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Supernatural: Origins


By Peter Johnson, Geoff Johns, Matthew Don Smith & various (WildStorm)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-754-7

Comicbooks have always enjoyed a long, successful affiliation and nigh-symbiotic relationship with television, but in these days when even the ubiquitous goggle-box business is paralysed and endangered by on-demand streaming, too many channels and far too much choice, the numbers and types of program that migrate to funnybooks is increasingly limited.

Excluding kids’ animation shows, cult fantasy adventure series now predominate in this dwindling arena and one of the best to make that transition to the printed page was the epic monster-fighting saga of two brothers literally on the road to Hell as they tracked down unnatural horrors, mystical malignancies and all the unexplainable things that treat humanity as fair game and delicious delicacies…

Over eight seasons since 2006, the TV series Supernatural has followed Sam and Dean Winchester whose lives were forever changed when a yellow-eyed demon killed their mother.  The horrific event drove their distraught father into a life of eternal wandering: stalking and killing the impossible beasts and horrors he now knew lurked in every shadow.

Years after growing up from a baby on the road to hell, Sam got out of the life and tried to live a normal existence but was eventually dragged back when disaffected, alienated brother Dean called to say that their father had gone missing. It happened right about the time Sam’s girlfriend was killed by a fiery demon…

This impressive official prequel to the TV show follows the dysfunctional Winchester family in the days, months and years after the boys’ mother floated up into the air and spontaneously combusted, leaving father John with unanswerable questions, a hunger for vengeance and two unnatural kids to raise…

After Mary’s death, John packs little Dean and baby Sam into his car and goes into a spin of booze and bar-fights, until he meets palm-reader Missouri Mosley. The prognosticator offers veiled answers and a glimpse into a world of mumbo-jumbo which is proven to be impossibly real when an unseen monster kills Mary’s best friend Julie, who had been babysitting the traumatised boys. Lodged in her ghastly remains was a huge rune-carved fang from no creature ever born on Earth…

Armed with only hints into the true nature of the world, the former marine begins a quest for the tooth’s owner and in Tempe, Arizona meets prickly, reclusive outré scholar Fletcher Gable who identifies it as belonging to a Black Shuck… a Hellhound.

Sending Winchester on to a reported sighting of such in California, the savant offers a further gift: a blank journal in which to record all the notes, photos, clippings, drawings, thoughts and experiences that will inevitably occur now that father and sons are irrevocably set on their particular road to Perdition…

The wise man and his latest student are both painfully unaware that Winchester is himself being hunted…

When Mary’s formidable brother Jacob comes looking for the boys and fearing the worst (although he has no idea of what the can worst actually be), he too becomes embroiled in the quest – to his eternal regret – and only the arrival of the mysterious shadower saves John from becoming the latest casualty of the hellhound…

“Hunter” – more a job description than his name – helps Winchester clear up the mess and cover up the evidence before introducing the now-doubly bereaved and shell-shocked single parent to the full horror of the hidden world of the Supernatural. It’s 1983 and all Hell’s breaking loose…

Soon Winchester is part of an amorphous hidden association of loners known as Hunters: mortals who’ve lost loved ones, seen the truth and had the guts to look for payback…

Partnered with his brusque and enigmatic mentor, John Winchester is still looking for a golden eyed demon and a hellhound with a missing fang as he tackles his first monster – a leaping carnivore known as a “Heeler” with Hunter and another clean-up man named Ichi.

However by the time the trio return to the grimly unique bar known as Harvelle’s Roadhouse where Sam and Dean have been waiting under the lethally efficient care of waitress Ellen, John is a full-blooded monster killer. Good thing too, as Ichi isn’t friendly or human anymore…

Thus begins the perilous pattern: John and Hunter dumping the kids on someone blithely oblivious or horribly in on the secret for a few days whilst they take care of business and that journal filling up with accounts of incredible horror.

Winchester is a fast learner and, after meeting a resurrected priest who gives him a few precious tainted moments with Mary’s spirit, he and his extremely hands-on senior partner revisit Fletcher Gable with some useful intel on the rune-carved fang. Before long they’re heading to one of the spookiest locations in American geography for an appalling gauntlet of terrors, a confrontation with the hellhound, its master, inevitable betrayal and an explanation for all that the bereaved father and his sons have endured…

Dotted with moving, telling “flashbacks” such as the moment in 1991 when even tough, independent and lethally dangerous Dean had enough and tried to run away, abandoning his dad and little brother to an interminable legion of monsters, this initial chronicle also includes a short tale of the boys by Geoff Johns, Phil Hester & colourist JD Mettler.

‘Speak No Evil’ harks back to a day in 1989 when the taciturn Sam asked his big brother just how their mother died. He might even have received an answer if a demon hadn’t smashed through the motel window just then, locked in a death grip with their father…

This rip-snorting, tense and moody thriller lives up to the demands of the dedicated TV following and still fulfils all that’s demanded of a horror comic for readers who haven’t followed the torturous trail of the Winchesters, and this chilling compendium even offers in-process views of covers by Tim Sale and pin-ups, working drawings and sketches by series illustrator Matthew Dow Smith.

Punchy, powerful and spookily addictive…
Compilation and sketchbook © 2008 Warner Bros Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. Supernatural and all characters, distinctive likenesses and related elements are ™ Warner Bros Entertainment, Inc.

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Ultimate Comics X-Men: Divided We Fall, United We Stand


By Brian Wood, Paco Medina, Reilly Brown, Carlo Barberi, Agustin Padilla, Juan Vlasco & Terry Pallot (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-525-3

Marvel’s Ultimates imprint launched in 2000 with major characters and concepts re-imagined to bring them into line with the presumed-more sophisticated tastes of modern readers and free from decades of extraneous story baggage.

Eventually the alternate, darkly nihilistic universe became as continuity-constricted as its predecessor, and in 2008 the cleansing event “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which apparently (this is still comics, after all) killed dozens of super-humans and millions of lesser mortals.

The era-ending event was a colossal tsunami triggered by mutant terrorist messiah Magneto which inundated the superhero-heavy island of Manhattan and utterly devastated the world’s mutant population. The X-Men – and many other superhumans, good and bad – died, and in the aftermath anybody classed as “Homo Superior” had to surrender to the authorities or be shot on sight. Understandably most survivors as well any newly emergent X-people kept themselves well hidden…

Mutants had always been feared and despised. As the indisputable inheritors of Earth, the often lethally-empowered and wildly uncontrollable creatures were generally believed to be an intrinsically hostile species: the new race destined to take the world from humanity as we took it from the Neanderthals…

This volume, collecting Ultimate Comics: X-Men issues #13-18 (August – December 2012), is part of an imprint-wide crossover which saw America fall into chaos and civil war, with the events affecting and seen from the points of view of a new Spider-Man, a restored team of Ultimates and the current crop of X-Men…

The world had been stumbling from crisis to catastrophe ever since the Deluge (for fuller comprehension the reader is also advised that a thorough reading of companion series Ultimate Comics: the Ultimates volumes 1 & 2 will greatly enhance understanding of the parlous state of this alternate universe in its darkest hours) when word was leaked that all the mutants proliferating around the globe were the result of a 50-year old covert program of genetic manipulation which had slipped from American control, rather than a process of inexorable evolution and natural selection.

Humanity went crazy and a wave of violent prejudice quickly threatened the existence of the feared and despised metahuman lab-rats. In the political furore following the disclosure, bloodshed grew to global panic and a genetic arms-race in Asia (see Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye and The Ultimates: The Republic is Burning), and the President unexpectedly sidelined S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury in favour of co-operation with Magneto’s son Pietro Lensherr – who had inherited control of the terrorist group known as the Brotherhood of Mutants.

The super-swift manipulator had a Faustian Bargain for the severely embattled Leader of the Free World, but their plans were subverted by fundamentalist preacher Reverend William Stryker who seized control of the government’s Sentinel technology and used it to attack mutants all over America as part of his genocidal crusade to purify humanity…

Quicksilver planned to co-opt the latest Nimrod Sentinels to his own purposes but Stryker had outwitted him by taking personal control of the entire program.

The hate-filled preacher then unleashed every killer robot in America’s arsenal to hunt down all remaining mutants wherever they might be hiding, turning a large part of the southwest USA into a killing zone where the freaks were held in experimental facilities, just waiting to die…

However in Mutant Internment Camp Angel, the humans guards and slaughtering Sentinels were overthrown by former X-Men Colossus and Storm, and once the younger prisoners discovered what atrocities the normals had been secretly perpetrating against the captives they erupted into open rebellion.

Tragically, before the situation could escalate further, the sky filled with unstoppable Nimrods who began their program of total eradication by indiscriminately targeting human and aberration alike…

…And after the camps, the Nimrods turned their attention on those human cities which foolishly allowed mutants to live amongst them, before beginning to construct their own robotic god and master – a Supreme Sentinel which somehow gained the personality of the recently killed Reverend Stryker…

Simultaneously in Washington DC, the President and the entire Cabinet were wiped out in a nuclear attack from Reed Richards‘ future men of the Dome (that’s all in the Ultimates volumes) whilst Texas seceded from the Union, provoking a series of similar rebellions by militias and libertarian hate-groups throughout the nation. Hopelessly out of his depth, Acting President Howard declared martial law and the second American Civil War began…

Former X-Man Karen Grant (nee Jean Grey) had been secretly continuing Charles Xavier‘s dream of fostering Human/Mutant co-existence and had gathered a few young mutants together for safety. After vanishing during the burgeoning Asian conflict her role had been taken up by “Mutant Terrorist” and public enemy Kitty Pryde…

Now Jimmy Hudson (whose dead father Wolverine had been revealed as the Military’s ‘Mutant Zero’), languished in hiding with Pryde as well as Iceman Bobby Drake, Marian “Rogue” Carlisle and Human Torch Johnny Storm, all on the run ever since their friend and fellow teen prodigy Peter Parker was murdered in his Spider-Man identity…

The kids had been laying low after Stryker was killed trying to eradicate all of New York’s mutants in a televised ambush. The kids had all survived and subsequently become accidental guardians to a group of mutant children found in tunnels beneath the city…

Written in entirety by Brian Wood, the unRealpolitik begins with ‘Born Free’ (art by Paco Medina, Reilly Brown, Juan Vlasco & Terry Pallot) as Kitty and her band reel in shock as President Howard officially cedes control of the Sentinel-held southwest states to human anti-mutant militias and mechanical murderers; legitimising the mass murder of their rare breed…

Unable to abide any more, Pryde decides to make a stand and invites any who feel the same to join her as she travels across her hostile homeland to Camp Angel. Only Johnny declines: as a mere enhanced human, he believes he’ll be safely left alone to look after their young mutant charges. He’s tragically mistaken and has sorely misjudged how much mankind can hate the different…

The twinned event begins with ‘Divided We Fall‘ and the 2-part ‘Road Worn’ as the freedom fighters escape from New York and slowly make their way across the broken country to Sentinel-subdued Arizona/New Mexico/Utah/Oklahoma, encountering and defeating vile prejudice and murderous men, but only by surrendering to those worst aspects of behaviour that they apparently share with savage unforgiving humanity…

At their lowest point the teen rebels link up with the long-undercover Nick Fury and a young mutant Paige Guthrie. The disgraced and disavowed superspy has been secretly saving the hunted Homo Superior and hiding them from the hordes of would-be genetic purifiers…

Now with inspirational and gutsy fighters to inspire his demoralised charges, Fury takes a back seat and schools Kitty in the role of Mutant Messiah for the upbeat fight back of ‘United We Stand:’ (illustrated by Barberi, Medina, Vlasco & Agustin Padilla)…

The desperate campaign begins with an assault on a newly constructed death-camp and the visible destruction of a brace of the not-so-invulnerable Nimrods, but these robot killers have hidden advantages the freedom fighters are painfully unaware of.

Soon the colossal Super Sentinel that thinks it is William Stryker is on the move with his entire artificial army assembled to wipe out the stain of mutants forever…

As other sectors of the sundered country begin their own climactic last battles, in the southwest states the tiny mutant force faces its greatest martial threat and emerges as an independent Mutant Nation, but victory only brings new problems…

This bombastic battle for life, liberty and honour is deliberately tangential to the other story arcs comprising the full saga (and can thus be read independently if desired), so I’m not going to spoil the manner in which Kitty’s magnificent triumph is soured, except to say that the new President of the forcibly re-United States extends the hand of friendship and cooperation whilst simultaneously offering the rebel leader the most punishing of choices…

The darkly trenchant, nihilistically cynical Ultimate fare, with its trademark post-modernity and bleakly brutal action, still delivers the grim ‘n’ gritty punch fans crave, but sweetens the deal here by offering a powerfully uplifting message of hope for the determinedly worthy that is both satisfying and keenly tantalising. However for maximum impact you really should read the other two collections in this triptych of comics delights…

As usual the volume also contains a gallery of covers and variants by Kaare Andrews, Dave Johnson & Phil Noto, Jorge Molina & Adi Granov, and this up-to-the-minute epic also incorporates 21st century extras for all those tech-savvy consumers with added value in mind.

Many chapters contain an AR icon (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which gives access to all sorts of story extras once you download the little dickens – for free – from marvel.com onto your iPhone or Android-enabled device.

Stay tuned, fans, there’s much more to come…
™ & © 2012 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Wonder Woman Archives volume 4

WW arc 4 front
By Charles Moulton (William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter) (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-4012-0145-8

Wonder Woman was conceived by polygraph pioneer William Moulton Marston and illustrated by Harry G. Peter in a calculated attempt to offer girls a positive and forceful role model and, on Editor M.C. Gaines’ part, sell funnybooks.

The Princess of Paradise debuted as a special feature in All Star Comics #8 (December 1941), before springing into her own series and the cover-spot of new anthology title Sensation Comics a month later. An astonishing instant hit, the Amazing Amazon quickly won her own eponymous supplemental title in late Spring of that year (cover-dated Summer 1942).

Once upon a time on a hidden island of immortal super-women, American aviator Steve Trevor of US Army Intelligence crashed to Earth. Near death, he was nursed back to health by young and impressionable Princess Diana.

Fearing her growing obsession with the creature from a long-forgotten and madly violent world, her mother Queen Hippolyte revealed the hidden history of the Amazons: how they were seduced and betrayed by men but rescued by the goddess Aphrodite on condition that they isolated themselves from the rest of the world and devoted their eternal lives to becoming ideal, perfect creatures.

However when goddesses Athena and Aphrodite subsequently instructed Hippolyte to send an Amazon back with the American to fight for global freedom and liberty, Diana overcame all other candidates and became their emissary – Wonder Woman.

On arriving in America she bought the identity and credentials of lovelorn Army nurse Diana Prince, elegantly allowing the Amazon to be close to Steve whilst enabling the heartsick medic to join her own fiancé in South America. Soon Diana also gained a position with Army Intelligence as secretary to General Darnell, ensuring she would always be able to watch over her beloved. She little suspected that, although the painfully shallow Steve only had eyes for the dazzling Amazon superwoman, the General had fallen for the mousy but superbly competent Lieutenant Prince…

Using the nom de plume Charles Moulton, Marston (with some help in later years from assistant Joye Murchison) scripted almost all of the Amazing Amazon’s many and fabulous adventures until his death in 1947, whereupon Robert Kanigher took over the writer’s role. Venerable veteran illustrator and co-creator H.G. Peter performed the same feat, limning practically every titanic tale until his own death in 1958.

This fourth lavishly deluxe full-colour hardback edition collects the increasingly fanciful and intoxicating adventures from Wonder Woman #8-9 and Sensation Comics #25-32 spanning cover-dates January to August 1944. After an appreciative Foreword from comics journalist and historian Maggie Thompson who outlines the landmarks and catalogues the achievements of the Amazing Amazon, the war-woven epics and imaginatively inspirational dramas begin with Sensation #25 and the ‘Adventure of the Kidnapers of Astral Spirits’ as Diana Prince witnesses a murder. However the killer was asleep at home in bed at the time and soon more impossible killings occur, drawing Wonder Woman into an incredible adventure beyond the Walls of Sleep into uncanny realms where even her gifts are useless and only determination and rational deduction can save the day…

Far less outré but no less deadly was the menace of ‘The Masquerader’ who replaced the Amazing Amazon in #26, following an unshakeable prophecy which saw the champion of Love and Freedom murdered by merciless racketeer Duke Dalgan. It took the covert intervention of Aphrodite and a Girl’s Best Friend to thwart that dire fate, but Diana never knew just who took her place…

When the Amazon, Etta Candy, her sorority Holliday Girls and former convict Gay Frollik resolved to raise a billion dollars for ‘The Fun Foundation’, they never expected their most trusted advisor to turn against them, but his greed led to his downfall and the clearing of a framed woman’s name in Sensation #27, after which Wonder Woman #8 offered another novel-length triumph of groundbreaking adventure.

The drama opened with ‘Queen Clea’s Tournament of Death’ as Steve, on an undercover mission, was snatched by a giant barbarian woman. Hot on his trail, Diana discovered her beau a captive of undersea Amazons from lost Atlantis, living in colossal caverns below the oceans.

Diana soon found herself embroiled in a brutal civil war battling the forces of usurping conqueror Clea of belligerent state Venturia and trying to restore the rightful ruler Eeras to peaceful, beleaguered Aurania. Should she fail, Clea intended to invade the upper world, looking for husky men like Steve to replace the depleted, worn-out puny males of her own realm…

After restoring order in Atlantis, the Amazon returned to her military job and civilian identity until a little girl begged for aid in finding her missing father. Closer investigation revealed that Clea’s forces had been capturing sailors and airmen but with the rebel queen imprisoned as ‘The Girl with the Iron Mask’, who could the leader of the raids possibly be?

After another fearsome subterranean clash the status quo was re-established, but when Diana later met a huge a powerful student at Holliday College she realised that the adventure was still not over as ‘The Captive Queen’ infiltrates Paradise Island and captures both Wonder Woman and Eeras’ wayward daughter Octavia.

Even after defeating her ponderous perpetual foe the action doesn’t end for the Princess of Power as her return to the land beneath the sea is interrupted by another revolution.

This time the ineffectual Atlantean men had used the constant distractions and American modern weapons to enslave the women, making the sub-sea empire a brutal, domineering patriarchy…

But not for long, as Diana and Steve led a brilliant counter-offensive…

In Sensation Comics #28 ‘The Malice of the Green Imps’ offered a welcome dose of metaphysical suspense as jealous thought and impulses were made manifest and drove gangsters and even good folks to attack the recently opened Fun Foundation Clinics sponsored by Diana and Gay Frollik, after which #29 saw another Amazon in Man’s World in the ‘Adventure of the Escaped Prisoner’. After imprisoning gambling racketeer and blackmailer Mimi on the Amazon’s prison island, Wonder Woman was unaware that the harridan’s subsequent escape also brought confused and naively curious fellow warrior Mala to New York where she quickly fell in with the wrong crowd…

Marston’s psychiatric background provided yet another weirdly eccentric psychic scenario in #30’s ‘The Blue Spirit Mystery’ as Steve, Etta Candy and Diana investigated Anton Unreal, a mystic and mentalist who offered to send his client to the heavenly Fourth Dimension – for a large fee, of course…

Unfortunately – although a crook – Unreal was no charlatan and the “ascended ones” certainly found themselves in a realm utterly unearthly, but definitely no paradise until Steve and Diana followed and took matters into their own immaterial hands…

Wonder Woman #9 saw the origins of one of the Amazon’s most radical foes and bizarre adventures. ‘Evolution Goes Haywire’ began with zoo gorilla Giganta stealing Steve’s little niece before the Amazon effected a rescue, after which crazy scientist Professor Zool used his experimental Hyper-Atomic Evolutionizer to transform the hirsute simian into an gorgeous 8-foot tall Junoesque human beauty. Sadly the artificial Amazon retained her bestial instincts and, battling Wonder Woman, managed to damage Zool’s machine, resulting in the entire region being devolved back to the days of cavemen and dinosaurs…

With even Diana converted to barbarism it was an uphill struggle to rerun the rise to culture and civilisation sufficiently to achieve a primitive Golden Age in ‘The Freed Captive’, but eventually the twisted time-travel tale took them back to where they had started, even if only after ‘Wonder Woman vs. Achilles’ – a deranged diversion to save her own mother and people from male oppression by the legendary warrior king…

Sensation Comics #31, by contrast, offered delicious whimsy and biting social commentary when the Princess of Power visited ‘Grown-Down Land’. When a wealthy socialite mother neglected her children the tykes ran away and almost died. Rescued by Wonder Woman, they told her of a dream world far better and happier than reality and next morning, when the kids can’t be awoken from a deep sleep, Diana realises they have chosen to stay in their topsy-turvy imaginary country. However when she enters their dream she finds genuine peril of a most unexpected kind…

This glorious tome of treasures then concludes with #32’s ‘The Crime Combine’ as Wonder Woman finds herself at the top of the American underworld’s hit-list. To scotch the scheme Diana asks fully reformed ex-Nazi and trainee Amazon Baroness Paula von Gunther to leave ParadiseIsland and infiltrate the hierarchy of hate, but it quickly seems that the temptations of Man’s World and allure of evil have seduced the villainess back to her wicked ways…

Seen through modern eyes there’s a lot that might be disturbing in theses old comics classics, such as the plentiful examples of apparent bondage, or racial stereotypes from bull-headed Germans to caricatured African Americans, but there’s also a vast amount of truly groundbreaking comics innovation.

The skilfully concocted dramas and incredibly imaginative story-elements are drawn from hugely disparate and often gratifyingly sophisticated sources, but the creators never forget they’re in the business of entertaining as well as edifying the young. There’s huge amounts of action, suspense, contemporary reflection and loads of laughs to be found here, and always the message is: girls are as good as boys and can even be better if they want to…

Wonder Woman influenced the entire nascent superhero genre as much as Superman or Batman and we’re all the richer for it. Even better, this exemplary book of past delights is a triumph of exotic, baroque, beguiling and uniquely exciting adventure, and these Golden Age exploits of the World’s Most Marvellous Warrior Maiden are timeless, pivotal classics in the development of the medium and still offer astounding amounts of fun and thrills for anyone interested in a grand nostalgic read.
© 1944, 2003 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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X-Men – First Class: Finals


By Jeff Parker, Amilcar Pinna, Roger Cruz & Colleen Coover, Len Wein & Dave Cockrum (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-4051-3348-3

Radical perpetual change – or at least the appearance of such – is a cornerstone of modern comics. There must be a constant changing of the guard, a shifting of scene and milieu and, in latter times, a regular diet of death, resurrection and rebirth – all grounded in relatively contemporary terms and situations.

With a property as valuable as the X-Men such incessant remodelling is a necessarily good thing, even if you sometimes need a scorecard to keep up, and over the intervening decades the franchise has repeatedly represented, refashioned and updated the formative early epics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, Roy Thomas and Werner Roth to give a solid underpinning to all the modern Mutant mayhem.

A case in point is this rather impressive and deliriously fun-filled restating of the Mutant paradigm from Marvel wherein the latest status quo gets the boot and a new beginning equates with a return to the good old days…

Most people who read comics have a passing familiarity with Marvel’s ever-changing X-Men franchise, and newcomers or occasional consumers won’t have too much trouble following the backstory, so let’s plunge in as the hostile world once more kicks sand in the faces of the planet’s most dangerous and reviled minority…

In 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced gloomy, serious Scott Summers/Cyclops, ebullient Bobby Drake/Iceman, wealthy golden boy Warren Worthington III/Angel, Jean Grey/Marvel Girl and erudite, brutish genius Henry McCoy/Beast: very special youngsters and students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and achieving integration between the sprawling masses of humanity and an emergent off-shoot race of mutants with extra abilities, ominously dubbed Homo Superior.

The team was also occasionally supplemented by magnetic minx Polaris and cosmic powerhouse Havok – although they were usually referred to respectively if not respectfully as Lorna Dane and Scott’s brother Alex.

After nearly a decade of eccentric, mind-blowing adventures, the masked misfits faded away in early 1970 when mystery and supernatural horror themes once again gripped the world’s entertainment fields causing a consequent sustained downturn in costumed hero comics.

Although the title was revived at the end of the year as a cheap reprint package, the mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players across the Marvel Universe whilst the Beast was further mutated into a monster to cash in on the new boom. A few years later Marvel Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas green-lighted a risky Giant-Size one-shot as part of the company’s line of over-sized specials. The introduction of a fresh team of mutants made history and began a still-burgeoning frenzied phenomenon…

In 2006 those deliriously naive secret school days inspired X-Men First Class (a comicbook iteration, not the movie) which once again updated and reinterpreted the seminal 1960s adventures for a far more sophisticated modern audience (as had happened twice before in the intervening decades).

An 8-issue miniseries and a One-Shot Special led to a further 16 issue run: retrofitting old material and creating new stories by in-filling cases and teaming the teenaged school squad with assorted guest stars such as Doctor Strange, Man-Thing, Gorilla-Man, Thor and Invisible Woman, and even leading to a number of spin-off series based on the same winning “untold X-tales” format.

However all good things come to an end – until the next time a few years from now – and the junior league finally had to move on into their later lives and rejoin the ongoing Marvel Universe continuity. Thus in 2009 the 4-issue miniseries X-Men – First Class: Finals revealed the story of the student heroes’ graduation and fed directly into the tale which would introduce the All-New, All Different modern team…

Written throughout by Jeff Parker and coloured by Val Staples, the end begins with ‘Seniorities’ – illustrated by Roger Cruz – wherein the boys inexplicably find themselves in a fantastic realm and at last shamefully realise that they are conscious and experiencing the newly telepathic Jean’s dreams. The visual tour and fearful panorama make them all realise how far they’ve come since joining the XavierSchool.

The Professor would know what to do but he’s gone now…

Back in the waking world later, a Danger Room training session gets inexplicably out of hand resulting in lots of collateral damage, but the kids are soon in genuine peril when horrific and formidable mutant marauder Frederick comes calling, looking for a rematch with Cyclops…

Each chapter here is broken up with a comedic short by Parker & Colleen Coover so, after ‘Scott and Jean Go on a Date!’, the suspense recommences with ‘Beginning of the End’ (by Amilcar Pinna & Cruz) as the vengeful monstrosity attempts to make Summers pay for past indignities by killing the so-serious class captain’s classmates. The overmatched heroes are only saved when one of their most feared enemies materialises, trashes Frederick and promptly vanishes again…

As Henry McCoy ponders a job offer from the multinational Brand Corporation following his graduation (for the outcome of that you’ll need to check out Essential Classic X-Men volume 3), the anxious students track a mutant sighting on electronic wonder-computer Cerebro.

The trail leads into the wilds of upstate New York and as the baffled champions search for answers they are attacked by an animated and extremely hostile pile of junk and machine scraps that look like the ghost of arch-enemy Magneto…

Following the charmingly daft interlude of ‘X-Date part 2’, the dread doom resumes in ‘Higher Learning’ as the inexplicable attacks and mystery rescues continue until the freshly returned Charles Xavier steps in to solve the riddle. However it’s actually Scott who deduces the true nature and origin of the ongoing threat, and after the madly whacky ending of ‘X-Date part 3’, the team unite to quell the insane attacks by entering and exorcising ‘The Mind of Jean Grey’…

This thoroughly entertaining read keeps the continuity baggage to a sustainable minimum for non-addicts and concentrates on delivering a vibrant fun and fast-paced rollercoaster thriller packed with smart laughs, heavy on action and light on extended sub-plots before the rather jarring jump to the added extra of the aforementioned Giant Size X-Men #1 from 1975.

Reprinted in full here the big, big blockbuster details how the original team was lost in action, forcing the distraught Professor X to scour Earth for replacements…

Recruiting established old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire plus Hulk villain and Canadian secret agent Wolverine, most of the Professor’s time and attention was invested in unexploited and hidden mutants scattered around the globe.

One such was Kurt Wagner, a demonic-looking German teleporter who would be codenamed Nightcrawler, whom Xavier saved from a religious lynch mob, after which the quest focussed on young Russian farm worker Peter Rasputin, who could transform into a living steel Colossus; embittered, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar – who was cajoled and pressured into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird, and Ororo Monroe, a young woman who comported herself as an African weather goddess and would be known as Storm. These raw replacements were all introduced in the stirring opening chapter ‘Second Genesis’…

‘…And When There Was One!’ found wounded team-captain Cyclops swiftly drilling the far from willing or eager team before leading them into primordial danger against the monolithic threat of ‘Krakoa… the Island That Walks Like a Man!’

Overcoming the phenomenal terror of a sentient mutant eco-system and rescuing the original team should have led to another Special, but so great was the groundswell of support that the follow-up adventure was reworked into a 2-parter for the rapidly reconfigured reprint monthly which became a bimonthly home to the team and began the mutant madness we’re still experiencing today.

Engaging, exciting and extremely entertaining, the saga perfectly wrapped up the school days of the First Class and led perfectly into a sequel series starring the newcomers and offering more untold moments of mutant mirth and mayhem…
© 1975, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Hellraisers – a Graphic Biography


By Robert Sellers & JAKe (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-906838-36-2

I’m a sucker for comics biographies, and when I saw this superbly engaging and imaginative one on the shelves of my local library I just couldn’t resist a peek…

Robert Sellers is a former stand-up comedian and current film journalist with prose biographies of Sting, Tom Cruise, Sean Connery and the Monty Python phenomenon to his name, as well a regular contributor to periodicals and magazines such as The Independent, Empire, Total Film, SFX and Cinema Retro. He has also been seen on TV.

In 2009 he published a magnificent history of brilliance and excess in his “Life and Inebriated Times of Burton, Harris, O’Toole and Reed” in 2011 in collaboration with prestigious illustrator, designer and animator JAKe (How to Speak Wookiee, cartoon series Geekboy, Mighty Book of Boosh, The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land and so much more, both singly and with the studio Detonator which he co-founded). The artist keeps himself to himself and lets his superb artistry do all the talking.

Self-adapted from his prose history of the iconic barnstorming British film and theatre legends Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and Peter O’Toole, Sellers here transformed Hellraisers into a pictorial feast, featuring the unique lives of a quartet of new wave, working class thespian heroes – more famed for boozing and brawling than acting – into a masterful parable and celebration of the vital, vibrant creative force of rebellion, interpreted with savage, witty style in ferociously addictive and expressive monochrome cartoon and caricature by the enigmatic artist.

Working on the principle that a Hellraiser is “a person who causes trouble by violent, drunken or outrageous behaviour” and cloaked in the guise of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the salutary fable opens as another drunken reprobate is thrown out of another pub. It’s Christmas Eve at the Rose & Crown of Broken Dreams and Martin should be home with his wife and son.

After again disgracing himself the pathetic drunk staggers back, shaking with DT’s and unexpunged rage to his loving but scared family, only to pass out. He is awoken by his hellraising father who drank and smoked himself to death seven years ago…

Told that he has one last chance to save himself, Martin is warned that he will be visited by four spirits (no, not that sort) who will regale him with the stories of their lives and fates and failures and triumphs …

What follows is a beguiling journey of bitter self-discovery as Burton, Harris, Reed and O’Toole (still alive but part of the visitation of “spooky buggers” since it’s just a matter of time, my dear boy) recount their own sodden histories, experiences and considerations in an attempt to turn the neophyte around.

They’re certainly not that repentant, however, and even proud of the excesses and sheer exuberant manly mythology they’ve made of their lives…

Managing the masterful magic trick of perfectly capturing the sheer charismatic force and personality of these giants of their craft and willing accomplices in their own downfalls, this superb saga even ends on an upbeat note, but only after cataloguing the incredible achievements, starry careers, broken relationships, impossibly impressive and frequently hilarious exploits of debauchery, intoxication and affray perpetrated singly and in unison by the departed, unquiet soused souls…

Filled with the legendary exploits and barroom legends of four astoundingly gifted men who couldn’t stop breaking rules and hearts (especially their own), blessed or cursed with infinitely unquenchable thirsts for the hard stuff and appetites for self-destruction, this intoxicating and so very tasty tome venerates the myths these unforgettable icons promulgated and built around themselves, but never descends into pious recrimination or laudatory gratification.

It’s just how they were…

Sellers has the gift of forensic language and perfectly reproduces the voices and idiom of each star even as JAKe perfectly blends shocking historical reportage with evocative surreal metafiction in this wonderful example of the power of sequential narrative.

Clever, witty and unmissable.
© 2010 Robert Sellers and JAKe. All rights reserved.

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Secret Warriors volume 2: God of Fear, God of War


By Jonathan Hickman, Alessandro Vitti, Ed McGuiness, Tom Palmer & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851- 3865-5

Marvel’s very own immortal secret agent Nick Fury had in his time fought in every war since WWII, worked for the CIA and run numerous iterations of superspy agency S.H.I.E.L.D., generally finding over and again that nobody could be trusted – not to stay clean and decent – in a world of temptation or, worse yet, to never baulk at doing whatever was necessary to save the planet.

Too many times the spooks “on our side” became as debased as the bad guys in a world where covert agencies were continually exposed as manipulative, out-of-control tools of subversion and oppression.

The taste of betrayal and those seeds of doubt and mistrust never went away and following a succession of global crises – including a superhero Civil War – Fury was replaced as S.H.I.E.L.D. director.

His successor Tony Stark proved to be a huge mistake and after an alien invasion by Skrulls, the organisation was mothballed: replaced by the manically dynamic Norman Osborn and his cultishly loyal H.A.M.M.E.R. outfit. As America’s Director of National Security, the former Green Goblin and recovering psychopath instituted a draconian “Dark Reign” of oppressive, aggressive policies which turned the nation into a paranoid tinderbox and as the nation’s Top Fed he was specifically tasked with curbing the unchecked power and threat of the burgeoning metahuman community.

He was, however, also directing a cabal of the world’s greatest criminals and conquerors intent on divvying up the planet between them. The repercussions of Osborn’s rise (and inevitable fall) were felt throughout and featured in many series and collections throughout the entire fictive universe.

His brief rule also drastically shook up the entrenched secret empires of the planet, and his ultimate defeat destabilised many previously unassailable clandestine Powers and States…

Fury, a man driven by duty, fuelled by suspicion and powered by a serum which kept him vital far beyond his years, didn’t go away. He just went deep undercover and continued doing what he’d always done – saving the world, one battle at a time. From this unassailable unsuspected vantage point Fury picked his battles and slowly gathered assets and resources he’d personally vetted or built…

The indomitable freedom fighter had always known that to do the job properly he needed his own trustworthy forces and no political constraints. To this end he had long endeavoured to clandestinely stockpile his own formidable, unimpeachable army. Decades in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided him with mountains of data on metahumans from which he compiled “Caterpillar Files” on many unknown, unexploited, untainted potential operatives who might one day metamorphose into powerful assets…

His first move was to assemble a crack squad of super-human operatives. Team White initially comprised Yo Yo Rodriguez AKA Slingshot, Sebastian Druid, Jerry “Stonewall” Sledge, J.T. “Hellfire” James and Daisy Johnson, codenamed Quake, and the terrifyingly volatile Alexander: a 12-year old boy with incredible power.

The child Phobos was destined to become a true god and personification of Fear but until then his daily-growing divine gifts were Fury’s to use… if he dared…

In the aftermath of the wave of crises the old soldier had come across a truly shocking piece of intel: for most of his career, S.H.I.E.L.D. had been no more than a deeply submerged and ring-fenced asset of Hydra. All Fury’s world-saving triumphs had been nothing more than acceptable short-term losses for a secret society which claimed to reach back to ancient Egypt, secretly steering the world for millennia.

However since Osborn and the Skrull invasion had shaken things up so much, the old warhorse now had an honest chance to wipe out the perfidious faceless foe forever…

Hydra too had been badly damaged by the crisis, and as the dust settled Baron Wolfgang von Strucker sought to capitalise on the chaos to regenerate the cult in his own image, seizing all fallow assets, technology and even experienced operatives abandoned by friends and enemies alike…

To this end, Strucker co-opted breakaway factions of Hydra and convened a new hierarchy of deadly lieutenants loyal to him alone. However even with Viper, Madame Hydra, Kraken, Silver Samurai, The Hive and resurrected mutant ninja the Gorgon on board, the prospect of wedding super-science and corporate rapaciousness with ancient magic and millennial covert cabals was a risky ploy…

The rabid rapid expansion also gave Fury an opportunity to place one of his own deep within the organisation…

To further bolster his own relatively meagre forces, Fury reached out to selected old S.H.I.E.L.D. comrades and especially his former second-in-command Dum-Dum Dugan who had gathered up the most trustworthy agents and veterans into a private security agency – the Howling Commandos Private Military Company. Warriors to the last, they were all looking for one last good war and a proper way to die…

Some of them got their wish when the good guys launched a daring raid and stole three of the mothballed colossal flying fortress warships dubbed Heli-Carriers, laying the groundwork for an imminent, unavoidable and very public shooting war…

Written throughout by Jonathan Hickman, this second intriguing and complex espionage epic declassifies material from Dark Reign, The List and Secret Warriors #7-10 from 2009, and opens in stunning style with ‘I Know Who You Work For’ (illustrated by Alessandro Vitti) as Fury secures operating capital for his private war by sending the team to rob a bank – a decent, reliable, reputable financial institution which just happens to be a covertly owned corporate holding of Hydra…

The audacious act prompts Strucker to reach out to Osborn who in turn condescends to deal with Fury as an insulting, double-edged “favour” to the despised former Nazi war-criminal. Osborn’s greatest advantage is his own team of Dark Avengers: ferocious ersatz heroes masquerading as genuine, altruistic champions of justice. One of the most formidable is Grecian war-god Ares. The Olympian is also the father of Fury’s wild-card agent Phobos…

The terrifying celestial child is snooping in Fury’s office with older but no-wiser bad influence J.T. James when they intercept a distress call from ex-Avenger and former S.H.I.E.L.D. operative Black Widow. She needs extraction immediately but when “Fury” rendezvous with her and partner Songbird, the desperate agents are all ambushed by Osborn’s Thunderbolts – a penal battalion of super-villains, purchasing pardons by doing dirty jobs for the Federal government…

In New York, captured and confronted by the Security Czar in ‘I’m the Perfect Means to an End’, Fury is shot in the head and everybody thinks it’s all over – until Phobos climbs out of the undetectable Life Model Decoy (a trusty robot duplicate the S.H.I.E.L.D. Director has utilised for decades to save his life from assorted threats)…

The real Fury is actually in Virginia with another old operative.

John Garrett is 90% mechanical after years of dutiful service to his country but the cyborg is prepared to risk all he’s got left for the right cause…

Back in the Big Apple, Team White agents J.T. and new recruit Eden Fesi attempt a rescue but it’s Phobos who saves them all by confronting Osborn head-on – earning the grudging respect of Ares who lets them all go. It’s not a reprieve, though, just a decent head start…

The rest of the squad are with severely wounded team-mate Yo Yo Rodriguez – whose arms have been replaced with mechanical limbs – when Alexander, J.T. and Eden teleport home with Ares, the Dark Avengers and lots of H.A.M.M.E.R. grunts hard on their heels in ‘The Starting Point is Everything’. With the base automatically initiating a data-purge and self-destruct program, Team White stage a spectacular holding action allowing everyone to relocate to a safe house…

And in Virginia, Garrett begins investigating former S.H.I.E.L.D. op Seth Waters, now a big-wig in the Department of the Treasury and just possibly a life-long dedicated Hydra agent…

Ed McGuiness & Tom Palmer provide the interlude ‘Start the Clock End Game’ wherein Nick breaks into the heart of Osborn’s citadel to put the Security Director on notice even as Waters is exposed as an agent of long-dormant terrorist group and universal threat Leviathan.

With Fury as Osborn’s willing hostage, H.A.M.M.E.R. officers and Dark Avengers lead the savage interrogation but Waters has unsuspected resources and distractingly suicides – just as the immortal superspy intended – allowing Fury to escape from the lion’s den with invaluable intelligence and ‘Leviathan Technical Data’ (all the bases, maps, files and diagrams any conspiracy nut could ever need to untangle the web of intrigue all diligently laid out for our perusal).

‘There Will Always Be War’ wraps up this saga with the full history of Phobos, beginning with an ancient parable of a forgotten war between the gods of Greece and Japan, the crafting of god-killing weapons and rare, telling insights into how Ares and Alexander grew apart.

A secret deal between undying war god and immortal spy is revealed before the fearsome inescapable fate and cost of inheritance is at last made clear to the slowly-maturing future god of Fear…

To Be Continued…

This excellent exercise in tense suspense and Machiavellian manipulation also includes a stunning ‘Cover gallery’ by Jim Cheung as well as variant covers from McGuinness, Adi Granov, Frank Cho & Gerald Parel to supplement the wry, engagingly cynical, blackly comical, staggeringly over-the-top action and dazzling cloak-and-dagger conflicts: employing enough intrigue to bamboozle even the most ardent espionage aficionado, with the added bonus that far less knowledge of Marvel continuity is necessary to fully appreciate this particularly intense and engaging effort to the full.
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Lola – a Ghost Story


By J. Torres & Elbert Or (Oni Press)
ISBN: 978-1-934964-33-0

These days young kids are far more likely to find their formative strip narrative experiences online or between the card-covers of specially tailored graphic novels rather than the comics and periodicals of my long-dead youth.

In times past the commercial comics industry thrived by producing copious amounts of gaudy, flimsy pamphlets subdivided into a range of successfully, self-propagating, seamlessly self-perpetuating age-specific publications. Such eye-catching items generated innumerable tales and delights intended to entertain, inform and educate such well-defined target demographics as Toddler/Kindergarten, Younger and Older Juvenile, General, Girls, Boys and even Young Teens, but today the English-speaking world can only afford to maintain a few paltry out-industry, licensed tie-ins and spin-offs for a dwindling younger readership.

Where once cheap and prolific, strip magazines in the 21st century are extremely cost-intensive and manufactured for a highly specific – and dying– niche market, whilst the beguiling and bombastic genres that originally fed and nurtured comics are more immediately disseminated via TV, movies and assorted interactive games media.

Happily, old-school prose publishers and the newborn graphic novel industry have a different business model and far more sustainable long-term goals, so the magazine makers’ surrender has been turned into a burgeoning victory, as solid and reassuringly sturdy Comic-Books increasingly buck the pamphlet/papers trend.

Some of the old-fashioned publishers even evolved…

Independent comics mainstay Oni deftly made the switch to sturdy stand-alone one-offs at the end of the last century, publishing a succession of superb illustrated tales splendidly pushing the creative envelope whilst providing memorable yarns that irresistibly lure young potential fans of the form into our world…

That looks quite creepy in type-form but that’s okay – this is a beguilingly spooky story and you should be on your guard…

Aimed at readers of seven and above, Lola – a Ghost Story follows young Canadian Jesse as he returns to the rural Philippine farm where his parents grew up. It’s not his first visit, but it is the saddest. They’re going back for the funeral of his grandmother…

In the native Tagalog language Lola means “grandmother” and Jesse’s was pretty scary. She was old and ugly, had a hump on her back and – he thinks – tried to drown him when he was a baby.

She also saw dead things and monsters and the future… just like Jesse does.

Despite all this he loved her very much and really doesn’t want to accept that she’s gone forever. After hours of exhausting travel Jesse and his folks at last arrive at the old farmhouse which has seen so much tragedy. The visitor fulsomely greets his uncle and cousin Maritess, but doesn’t acknowledge her brother JonJon.

The kid’s acting like a jerk as usual, and besides he’s been dead for over a year and no-one else can see him…

Soon the family are gathered together: eating, remembering the departed and telling stories of Lola – like the time she saw the giant devil-pig and saved the entire family from financial ruin – but Jesse is still ill at ease. Even though everyone here believes his grandmother had second sight and blessed gifts, the sensibly modern boy can’t bring himself to believe the things he sees are real…

Maritess believes though and she suspects what Jesse won’t admit even to himself…

After JonJon teases him some more and taunts him with the giant bestial, cigar-smoking Kapre lurking at the window, Jesse finally drops into an exhausted, nervous slumber.

The funeral next day is horrible. Everybody is sad, the church is filled with so many shockingly damaged spirits and Jesse is afflicted with a vision of being trapped and burning which makes him run terrified from the ceremony.

Still traumatised that evening, he finds JonJon’s old toybox on his bed and Maritess guesses what has happened.

She tells her cousin the story of the bloodsucking Manananggal which attacked Lola’s mother causing her unborn daughter’s hump-back and magical sight. Such gifts and curses usually skip a generation and Maritess always assumed she’d be the one to get the sight, but now that it’s clear Jesse is the one to inherit she’s determined to give him all the help he needs.

The box is full of JonJon’s toy cars, and after playing with them Jesse and the dead boy romp over by the farm wall – the one where nobody is allowed to go anymore…

Jesse’s uncle isn’t doing very well: all the tragedies have made him very sad and he’s drinking an awful lot.

There are other problems bothering Jesse. The entire family have stories about his grandmother and it’s clear that she was brave and determined and fought monsters all her life: is that, then, why she tried to drown him when he was a baby?

As Maritess tells her Canadian cousin about the time young Lola saved her school friends from a predatory Tiyanak – a baby-shaped carnivorous monster – and he prepares to ask her if she thinks he might be evil, her father comes in very drunk and shouts at him for leaving JonJon’s cars in the garden.

They are all he has left to remember his son and the boy’s favourite one is already missing. Jesse knows which one it is… the striped one JonJon calls “Zebra” which he wouldn’t share with him last night by the wall…

Uncle Tim hates the wall. It had something to do with his son’s death and Jesse knows he’ll get into trouble if he goes over it. But Uncle is so sad. He misses his boy and really wanted to bury Zebra with JonJon, but it’s gone and the man is so drunk and angry all the time now…

Jesse’s fear that Lola saw something evil in him is assuaged by Maritess who thinks he should use his gift to help people – just like just their grandmother used to -  so when JonJon appears again, Jesse climbs the hated wall and vanishes into the wild unknown beyond…

With Jesse’s first good deed successfully accomplished JonJon can rest and Uncle Tim is at peace. The troubled psychic is even a little less disturbed by his power and his apparent destiny, but that all changes on the trip back to the airport when Jesse sees something utterly horrifying…

Evocative, compelling, gently enthralling and with a genuinely scary shock ending, this superb kid’s chiller is filled with a fascinating new bestiary of monsters and boogey-men to bedazzle Western eyes and imaginations, but mostly relies on captivating art and top-notch storytelling to draw readers in. I loved it and I’m actually praying there’s a sequel in the pipeline…
Lola is ™ & © 2009 J. Torres. All other material © 2009 Oni Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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The Guild


By Felicia Day, Jim Rugg & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-549-0

The Guild is a US comedy show which first appeared on the web in 2007, brainchild of actress and author Felicia Day. The quirkily smart, geeky-outsider fantasy revolves around Cyd Sherman, a musician who is more than usually prone to problems in the real world and escapes the dreary horror of it all by joining like misfits in a cyber-spacey online gang (or “Guild”) in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (or MMORPG) called unsurprisingly “The Game”.

The live action episodes revolve around the interactions of Cyd and her associate ‘Knights of Good’ – all of whom find themselves more at home in an artificial universe of magic, myth, monsters and really mean people rather than mundane reality – although of course there are plenty of impossible tasks, unpalatable hardships and actual mean people here too.

You can check out the show – six seasons thus far – on Day’s dedicated YouTube channel Geek and Sundry…

We don’t do shows here, but since the material clearly overlaps with that old fashioned fantastic universe of comics, Dark Horse Comics approached Day in 2009 in search of a canny cross-fertilisation. The result was a 3-issue miniseries and a short story which appeared on the publisher’s own digital dimension in MySpace Dark Horse Presents #27. That pithy 2-page debut/introduction (illustrated by Jim Rugg and painted and coloured by Juan Ferreya & Dan Jackson) is included here at the conclusion of the main storyline.

On screen the seductive soap opera story is ongoing and began with the characters already in place and interacting, but The Guild comicbook gave Day the chance to work with an unlimited visual budget (that’s the advantage of comics: a monologue in a bedroom costs as much and as little to draw as all the hordes of hell unleashed and riding winged monkeys up the Champs–Elysées) and thus inspired her to reveal the secret origins of her outré comrades in a winning, hilarious and deftly moving prequel tale.

Cyd plays far less than second fiddle at the back of a sub-par orchestra and is very fed up with her crappy life. She knows that she’s a failure at everything and a disappointment to everybody.

Although she has a boyfriend and fools herself that it’s love, deep down she knows that Trevor is a manipulative, exploitative, controlling jerk only using her as roadie, housekeeper, bedwarmer, manager, press-officer, writer and arranger of the music he claims as his as he tries hopelessly to break into the rock biz.

She even goes all over town pinning up the flyers she designed for his third-rate band’s gigs…

Cyd first learned about the manic world of consensual alternate realities when she was pinning up a poster in a comicbook and gaming store and, on the insistence of the therapist her dad is paying for, one day tried to break out of her dis-comfort zone by making new friends – if only by becoming a completely different person in a role-playing alternate universe…

After yet another ungrateful disappointment from Trevor the Rock God, she sat at her keyboard and became Codex, a mystic healer in the captivating fairyland of The Game…

Soon she was exulting in graphic slaughter, thievery and high adventure, meeting loads of wild people all revelling in being someone or something other than they were…

And as she learns and evolves in fantasyland, Cyd makes true friends and proper foes, forming her own guild of like-minded questors. They’re all real even if they aren’t actually there, and their effect on Cyd even leads to a satisfactory showdown with the increasingly unbearable Trevor…

Sharp, clever, moving and painfully funny, this an engaging introduction to the milieu and characters of the show and if I’ve skimped on detail you’ll thank me when you marvel at the captivating interactions of the beguiling cast of adorable misfits and wonder at the astonishing facility of illustrator Rugg as he makes both grim reality and miraculous meta-world come to life – each in its own unforgettable manner…

With covers and supplemental artwork by Georges, Jeanty, Dexter Vines & Tariq Hassan, Matthew Stawicki, Kristian Donaldson, Cary Nord & Dave Stewart, Rugg & Dan Jackson, Juan Ferreyra, Paul Lee, Jason Gonzalez and Jon Adams, working designs and a sketchbook collection from illustrator Rugg, complete with commentary by editor Scott Allie, plus a Bonus Section of tryout pages by a crazed band of artists including Zack Finfrock, Indigo Kelleigh, Kevin McGovern and Ron Chan, this slim, fanciful and thoughtfully funny fantasy offers a wry counterpoint to both gaming bombast and comicbook blood and thunder whilst defending your right to another life, liberty of imagination and the pursuit of fairy gold…

If you need the odd, gentle laugh in your hectic, horrible life The Guild might be just the tonic…
The Guild © 2010 The Guild. All rights reserved.

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Batman: Life After Death


By Tony S. Daniel, Guillem March, Sandu Florea, Norm Rapmund & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85767-123-2

At the climax of a harrowing and sustained campaign of terror by insidious cabal The Black Hand, Batman was apparently killed (by evil New God Darkseid during the “Final Crisis”). Although the news was kept from the general public, the superhero community secretly mourned whilst a small dedicated army of assistants, protégés and allies trained over the years by the Dark Knight formed a “Network” of champions to police GothamCity in the catastrophic days and weeks which followed: marking time until a successor could be found…

Most of the Batman-trained task force refuse to believe their inspirational mentor is dead and thus, believing him only lost, have accepted Dick Grayson – first Robin and latterly Nightwing – as the stand-in Gotham Guardian until Bruce Wayne can find his way back to them.

The transition has been bloody and brutal. Grayson had to stop an outcast contender who sought to usurp the legacy of Batman and turn the role of Dark Knight into debased red-handed avenger rather than benign shadowy protector. For now former Robin and erstwhile Red Hood Jason Todd has been defeated, abandoning his quest to become the new Gotham Guardian even as a new iteration of deceased crimelord Black Mask runs rampant in the city.

Crushed and cast aside in the savage gang-war with the triumphant mobster’s mind-controlled False Face Society, mercurial maniac Two-Face has simply vanished, whilst third force The Penguin has been apparently conquered and cowed: remaining only as a meek and compliant vassal of the triumphant newcomer.

Whoever he is, the current Black Mask is as sadistic, psychotic, meticulously methodical and strategically brilliant as his predecessor. His first move had been to free many of Batman’s most maniacal menaces – temporarily stored at Blackgate Prison after the infamous Arkham Asylum was destroyed. Despite the Network’s utmost efforts and the completion of a new high-tech institution, many of the worst inmates remain at large…

This terse and occasionally histrionic volume collects the contents of Batman #692-699 (December 2009 – July 2010) revealing the identity of the mastermind behind the mask and recounting the final fate of the pretender as well as heralding the return of a much misunderstood and fearfully underestimated foe…

Written and primarily pencilled by Tony S. Daniel, the eponymous saga ‘Life After Death’ begins with ‘The Awakening’ (inked by Sandu Florea) as Grayson – grudgingly assisted by Bruce Wayne’s assassin-trained son Damian as the latest Boy Wonder – continues to hunt the escapees and their Machiavellian manipulator…

So great was the crisis that the National Guard had been deployed to enforce Martial Law, driving back the False Face legions and more or less cordoning them into the Devil’s Square area of the city.

With the successor Batman and Police Commissioner Jim Gordon forced to play a waiting game, Black Mask and his inner circle – malignant “Ministry of Science” boffins Fright, Professor Hugo Strange and Dr. Death – go on the offensive by resurrecting a deadly nemesis even as the new director of Arkham seeks a way of undoing the brainwashing techniques used on the False Faces. Hard pressed on all fronts, Grayson seeks the unique assistance of his mentor’s greatest, most secret asset Selina Kyle, and together they discover a new player in the drama. Marco Falcone has returned to Gotham…

Years ago the original Batman had destroyed the power of the Mafia in the city, driving the last of the “Made Men” into exile and breaking the all-pervasive organisation of Carmine “The Roman” Falcone. Now his last surviving son seems intent on using the current chaos to reclaim his inheritance and re-establish the family business…

However the gangster has his own setbacks to deal with: his safe has just been broken into and the contents swiped by Catwoman. As well as cash and jewels the vault contained the most valuable and potentially dangerous document in Gotham…

Luckily for all concerned, Mario doesn’t realise the role his beloved “niece” Kitrina – a very capable and dangerous teenaged cat-burglar in her own right – played in that theft…

The Ministry of Science now has a ferociously hands-on new member. Concentration Camp survivor Dr. Grant Gruener once haunted Gotham as the scythe-wielding vigilante The Reaper, until his apparent demise at the gauntleted hands of the Dark Knight. After years of genetic tampering and behaviour modification by Strange, the killer is back and ready to resume his crusade…

Moreover new information has revealed that the mesmerised False Faces aren’t just enslaved career criminals but also have members recruited from ordinary law-abiding citizens, all equally mind-controlled by the hideous masks they wear – and now someone is killing them, guilty and innocent alike…

The campaign of terror continues as the headstrong and potentially lethal latest Robin joins his barely tolerated commanding officer in winnowing the hordes of False Faces before the pair are distracted by different enemy in ‘Charades’.

Bruce Wayne’s (if not Batman’s) ultimate adversary is Dr. Tommy Elliot, a beloved boyhood friend as warped by his own mother’s malign influence as Bruce was reshaped by the murder of his beloved parents.

Eminent surgeon Elliot became the twisted, sadistic and obsessive Hush to punish his only friend and childhood companion: one who had been perpetually held up to the troubled, never-good-enough kid as a perfect example of a son by Elliot’s deranged parent. Tommy even divined the billionaire’s greatest secret – the true identity of the Dark Knight…

After many deeply personal, psychotic attacks on Wayne’s legacy and Batman’s friends, Hush took the ultimate step in his psychological war against his oldest confidante by surgically transforming himself into Wayne’s mirror image and attempting to entirely usurp his life (see Batman – Streets of Gotham: Hush Money).

The Batman Family had never accepted that their mentor was dead, and all their actions were predicated upon the premise that he would eventually return to reclaim his mantle, so once Catwoman tracked down and emptied all Elliot’s hidden bank accounts Hush began trading on his stolen looks to rebuild his fortune and take another stab at revenge by bankrupting the Wayne financial empire, simultaneously removing the Bat-Network’s crucial operating capital at the same time…

Only recently reformed criminal-turned-High Society Private Eye Edward Nigma – still known as The Riddler – seemed to suspect the imposture, with Grayson and his comrades ironically compelled to publicly cover for the faux Bruce to keep their own secrets…

At a grand benefit to mark the re-opening of Arkham Asylum, Grayson and the undercover Huntress verbally spar with Elliot, Riddler and the Falcones, but when Kitrina perpetrates another robbery Nigma chases her and sustains a life-altering head injury…

Meanwhile in the bloody streets The Reaper is taking a brutal toll on Black Mask’s enemies and the general public too…

Batman begins his fight back by targeting the suspiciously quiescent Penguin in ‘Fractured Pieces’ even as the newly open Arkham begins to suffer mysterious attacks and its builders and administrators begin succumbing to tragic accidents. But even as the Dark Knight’s strategy prompts a murderous attack on the Bird Bandit by Black Mask forces, Mario has discovered Kitrina’s role in his misfortunes and takes steps to end her interference.

Tragically he has completely underestimated her abilities as he hunts for missing maps of Devil’s Square – and Black Mask’s secret sanctum – which she originally created and has now reclaimed…

Norm Rapmund joins Florea on inking with ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ as Kitrina begins her brutal retaliation against the Falcones and Batman discovers who she really is. As Mario flees the aftermath, the mob boss is ambushed by the Reaper and only the last minute intervention of Batman and Huntress save him from a grisly end.

On the deadly, near-deserted streets, Riddler’s confusion slowly abates as he begins making connections to a life he’d forgotten and re-experiences a compulsion long controlled…

The war takes an ugly turn in ‘Mind Games’ when the Penguin at last makes his move: enslaving Batman with Black Mask’s mind-binding gimmicks and dispatching the befuddled crimebuster to even the score – and perhaps even assassinate the murderous mastermind behind everyone’s woes…

By the time Robin has rescued his brainwashed senior partner, Kitrina has found an ally and mentor of her own – one with no love for the Falcones, Penguin or Black Mask and an agenda all her own – and the Boy Wonder’s unsavoury task is to reconstruct just what horrors Batman has committed since he fell under the spell of the mind-controlling mask.

Armed with inevitable conclusions, hard-won knowledge and unpalatable truths regarding presumed friends and foes, the new Dark Knight at last implacably ends the plague of unrest afflicting Gotham but, even after taking out the Ministry of Science, overcoming the rampaging Reaper and exposing Black Mask, the ‘Liberator’ and his Network allies are acutely aware that the job never ends and the battle is barely begun…

This collection then concludes with the 2-part ‘Riddle Me This’ (illustrated by Guillem March & colourist Tomeu Morey) as the Prince of Puzzlers encounters a murderous old associate in criminal conjuror Blackspell whose ‘Magic Tricks’ concealed a cunning, years-long revenge scheme.

However as the bloodshed and mystery escalated in ‘A Means to an End’ the increasingly overworked Batman was forced to accept that the obvious suspect might not be the guilty one… nor that all his allies were working with him…

Torturous, tumultuous, convoluted and challenging, this action-packed, high-octane Fights ‘n’ Tights drama will deliver all the thrills, spills and chill fans could hope for with impressive punch and panache aplenty. Moreover it’s all very, very pretty to look at and even the freshest neophyte is well aware that it’s all just a prelude to the return of the real Dark Knight…
© 2009, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Runaways: Rock Zombies


By Terry Moore, Chris Yost, James Asmus, Takeshi Miyazawa, Sara Pichelli, Emma Rios, Norman Lee, Craig Yeung & Roland Paris (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4074-0

The Runaways are a bunch of super-powered kids whose parents lied to them.

Whilst conveying an aura of affluent respectability, the adults were in actuality a secret cabal of super-criminals: “The Pride”. These extremely circumspect and clandestine villains played it smart for years and ran Los Angeles without the populace knowing they even existed – and were so ruthlessly dominant that most of the baddies and monsters in the Marvel Universe gave the city a wide berth.

When the appalled, betrayed offspring discovered the truth they rebelled and ran away (Duh!) and after many trials and tribulations – including the death of some of the pesky kids – the young absconders confronted, overthrew and eradicated their progenitors, with the unwelcome result that LA became a newly open city and soft target for ambitious costumed ne’er-do-wells and malevolent masterminds.

The orphans were briefly placed with well-meaning, clueless social services, but before long the renegades – who had inherited assorted powers, talents and devices, if not the amoral proclivities of their progenitors – were compelled to bolt: preferring to stick together on the streets rather than be separated again.

They also felt responsible for and were driven to protect the city they had unwittingly endangered. It was a dangerous wild life and the kids lost friends and recruited new members of the dysfunctional family with alarming frequency

…But not all of them were trustworthy either…

The underlying premise of this series is that adults can’t be trusted – only your friends – and this volume (collecting volume 3, issues #7-10 of the monthly comic-book) sees the kids, after adventures in New York and another century, resettled back in LA and endeavouring to taking their self-imposed role of city defenders seriously.

The current roster comprises Nico Minoru, last in a long line of hereditary sorcerers, whilst Karolina Dean was once the compliant daughter of two domineering aliens intent on global conquest. The extraterrestrial Valley Girl has just lost her lover (rebellious shape-shifting, gender-fluid apprentice Super-Skrull Prince Xavin) who sacrificed him/her/itself to save Karolina from vengeful alien invaders.

Little Molly Hayes is much younger than the others, a super-strong, invulnerable child of evil mutant parents, whilst oafish teen Chase Stein was the son of genuine mad scientists. He might not have inherited their intellects but he has got lots of toys from their arsenal. He also sort of inherited the genetically-augmented 87th century empathic dinosaur Old Lace when her adored previous owner Gertrude Yorkes was killed by the Pride.

Gert’s folks were time-travelling bandits and would-be world conquerors…

The latest editions to the group are Victor Mancha, who can control electricity and manipulate metals; gifts his “father” – genocidal robotic despot Ultron – considered quite useful in the secret weapon he was building and growing, and little Klara Prast, a 12-year Swiss girl rescued from her abusive husband in 1907. She can accelerate the growth and control the motion of plants, and thinks the 21st century is a joyous paradisiacal wonderland…

As this book opens with the 3-part tale ‘Rock Zombies’ by Terry Moore and artists Takeshi Miyazawa, Norman Lee, Craig Yeung & Roland Paris, the voluntary outcasts are back in LA LA land just taking it easy and bonding.

Over at radio station KZIT however, ambitious, greedy power-mad DJ Val Rhymin is chatting to an old friend. Wicked wizard and accountant Monk “Mother” Theppie has come far since the demise of the Minorus who kept the city’s magical denizens tightly bound, and Val’s talk of making zombies has produced a dark inspiration in the cagy mage/treasurer.

He can’t just magic up an army of enslaved undead, but he could use a transformation spell on something that many people have communally experienced. Something like plastic surgery, for example…

It’s Los Angeles: who knows how many people that sort of spell might affect…?

As Nico, Karolina and the younger girls tackle a hostage stand-off, Val is layering the spell into his latest dub mix and whilst the team are blithely vacationing in the desert the demented DJ plays it repeatedly on his show.

By the time the gang hit the city again, thousands of monster-zombies are rampaging through the sunny streets gathering booty for their avaricious master, and when Nico uses her mystic weapon the Staff of One to stop the ghastly rioters the spell is warped and hundreds of individual victims merge into a colossal composite horror…

Whilst she was in the past, the Last of the Minorus was captured and tortured by her own ancestor, a witch determined to make Nico attain her full potential. That scheme has clearly worked as her spells are fantastically stronger and drastically misfire every time she tries one…

After a further disastrous attempt to save the ensorcelled zombies, the kids withdraw and instead go after Rhymin at the Hollywood Bowl where he waits for his slaves to bring all the money and jewels they’ve been ordered to steal.

Also there is Mother, who attempts to steal Nico’s Staff – and regrets it for the last three seconds of his life…

With the wizard gone it doesn’t take the kids long to reverse the spell and save the day but Nico is now terrified by how lethally uncontrollable her power has become…

Issue #10 offered two tales, beginning with the hilarious ‘Mollifest Destiny’ by Chris Yost & Sara Pichelli. Molly is a super-strong and tough mutant going through those difficult bossy-boots years but she’s faithful, loyal and extremely protective of her friends.

Elsewhere in the world, the world’s mutant population was reduced to a couple of hundred desperate souls, following the temporary madness of the Avenger Scarlet Witch (as seen in the various House of M story-arcs).

Most of the empowered survivors banded together in self-imposed exile on Utopia Island in San Francisco Bay: a defensive enclave led and defended by the X-Men. Although generally welcomed by most of the easygoing residents of the city, tensions were high and leader Cyclops ran the colony in an increasingly draconian and military manner whilst telepath Emma Frost sent out a psychic summons offering all remaining mutants sanctuary.

Heeding the call, little Mollie reluctantly obeyed but she would rather have stayed with her friends…

…And after a very short while trying to deal with the hyper-active, super-curious, annoyingly perky, indestructible and incredibly destructive little girl, Colossus, the Beast, Frost, Cyclops and especially Wolverine were more than happy to return her to them – especially after Wolverine saw how Mollie dealt with a gang of super-villains who wanted to take revenge on the turbulent tyke for the unexpiated sins of her parents…

The stories end with a warmly informative character piece by James Asmus & Emma Rios, which finds the reunited runaways playing ‘Truth or Dare’ in the Malibu beach house they have appropriated.

As well as learning more about each other, the kids discover just how unruly Nico’s Staff has become after it grotesquely interacts with another mystic talisman recently confiscated from racist cult The Sons of the Serpent. There’s kissing and violence and giant snakes and icky grossness, dudes…

With covers and variants by Humberto Ramos, David LaFuente & Christina Strain, cover production art by LaFuente and design sketches from Rios, this marvellously upbeat and deliciously funny thriller is a superbly entertaining, thought-provoking Fights ‘n’ Tights treasure bursting with wit, action, horror, humour, charm and poignant passion, once more proving that superhero comics can surmount their escapist, gratuitous power-fantasy roots and deliver stories of depth and even joy.

© 2009 Marvel Characters Inc. All Rights Reserved.