Batman: Heart of Hush
By Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen & Derek Fridolfs (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2123-2, softcover 978-1-84856-214-1
Paul Dini once more proved himself the very best of contemporary Batman writers with this chilling, suspenseful epic of love and obsession featuring Bruce Wayne’s ultimate adversary Tommy Elliot, a boyhood friend as twisted by his own mother’s malign influence as the boy Bruce was transformed by the murder of his parents Thomas and Martha Wayne.
Eminent surgeon Elliot became the sadistic and obsessive Hush to obtain vengeance on Bruce Wayne; his boyhood friend and companion but one who had been perpetually held up to him as a perfect example of a son by Elliot’s disabled and deranged mother. Now in this intriguing and affecting collection, reprinting Detective Comics #846-850 we gain a deeper insight into Batman’s dark doppelganger and the succession of tragedies that made him.
The stunning saga opens with ‘First Families of Gotham’ with occasional allies Catwoman and Batman tackling theme villain Doctor Aesop, unaware that the malignant, murderously patient Elliot is watching their every move. As telling slices of his ghastly childhood are presented the crazed doctor concludes the final preparations for his greatest scheme of vengeance…
In ‘The Last Good Day’ more memories of Elliot’s school days with young Bruce Wayne counterpoint the targeting of Robin, Zatanna and Nightwing as the entire Batman Family come under Hush’s meticulous and malicious gaze and the villain prepares a perfect trap for Batman with the terrifying assistance of Dr. Jonathan Crane – the Scarecrow…
Batman is forced to confront the greatest chink in his heroic armour in ‘Heartstrings’ and Catwoman is struck down and made the ultimate hostage via a grotesque surgical strike, pushing the Dark Knight to the edge of reason and brink of death in ‘Scars’…
When the finally part of the plan culminates in Tommy Elliot becoming Bruce Wayne the scene is set for a spectacular confrontation with neither combatant quite sure who is the hero and who ‘The Demon in the Mirror’…
With a vast assembly of guest-stars and visiting villains, Heart of Hush finally elevated the previously over-hyped and uninspiring Tommy Elliot to the first rank of Batman’s Rogues Gallery. Fast, furious, genuinely scary and powerfully this is a masterful tale of suspense that no fan should miss… and since it’s available in both handsome hardback and scintillating softcover editions, you don’t have to..
© 2008, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
Signal From Space
By Will Eisner with Andre LeBlanc (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 0-87816-014-0
Here’s another classy contemporary cartooning classic which although readily available in a number of formats is still seen best in first release. Ambitious and deliberately targeting an adult book-reading rather than comics audience, this initial collection of Will Eisner’s trenchant political thriller-cum-social commentary proves once more that sometimes the medium really is the message…
It is pretty much accepted today that Eisner was one of the pivotal creators who shaped the American comicbook industry, with most of his works more or less permanently in print – as they should be.
From 1936 to 1938 William Erwin Eisner worked as a jobbing cartoonist in the comics production hothouse known as the Eisner-Eiger Shop, creating strips for both domestic US and foreign markets. Using the pen-name Willis B. Rensie he created and drew opening instalments for a huge variety of characters ranging from funny animal to historical sagas,
Westerns, Detectives, aviation action thrillers… and superheroes – lots of superheroes …
In 1940 Everett “Busy†Arnold, head honcho of the superbly impressive Quality Comics outfit, invited Eisner to take on a new challenge. The Register-Tribune newspaper syndicate wanted a 16-page weekly comicbook insert for the Sunday editions and Eisner jumped at the opportunity, creating three series which would initially be handled by him before two of them were delegated to supremely talented assistants. Bob Powell inherited Mr. Mystic and distaff detective Lady Luck fell into the capable hands of Nick Cardy (then still Nicholas Viscardi) and later the inimitable Klaus Nordling.
Eisner kept the lead feature for his own and over the next twelve years The Spirit became the most impressive, innovative, imitated and talked-about strip in the business. However, by 1952 he had more or less abandoned it for more challenging and certainly more profitable commercial, instructional and educational strips, working extensively for the US military in manuals and magazines like P*S, the Preventative Maintenance Monthly and generally leaving comics books behind.
After too long away from his natural story-telling arena Eisner creatively returned to the ghettos of Brooklyn where he was born on March 6th 1906. After years spent inventing much of the visual semantics, semiotics and syllabary of the medium he dubbed “Sequential Art†in strips, comicbooks, newspaper premiums and instructional comics he capped that glittering career by inventing the mainstream graphic novel, bringing maturity, acceptability and public recognition to English language comics.
In 1978 a collection of four original short stories in strip form were released as a single book, A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories. All the tales centred around 55 Dropsie Avenue, a 1930’s Bronx tenement, housing poor Jewish and immigrant families. It changed the American perception of cartoon strips forever. Eisner wrote and drew a further 20 further masterpieces opening the door for all other comics creators to escape the funnybook and anodyne strip ghettos of superheroes, funny animals, juvenilia and “family-friendly†entertainment. At one stroke comics grew up.
Eisner was constantly pushing the boundaries of his craft, honing his skills not just on the Spirit but with years of educational and promotional material. In A Contract With God he moved into unexplored territory with truly sophisticated, mature themes worthy of Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald, using pictorial fiction as documentary exploration of social experience.
One of the few genres where Eisner never really excelled was science fiction – and arguably he doesn’t in this tale either as, in Signal From Space, the big discovery is just a plot maguffin to explore politics, social interactions and greed – all premium Eisner meat…
The material in this collection was originally serialised in as eight 16 page episodes in Will Eisner’s Spirit Magazine as ‘Life On Another Planet’ from October 1978 to December 1980, rendered in toned black and white (a format adhered to and title revived in subsequent Kitchen Sink, DC and W.W. Norton collections). However for this luscious hardback the artist and long-time confederate Andre LeBlanc fully-painted the entire saga using evocative tones and hues to subtly enhanced the sinister, cynical proceedings.
One night lonely radio astronomer Mark Argano, based at a New Mexico observatory, picks up ‘The Signal’ a mathematical formula which originated from Barnard’s Star – proof positive of extraterrestrial intelligence…
One of his colleagues wants to inform the public immediately but Argano is adamant that they go slowly as he harbours schemes to somehow “cash inâ€. Unfortunately the other scientist he shares the secret with is a Soviet sleeper agent…
Almost immediately the first murder in a long and bloody succession is committed as various parties seek to use the incredible revelation to their own advantage. World-weary science advisor and maverick astrophysicist James Bludd is dispatched by the CIA to verify and control the situation, but he walks straight into a KGB ambush and narrowly escapes with his life…
There’s now a deadly Cold War race to control contact with the mysterious signallers and ‘The 1st Empire’ follows recovering addict Marco as he turns his life around and uses the now public sensation to create a personality cult dedicated to leaving Earth and joining the aliens. Whilst Marco’s Star People grab all the headlines ruthless plutocrat Mr. MacRedy uses his monolithic Multinational Corporation to manipulate Russia and America, intending to be the only one to ultimately capitalise on any mission to Barnard’s Star.
Since travel to far space is still impossible for humans MacRedy sanctions the unethical and illegal creation of a human/plant hybrid and starts looking for volunteers to experiment on in ‘A New Form of Life’ whilst Bludd accepts another undercover assignment – now more reluctant spy than dedicated scientist. Casualties moral, ethical and corporeal mount in ‘Pre-Launch’ whilst in distressed African nation Sidiami, a desperate despot declares his nation a colony of Barnard’s Star to avoid UN sanctions and having to pay back his national debt to Earthly banks…
Soon he’s offering a base to Multinational for their own launch site and sanctuary to those Star People anxious to emigrate…
In ‘Bludd’ the scientist and his sultry KGB counterpart find themselves odd-bedfellows and the Mafia get involved in the crisis – for both personal and pecuniary reasons – whilst in America MacRedy prepares to install his own President…
Now determined to take matters into his own hands and screw all governments and interests, Bludd is caught up in an unstoppable, uncontrollable maelstrom of events in ‘Abort’ and after the American President has a fatal accident in ‘The Big Hit’ MacRedy thinks he’s finally won, but is utterly unprepared for Bludd’s unpredictable masterstroke in ‘The Last Chapter’…
A Signal From Space is a dark and nasty espionage drama as well as a powerfully intriguing ethical parable: a Petrie dish for ethical dilemmas where Eisner masterfully manipulates his vast cast to display human foible and eventually a glimmer of aspirational virtue. This is a hugely underrated tale from a master of mature comics guaranteed to become an instant favourite. And it’s even better in this sumptuous oversized edition which is well worth every effort to hunt it down.
After all, Per Ardua ad Astra…
© 1978, 1979, 1980, 1983 Will Eisner.All rights reserved.
Showcase Presents Metal Men volume 2
By Robert Kanigher, Mike Sekowsky, Ross Andru, Mike Esposito & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1559-0
The Metal Men first appeared in four consecutive issues of National/DC’s try-out title Showcase: legendarily created over a weekend by Kanigher – after an intended feature blew its press deadline – and rapidly rendered by the art-team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. This last-minute filler attracted a large readership’s eager attention and within months of their fourth and final adventure the gleaming gladiatorial gadgets were stars of their own title.
This second sterling black and white chronicle collects the solid gold stories from Metal Men #16-35 and the second of their nine team-up appearances in Brave and the Bold; in this case #66.
Brilliant young Einstein Will Magnus constructed a doomsday squad of self-regulating, intelligent automatons, governed by micro-supercomputers dubbed “Responsometersâ€.
These miracles of micro-engineering not only simulate – or perhaps create – thought processes and emotional character for the robots but constantly reprograms the base form – allowing them to change their shapes.
Magnus patterned his handmade heroes on pure metals, with Gold as leader of a tight knit team consisting of Iron, Lead, Mercury, Platinum and Tin warriors. Thanks to their responsometers, each robot specialised in physical changes based on its elemental properties but due to some quirk of programming the robots developed personality traits mimicking the metaphorical attributes of their base metal.
This compendium takes the high tech team through the best and worst of the 1960s “Camp Craze†and solidly into the bizarrely experimental phase that presaged the temporary decline of costumed heroes and rise of mystery and supernatural comics.
Metal Men #16 (October-November 1966) opens the proceedings as creative team Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito pulled out all the stops for the spectacularly whacky ‘Robots for Sale!’
Platinum or “Tina†always believed herself passionately in love with Magnus and his constant rebuffs regularly drove her crazy. Here his latest rejection made her so mad she fled into space and when the rest of the Metal Men chased her they all ended up reduced to doll size on a derelict planet where ravenous mechanical termites had almost destroyed the native wooden robots that lived there.
Issue #17 depicted Tina’s worst nightmare as Magnus and his motley metal crew investigated cosmic cobwebs which fell to Earth and the inventor was bewitched by a horrifying mechanical Black Widow in ‘I Married a Robot!’, whilst the team tackled a terrifying technological Tyrannosaur in #18’s ‘The Dinosaur Who Stayed for Dinner!’
‘The Man-Horse of Hades!’ featured a supernatural and mythic menace who had waited centuries for his true love to return before mistaking Tina for his missing “centauretteâ€, after which the Alloyed Avengers met Metamorpho, the Element Man in Brave and the Bold #66 (June-July 1966).
‘Wreck the Renegade Robots’ by Bob Haney & Mike Sekowsky saw the freakish hero turn to Doc Magnus to remedy his unwelcome elemental condition just as utterly mad scientist Kurt Borian resurfaced with his own Metal Men, extremely distressed that somebody else had patented the idea first.
Tragically, the only way to stop Borian’s rampage involved reversing Metamorpho’s cure…
‘Birthday Cake for a Cannibal Robot!’ featured a second appearance for Robert Kanigher’s craziest creation. Egg Fu was a colossal ovoid Chinese Communist robot determined to “Destloy Amelica†(I know, I know: different times OK?). The mechanical mastermind had first battled Wonder Woman, but resurfaced here to crush the West’s greatest artificial heroes with a giant automaton of his own, whilst ‘The Metal Men vs the Plastic Perils!’ played it all slightly more seriously in a guest-star stuffed romp (Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman and Flash) pitting the team against criminal genius Professor Bravo and his synthetic stalwarts Ethylene, Styrene, Polythene, Silicone and Methacrylate…
Soviet scientist Professor Snakelocks unleashed an unpredictable synthetic life-form against the heroes in #22’s ‘Attack of the Sizzler!’ before launching an invasion of America and, although they could handle hordes of mechanical Cossacks, they were completely outgunned when the sparkling synthezoid transformed Doc into a robot and the Metal Men into humans…
Issue #23 saw the robots restored but Doc still steel-shod as they faced ‘The Rage of the Lizard!’ – another sinister spy attacking the Free World – but before the inevitable end, Magnus too had regained his mortal form. Unfortunately Tina and Sizzler had become rivals for his attentions…
Metal Men #24 pitted the expanded team against a monstrous marauding inflatable alien in ‘The Balloon Man Hangs High!’ after which the ‘Return of Chemo…the Chemical Menace!’ saw tragedy strike as the Sizzler was destroyed and Doc grievously injured just before the toxic terror attacked. Mercifully the Shiny Sentinels proved equal to the task even without their mentor-inventor and it was back to regular zaniness for #26’s ‘Menace of the Metal Mods!’ wherein mechanical fashion icons went on a robbing rampage. ‘The Startling Origin of the Metal Men!’ rehashed their first mission as a modern Mongol Genghis Khan launched an anti-American assault.
‘You Can’t Trust a Robot!’ saw a fugitive gang-boss take control of the Metal Men’s spare bodies, resulting in a spectacular “evil-twin†battle between good and bad mechanoids, after which it was back into outer space to battle ‘The Robot Eater of Metalas 5!’ and his resource hungry masters – a staggeringly spectacular romp which marked an end for the Kanigher, Andru &Esposito team’s connection with the series.
Metal Men #30 (February-March 1968) featured the first of two fill-in issues by Otto Binder and Gil Kane – with Esposito hanging on to provide inks – after which a whole new and highly radical retooling was undertaken.
In ‘Terrors of the Forbidden Dimension!’ the Handmade Heroes were forced to travel to other realms in search of a cure when Magnus fell into a coma after a lab accident. No sooner did they defeat a host of hazards to fix him than he insulted them by building another team! Issue #31’s ‘The Amazing School for Robots!’ introduced Silver, Cobalt, Osmium, Gallium, Zinc and Iridium – although she preferred “Iridiaâ€â€¦
It was all barely manageable until disembodied alien intelligence Darzz the Dictator possessed the newcomers and civil war broke out…
By1968 superhero comics were in steep and rapid decline. Panicked publishers sought new ways to keep audiences as tastes changed and back then, the entire industry depended on newsstand sales, so if you weren’t popular, you died.
Editors Jack Miller and George Kashdan tapped veteran Mike Sekowsky to stop the metal fatigue and he had a radical solution: the same nuts and bolts overhaul he was simultaneously spearheading with Denny O’Neil on the de-powered Diana Prince: Wonder Woman.
The enchantingly eccentric art of Sekowsky had been a DC mainstay for decades and his unique take on the Justice League of America had cemented its overwhelming success. He had also scored big with Gold Key’s Man from Uncle and Tower Comics’ T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Fight The Enemy!
Now he was creatively stretching himself with a number of experimental, youth-targeted projects; tapping into the teen zeitgeist with the Easy Rider-like drama Jason’s Quest, new sci-fi project Manhunter 2070, the hopelessly moribund Amazon and eventually Supergirl.
Sekowsky began conservatively enough in #32 and Binder scripted ‘The Metal Women Blues!’ wherein Doc built counterparts and companions for his valiant crew with disastrous results, after which the new “relevancy†direction debuted in The New Hunted Metal Men #33 (August-September 1968).
Kanigher returned as scripter as Sekowsky & George Roussos crafted a darker paranoic tone for ‘Recipe to Kill a Robot!’ wherein the once celebrated team went on the run from humanity. The problems started when Doc increased their power exponentially, causing them to constantly endanger the very people they were trying to help and were compounded when their creator was injured and plunged into another coma.
Pilloried by an unforgiving public and only stopping briefly to defeat an invasion by voracious giant alien insects, the misunderstood mechanoids fled, finding sanctuary with Doc’s brother David – a high ranking military spook.
Issue #33 ‘Death Comes Calling!’ had them encounter a ghastly extraterrestrial force which murderously animated America’s shop manikins after Tina rejected its amorous advances. The carnage and highly visible collateral damage was exacerbated in #35 – the last tale in this masterful monochrome tome – and added to humanity’s collective woes when a vast and love-hungry Volcano Man joined the chase in ‘Danger… Doom Dummies!’
Kanigher’s masterful ability for dreaming up outlandish visual situations and bizarre emotive twists might have dropped out of vogue, but this simply opened the door for more evocative and viscerally emotive content more in keeping with the series’ now teen-aged audience and the best was still to come…
But that’s the stuff of another volume – and ASAP, please!
© 1965-1969, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
Commies From Mars the Red Planet: the Collected Works
By Tim Boxell, Hunt Emerson, Peter Kuper & various (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-343-5
When political debate in America was less strident and a little more reasoned (let’s call it 1972) a bunch of filthy anarchist pinko hippy satirists recruited by the traitorously seditionist Tim Boxell began contributing raw, rude and utterly hilarious skits, sketches and spoofs on the social and cultural scene to a sporadically published underground comics anthology called Commies From Mars.
Taking their lead from the turbulent but well-informed political climate and deeply influenced by both EC horror and science fiction publications of the 1950s and the classic 1962 Wally Wood Mars Attacks trading cards, contributing artists took cartoon pot-shots at God, Mother and Country in brilliant pastiches ranging from graphic ultra-violence and outrageous interplanetary, inter-species sex-shockers to surreal adventure and outright polemical diatribes. The overriding premise if you’re still not following me was: Communism is Evil; Martians want to conquer us and steal our women. Ergo Martians must be Commies…
Or maybe the cartoonists were just being “cleverâ€â€¦
Six issues were published between 1972 and 1987 and at the end of 1986 Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner released a black and white compilation of (most of) the first four to commemorate the imminent release of #5. That supremely subversive tome is still available if you look hard and surely the time is long overdue for an updated, revised and complete edition…
Following a Foreword from Jerry (Grateful Dead) Garcia, ‘A Warning From the Editor’, ‘Excerpts From the Journal of Billy “Rage†Riley’ and the cover to issue #1, the graphic assault begins with ‘In our midst… Commies From Mars!’ which sets the scene and the scenario with a gritty story of rural resistance from Boxell, after which John Pound’s cover for #2 and more ‘Excerpts From the Journal of Billy “Rage†Riley’ precede a stunning Boxell fantasy-fest ‘Snak?’, a wry and grimly grotesque conversation with Martian Comrade Colonel Bemovitch in ‘The Treaty!’ courtesy of (Comrade) Rich Larson, and Hunt Emerson relates the astounding extra-terrestrial ‘Adventures of Alan Rabbit’.
Greg Irons revealed ‘Gregor’s 115th Wet Dream’ and Capitalism, Interplanetary Communism and nasty fast food collided at Boxell’s ‘Commies From Mars Café’ before #2 closed with the charmingly dark ‘Man on the Moon’ by Shawn Kerri.
Pound’s arresting cover for #3 and another “Rage†Riley page are followed by an untitled Checkered Demon/Commies From Mars team-up by S. Clay Wilson and a superb Kerri anthropomorphic exploit ‘Life on the New Martian Earth’, before Boxell waxes cataclysmically philosophical in ‘Washed Up’.
Ripp (Larry Rippee) plugged ‘Tourism on the Red Planet’ and a young Peter Kuper revealed a recurring nightmare in ‘Shiver and Twitch’ whilst Irons contributed a socially inclusive argument for welcoming the invaders in an impressive double-page spread. Boxell’s ‘Stoned Wolf’ went on a ‘Crash Diet’ after which Ian (Jim Schumeister) James & Jon Rich got shockingly dramatic with ‘Prayers from a Closet’ and Revilo drew up a fabulous integration questionnaire in ‘A Comic’.
Following the usual cover and “Rage†piece for #4 Shawn Kerri explains ‘The Communist Way’, Tom Cheney describes ‘Life on the Planet Floyd’ and Larson explicitly defines ‘Making Loveski’.
Chad Draper outlines ‘Mixed Marriage’ and Revilo expands the romantic theme in harrowing detail with another ‘A Comic’, after which Kuper also gets in on the unnatural act with ‘True Martian Romance’. Larson & Boxell contribute a brace of ‘False Views’ after which ‘Bye Bye Baby’ explains a few new facts of life.
Melinda Gebbie & Adam Cornford promote the social graces in ‘Hall Monitors from Mars’ and Kenneth Huey explores the political effects of the military industrial complex in ‘Dictation: Tales from the Apocalypse’, after which Mr. Rippee returns with ‘A Marriage Made in Heaven’ and Boxell punches the action button in the X-rated ‘Under His Hat?’
Hunt Emerson details romance in a Martian Socialist State with ‘The Date’ and Spain Rodrigues provides a graphic tribute to Godfather of the series Wally Wood, after which Boxell & Grisly went all-out weird and nasty with ‘The Swap’ to close the story portion of this outrageous entertainment.
Absolutely packed with pin-ups, supplementary art and prose pages, a selection of astoundingly intriguing house ads and with an extensive biographies dossier on the Underground greats and cartooning luminaries who contributed to this Big Red Scare, this delicious tome is still a marvellous example of un-Realpolitik as only cartoonists could conceive it.
Next time you feel the need to stretch your boundaries in a mature manner, why not try this never-more-contemporary tome. Just think “Fundie†or “Repug†and you’ll see what I mean…
©1985 Tim Boxell and contributing artists. All rights reserved.
X-Men: Age of X
By Mike Carey, Simon Spurrier, Clay Mann, Steve Kurth, Paul Davidson & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-490-4
Most people who read comics have a passing familiarity with Marvel’s ever-changing X-Men franchise and most of us have seen alternate world stories so this intriguing and highly entertaining package seems pretty easy to pigeonhole… but appearances can be deceiving.
With a property as valuable as these massed mutants, change is a necessarily good thing, even if you sometimes need a scorecard to keep up. This utterly engrossing tome (collecting Age of X Alpha, X-Men Legacy #245-247, New Mutants volume 3 #22-24 and Age of X Universe #1 and 2) keeps the backstory baggage to the barest minimum for newbies and non-addicts; concentrating instead on building an “end-of-days†tension in a brutally harsh last stand scenario – although the pacing is a little hard to grasp in places.
This Marvel publishing event, which ran from January to April 2011, is a tribute to the Age of Apocalypse mega-crossover of 1995, with an introductory Alpha issue, dedicated stories in X-men core titles and a pair of “Universe†compilations focusing on the non-mutant heroes of the altered continuity.
Written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Mirco Pierfederici, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Carlo Barberi, Walden Wong, Paco Diaz and Paul Davidson, the initial instalment describes a very different world where all-out species war is being waged between humans and homo superior. Anti-mutant statutes by the Human Coalition have all but eradicated mutantkind and any ordinary mortal who might carry the hated genes to make them.
Three years of inspired atrocity later, the stories of those last remnants of the variant species are examined in telling vignettes: Scott Summers was forced to execute his fellow inmates at a mutant Alcatraz before spectacularly escaping, Sam Guthrie survived the extermination of his entire family, super-powered or not, and Wolverine lost all his abilities destroying a pathogen designed to wipe out all genetic aberrations.
During the darkest moment of this man-made Extinction Event Magneto rescued the last remnants of meta-humanity and created a monumental Fortress X from the ruins of a devastated city. Here the remaining mutants hold out in a desperate all-or-nothing holding action…
After 1000 days of dire and valiant resistance a kind of last ditch détente persists. The humans keep attacking and the mutants perpetually narrowly beat them off. In this world where there are no telepaths and there has never been a Professor X, every day is one more precious moment of defiant unity in the face of imminent doom.
The stalemate continues in X-Men Legacy #245 (Carey, Clay Mann & Jay Leisten) as the resistors continue to defy the human world’s technology and soldiery. Especially vital are the contributions of the Force Warriors: energy-casting mutants whose powers maintain an impenetrable energy-shield around Fortress X. They are led by the charismatic Legion – son of Dr. Moira MacTaggert and an unknown father…
The most tragic hero is Legacy, whose touch can steal memories and abilities. She is not allowed to fight but is tasked with preserving forever the dying memories of mutants who fall in battle.
A few resisters are troubled by more than just the state of the world: something is imperceptibly wrong with reality itself. Metal-morph Madison Jeffries discovers there is something amiss with the stars in the sky; Summers, dubbed the Basilisk, realises that he’s killed some humans more than once and some defenders question why so many mutants are mysteriously imprisoned in the citadel’s dungeons.
Moreover, the enigmatic “X†who runs the fortress seems more concerned with containing them than defeating the human attackers. Even Magneto feels something is being kept from him – and he’s in charge…
When immaterial internee Kitty Pryde escapes the Brig and penetrates the forcefield she discovers something fantastic and X orders her silenced at all costs, precipitating traitorous action from Legacy, Cajun thief Gambit and even Magneto himself…
The New Mutants chapters are illustrated by Steve Kurth & Alex Martinez and follow Basilisk, Legacy and the liberated Pryde as they begin unpicking the darkly credible but ferociously flawed universe they inhabit. A turning point comes when the fugitive fighters free an imposing bald man named Xavier who claims to be a telepath…
Cunningly tapping into the brooding pressure and extreme vivacity of life during wartime and wonderfully reminiscent of William Hope Hodgson’s macabre 1912 classic The Night Land (an absolute “must-read†for all fantasy fans) this is an effective thriller and just a little different from your standard “unite and save the universe†crossover-events with a superb and spectacular surprise climax that will delight regulars and visiting readers alike.
And that’s the only real problem here: because after that satisfactory ending the Age of X Universe stories (written by Simon Spurrier, Jim McCann & Chuck Kim, illustrated by Khoi Pham, Tom Palmer, Paul Davidson & Gabriel Hernandez Walta) follow, totally killing the mood and the flow despite all being extremely well-produced revelatory side-bars and effective character-pieces.
Viewed on their own merits the stories of Spider-Man’s ultimate sacrifice, the brutal and tragic career of Humanity’s Avengers (Captain America, Invisible Woman, Iron Man, Ghost Rider, the arachnoid Redback plus the most disturbing Hulk ever) and hidden secrets of the Mutant-hunting Dr. Strange are extremely impressive. If they’d been disclosed before the big reveal, surprise ending they would have been valuable elements in the greater narrative but chucked in after the fact they just detract from a really impressive story-ending.
This action-packed, compulsive and otherwise excellent volume also includes variant covers by Olivier Coipel and Clayton Mann.
If you want fast, furious and fulfilling Fights ‘n’ Tights magic this is a nearly perfect one-shop stop for your edification and delectation – just make sure you read the last bit after the first bit and before the middle bit…
™ and © 2010 & 2011 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. A British edition released by Panini UK Ltd.
Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954
By Alex Toth, Mike Peppe & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-408-5
Alex Toth was a master of graphic communication who shaped two different art-forms and is largely unknown in both of them.
Born in New York in 1928, the son of Hungarian immigrants with a dynamic interest in the arts, Toth was something of a prodigy and after enrolling in the High School of Industrial Arts doggedly went about improving his skills as a cartoonist. His earliest dreams were of a strip like Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, but his uncompromising devotion to the highest standards soon soured him on newspaper strip work when he discovered how hidebound and innovation-resistant the family-values based industry had become whilst he was growing up.
At age 15 he sold his first comicbook works to Heroic Comics and after graduating in 1947 worked for All American/National Periodical Publications (who would amalgamate and evolve into DC Comics) on Dr. Mid-Nite, All Star Comics, the Atom, Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder, Sierra Smith, Johnny Peril, Danger Trail and a host of other features. On the way he dabbled with newspaper strips (see Casey Ruggles: the Hard Times of Pancho and Pecos) and found nothing had changed…
Continually trying to improve his own work he never had time for fools or formula-hungry editors who wouldn’t take artistic risks. In 1952 Toth quit DC to work for “Thrilling†Pulps publisher Ned Pines who was retooling his prolific Better/Nedor/Pines comics companies (Thrilling Comics, Fighting Yank, Doc Strange, Black Terror and many more) into Standard Comics: a comics house targeting older readers with sophisticated, genre-based titles.
Beside fellow graphic masters Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, Art Saaf, John Celardo, George Tuska, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito and particularly favourite inker Mike Peppe, Toth set the bar high for a new kind of story-telling: wry, restrained and thoroughly mature; in short-lived titles dedicated to War, Crime, Horror, Science Fiction and especially Romance.
After Simon and Kirby invented love comics, Standard, through artists like Cardy and Toth and writers like the amazing and unsung Kim Aamodt, polished and honed the genre, regularly turning out clever, witty, evocative and yet tasteful melodramas and heart-tuggers both men and women could enjoy.
Before going into the military, where he still found time to create a strip (Jon Fury for the US army’s Tokyo Quartermaster newspaper The Depot’s Diary) he illustrated 60 glorious tales for Standard; as well as a few pieces for EC and others. On his return to a different industry – and one he didn’t much like – Toth split his time between Western/Dell/Gold Key (Zorro and many movie/TV adaptations) and National (assorted short pieces, Hot Wheels and Eclipso): doing work he increasingly found uninspired, moribund and creatively cowardly. Soon he moved primarily into TV animation, designing for shows such as Space Ghost, Herculoids, Birdman, Shazzan!, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and Super Friends among many others.
He returned sporadically to comics, setting the style and tone for DC’s late 1960’s horror line in House of Mystery, House of Secrets and especially The Witching Hour and illustrating more adult fare for Warren’s Creepy, Eerie and The Rook. He redesigned The Fox for Red Circle/Archie, produced stunning one-offs for Archie Goodwin’s Batman or war comics (whenever they offered him a “good scriptâ€) and contributed to landmark or anniversary projects such as Batman: Black and White.
His later, personal works included Torpedo and the magnificently audacious Bravo for Adventure!
Alex Toth died of a heart attack at his drawing board on May 27th 2006.
After reprinting an extensive interview with the artist from Graphic Story Magazine conducted by Vincent Davis, Richard Kyle and Bill Spicer in 1968, this fabulous full colour chronicle reprints every scrap of Toth’s superb Standard fare beginning with impressive melodrama in ‘My Stolen Kisses’ from Best Romance #5 (February 1952), after which light-hearted combat star Joe Yank nearly lost everything to ‘Black Market Mary’ in the debut issue of his own title (#5 March 1952).
Perhaps a word of explanation is warranted here: due to truly Byzantine commercial considerations all Standard Comics started with issue #5, although the incredibly successful Romance comics were carried over from their earlier Better Comics incarnations such as New Romances #10 (March 1952) for which Toth illustrated the touching ‘Be Mine Alone’ or the parable of empty jealousy ‘My Empty Promise’ from #11.
The hilarious ‘Bacon and Bullets’ offered a different kind of love in Joe Yank #6 (May) – a very pretty pig named Clementine – after which witty 3 pager ‘Appointment with Love’ (Today’s Romance #6 May) provides a charming palate cleanser before the hard-bitten ‘Terror of the Tank Men’ from Battlefront #5 (June 1952) offers a more traditional view of the then raging Korean War.
‘Shattered Dream!’ (My Real Love #5 June) is an ordinary romance well told whilst ‘The Blood Money of Galloping Chad Burgess’ (The Unseen #5 June 1952) reveals the sheer quality of Standard’s horror stories and ‘The Shoremouth Horror’ (Out of the Shadows #5) that same month proved Toth to be an absolute master of terror.
‘Show Them How to Die’ (This is War #5 July) is a superbly gung-ho combat classic whilst the eerie ‘Murder Mansion’ and ‘The Phantom Hounds of Castle Eyne’ both from Adventures into Darkness #5 (August) once more demonstrate the artist’s uncanny flair for building suspense.
The single page ‘Peg Powler’ (The Unseen #6 September) is reprinted beside the original artwork – which makes me wish the entire collection was available in black and white – after which the experimental ‘Five State Police Alarm’ (Crime Files #5) displays the artist’s amazing facility with duo-tone and craft-tint techniques before the salutary ‘I Married in Haste’ (Intimate Love #19, September) takes a remarkably modern view of relationships.
Science Fiction was the metier of Fantastic Worlds #5 which provided both the contemporary ‘Triumph over Terror’ and futuristic fable ‘The Invaders’ to finish off Toth’s September chores after which ‘Routine Patrol’ and ‘Too Many Cooks’ offered two-fisted thrills from This is War #6 (October).
‘The Phantom Ship’ is a much reprinted classic chiller from Out of the Shadows #6 and October also offered the extremely unsettling ‘Alice in Terrorland’ in Lost Worlds #5. Toth only produced four covers for Standard, and the first two, Joe Yank #8 and Fantastic Worlds #6 precede ‘The Boy who Saved the World’ from the latter (November 1952) after which service rivalry informed ‘The Egg-Beater’ from Jet Fighters #5.
The cover of Lost Worlds #6 (December) perfectly introduces the featured ‘Outlaws of Space’ after which the single-page ‘Smart Talk’ (New Romance #14) perfectly closes the first year and sets up 1953 which opens strongly with ‘Blinded by Love’ from Popular Romance #22 January) in which the classic love triangle has never looked better…
This was clearly Toth’s ideal year as ‘The Crushed Gardenia’ from Who is Next? #5 shows his incredible skills to their utmost in one of the best crime stories of all time. ‘Undecided Heart’ (Intimate Love #21 February) is a delightful comedy of errors whilst both ‘The House That Jackdaw Built’ and ‘The Twisted Hands’ from Adventures into Darkness #8 perfectly reveal the artist’s uncanny facility for building tension and anxiety.
The cover to Joe Yank #10 is followed by the splendid aviation yarn ‘Seeley’s Saucer’ from the March Jet Fighters (#7) whilst the clever and racy ‘Free My Heart’ from Popular Romance #23 (April) adds new depth to the term sophisticated and ‘The Hands of Don José’ (Adventures into Darkness #9) is just plain nasty in the manner horror fans adore…
‘No Retreat’ (This is War #9 May) offers more patriotic combat, but ‘I Want Him Back’ (Intimate Love #22) depicts a far softer and more personal duel and ‘Geronimo Joe’ (Exciting War #8 May) proves that in combat there’s no room for rivalry.
Toth was rapidly reaching the peak of his design genius as ‘Man of My Heart’ (New Romances #16 June), ‘I Fooled My Heart’ (Popular Romance #24 July, and reprinted in full as original art in the notes section) and both ‘Stars in my Eyes’ and ‘Uncertain Heart’ from New Romances #17 (August) saw him develop a visual vocabulary that cleanly imparted plot and characterisation simultaneously.
He often stated that he preferred these mature and well-written romance stories for the room they gave him to experiment and expand his craft and these later efforts prove him right: especially in the moving ‘Heart Divided’ (Thrilling Romances #22) and compelling ‘I Need You’ from the September Popular Romances (#25).
‘The Corpse That Lived’ was a historically based tale of grave-robbing from Out of the Shadows #10, whilst the deeply affecting ‘Chance for Happiness’ (Thrilling Romances #23 October) is as powerful today as it ever was. ‘My Dream is You!’ (New Romances #18) offered a fresh look at the old dilemma of career or husband whilst a far darker love was displayed in ‘Grip on Life’ (The Unseen #12 November), but true love actually triumphed in ‘Guilty Heart’ from Popular Romance #26.
Another ‘Smart Talk’ advice page ends 1953 (New Romances #19 December) and neatly precedes an edgy affair in ‘Ring on Her Finger’ (Thrilling Romances #24 January 1954), after which ‘Frankly Speaking’ from the same issue leads to a terrifying historical horror in ‘The Mask of Graffenwehr’ (Out of the Shadows #11).
February produced a fine crop of Toth tales beginning with charming medical drama ‘Heartbreak Moon’ (Popular Romance #27), spooky mining mystery ‘The Hole of Hell’ (The Unseen #13), one-page amorous advisory ‘Long on Love’ (Popular Romance #27), the lesson in obsession ‘Lonesome for Kisses’ and two further advice pages ‘If You’re New in Town’ and ‘Those Drug Store Romeos’ all from Intimate Love #26.
These last stories were eked out in the months after Toth had left, drafted and posted to Japan. However, even though he had presumably rushed them out whilst preparing for the biggest change in his young life there was no loss but a further jump in artistic quality.
One final relationship ‘Smart Talk’ page (New Romances #20 March 1954) precedes a brace of classic mystery masterpieces from Out of the Shadows #12: ‘The Man Who Was Always on Time’ (also reproduced in original art form in the ‘Notes’ section at the back of this book) and the graphic wonderment regrettably concludes with the cynically spooky ‘Images of Sand’ – a sinister cautionary tale of tomb-robbing…
After all this the last 28 pages of this compendium comprise a thorough and informative section of story annotations, illustrations and a wealth of original art reproductions to top off this sublime collection in perfect style.
Alex Toth was a tale-teller and a master of erudite refinement, his avowed mission to pare away every unnecessary line and element in life and in work. His dream was to make perfect graphic stories. He was eternally searching for “how to tell a story, to the exclusion of all else.â€
This long-awaited collection shows how talent, imagination and dedication to that ideal can elevate even the most genre-locked episode into a masterpiece the form and a comicbook into art.
All stories in this book are in the public domain but the specific restored images and design are © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. Notes are © 2011 Greg Sadowski and the Graphic Story Magazine interview is © 2011 Bill Spicer. All rights reserved.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow volume 1
By Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams, Frank Giacoia, Dick Giordano, Dan Adkins & Berni Wrightson (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0224-8
After nearly a decade of earthly crime-busting, interstellar intrigue and spectacular science fiction shenanigans the Silver Age Green Lantern was swiftly becoming one of the earliest big-name casualties of the downturn in superhero sales in 1969 and Editor Julie Schwartz knew something extraordinary was needed to save the series.
The result was a bold experiment that created a fad for socially relevant, ecologically aware, more mature stories which spread throughout DC costumed hero comics that totally revolutionised the industry and nigh-radicalised the readers.
Tapping superstars-in-waiting Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams to produce the revolutionary fare, Schwartz watched in fascinated disbelief as the resultant thirteen groundbreaking, landmark tales – the first seven of which are reprinted in this superb colour collection – captured the tone of the times, garnered critical praise and awards within the industry and desperately valuable publicity from the real world outside, whilst simultaneously registering such poor sales that the series was finally cancelled anyway, with the heroes unceremoniously packed off to the back of marginally less endangered comicbook The Flash.
Once safely established and doubling up the die-hard fan-base, the stories resumed their traditional themes – crime, adventure and space opera – and Green Lantern gradually grew popular enough for his own solo title once more….
By the end of the 1960s America was a bubbling cauldron of social turmoil and experimentation. Everything was challenged on principle and with issue #76 of Green Lantern (April 1970 and the first issue of the new decade) O’Neil and comics iconoclast Neal Adams utterly redefined superheroism with their “Issuesâ€-driven stories; transforming complacent establishment masked boy-scouts into uncertain, questioning champions and strident explorers of the enigma of America.
When these stories first appeared DC was a company in transition – just like America itself – with new ideas (which, in comic-book terms meant “young writersâ€) being given much leeway: a veritable wave of fresh, raw talent akin to the very start of the industry, when excitable young creators ran wild with imagination. Their cause wasn’t hurt by the industry’s swingeing commercial decline: costs were up and the kids just weren’t buying funnybooks in the quantities they used to…
O’ Neil, in tight collaboration with hyper-realistic artist Adams, assaulted all the traditional monoliths of contemporary costumed dramas with tightly targeted, protest- driven stories. The comicbook had been re-designated Green Lantern/Green Arrow with Emerald Archer Oliver Queen constantly mouthing off as a hot-headed, liberal sounding-board and platform for a generation-in-crisis whilst staid, quasi-reactionary GL Hal Jordan played the part of the oblivious but well-meaning old guard. At least the Ring-Slinger was able to perceive his faults and more or less willing to listen to new ideas…
‘No Evil Shall Escape My Sight!’ (inked by Frank Giacoia) is a true landmark of the medium, utterly reinventing the concept of the costumed crusader as newly-minted, freshly bankrupted millionaire Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen challenged his Justice League comrade’s cosy worldview when the lofty space-cop painfully discovered real villains wore business suits, had expense accounts, hurt people just because of skin colour and would happily poison their own nests for short-term gain…
The specific villain du jour was a wealthy landlord whose treatment of his poverty-stricken tenants wasn’t necessarily illegal but certainly was wickedly immoral… Of course, the fact that this yarn is also a brilliantly devious crime-thriller with science-fiction overtones doesn’t exactly hurt either…
‘Journey to Desolation’ in #77 was every bit as groundbreaking.
At the conclusion of the #76 an immortal Guardian of the Universe – known as “the Old Timer†was assigned to accompany the Emerald Duo on a voyage to “discover Americaâ€: a soul-searching social exploration into the dichotomies which divided the nation – and a tremendously popular pastime for the nation’s disaffected citizens back then.
The first stop brought the trio to a poverty-stricken mining town run as a private kingdom by a ruthless entrepreneur happy to use agent-provocateurs and Nazi war criminals to keep his wage slaves in line. When a young protest singer looked likely to become the next Bob Dylan and draw unwelcome publicity, he had to be eliminated – as did the three strangers who drove into town at just the wrong moment…
Although the heroes provided temporary solutions and put away viciously human criminals, these tales were always carefully heavy-handed in exposing bigger ills and issues which couldn’t be fixed with a wave of a Green Ring; invoking an aura of helplessness that was metaphorically emphasised during this story when Hal was summarily stripped of much of his power for no longer being the willing, unquestioning stooge of his officious, high-and-mighty alien masters…
The confused and merely-mortal Green Lantern discovered another unpalatable aspect of human nature in ‘A Kind of Loving, a Way of Death!’ when Black Canary joined the peripatetic cast. Seeking to renew her stalled relationship with Green Arrow, she was waylaid by bikers, grievously injured and taken in by a charismatic hippy guru. Sadly Joshua was more Manson than Messiah and his brand of Peace and Love only extended to white people: everybody else was simply target practise…
The continuing plight of Native Americans was stunningly highlighted in ‘Ulysses Star is Still Alive!’ as corporate logging interests attempted to deprive a mountain tribe of their very last scraps of heritage, once more causing the Green Knights to take extraordinarily differing courses of action to help, whilst #80 added a science fiction gloss to a tale of judicial malfeasance in ‘Even an Immortal Can Die!’ (inked by Dick Giordano).
When the Old Timer used his powers to save Green Lantern rather than prevent a pollution catastrophe in the Pacific Northwest, he was chastised by his fellow Guardians and dispatched to the planet Gallo for judgement by the supreme arbiters of Law in the universe. His earthly friends accompanied him and found a disturbing new administration with a decidedly off-kilter view of justice…
Adams’ staggering facility for capturing likenesses added extra-piquancy to this yarn that we’re just not equipped to grasp four decades later, with the usurping, overbearing villain derived from the Judge of the infamous trial of anti-war protesters “The Chicago Eightâ€.
Insight into the Guardians’ history underpinned ‘Death Be My Destiny!’ when Lantern, Arrow and Canary travelled with the now-sentenced Old Timer to the ancient world of Maltus and found a world literally choking on its own out-of-control population. The uncanny cause cast unlovely light on the perceived role and worth of women in modern society…
Ending this first of a two-set volume on a more traditional note, Green Lantern/Green Arrow #82 enquired ‘How do you Fight a Nightmare?’ (with additional inks from Berni Wrightson) as Green Lantern’s greatest foe unleashed Harpies, Amazons and all manner of female furies on the hapless hero before Black Canary and Green Arrow could turn the tide, whilst asking a few more pertinent questions about women’s rights…
As well as these magnificent still-challenging epics superbly re-coloured by Cory Adams and Jack Adler this chronicle also reprints O’Neil’s effusive introduction from the hardbound. slip-cased turn-of-this-century ‘Hard-Travelling Heroes‘ edition, creator biographies and a illustrated feature ‘Legacy in Print’ which pictorially examines the multifarious collected formats in which these timeless tales have been collected.
© 1970, 1971, 1992, 1977, 2000, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
Essential Super-Villain Team-Up volume 1
By Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Wally Wood, Keith Giffen & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-9041-5973-5
Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner was the second super-star of the Timely Age of Comics (but only because he followed after the cover-featured Human Torch in Marvel Mystery Comics #1) and has had the most impressive longevity of the company’s “Big Three†Torch, Subby and Captain America.
He was revived in 1962 in Fantastic Four #4; once again an anti-hero/noble villain and has been prominent in the company’s pantheon ever since.
The following issue introduced the first great villain of the Silver Age in the form of technologically armoured dark knight Doctor Doom, who takes up the lion’s share of this eclectic yet excellent collection of dastardly double-dealings encompassing Astonishing Tales #1-8, Giant-Sized Super-Villain Team-Up #1-2, Super-Villain Team-Up #1-14 and 16-17, as well as pertinent crossover appearances in Avengers #154-156 and Champions 16.
Incidentally, Fantastic Four #6 featured the first Super-Villain Team-Up of the Marvel age as Doom and Namor joined forces as ‘The Deadly Duo’. The Master of Latveria inevitably betrayed and tried to kill the Prince of Atlantis in that tale: an event which colours the relationship of the characters to this day… All of those magical moments appear in Essential Fantastic Four volume 1, by the way.
Although Doom had his first true solo outing in Marvel Super-Heroes #20 (May 1969) this magnificent and monumental monochrome collection opens with his follow-up series which began with ‘Unto You is Born… the Doomsman!’ (July-August 1970) wherein Roy Thomas & Wally Wood revealed the master manipulator’s daily struggle to maintain his iron control over the Ruritanian kingdom of Latveria, building a super-robot to crush the incipient rebellion of ousted Crown Prince Rudolfo and his mysterious sponsor.
However the use of a girl who seemed to be Victor von Doom’s lost love had the desired effect and the rebels almost succeeded in driving the tyrant from Doom Castle. In the attendant chaos the Doomsman device wandered away…
‘Revolution!’ proved Doom was not the only master of mechanoids as Rudolfo and the enigmatic Faceless One used the Doomsman to wreak havoc throughout the country, before a final assault in ‘Doom Must Die!’ (scripted by Larry Lieber) found all the tyrant’s enemies vanquished and the Monarch of Menace once more firmly in control.
Lieber & Wood then pitted Doom against the Red Skull in ‘The Invaders!’ as an army of leftover Nazis stormed into the country whilst Doom was away, only to be crushed and banished in ‘A Land Enslaved!’ (Astonishing Tales #5, by Lieber, George Tuska & Mike Esposito) as soon as he came back.
Issue #6 saw the Lord of Latveria invade the African nation of Wakanda in ‘The Tentacles of the Tyrant!’ determined to seize the vast stock of wonder mineral Vibranium only to fall foul of the furious tenacity of its king and defender T’Challa the Black Panther in ‘…And If I be Called Traitor!’ (Gerry Conway, Gene Colan & Frank Giacoia).
The short solo run ended in high style with a little landmark entitled ‘Though Some Call it Magic!’, wherein Conway, Colan & Tom Palmer revealed Doom’s darkest secret. Every year the ultimate villain was forced to duel the rulers of Hell in the vain hope of freeing the soul of his mother from eternal torment, and every year he failed: a tragic trial which punished both the living and the dead.
With this tormented mini-epic even further depth and drama were added to the greatest villain in the Marvel universe.
The series vanished with no warning and Doom returned to his status as premier antagonist in the Fantastic Four and elsewhere until Giant-Sized Super-Villain Team-Up #1 was released (March 1975), once more bathing the Deadly Despot in a starring spotlight.
In the intervening years the Sub-Mariner had also lost his own series, despite some very radical and attention-grabbing stunts. A nerve gas dumping accident perpetrated by surface dwellers had catastrophically altered his hybrid body, forcing him to wear a hydrating-suit to breathe. The same toxin had plunged the entire nation of Atlantis into a perpetual coma.
Alone and pushed to the brink of desperation, Prince Namor rescued Doom from a deadly plunge to Earth after the Iron Dictator’s latest defeat the hands of the FF and Silver Surfer in an impressive and effective framing sequence bracketing two classic reprint tales. ‘Encounter at Land’s End!’ (by Roy Thomas, John Buscema & Joe Sinnott) saw Doom plucked from the sea and the edge of death by a Sub-Mariner in dire need of scientific wizardry to cure his somnolent race and prepared to offer an alliance against all mankind to get it…
Painfully aware of their unhappy past history the outlaws recalled a previous encounter ‘In the Darkness Dwells Doom!’ (from Sub-Mariner #20, by Thomas, Buscema & Johnny Craig) wherein the fugitive Atlantean was offered sanctuary in New York’s Latverian embassy before being blackmailed and betrayed (again) by the Devil Doctor…
Initially reluctant, Doom reconsiders after recalling a past battle against the diabolical Diablo. ‘This Man… This Demon!’ (Thomas, Lieber, Giacoia & Vince Colletta) is the aforementioned solo tryout from Marvel Super-Heroes #20, which restated the Doctor’s origins and revealed his tragic, doomed relationship with a gypsy girl named Valeria…
The debate ends in a cataclysmic clash of egos and raw destructive power with both parties more bitterly opposed than ever but the follow-up ‘To Bestride the World!’ (Thomas, Mike Sekowsky & Sam Grainger) in the all-new Giant-Sized Super-Villain Team-Up #2 (June 1975), forced Doom to change his mind when his own android army rebelled after the long-lost Doomsman (under its new guise of Andro) returned and co-opted them for a war against organic life.
After blistering battle and extensive carnage Namor and Doom triumphed together and parted uneasy allies, only to regroup in the pages of Super-Villain Team-Up #1 (August 1975) as a chaotic ongoing series began with ‘Slayers from the Sea!’ by Tony Isabella, George Tuska, Bill Everett & Fred Kida.
As Doom actually contemplates treating an ally as a equal in the opening chapter ‘An Alliance Asunder?’, in the second part ‘Frenzy on a Floating Fortress’ (illustrated by George Evans & Frank Springer) Namor is ambushed by old foes Attuma, Dr. Dorcas and Tiger Shark, leading Doom to rush to his rescue in #2 as ‘In the Midst of Life…!’ (with art from Sal Buscema & Kida) the Sub-Mariner’s truest friend was murdered by his assembled enemies, leading to a brutal climax in ‘If Vengeance Fails!’ by Jim Shooter, Evans & Jack Abel.
Super-Villain Team-Up was an intriguing concept cursed with a revolving door creative team crisis: nobody seemed able to stay with the series for more than a couple of issues. Somehow the standards remained high but with no long-term planning the plots and characterisation jumped all over the place.
Bill Mantlo, Herb Trimpe & Jim Mooney produced ‘A Time of Titans!’ in #4 as Doom and Sub-Mariner battled each other and encountered a prototype Deathlok the Demolisher before splitting up yet again, after which Steve Englehart stepped in for ‘…And Be a Villain!’ (illustrated by Trimpe & Don Perlin) wherein the Lord of Latveria artificially exacerbated Namor’s breathing affliction and threatened to annihilate dormant Atlantis. Despite all the efforts of the Fantastic Four the Sub-Mariner was forced to swear fealty to Doom or see his people and himself perish forever…
This tumultuous issue also introduced mystic Batman knock-off the Shroud whose avowed mission was to free the world from the curse of Doom at all costs…
Jack Abel inked ‘Prisoner!’ in #6 as the FF invaded Latveria to rescue the promise-bound Sub-Mariner only to be sent packing by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who had just signed a non-aggression pact with Doom. One American observed no such legal or diplomatic niceties in ‘Who is… The Shroud?’ (Pablo Marcos inks) and, after revealing his origins to Namor, the Master of Darkness freed him from his vow by killing Dr. Doom.
As Shroud and Namor fled for the border chaos broke out in Latveria, but in actuality Doom was not dead. He had been rescued and imprisoned by Namor’s cousin Namorita and girlfriend Tamara in ‘Escape!’ (illustrated by Keith Giffen & Owen McCarron) under the misguided apprehension that they could force the Metal-shod Monarch into helping Atlantis and their Prince., The crisis escalated as it segued into an ongoing Avengers storyline, beginning ‘When Strikes Attuma?’ (Avengers #154 by Conway, George Perez & Marcos) as the Sub-sea Slayer enslaved the World’s Mightiest Heroes and commanded them to kill Namor…
The saga continued in Super-Villain Team-Up #9 (scripted by Mantlo, drawn by Jim Shooter & Sal Trapani) as the ‘Pawns of Attuma!’ attacked only to discover Doom in charge and easily able to thwart their half-hearted assault. In Avengers #155 the beaten heroes were helpless, leaving only the confused, battle-crazed Namor and a substitute team to hunt down the barbarian sea lord, with the epic conclusion ‘The Private War of Doctor Doom!’ in #156 (written by Shooter, drawn by Sal Buscema & Marcos) where the liberated and resurgent heroes joined forces to crush Attuma and prevent Doom from turning the situation to his own world-conquering advantage…
Behind the scenes in Latveria, Shroud had installed Prince Rudolfo as a faux Doctor Doom but things went wrong very quickly in Super-Villain Team-Up #10 (by Mantlo, Bob Hall & Perlin) when Captain America investigated ‘The Sign of the Skull!’
In the Latverian Embassy the genuine despot learned from the Star-Spangled Avenger that Red Skull had once more invaded Doom’s homeland, even as the Sub-Mariner discovered greedy surface-men pillaging his comatose city of Atlantis.
As Doom and Captain America battled their way through Latveria’s formidable defences the Skull proceeded in establishing his Fourth Reich, easily defeating the Shroud in ‘My Ally, my Enemy’ but when Namor raged in, tracking the ravagers of Atlantis to Doom’s castle, the tables were finally turned and the Iron Dictator swore to finally cure the Atlanteans in return for the Sub-Mariner’s aid against the Nazi invaders.
Firstly though, the Skull plans to enslave the earth with a hypno-ray had to be crushed in ‘Death Duel!’ with the Iron Doctor pursuing the Nazi mastermind to his hidden moonbase, casually sacrificing the Shroud in the process.
Finally fulfilling his oath Doom resurrected the comatose Atlanteans in #13, but only after a blistering sub-sea battle with amphibian arch-foe Krang and a brobdingnagian sea beast in ‘When Walks the Warlord!’ (by Mantlo, Giffen & Perlin)
With Atlantis and Namor restored a new era began and ended with Super-Villain Team-Up #14 (October 1977). ‘A World For the Winning!’ by Mantlo, Hall, Perlin & Duffy Vohland, opened with mutant villain Magneto tricked into a duel with Doom who was de facto master of the world since he had seeded the atmosphere with a mind control gas.
Ever the sportsman, the Lord of Latveria released Magneto from his control, allowed him to liberate one other thrall and challenged them both to save the world…
It was the last issue of the troubled title and the story concluded in Champions #19 (November 1977) as the Master of Magnetism and the Beast spectacularly overcame all odds and saved the day in ‘A World Lost!’ (Mantlo, Hall & Mike Esposito). A year later Super-Villain Team-Up #15 appeared from nowhere (dated November 1978 and presumably released to safeguard the copyright) with a reprint of the Red Skull story from Astonishing Tales #4-5.
‘Shall I Call Thee Master?’ by Peter Gillis, Carmine Infantino & Bruce Patterson was released a year later ( #16 May 1979, with one final issue 12 months after that) wherein the Skull, Hatemonger and radical geneticist Arnim Zola whiled away the days in a human atrocity lab. This was a dark exploration of monstrous inhumanity where torture and degradation were simply a way of passing the time until the leftover Fascists could build a new Cosmic Cube and reshape all reality to their twisted whims.
In this instance they were thwarted by merely mortal secret agents in the long delayed but savagely effective conclusion ‘Dark Victory!’ (Gillis, Arvell Jones & Patterson), after which the concept and title were shelved for decades.
This eccentric and thoroughly fan-only compendium concludes with a double page spread omitted from earlier reprintings of ‘This Man… This Demon!’ and the rather magnificent cover of that tale from Marvel Super-Heroes #20.
For all its flaws Super-Villain Team-Up was a bold experiment and a genuinely enjoyable dalliance with the different during the 1970s – as long as the reader had an in depth knowledge of the company’s ever- more complex continuity. I truly wish more people would sample the delights of this offbeat saga but I doubt any new reader could cope with the terrifying torrent of unexplained backstory.
Still, I’d be delighted if you prove me wrong…
© 1970, 1971, 1975, 1976, 1977, 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes
By various (Tempo Books/Grosset & Dunlap)
ISBN: 0-448-14535-9
Here’s another early attempt to catapult comics off the spinner racks and onto proper bookshelves; this time from 1977, coinciding with and celebrating one of the periodic surges in popularity of the venerable Legion of Super-Heroes.
The many-handed mob of juvenile universe-savers debuted in Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) in a Superboy tale wherein three mysterious kids invited the Boy of Steel to the future to join a team of metahuman champions inspired by his historic feats. Created by Otto Binder & Al Plastino, the throwaway concept inflamed public imagination and after a slew of further appearances throughout Superman Family titles, the LSH eventually took over Superboy’s lead spot in Adventure for their own far-flung, quirky escapades, with the Caped Kryptonian reduced to “one of the in-crowdâ€â€¦
This terrific little black and white tome, part of National Periodical Publications’ on-going efforts to reach wider reading audiences – which began during the “Camp†craze of the 1960s with reformatted Superman and Batman pocket paperbacks and intermittently continued for the next twenty years – is particularly appealing as it leads off with a straight Superboy solo story.
The exploits of the Kid Kryptonian were always problematic. Since his inception (More Fun Comics #101 January/February 1945) the character had been perennially set in the past, “the adventures of Superman when he was a boyâ€. He was always popular and a solid seller, but as the world and the readership grew increasingly more complex in the late 1960s, the vague, timeless “about twenty years ago†settings grew ever-harder to reconcile with the uniform continuity being formed within the cohesively congealing DC universe.
For long term readers, the tales were seen to have occurred anytime between 1929-1957 and eventually DC (as NPP became) simply gave up the ghost and simply told fans to subtract 12-20 years from whatever the date was in Superman. More succinctly: “deal with it, it’s only a comicbook…â€
When the Legion were revived after a nearly two years in limbo, they moved briefly into the back of Superboy before taking over the title (Déjà vu, much?). Thereafter all the Boy of Steel’s adventures took place in the future, not the past…
Tragically, however, that relegated a huge amount of superb comics stories to oblivion: not acknowledged and never included in those reprint collections increasingly targeting the mainstream fan-base. Mercifully, one of those lost tales – from a brilliant run by scripter Frank Robbins and artists Bob Brown & Wally Wood – found its way into this collection for a wider and less picky audience…
‘Superboy’s Darkest Secret!’ (from Superboy #158, July 1969) is a powerful and moving epic which fits nowhere in accepted continuity. In this beautifully rendered tragedy the Boy of Steel discovers his birth parents had actually – and unwillingly – escaped Krypton and now lay interred in a life-pod deep inside a debris field of Kryptonite and space mines. Moreover, the only person who could reunite him with them was the kindly Kryptonian savant who had murdered them and was now determined to resurrect them…!
The Heroes of Tomorrow finally show up in ‘The Six-Legged Legionnaire!’ (Adventure Comics #355, April 1967 by Otto Binder, Curt Swan & George Klein) as Superboy brings his High School sweetie Lana Lang to the 30th century, where she joins in a mission against a science-tyrant as the shape changing Insect Queen. Disaster strikes when she loses the alien ring that enables her to resume her human form…
‘Curse of the Blood-Crystals!’ by Cary Bates, Dave Cockrum & Murphy Anderson comes from Superboy #188 (July 1972); the sixth stunning back-up tale of the unstoppable Legion revival that would eventually lead to the team taking over the title. This clever yarn of cross-and-double-cross finds a Legionnaire possessed by a magical booby-trap and forced to murder Superboy – but which hero is actually the prospective killer…?
This nifty nostalgic nugget ends with a rather strange but genuinely intriguing choice.
By 1970 the team’s popularity was on the wane. They had lost their Adventure Comics spot to Supergirl and become a back-up feature in Action Comics. Moreover, the masterful penciller Curt Swan had left to devote himself fully to Superman…
The shorter stories were bolder and more entertaining than ever, but too many casual readers had moved on. ‘The Legionnaires Who Never Were!’ (Action #392, September 1970, by Bates, Winslow Mortimer & Jack Abel) was their last adventure until popping up in Superboy and presents a brilliant psychological thriller/mystery romp as Saturn Girl and Princess Projectra return to Earth and discover that they no longer exist…. Of course, there’s a sound reason why all their old comrades are trying to kill them…
The Legion of Super-Heroes has long been graced with the most faithful and determined hard-core fans in comics history. Once the graphic novel market was established all of their old adventures became readily available in many different formats, so for most readers and collectors the true value of this scarce back-pocket item probably lies in that solo Superboy treat.
I’ve always harboured a secret delight in these paperback pioneers of the comics biz; however, and if you’re in any way of similar mien, I can thoroughly recommend the sheer tactile and olfactory buzz that only comes from holding such an item in your own two hands…
Wipe them first, though, right…?
© 1966, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1977 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved.