree & J.A.H.N.
ISBNs: 978-1-4947-1244-0 & 978-1-4947-2240-1

In Britain we have a glorious tradition of Gentlemanly Amateur Excellence. In the Good Old Days we decried crass commercial professionalism in favour of gifted tryers: Scientists, Inventors, Sportsmen – even colonialists and missionaries – all those who in their time eschewed tawdry lucre, hefty development budgets and “Practicing Beforehand” (“…which ruins the fun”) in favour of just getting on with it and pluckily “Having-a-Bash”.

And a surprising number of those local heroes soared, like Charles Darwin, Robert Boyle or Henry Fox Talbot, and the tradition continues to this day like Trevor Baylis (inventor of the clockwork radio) and has spread to other areas of endeavour such as Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards or our many self-publishing stars like Eddie Campbell or John Maybury.

With such antecedents it especially generates a manly pang of pride in me when that “Can-Do Spirit” results in good comics…

So despite both creative participants here having non-resident status I’m doing them the honour of according them Notional Nationality status for the duration of this review – or as long as they can handle it…

Candidly drawing on Britain’s the venerable tradition of appalling bad-taste, surreal zaniness and shameless, protracted double entendres, Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers takes the topical taste for Zombie Apocalypse fiction and convincingly tweaks, twists and tortures (not to mention folds, spindles and mutilates) the genre and zeitgeist with wit, remorseless, sarcastic invention and cynical, surreal socio-political shots to the ‘nads.

The physical editions (the tomes are as available as Kindle editions and in other formats) are big black-&-white paperback tomes (280 x 207mm) stuffed with sly, wry innuendo and, whilst artist J.A.H.N. might have benefited from better reference material and more drawing time in places, author Maree’s trenchant pacing and remorseless parody riffs carry the tale along with frantic, furious, madcap pace…

The end of everything begins in volume 1: The Thin Goo Line where, in a faraway dimension, the world has collapsed into disaster. On this parallel Earth, vain and foolish geneticists meddled with male mating urges and accidentally spawned a virus which turned men into unthinking, out-of-control anally-fixated undead rapists. Of course, it killed them first…

In the wink of an eye civilisation fell, but one scientist built a trans-dimensional portal, intending to escape, only to fall foul of the rectal Armageddon at the very last minute and on landing transformed in another London as a fully-fledged trousers-down crusty carrier…

In the essentially Third World London Borough of Sutton, the brain-dead and preternaturally horny Apocalypse-beast arrives and immediately assaults an unwary Irishman outside a local hostelry.

Instantly infected, the traumatised Son of Erin is comforted by Basil, Rupert and Mandingo (an out-&-proud Gay Black Police Detective); passing homosexual partygoers who take pity on the stunned and shell-shocked (and dying/mutating) Kerryman. Feeling very out of sorts he goes with them for a medicinal drink or ten at their favourite night-spot…

The taint he carries works with terrifying rapidity and within hours the first victim has himself infected hundreds of eager and willing fun-seekers at the wild and woolly club…

Meanwhile his trans-dimensional transgressor has continued its own mindless rampage, only to be arrested by unbelieving coppers who catch him/it having his way with a doubled-over store mannequin. The green and mouldy incoherent invader is thrown into a cell and largely forgotten as reports rapidly come in concerning a rash of unwholesome acts in the streets…

At Sutton police station “old school copper” (for which read brutal, bigoted, bullying undiagnosed psychopath) Inspector Jake hears of the plague of Sodomy and sends his boys out to crush it, but his Manor is not a happy, rich, fashionable borough like utopian paradisiacal neighbour Croydon and he expects terrific resistance from the surly, unruly multi-cultural hoi-polloi who dwell there…

People like class-traitor Julie, a blue-blooded lass and latter-day chav, married to staunch socialist-liberal ex-aristocrat Dale, wine critic for the Workers Revolution newspaper.

She has unspecified connections to the highest in the land but prefers to slum it with her commie-pinko chums, or ultra-extreme Politically Correct roving reporter Bunting Bell of the BBC.

Jake almost prefers the deranged, greedy fundamentalist cant of Pox News journo P. Chariti, eagerly spreading panic around the globe by perpetually broadcasting scenes of what she is sure is the biblical End of Days.

Julie’s first clash with the Priapic perambulators forces her to reveal her deadly proficiency in ninja fighting arts and, barely escaping the shamblers, she dashes home to save her man from another clutch of zombies even as Inspector Jake’s attempts to reclaim his streets goes very badly wrong and his diminished force of rozzers retreats back behind the firmly clenched doors of the police station.…

With the crisis growing and an exponentially growing wave of bumbies roaming the streets, Mayor Hussein broadcasts a call for all uninfected residents – whatever their gender, race or orientation – to take refuge at the huge and sturdy Grand Mosque on Winnie Street and Jake and his men make a desperate dash to comply.

A couple of social classes away at 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister David Cameroon, Chancellor Assbourn and Homely Secretary Terry Pays are aroused from their posh-boy (and girl) games and appraised of the growing disaster somewhere in one of the poor bits of town…

As the situation worsens the triumvirate of Toffs endure a bollocking in Parliament, and wishy-washy Cameroon decides that they need to be seen doing something. However their publicity-junket to the front lines goes horrifically wrong when their helicopter goes down in hostile territory.

Trapped in Sutton and surrounded by insatiable undead rear-enders, Pays is beginning to regret her obsessive purge of police numbers when the political poltroons are surprisingly saved by turban-wearing, sword-wielding worshippers from the Mosque.

Temporarily secure behind its stout walls, they are soon joined by infamous police-hating lawyers Micky Manksfield and Inman Khant who have rushed to Sutton to make sure the rampaging monsters are not brutalised and framed by the cops…

With the country’s governors lost, Parliament is in uproar and ripe for takeover. The blow comes when Britain’s real masters brutally emerge from their shadows and cow the pewling Parliamentarians at the point of their guns.

The scraggy, reanimated remains of Dorris Stokes, Mary Whitehouse, Claire Rayner and Fanny Craddock are scary enough, but when their squad leader exposes herself as the terrifying Maggie T, the Mother of all Parliaments rocks with horror, shock and – from the simpering mummies-boys of the Tory back-benches – fawning adoration and relief…

At the Winnie Street Mosque, the deflated, unsuspectingly ousted government’s very worst enemy has just fought his way through the anarchy-riven borough to join the unsullied survivors, but Radical Scots Islamist Georgy Goaway and his Unregulated Mini Scab Taliban are not there to save their scalps: quite the opposite in fact…

And back in Proper London, Maggie is back to steer the country through its greatest crisis, but as dawn breaks over Sutton nobody is aware that the Ironed Lady is herself in the clutches of a far darker mistress…

The lewd lunacy escalates into even crazier political capital and horrific hoots in the concluding volume – Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers 2: In Sutton, No-One Can Hear You Cream – with Jake deploying the nauseating Police Community Support Officers whilst Maggie activates the Metropolitan Police’s long-hidden, obscenely secret doomsday weapon (the last working member of the notorious Special Patrol Group, or Bob as likes to be called) before, in the dead zone, Julie reveals her own clandestine links to Britain’s real rulers and the zombie bottom-feeders try to break out of Sutton and spread their atrocious acts into Croydon and other, lesser realms…

Appallingly bad-taste, brutally non-PC, simultaneously fancifully macabre and punishingly politically astute, this extremely funny story takes on a far more powerful significance if you actually live in or around London.

Although drenched in local colour gone wild and geographical in-jokery of a highly refined kind, this is a tale totally unfettered by the strictures of good taste: sardonically blessed with chapter headings such as ‘Play Fisty For Me’, ‘The Evil Head’ and ‘The Porking Dead’ (apparently some of these are under revision so I’ve spitefully chosen not to share them you: get your own copies) whilst always carefully balancing political pokes with blisteringly vulgar sallies at the insanity of modern life.

Shamefully, laugh-out-loud, spit-take, blasting-coffee-from-your-nose funny and happily reminiscent of Robert Rankin’s wonderful Brentford Triangle novels (but with pictures and many, many more bottoms) and as addictively addled as Whoops Apocalypse (Andrew Marshall & David Renwick’s sublime satirical TV show, not the bowdlerised movie adaptation), Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers is the kind of story only certain people will want – or be able – to read, so I hope you’re one of us and not one of them…

It doesn’t say so but I’m going to assume © 2013 Maree & J.A.H.N. or maybe © 2013 Trans-Dimensional Zombie Bummers. All rights reserved in either case.

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Golden Age Doctor Fate Archives volume 1


By Gardner F. Fox, Hal Sherman, Stan Aschmeier & Jon Chester Kozlak (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1308-0

One of the most interesting aspects of DC’s golden Age superhero pantheon is just how much more they gripped the attention of writers and readers from succeeding generations, even if they didn’t set the world alight during their original “Glory Days”.

Many relatively short-lived or genuinely second-string characters with a remarkably short shelf life through the formative years of the industry have, since the Silver Age which began in 1956, seldom been far from our attention and been constantly revived, rebooted and resurrected.

After The (Jay Garrick) Flash and The Spectre, probably the most revered, revisited and frequently revived is Doctor Fate, who first appeared in 1940, courtesy of writer Gardner F. Fox and the uniquely stylistic Howard Sherman.

Although starting strong, he was another incredibly powerful man of mystery who failed to capture the imaginations of enough readers to build on the chimeric tone of the times: undergoing a radical revision midway through his initial run and losing his strip even before WWII ended.

Since his Silver Age revival however Fate has become a popular cornerstone of more than one DC Universe…

Following the historically informative and laudatory Foreword by big-time devotee fan and Golden Age Keeper of the Flame Roy Thomas, this monumental 400 page full-colour deluxe hardback (representing the entirety of Doctor Fate‘s run from More Fun Comics #55-98 (May 1940-July/August 1944) introduces the potentate of peril in a 6-page parable wherein he combats ‘The Menace of Wotan’.

During those simpler times origins and motivations were far less important than plot and action, so this eerie yarn focuses on a blue-skinned Mephistopheles’ scheme to assassinate comely lady of leisure Inza and how her enigmatic, golden-helmed protector thwarted the plot. The hero dealt harshly with the nefarious azure mage, barely mentioning in passing that Fate possessed all the lost knowledge and lore of ancient civilisations.

That’s probably the biggest difference between the original and today’s Fate: back then he was no sorcerer but an adept of forgotten science (a distinction cribbed from many Lovecraftian horror tales of the previous two decades of pulp fiction): a hair-splitting difference all but lost on the readers.

In #56 – which sported the first of eleven cover spots for the Wielder of Old Wisdoms –‘The Search for Wotan’ saw Fate carry Inza up the Stairs of Judgement to Heaven where they learned their foe was not dead and was preparing to blow up the entire Earth.

Foiling the plan but unable to permanently despatch the big blue meanie, Fate was forced to bury his enemy alive at the centre of the world…

In ‘The Fire Murders’ in #57, certified doom-magnet Inza was targeted by mystic arsonist Mango the Mighty before her guardian Fate quickly ended the campaign of terror, whilst in the next issue a modern mage recovered ‘The Book of Thoth’ from its watery tomb and unleashed a wave of appalling, uncanny phenomena… until the Blue-and-Gold Gladiator stepped in.

The self-appointed bulwark against wicked mysticism flew out of his comfort zone in More Fun #59 to repel an invasion by ‘The People from Outer Space’ but was firmly back in occult territory for #60 when he destroyed ‘The Little Men’ employed by a legendary triumvirate of colossal Norns to crush humanity.

Behind #61’s striking Sherman cover, ‘Attack of the Nebula’ pitted the Puissant Paladin against a cosmic cloud and wandering planetoid summoned by an Earthly madman to devastate the world, then saw him crush a deranged technologist’s robotic coup in #62’s ‘Menace of the Metal Men’ and save Inza from petrification by ‘The Sorcerer’ in More Fun #63.

Like many of Fox’s very best heroic series, Doctor Fate was actually a romantic partnership, with Inza (after a number of surnames she eventually settled on Cramer) acting as assistant, foil and so very often the target of many macabre menaces. In #64 she and Fate – who still had no civilian identity – shared a pleasure cruise to the Caribbean where a slumbering Mayan God of Evil wanted to utilise her unique psychic talents in ‘The Mystery of Mayoor’.

She got a brief rest in #65 as Fate soloed in a bombastic battle to repel an invasion of America by ‘The Fish-Men of Nyarl-Amen’ but played a starring role in the next episode when Fate exposed a sadistic crook trying to drive his wealthy cousin to suicide by convincing her that she was ‘The Leopard Girl’…

A year after his debut, More Fun Comics #67 (May 1941) at last revealed ‘The Origin of Doctor Fate’ telling how the boy Kent Nelson had accompanied his father Sven on an archaeological dig to Ur in 1920.

Broaching a pre-Chaldean pyramid, the lad awakened a dormant half-million year old alien from the planet Cilia, accidentally triggered security systems which killed his own father. Out of gratitude and remorse the being known as Nabu the Wise trained Kent to harness the hidden forces of the universe – levitation, telekinesis and the secrets of the atom – and after two decades sent him out into the world to battle those who used magic and science with evil intent.

That epic sequence only took up three pages, however, and the remainder of the instalment found time and space for Fate and Inza to turn back a ghostly incursion and convince Lord of the Dead Black Negal to stay away from the lands of the living…

Fate then graduated to 10-page tales and held the covers of More Fun #68-76, beginning a classic run of spectacular thrillers by firstly crushing a scientific slaughterer who had built an invisible killing field in ‘Murder in Baranga Marsh’, before gaining a deadly arch-enemy in #69 when deranged physicist Ian Karkull used a ray to turn his gang into ‘The Shadow Killers’…

In #70 the shadow master united with Fate’s first foe as ‘Wotan and Karkull’ built an arsenal of doomsday weapons in the arctic, but were still too weak to beat the Master of Cosmic Forces, whereas rogue solar scientist Igorovich would have successfully blackmailed the entire planet with ‘The Great Drought’ had Inza not intervened…

With involvement in WWII now clearly inevitable, the covers had increasingly become more martial and patriotic in nature, and with More Fun Comics #72 (October 1941) Fate underwent an unexpected and radical change in nature.

The full face helmet was replaced with a gleaming metallic half hood and his powers diminished. Moreover the hero was no longer a cold, emotionless force of nature, but a passionate, lusty, two-fisted swashbuckler throwing punches rather than pulses of eerie energy. His previous physical invulnerability was countered by revealing that his lungs were merely human and he could be drowned, poisoned or asphyxiated…

The quality and character of his opposition changed too. ‘The Forger’ pitted him against a gang of con-men targeting Inza’s family and other farmers; altering intercepted bank documents to pull off a cruel swindle, whilst a far more rational and reasonable nemesis debuted in #73 as criminal mastermind ‘Mr. Who’ used his body-morphing, forced- evolution Solution Z to perpetrate a series of sensational robberies.

Despite a rather brutal trouncing – and apparent death – the brute returned in #74 as ‘Mr. Who Lives Again’ saw the sinister scientist use his abilities to replace the City Mayor, whilst in #75 ‘The Battle Against Time’ found Fate racing to find a killer who had framed Inza’s best friend for murder…

Underworld chess master Michael Krugor manipulated people like pawns but ‘The King of Crime’ found himself overmatched when he tried to use Inza against Fate, after which #77 saw a welcome – if brief – return to the good old days as ‘Art for Crime’s Sake’ found the Man of Mystery braving a magic world of monsters within an ancient Chinese painting to rescue young lovers eldritchly exiled by a greedy art dealer

Issue #78 featured clever bandits who disguised themselves as statues of ‘The Wax Museum Killers’ whilst #79’s ‘The Deadly Designs of Mr. Who’ revealed how the metamorphic maniac attempted to impersonate and replace one of the richest men on Earth, and in #80 innovative felon ‘The Octopus’ turned a circus into his playground for High Society plunder.

In More Fun #81 cunning crook The Clock used radio show ‘Hall of Lost Heirs’ to trawl for potential victims and easy pickings whilst in the next issue Fate exposed the schemes of stage magician/conman The Red Sage who was offering Luck For Sale!’ after which ‘The Two Fates!’ – fortune tellers who used extortion and murder to bolster their prognostications – were stopped by the real deal…

In #84 the energetic crimebuster braved ‘Crime’s Hobby House!’ to stop thieving special effects wizard Mordaunt Grimm using rich men’s own pastimes to rob them, before big changes for Kent Nelson occurred in #85.

Here the society idler quickly qualified as a surgeon and medical doctor, embarking on a new career of service to humanity. Additionally, his alter ego ditched the golden cape, becoming a more acrobatic and human – if still bulletproof – crimebuster, exposing a greedy plastic surgeon helping crooks escape justice as ‘The Man Who Changed Faces!’

The medical theme predominated in these later tales. ‘The Man Who Wanted No Medals’ was a brilliant surgeon who feared a crushing youthful indiscretion would be exposed after which #87’s ‘The Mystery of Room 406’ dealt with a hospital cubicle where even the healthiest patients always died whilst in ‘The Victim of Doctor Fate!’, Nelson suffered crippling self-doubt when he failed to save a patient.

Those only faded after the surgeon’s diligent enquiries revealed the murderous hands of Mad Dog McBain behind the untimely demise…

Charlatan soothsaying scoundrel Krishna Das was exposed by Fate and Inza in #89’s ‘The Case of the Crystal Crimes’ after which ‘The Case of the Healthy Patient!’ pitted them against a fraudulent doctor and incurable hypochondriac before Mr. Who used his chemical conjurations to shrink our hero to doll size in #91’s ‘The Man Who Belittled Fate!’

The Thief of Time struck again – whilst still in jail – in More Fun #92 as ‘Fate Turns Back The Clock!’ and Hal Sherman ended his long association with the strip in ‘The Legend of Lucky Lane’ wherein an impossibly fortunate felon finally played the odds once too often…

As the page-count dropped back to six pages Stan Aschmeier illustrated the next two adventures, beginning with 94’s ‘The Destiny of Mr. Coffin!’ with Fate coming to the aid of a fatalistic old soul framed for being a fence whilst ‘Flame in the Night!’ saw a matchbox collector targeted by killers who thought he knew too much…

With the end clearly in sight Jon Chester Kozlak took over the art beginning with More Fun Comics #96 and ‘Forgotten Magic!’ as Fate’s Chaldean sponsor was forced to remove the hero’s remaining superhuman abilities for a day – leaving Fate to save trapped miners and foil their swindling boss with nothing but wits and courage.

Then the restored champion exposed the spurious bad luck reputed to plague ‘Pharaoh’s Lamp!’ and ended/suspended his crime-crushing career with #98 by sorting out a case of mistaken identity when a young boy was confused with diminutive Stumpy Small AKA ‘The Bashful King of Crime!’…

With the first age of superheroes coming to a close new tastes were developing in the readership. Fate’s costumed co-stars Green Arrow, Aquaman and Johnny Quick – along with debuting concept Superboy – moved over to Adventure Comics leaving More Fun as an anthology of cartoon comedy features.

Initially dark, broodingly exotic and often genuinely spooky, Doctor Fate smoothly switched to the bombastic, boisterous, flamboyant and vividly exuberant post war Fights ‘n’ Tights style but couldn’t escape the changing times. Now however, both halves of his early career can be seen as a lost treasure trove of tense suspense, eerie enigmas, spectacular action and fabulous fun: one no lover of Costumed Dramas or sheer comics wonderment can afford to miss.
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