Outsiders: Crisis Intervention


By Judd Winick, Jen Van Meter, Matthew Clark, Dietrich Smith, Art Thibert & Steve Bird (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0973-5

Once upon a time superheroes, like firemen, sat around their assorted lairs or went about their civilian pursuits until the call of duty summoned them to deal with a breaking emergency. In the increasingly sober and serious world after Crisis on Infinite Earths, that precept was challenged with a number of costumed adventurers evolving into pre-emptive strikers…

Arsenal and Nightwing always intended to run their new team as a covert and pre-emptive pack of self-professed “hunters”: seeking out and taking down metahuman threats and extraordinary criminals before they could do harm, but they were continually thwarted as events always seemed to find them off-guard and unready…

Now, following the deaths of more beloved comrades (see Teen Titans/Outsiders: the Insiders), Arsenal decides to finally live up to the brief by going after the villainous scum with all guns blazing and the gloves off…

This fourth edgy compendium eschews individual issue titles but for your convenience and mine I’ve again supplied them from the original issues (#29-33 plus relevant portions of Firestorm #19, covering December 2005 to March 2006) of Judd Winick’s grim and witty Outsiders comicbook, with the barely-functioning team – Arsenal, Starfire, Grace, Thunder, Shift, Jade and Captain Marvel Jr. – facing their lowest moments in the aftermath of their betrayal by Indigo…

‘Unoriginal Sins, Part 1: All Together Now’ by Winick, Matthew Clark & Art Thibert begins with the out-of-control divine force The Spectre declaring war on magic-users and destroying mystical fortress The Rock of Eternity, thereby unleashing the Seven Deadly Sins.

These personified spiritual anathemas find a new home inside Outsiders antagonist Ishmael Gregor who had previously transformed himself into the benighted and demonic Sabbac in his unquenchable thirst for power (see Outsiders: Sum of All Evil)…

When Deathstroke the Terminator offers the painfully ambitious Gregor a position in Lex Luthor‘s criminal elite The Society the stage is set for an epic confrontation, but before the devil can mobilise, Dr. Sivana and the survivors of the Fearsome Five attack Alcatraz and provoke an immediate response from the mad-as-hell Outsiders…

When Sabbac at last arrives, in the concluding episode ‘All Hell Breaks Loose’ using the powers of the Sins to derange friend and foe alike through waves of Lust, Rage, Envy and more, founding Outsider Katana is inexorably drawn to the conflict by her ensorcelled sword and saves the day, just before demi-goddess and old friend Donna Troy shows up, hoping to recruit the more cosmic team-members for a mission in deep space…

‘Out of Town Work’ (illustrated by Dietrich Smith, Thibert & Steve Bird) directly ties in to the company crossover Infinite Crisis with Troy seconding Jade, Shift, Starfire and the young Marvel as part of a task force to save the universe.

Significant portions of Firestorm #19’s ‘The Forests of the Night’ by Stuart Moore, Jamal Igle & Rob Stull are also included as the voyagers head for the heart of Creation to battle the unknown enemy but become sidetracked and embroiled in lethal sibling rivalry as Starfire’s sister Blackfire ambushes the squad in ‘Detour’…

Meanwhile on Earth, Katana sticks around when Arsenal decides to attack Deathstroke and the Society, culminating in a devastating ‘Deep Impact’ wherein the Outsiders finally deliver a crushing and costly defeat on the super-criminal army just as all reality goes insane thanks to the aforementioned Infinite Crisis hitting the Cosmic Reset Button.

The next volume will begin with the first One Year Later story-arc…

Wickedly barbed, action-packed and often distressingly hard-hitting, Outsiders was one of the very best series pursuing that “hunting heroes” concept, resulting in some of the most exciting superhero sagas of the last decade. Still gripping, evocative and extremely readable, these bleakly powerful stories will astound and amaze older fans of the genre, but this volume at least is best seen in conjunction with too many other books to truly stand on its own merits.

The action is intense, and the dialogue wonderful, but the story won’t appeal or even be understandable to casual readers whilst the effect of the notional cliffhanger ending is rather negated by the deliberately ambiguous closing scene. Page by page and scene by scene this is great stuff, but the imposed conclusion renders all that sterling work irrelevant. This is another one for completists only, I’m afraid.
© 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Golden Age Western Comics


By various, compiled and edited by Steven Brower (PowerHouse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-57687-594-0

There was a time, not that very long ago, when all of popular fiction was engorged with tales of Cowboys and Indians.

As always happens with such periodic phenomena – such as the Swinging Sixties Super-Spy Boom and perhaps the more recent Vampire/Werewolf Boyfriend trend (too soon to tell, but I’m sharpening stakes, stocking silverware and having some cola and Perrier blessed, just in case…) – there’s a tremendous amount of dross and a few spectacular gems.

On such occasions there’s also generally a small amount of wonderful but not-quite-life-changing material that gets lost in the shuffle: carried along with the overwhelming surge of material pumped out by TV, film, comics and book producers and even the toy, game and record industries.

After World War II the American family entertainment market – for which read comics, radio and the burgeoning television industry – became comprehensively enamoured of the clear-cut, simplistic sensibilities and easy, escapist solutions offered by Tales of the Old West; already a firmly established favourite of paperback fiction, movie serials and feature films.

I’ve often pondered on how almost simultaneously a dark, bleak, nigh-nihilistic and oddly left-leaning Film Noir genre quietly blossomed alongside that wholesome revolution, seemingly for the cynical minority of entertainment intellectuals who somehow knew that the returned veterans still hadn’t found a Land Fit for Heroes… but that’s a thought for another time and different graphic novel review.

Even though comic books had encompassed western heroes from the very start – there were cowboy strips in the premier issues of both Action Comics and Marvel Comics – the post-war years saw a vast outpouring of anthology titles with new gun-toting heroes to replace the rapidly dwindling supply of costumed Mystery Men, and true to formula, most of these pioneers ranged from transiently mediocre to outright appalling.

With every comic-book publisher turning hopeful eyes westward, it was natural that most of the historical figures would quickly find a home and of course facts counted little, as indeed they never had with cowboy literature…

Europe and Britain also embraced the Sagebrush zeitgeist and produced some pretty impressive work, with France and Italy eventually making the genre their own by the end of the 1960s. Still and all there was the rare gleam of gold and also a fair share of highly acceptable silver in the American tales, and as always, the crucial difference was due to the artists and writers involved…

With all the top-line characters and properties such as Tomahawk, Rawhide Kid, or the Lone Ranger still fully owned by big concerns, this delightful and impressive hardback compilation gathers a broad selection of the second-string (call ’em Sunday matinee or B-movie comics if you want) material and, although there’s no Kinstler or Kubert or Kirby classics, what editor Steven Brower has re-presented here in lavish, scanned full-colour is a magnificent meat-and-potatoes snapshot of what kids of the time would have been avidly absorbing.

Sadly records are awfully spotty for this period and genre but I’m cocky enough to offer a few guesses whenever the creator credits aren’t available and I’m relatively sure of my footing…

After an informative introduction from Christopher Irving and an introductory essay by Brower, the rip-roaring yet wholesome fun and thrills begin with Texas Tim, Ranger (from an undesignated issue of Blazing West in 1948), part of writer/Editor Richard Hughes’ superb American Comics Group line, and a veritable one-man band of creative trend following. In this sadly uncredited yarn (perhaps drawn by Edmond Good).

Hughes is an unsung hero of the industry, competing with the Big Boys in spy, humour, western, horror and superhero titles well into the 1960s and writing the bulk of the stories himself.

Here the Texan lawman tracks down rustlers and foils a plot to frame an innocent man in a rollicking 8-page romp after which movie star Lash LaRue solves the case of ‘The King’s Ransom’ in an adventure stuffed with chases, kidnapping, fights, framed Indians and prodigal sons, originally from #56 (July 1955 and perhaps drawn by John Belfi or Tony Sgroi) of his own licensed title. Fawcett had a huge stable (I said it and I ain’t sorry, neither) of Western screen stars, and when they quit comics in 1953 the gems that didn’t go to DC – such as Hopalong Cassidy – went to Capitol/Charlton Comics who purchased the bulk of retired comics publishers inventory during the 1950’s…

Charlton was always a minor player in the comics leagues, paying less, selling less, and generally caring less about cultivating a fan base than the major players. But they managed to discover and train more big names in the 1960s than either Marvel or DC, and created a vast and solid canon of memorable characters, concepts and genre material. Almost all their stuff was written by Joe Gill or Pat Masulli, although in the 1960s young tyros like Roy Thomas, Steve Skeates, Dave Kaler and Denny O’Neil all got a healthy first bite of the cherry there, and I’m fairly certain “King of Comics” Paul S. Newman was the regular Larue scripter…

‘Magic Arrow Rides the Pony Express’ hails from Youthful Publications’ Indian Fighter (1950) illustrated by S. B. Rosen and detailing how the young Seneca chief and all-around “Good Injun” saves the famed postal service from unscrupulous badmen armed only with his quiver of enchanted shafts.

Fawcett also published screen star Tom Mix Western and from #15, 1949 comes ‘Tom Mix and the Desert Maelstrom’ probably drawn by Carl Pfeufer and John Jordan – as most of the strips were – wherein the legendary lawman braved a stupendous sandstorm to capture bank-robbers and save a wounded rodeo rider from destitution.

Lots of publishers had Jesse James series and the one sampled here comes from Charlton’s Cowboy Western Comics #39, (June 1955, probably written by Gill & illustrated by William M. Allison). In it the always misunderstood gunslinger was framed for a stage hold-up…

Magazine Enterprises produced some the very best comics of the 1950s and from Dan’l Boone #4, December 1955 comes the stirring saga of pioneer America ‘Peril Shadows the Forest Trail’, wherein the mythical scout and woodsman ferrets out a murderous white turncoat in a timeless thriller illustrated by the hugely undervalued Joe Certa.

‘Buffalo Belle’ also comes from the 1948 Blazing West and again displays Hughes’ mastery of the short story strip as a miniskirt-wearing agent of  justice deals with a dragged-up bandit in a terrific yarn possibly limned by Max Elkan or even Charles Sultan…

Also from that ACG title are the lovely ‘Little Lobo the Bantam Buckeroo’ – illustrated by Leonard Starr in his transitional Milton Caniff drawing style – depicting the tempestuous boy’s battle against fur thieves, and the charming ‘Tenderfoot’ (by a frustratingly familiar artist I can’t identify, but who might be Paul Cooper) with the sissy-looking Eastern Dude dispensing western vengeance to bullies and bandits alike…

‘Little Eagle: Soldier in the Making’ also comes from Indian Fighter – illustrated with near-abstract verve by Manny Stallman – and heads firmly into fantasy as a youthful brave equipped with magic wings tackles renegade brave Black Dog before he sets the entire frontier ablaze with war…

Avon Books started in 1941, created when the American News Corporation bought out pulp magazine publishers J.S. Ogilvie, and their output was famously described by Time Magazine as “westerns, whodunits and the kind of boy-meets-girl story that can be illustrated by a ripe cheesecake jacket.”

By 1945 the company had launched a comic-book division as fiercely populist as the parent company with over 100 short-lived genre titles such as Atomic Spy Cases, Bachelor’s Diary, Behind Prison Bars, Campus Romance, Gangsters and Gun Molls, Slave Girl Comics, War Dogs of the U.S. Army, White Princess of the Jungle and many others, all aimed – even the funny animal titles like Space Mouse and Spotty the Pup! – at a slightly older and more discerning audience and all drawn by some of the best artists working at the time.

Many if not most sported lush painted covers that were both eye-catching and beautiful.

Six of their titles had respectable runs: Peter Rabbit, Eerie, Wild Bill Hickock, outrageous “Commie-busting” war comic Captain Steve Savage, Fighting Indians of the Wild West and their own magnificently illustrated fictionalised adventures of Jesse James.

‘Terror at Taos’ comes from Avon’s Kit Carson #6 (March 1955, but reprinted here from Fighting Indians of the Wild West) and pits the famed scout against corrupt officials and traitorous wagon masters in the Commancheria territory, all lavishly rendered by the superb Jerry McCann.

Next is ‘Young Falcon and the Swindlers’ from Fawcett’s Gabby Hayes Western #17 (April 1950) by an artist doing a very creditable impression of Norman Maurer, wherein the lost prince of the Truefeather Tribe tracked down crooked assayers who bilked him of his rightful pay, after which ‘Annie Oakley’ (Cowboy Western Stories # 38, April/May 1952) finds the famed sharpshooter hunting bandits in a canny 4-page quickie illustrated by Jerry Iger under the pen-name Jerry Maxwell.

Charlton’s back catalogue also provided ‘Flying Eagle in Golden Treachery’ from Death Valley #9 October 1955, as the noble brave foils white claim-jumpers togged up like Indians, and ‘Cry for Revenge’ (Cowboy Western #49 May/June 1954) saw old Fawcett star Golden Arrow hunt down more murderous whites posing as Red Men to drive settlers off their land in a gripping (Gill?) yarn illustrated by Dick Giordano & Vince Alascia.

‘Chief Black Hawk and his Dogs of War’ was a historical puff-piece also from the aforementioned Kit Carson #6 with artist Harry Larsen delineating the rise and fall of the legendary Sauk war chief after which Giordano & Alascia’s ‘Triple Test’ (Cowboy Western #49 May/June 1954) laconically describes the dangers of marrying in a rare, wry light-hearted tale from an age of shoot-and-swipe sagas…

Gabby Hayes Western #17 also provided an adventure of the World’s Most Successful Sidekick himself (seriously: Hayes was the comedy stooge to almost every cowboy in Tinsel Town, from Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy to Randolph Scott and John Wayne).

‘The Big Game Hunt’ is a fun-filled riot as the garrulous old coot takes the wind out of snobby globe-trotting safari addict and saves the life of a cantankerous moose in a charming rib-tickler probably written by Rod Reed or Irwin Schoffman and illustrated by Leonard Frank.

The last tales in this tome are from Charlton; starting with the Giordano & Alascia ‘Breakout in Rondo Prison’ (Range Busters #10 September 1955) wherein hard-riding trio Scott, Chip and Doodle were framed for robbery in a pokey cow-town and forced to fight their way to freedom after which the action ends with a superb costumed cowboy thriller ‘For Talon’s Nest’ from Masked Raider #2 (August 1955) wherein the mystery gunslinger is forced to defend his pet Eagle’s honour in a classy classic drawn by Mike Sekowsky (and possibly inked by Standard Comics comrade Mike Peppe?)

Sadly there’s no inclusion of Charlton’s superb and long-running Billy the Kid, Gunmaster or Cheyenne Kid features but hopefully there’s the possibility of a follow-up volume dedicated to them…?

Within these pages cow-punching aficionados (no, it’s neither a sexual proclivity nor an Olympic sport) and all fans of charming and nostalgia-stuffed comics can (re)discover a selection of range-riding rollercoaster rides about misunderstood fast-guns or noble savages compelled to take up arms against an assorted passel of low-down no-goods and scurvy owlhoots, and all the other myriad tropes and touchstones of Western mythology. Black hats, white hats, great pictures and traditional action values – what more could you possibly ask for?

Text, compilation and editing © 2012 Steven Brower. Foreword © 2012 Christopher Irving. All rights reserved.

The Fantastic Four Collectors Album & The Fantastic Four Return (Paperbacks)


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & various (Lancer)
“ISBNs” 72-111 and 72-169

Here’s a final brace of Swinging Sixties “Pop-Art” compendia celebrating the meteoric rise of the Little House that Stan, Jack and Steve Built, which will probably be of interest only to inky-fingered nostalgics, fan fanatics collectors and historical obsessive pickers, but as I’m all of them and it’s my party:

Far more than a writer or Editor; Stan Lee was also a master of entrepreneurial publicity generation and his tireless schmoozing and exhaustive attention-seeking was as crucial as the actual characters and stories in promoting his burgeoning line of superstars.

In the 1960s most adults, especially many of the professionals who worked in the field, considered comic-books a ghetto. Some disguised their identities whilst others were “just there until they caught a break”. Stan and creative lynchpins Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko had another idea – change the perception.

Whilst Kirby and Ditko pursued their respective creative credos and craft, waiting for the quality of the work to be noticed, Stan pursued every opportunity to break down the ghetto walls: college lecture tours, animated shows (of frankly dubious quality at the start, but always improving), foreign franchising and of course getting their product onto mainstream bookshelves in real book shops.

There had been a revolution in popular fiction during the 1950s with a huge expansion of affordable paperback books, and companies developed extensive genre niche-markets, such as war, western, romance, science-fiction and fantasy.

Always hungry for more product for their cheap ubiquitous lines, many old novels and short stories collections were republished, introducing new generations to fantastic pulp authors like Robert E. Howard, Otis Adelbert Kline, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and many others.

In 1955, spurred on by the huge parallel success of cartoon and gag book collections, Bill Gaines began releasing paperback compendiums culling the best strips and features from his landmark humour magazine Mad, and comics’ Silver Age was mirrored in popular publishing by an insatiable hunger for escapist fantasy fiction.

In 1964 Bantam Books began reprinting the earliest pulp adventures of Doc Savage, triggering a revival of pulp prose superheroes, and seemed the ideal partner when Marvel began a short-lived attempt to “novelise” their comicbook stable with The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker and Captain America in the Great Gold Steal.

Although growing commercially by leaps and bounds, Marvel in the early 1960s was still hampered by a crippling distribution deal limiting the company to 16 titles (which would curtail their output until 1968), so each new comicbook had to fill the revenue-generating slot (however small) of an existing title. Even though the costumed characters were selling well, each new title would limit the company’s breadth of genres (horror, western, war, etc) and comics were still a very broad field at that time. It was putting a lot of eggs in one basket and superheroes had failed twice before for Marvel.

As Lee cautiously replaced a spectrum of genre titles and specialised in superheroes, a most fortunate event occurred with the advent of the Batman TV show in January 1966. Almost overnight the world went costumed-hero crazy and many publishers repackaged their old comics stories in cheap and cheerful, digest-sized monochrome paperbacks, and it’s easy to assume that Marvel’s resized book collections were just another company cash-cow, part of their perennial “flood the marketplace” sales strategy, but it’s just not true.

Lee’s deal with Lancer to publish selected adventures in handy paperback editions had begun a year earlier with The Fantastic Four Collectors Album. Other comics publishers – National/DC, Tower Comics and Archie – were just as keen to add some credibility and even literary legitimacy to their efforts, but were caught playing catch-up in the fresh new marketplace.  Moreover, when Lancer began releasing Marvel’s Mightiest in potent and portable little collections it was simple to negotiate British iterations of those editions.

Except for the FF – as far as I can ascertain neither of the books on display here ever had a UK edition.

A word about artwork here: modern comics are almost universally full-coloured in Britain and America, but for over a century black and white was the only real choice for most mass market publishers – additional (colour) plates being just too expensive for shoe-string operations to indulge in. Even the colour of 1960s comics was cheap, and primitive and solid black line, expertly applied by master artists, was the very life-force of sequential narrative.

These days computer enhanced art can hide a multitude of weaknesses – if not actual pictorial sins – but back then companies lived or died on the illustrating skills of their artists: so even in basic black and white (and the printing of paperbacks was as basic as the accountants and bean-counters could get it) the Kirbys and Ditkos of the industry exploded out of those little pages and electrified the readership.

I can’t see that happening with many modern artists deprived of their slick paper and multi-million hued colour palettes…

This first stellar volume from the utterly on-form Lee, Kirby & Dick Ayers opened with a couple of second appearances as the deadly Doctor Doom allied with a reluctant but gullible Sub-Mariner to attack our quirky quartet in ‘Captives of the Deadly Duo!’ (FF #6, 1962)

In this first Marvel super-villain team up Prince Namor‘s growing affection for the team’s female member forced the sub-sea stalwart to save his foes from dire death in outer space – but only after Doom tried to kill him too…

That superb classic was actually split into two sections and interrupted by a quick recap of the origin, cobbled together from #1 and #11…

The Fantastic Four saw maverick scientist Reed Richards summon his girl-friend Sue Storm, their friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother Johnny before heading off on their first mission. In a flashback we discover they are driven survivors of a private space-shot which went horribly wrong when Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding. They crashed back to Earth where they found that they’d all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks…

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible, Johnny Storm could turn into living flame and tragic Ben turned into a shambling, rocky freak. Shaken but unbowed they vow to dedicate their new abilities to benefiting mankind…

After a series of stunning solo pin-ups by Kirby & Joe Sinnott, ‘The Impossible Man’ also from #11 (February 1963) followed; depicting a bizarre, baddie-free yet compellingly light-hearted tale about a fun-seeking but obnoxiously omnipotent visitor from the stars who only wants to have fun, and could only be “defeated” by boredom…

Following Super Skrull and Molecule Man pin-ups, ‘The Mad Menace of the Macabre Mole Man!’ (Lee, Kirby & Chic Stone from issue #31, October 1964) saw the uncanny underground outcast try once more to conquer the surface world in a stunning tale which balanced a loopy plan to steal entire streets of New York City with a portentous sub-plot featuring a mysterious man from Sue’s past. Presumably to avoid confusion a rather fractious spat over jurisdiction with the Mighty Avengers was excised from this edition…

To complete the graphic wonderment this initial outing ends with pin-ups of the Hate Monger and the dastardly Diablo as well as a house ad for the burgeoning Marvel Comics Line…

The Fantastic Four Return (Guest Star Sub-Mariner) was the penultimate Marvel/Lancer edition, released in 1967 and opening with ‘The Final Victory of Dr. Doom!’ from Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1964, by Lee, Kirby & Stone) and saw the mysterious monarch of Latveria brazenly attack the quartet only to suffer his most galling defeat, after which ‘Side-by-Side with Sub-Mariner!’ brought the aquatic anti-hero one step closer to his own series when the team lent surreptitious aid to the embattled undersea monarch against the hordes of deadly sub-sea barbarian Attuma in a blistering battle yarn by Lee, Kirby & Stone from FF #33 (December 1964).

‘Calamity on the Campus!’ (FF #35 February 1965 by the same creative team) saw the heroes visit Reed Richard’s old Alma Mater in a tale designed to pander to the burgeoning college fan-base Marvel was cultivating, but the rousing yarn that brought back Diablo and introduced the monstrous homunculus Dragon Man easily stands up as a classic on its own merits, full of spectacular action and even advancing the moribund romance between Reed and Sue to the point that he would actually propose in the months to come…

This superb book only boasts one pin-up but it is a classic shot of the mighty and regal Sub-Mariner by Kirby & Stone…

As someone who bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years – including the constantly recycled reprints in British weeklies from the mid-sixties to the 1980s – I have to admit that the classy classic paperback editions have a charm and attraction all their own even if they are heavily edited and abridged and rather disturbingly printed in both portrait and landscape format…

If you’ve not read these tales before then there are certainly better places to do so (such as the pertinent Essential or Marvel Masterwork volumes) but even with all the archaic and just plain dumb bits these books are still fabulous super-hero sagas with beautiful art that will never stale or wither, and for us backward-looking Baby-boomers these nostalgic pocket tomes have an incomprehensible allure that logic just can’t tarnish or taint…
© 1966 and 1967 Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved.

Batman: Blind Justice


By Sam Hamm, Denys Cowan & Dick Giordano (DC Comics)
ISBN 10: 1-56389-047-X       ISBN 10: 978-1563890475

1989 was a banner year for Batman. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the Caped Crusader and the world was about to go completely Bat-crazy for the second time in twenty-five years, so DC were pushing the boat out preparing a brand-new title to add to the Gotham Guardian’s stable of comicbooks.

Two years earlier in 1985-1986, the venerable publisher had grabbed headlines by boldly retconning their entire ponderous continuity via the groundbreaking maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths; ejecting the entire concept of a multiverse and re-knitting time so that there had only ever been one Earth. For readers, the planet was now a perfect place to jump on at the start: a world literally festooned with iconic heroes and villains draped in a clear and cogent backstory nobody knew yet.

Many of their greatest characters got a unique restart, with the conceit being that the characters had been around for years and the readership were simply tuning in on just another working day.

Because of the Tim Burton movie Batman’s popularity was at an intoxicating peak and, since DC was still in the throes of re-jigging the entire narrative continuity, this three-part epic (two 80-page specials bracketing a single regular issue, reprinting Detective Comics #598-600, March-May 1989) can in many ways be seen as a transitional tale in the re-imagining of the Dark Knight for the 1990s…

After an introduction by the author the saga begins with ‘The Sleep of Reason’: Bruce Wayne awakes from an uncharacteristic nightmare and walks into a perplexing and macabre murder mystery wherein a night watchman has been reduced to a sack of powdered bones and organs. Across town, plucky Jeannie Bowen has just hit Gotham, looking for her brother who simply vanished one day after leaving work at Waynetech…

The nightmares continue to plague the Batman’s alter ego as Jeannie comes up against an administrative stone wall. Her brother’s boss claims no “Roy Kane” has ever worked for the cutting-edge research firm, but when the Dark Knight barely survives an encounter with a technological monster dubbed the Bonecrusher the disparate events begin to gel together…

‘The Kindness of Strangers’ brings Bruce Wayne to Jeannie’s aid and together they pierce the corporate wall at Waynetech and discover brother Roy was indeed employed there, but his tenure and subsequent disappearance have been excised from all records.

Roy had been the assistant to the company’s paraplegic genius Kenneth Harbinger, whose groundbreaking discoveries into cybernetic replacements and enhancements had offered great hope for physical trauma patients, but the junior had simply not turned up for work one day…

Now a police sweep finds Roy amnesiac and derelict on the streets. Apparently brain-damaged, he also seems to have a psychic connection to the devastating Bonecrusher…

When the hulking brute self-destructs rather than surrender to Batman and the cops, Roy and Jeannie move into Wayne Manor and, as the billionaire begins to clean house at Waynetech, they discover that the young man has been surreptitiously fitted with a memory transceiver biochip: a cybernetic back-door which allows a mystery mastermind to possess bodies at will. Bonecrusher is not one man but a slave army of remote control killers…

Only the seemingly benign Harbinger can be behind it, but further investigations in ‘The Price of Knowledge’ reveal that he had not worked alone. Wayne’s companies have been targeted by a clandestine “Cartel” of corporate raiders intent on possessing all his wealth and technologies, but as the Batman moves in all he finds is Harbinger’s corpse…

Moreover, someone has pieced together Wayne’s eccentric lifestyle, history and expenses and had the playboy arrested as a communist spy…

Harbinger is not dead. The crippled genius has simply abandoned his broken body and taken up residence in other unsuspecting biochip recipients. Free and fit, he goes on a spree of physical excess and wilful murder whilst Bruce Wayne festers under house arrest, enforced helplessness and increasingly horrific dreams…

As the government prosecutors track down the men who individually trained the boy-orphan Wayne as he travelled across Europe and the East years ago, the case against the accused spy looks to be unshakable, especially once French manhunter Henri Ducard agrees to be a bought witness and say whatever the prosecutors wish…

However proceedings take a dark turn when Harbinger in another borrowed body and, now at odds with his former Cartel paymasters, shoots Wayne on the Courthouse steps, possibly crippling him permanently…

‘Hidden Agendas’ finds Harbinger setting up his own organisation and powerbase just as the ruthless and amoral Ducard puts together scraps of information and deduces Bruce Wayne’s real secret. However the broken and demoralised Gotham Guardian gets a new lease of life when Roy discovers the Batcave and offers to lend his bio-chipped body to the disabled crusader for use as a surrogate Batman…

Wayne refuses but Roy is persistent and the continual threat of Harbinger’s hidden new life eventually leads the desperate and debilitated detective to make the biggest mistake of his career…

‘Covert Operations’ sees a Dark Knight haunting the alleys and rooftops of Gotham after weeks of absence, prompting Ducard to fetch up at the mansion with an astonishing proposition…

‘Ulterior Motives’ sees the compelling if convoluted saga come to a shattering climax as Wayne’s mind in Roy’s body tracks down and confronts Harbinger and his platoon of augmented Bonecrushers before turning the tables on the cartel. Of course the price paid for the victory is heartbreak, tragedy death and relentless guilt…

This is amongst the very best of modern Batman yarns: dark, intense, cunning and incredibly complex; blending high-tech adventure with brooding psychological drama, doomed romance with corporate and political intrigue, all illustrated with mesmerising verve and style by Denys Cowan & Dick Giordano.

Moreover, as an anniversary event, the collected edition also includes a superb gallery of graphic appreciations from Bob Kane, Neal Adams, Kyle Baker, Norm Breyfogle, Howard Chaykin, Mike Zeck, Mike Mignola, Walt Simonson and David Mazzucchelli.

If you haven’t seen this supremely engaging tale – criminally out of print but well worth hunting down – then you don’t really know the Dark Knight yet…
© 1989, 1990, 1992 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Teen Titans/Outsiders: the Insiders

New Expanded Review

By Geoff Johns, Winick & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-247-6
Once upon a time superheroes, like firemen, sat around their assorted lairs or went about their civilian pursuits until the call of duty summoned them to deal with a breaking emergency. In the increasingly sober and serious world after Crisis on Infinite Earths, that precept was challenged with a number of costumed adventurers evolving into pre-emptive strikers…

After the deaths of two Teen Titans, Arsenal convinced the heartbroken Nightwing to run a covert and pre-emptive pack of self-professed “hunters”: seeking out and taking down metahuman threats and extraordinary criminals before they could do harm …

Nominally the fourth Outsiders collection this tome is also technically a Teen Titans graphic novel, as a case involving the kids overlaps and crosses over with the covert hunters’ latest disaster as originally seen in Teen Titans #24-26 and Outsiders #24-25 and 28…

This edgy chronicle is set in the slow and ponderous build-up to DC’s Infinite Crisis crossover event with lots of long-running story-threads pulling together ready for the big bang, and the tense tale contained herein collects a shared storyline that began with ‘The Insiders Part 1’ by Geoff Johns, Matthew Clark & Art Thibert, from TT #24, wherein Superboy, who had always believed himself a clone of Superman, discovered that part of his DNA was Lex Luthor‘s – just as a deeply embedded psychological program activated, forcing him to mercilessly attack his fellow Titans.

With Wonder Girl, Cyborg, Kid Flash, Beast Boy, Raven and Speedy out of action the severely injured Robin desperately contacts the team’s mentors, but the Outsiders have a few problems of their own…

‘The Insiders Part 2’ in Outsiders #24 (by Judd Winick & Carlos D’anda) opens moments after the embattled team – Nightwing, Arsenal, Shift, Jade, Grace, Thunder and Starfire – have discovered that the innocuous Indigo (a robotic being from the future who travelled back to our time and inadvertently caused the death of Omen and Donna Troy) is in fact the deadly artificial invader Brainiac 8, with her affable cover personality finally subsumed by the cybernetic monster within. Her mission has always been to ensure the future dominance of the planet Colu by assassinating key Earth heroes and re-configuring the time-continuum, and now the time has come…

The battered heroes unite in the third chapter as Lex Luthor and the first Brainiac rendezvous with their corrupted pawns. With a wave of robotic automatons reprogrammed by the former Indigo massing to attack humanity, the Titans once more confront Superboy in a cataclysmic battle…

Despite being painfully outmatched, some vestige of their comrade still remains and they narrowly survive, whilst Brainiac 8’s conversion also seems less than total and she alternatively taunts and begs the Outsiders to kill her if they can…

The crisis culminates when Superboy at last turns on Luthor, and a heartbroken Shift finally acquiesces to his former lover’s pleas and destroys Indigo in a manner only he can…

In the aftermath a key member quits the outsiders whilst in ‘Soul Searching’ (Johns, Tony Daniel & Marlo Alquiza from Teen Titans #26) the restored Conner Kent ponders his recent actions and agonises over whether a test tube hero with the genes of the World’s Wickedest Man has any right to happiness or any spark of the Divine, before mystic Raven offers him a shred of redemption, whilst from Outsiders #28 ‘Letting it Go’ (Winick, Clark & Thibert) shows the individual survivors each commemorating their lost comrade Indigo in their own unique way

In case you’re wondering: issues #26-27 were a fill-in tale starring Batman and the original Outsiders and are neither germane nor included here…

Riotous, rocket-paced and compellingly poignant, this engaging Fights ‘n’ Tights thriller reset and repositioned both series for the cosmic shenanigans to come and, whilst not perhaps the sort of tale to tempt a casual reader, will certainly delight any devotee of Costumed Dramas.
© 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Avengers: The Children’s Crusade


By Allan Heinberg, Jim Cheung, Alan Davis, Olivier Coipel & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-485-0

As the new Avengers film screens across the world, Marvel has again released a bunch of tie-in books and trade paperback collections to maximise exposure and cater to those movie fans wanting to follow up the cinematic exposure with a comics experience.

This stunning yarn is every bit as epic as any big screen extravaganza but does depend a bit too much on a thorough grounding in Avengers lore so newbies might struggle a bit with the minutiae…

Once upon a time the mutant Scarlet Witch married the android Vision and they had – through the agency of magic and Wanda’s unsuspected ability to reshape reality – twin boys. Over the course of time it was revealed that the boys were not real (for further details see Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Avengers) and as the years passed the tragedy drove the Scarlet Witch to insanity.

When Wanda tipped completely over the edge and destroyed at least three of her team-mates, the “World’s Mightiest Heroes” were shut down and rebooted in a highly publicised event known as Avengers Disassembled. Of course it was only to replace them with both The New and Young Avengers. The event also spilled over into the regular titles of current team members, and affiliated comic-books such as the Fantastic Four and Spectacular Spider-Man ran parallel but not necessarily interconnected story-arcs to accompany the Big Show.

Said Big Show consisted of the worst day in the team’s history as the Witch manipulated people and events: betraying her oldest, closest friends and causing the destruction of everything they held dear.

In the later company crossover event House of M reality was rewritten (yes, again!) when she had another breakdown and altered Earth continuity so that Magneto’s mutants ruled a society where normal humans (“sapiens”) were an acknowledged evolutionary dead-end living out their lives and destined for extinction within two generations. It took every hero on Earth and a great deal of luck to put that genie back in a bottle and in the aftermath almost no mutants were left on Earth…

Needless to say in recent time Wanda Maximoff has not been anybody’s favourite person so it’s perhaps lucky that no one on Earth seems to know her current whereabouts…

This compilation collects portions of Uncanny X-Men #526, Avengers: the Children’s Crusade #1-9 and Avengers: the Children’s Crusade – Young Avengers issue #1 (published in comicbook form from October 2011 to March 2012) which comprised the core-story for the latest relaunch of the constantly-changing grim and gritty alternate universe.

This gripping but convoluted tale opens with ‘Rebuilding’ (from X-Men #526 by author Allan Heinberg and artists Olivier Coipel & Mark Morales) as the aging Magneto, now loosely aligned with the remaining mutants in the semi-autonomous enclave “Utopia”, learns that two members of the teen superhero team Young Avengers bear an impossible similarity to the twins his daughter conjured up years ago.

Moreover, the ultra-swift Speed and sorcerous Wiccan bear an uncanny resemblance to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch at the same age…

Can these superhero twins possibly be his grandchildren? When he decides to investigate, X-Man and Avenger Wolverine warns the master of Magnetism to leave them alone… or else…

The story proper begins with Young Avengers Stature, Vision, Hulkling, Hawkeye, Patriot, Speed and Wiccan battling the racist terrorists Sons of the Serpent just as the elder Avengers arrive. When the child sorcerer displays a terrifying burst of power, alarm bells start ringing for Captain America, Iron Man and Ms. Marvel who have also noticed the startling similarities to their crazed and deadly former member…

In a world where the impossible happens every day and twice on Sundays, Wiccan has always suspected that Wanda was his true mother, and as the veteran heroes seek to curb his rapidly developing powers the boy mage convinces his team-mates to accompany him on a search for the missing Scarlet Witch and the true story of how and why she went bad…

Every Young Avenger has a different motive for the quest: for Speed it’s a chance to prove his annoying twin wrong, whilst Hulkling sees a chance to give his boyfriend Wiccan a sense of peace and closure. For Stature it’s the remote possibility of resurrecting the father Wanda murdered…

As the kids break out of Avenger custody they are joined by Magneto, sparking a clash with Wolverine and the rest of the “A” Team…

Bloodshed is avoided only by Wiccan transporting his friends and the Mutant Mastermind to the Balkan nation of Transia where Wanda and her brother Pietro grew up. Here they discover that Quicksilver – who blames his father and the Avengers in equal part for his beloved sister’s fate – is waiting.

…And so is Wanda herself…

Except that it’s only a carefully constructed android facsimile, but one which takes the reluctant and inimical fellow questers to the door of one the world’s most dangerous men, who has been harbouring the Scarlet Witch ever since the cataclysmic events following her magical decimation of the planet’s mutant population…

Meanwhile the Avengers have recruited Wonder Man – who was brought back from the dead by Wanda – but he proves to be an unreliable ally once he realises that the World’s Mightiest Heroes intend to kill the Witch at the first sign of trouble…

In Avengers: the Children’s Crusade – Young Avengers issue #1, illustrated by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, founding member Iron Lad returns to finish the mission he gathered the young heroes for.

The futuristic technologist is the teen iteration of Kang the Conqueror and formed the Young Avengers to prevent himself growing into the merciless Master of Time, but as this pithy behind-the-scenes and out of continuity saga shows, history and destiny are not easily cheated…

Back in Avengers: the Children’s Crusade #5 the chaos builds and the fabric of reality itself begins to unravel as Wanda and her notional boys are reunited and discover the true nature of her powers.

All Wanda wants to do is make amends whilst the man who claims to have caused all her breakdowns is prepared to keep her at all costs. Just as the Avengers arrive, determined to save the world from their former comrade, all hell breaks loose. When Iron Lad rejoins his team in real time he changes the recent past and the situation escalates to a catastrophic crescendo when the X-Men turn up, seeking justice for all the mutants “Wanda” destroyed in her crazy days…

With the dead rising, history unmaking itself and the true villain seizing control of all creation the stage is set for a truly tragic and spectacular climax…

Bombastic and cosmically broad in scope, this impressive tale by Allan (Wonder Woman, JLA, Sex and the City, The O.C., Gilmore Girls, Grey’s Anatomy) Heinberg seeks to undo and reset key milestones of Marvel history with boldness and generally succeeds in all his goals, aided by the impressive art of Jim Cheung and inkers Mark Morales, John Livesay, David Meikis & Dexter Vimes, but although this yarn will delight long-time fans I fear casual and new readers will struggle to pick up the nuances or even follow the plot. Still, the spectacular alternate cover gallery by Cheung, Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic, Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, Travis Charest and Art Adams will enthrall art fans and the impetus afforded by the film release will certainly draw new followers to this extremely attractive package with many small and big screen connections.

™ & © 2010, 2011, 2012 Marvel and subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A, Italy. All Rights Reserved. A British edition published by Panini UK, Ltd.

Doctor Who Graphic Novels volume 13: The Crimson Hand


By Dan McDaid, Martin Geraghty, Mike Collins & various (Panini Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-451-5

Doctor Who launched on television in the first episode of ‘An Unearthly Child’ on November 23rd 1963. Less than a year later his decades-long run in TV Comic began with issue #674 and the premier instalment of ‘The Klepton Parasites’. On 11th October 1979 (although adhering to the US off-sale cover-dating system so it says 17th) Marvel’s UK subsidiary  launched Doctor Who Weekly, which became a monthly magazine in September 1980 (#44) and has been with us under various names ever since.

All of which only goes to prove that the Time Lord is a comic hero with an impressive pedigree…

Marvel/Panini is in the ongoing process of collecting every strip from its archive in a uniform series of over-sized graphic albums, each concentrating on a particular incarnation of the deathless wanderer. This particular one gathers stories from issues Doctor Who Magazine or DWM #394, The Doctor Who Storybook 2010 and DWM #400-420, (originally published between 2008 and 2010): all featuring the escapades of the David Tennant incarnation of the far-flung Time Lord.

This is actually the third – and final – collection of strips featuring the Tenth Doctor and whether that statement made any sense to you largely depends on whether you are an old fan, a new convert or even a complete beginner.

None of which is relevant if all you want is a darn good read. All the creators involved have managed the ultimate ‘Ask’ of any strip creator – to produce engaging, thrilling, fun strips that can be equally enjoyed by the merest beginner and the most slavishly dedicated fan.

After an effusive introduction from series re-creator Russell T. Davies, the full-colour graphic grandeur begins with a one-off romp from 2008 entitled ‘Hotel Historia’ by writer/artist Dan McDaid, wherein the Good Doctor fetches up in a spectacular resort for time-travellers and first encounters the pushy and obnoxious corporate raider Majenta Pryce and uses her shoddy and slipshod time-technology to counter a threat from the chronal brigands known as the Graxnix.

This is riotously followed by a delightful clash with ‘Space Vikings’ (by Jonathan Morris, Rob Davis & Ian Culbard, from the 2010 Christmas Doctor Who Storybook) wherein the slave-taking star-rovers prove to be far less than they at first appear…

The main body of stories here formed something of an experiment as DWM #400-420 were designed as an extended story-arc leading up to the big change on television where Matt Smith would replace Tennant as “the Eleventh Doctor”.

Therefore McDaid was tasked with scripting the entire 21 issue run and began by reintroducing scurrilous money-mad chancer Majenta Pryce in ‘Thinktwice’ (#400-402, illustrated by Martin Geraghty & David A. Roach); an intergalactic penal institution with some decidedly off-kilter ideas on reforming prisoners.

Pryce is a prisoner but has amnesia. So does her cellmate Zed and in fact, most of the convicts aboard. The supposedly cushy debtor’s prison is in fact a horror-house of psychological abuse where suicide is endemic, maintained by the creepy Warden Gripton who is messing with the inmates’ memories to satisfy the hungers of something he calls “memeovax”…

Luckily the new prison doctor “John Smith” is a dab hand with the Sonic screwdriver…

With her memory far from restored the wickedly entrepreneurial Majenta becomes the unlikeliest of Companions as she demands that the “legally liable” Doctor makes restitution for all the trouble he’s caused by ferrying her to the planet Panacea where she can be properly cured. As we all know however, the Tardis goes where She wants and at Her own pace…

‘The Stockbridge Child’ (#403-405 with art from Mike Collins & Roach) deposits the unhappy partners to that peaceful English village where three different incarnations of the Time Lord have encountered incredible alien incursions. When the Doctor is reunited with outcast skywatcher Maxwell Edison they uncover at last the ancient horror beneath the hamlet which as made the place such a magnet for madness and monsters before finally despatching the brooding anti-dimensional threat of the Lokhus…

Meanwhile Majenta’s big secret hasn’t forgotten her and is rapidly closing in…

DWM #406-407 featured ‘Mortal Beloved’, illustrated by Sean Longcroft, wherein the Doctor and “Madge” arrive at a decrepit asteroid mansion on the edge of the biggest storm in creation. Amidst the flotsam and jetsam lurk poignant clues to Pryce’s past as tantalisingly revealed by the robots and holograms left to run the place after a far younger Majenta jilted brilliant playboy industrialist Wesley Sparks. Of course, after such an immense length of time even the most devoted of loves and programs could falter, doubt and even hate…

‘The Age of Ice’ (#408-411, by McDaid, Geraghty & Roach) brought the Last Time Lord and Lost Executive to Sydney Harbour and a fond reunion with Earth Defence Force UNIT, just as time-distortions began dumping dinosaurs in the sunny streets and crystalline knowledge stealers The Skith once more attempted to assimilate all the Doctor’s vast experience. Majenta too found an old friend in the shape of her long-lost junior associate Fanson who admitted he had wiped her memory. When he became part of the huge body-count before revealing why, Madge thought she would lose what was left of her mind…

‘The Deep Hereafter’ (#412, by Rob Davis with above-and-beyond calligraphy from faithful letterer Roger Langridge) is a scintillating space detective story, pastiching the classic Will Eisner Spirit Sunday sections, but still succeeds in advancing the overarching plot as Madge and the Doctor complete the last case of piscine P.I. Johnny Seaview and chase down the threat of the reality warping World Bomb whilst ‘Onomatopoeia’ in #413 (Collins & Roach) pits the reluctant pair against space-rats and out-of-control pest prevention systems in a clever and heart-warming fable told almost exclusively without dialogue.

The superb ‘Ghosts of the Northern Line’ (#414-415) follows with guest-artist Paul Grist working his compositional magic in a chilling yarn of murderous phantoms slaughtering tube passengers in present day London. Obviously they can’t be spirits so what is the true cause of the apparitions? This yarns leads directly into the big payoff as they assemble forces of galactic Law and Order suddenly show up to arrest Majenta, plunging the voyagers into a spectacular epic as the stroppy impresario at last regains her memory and acquires the power to reshape all of reality as part of the cosmic consortium known and feared as ‘The Crimson Hand’ (DWM #416-420, by McDaid, Geraghty & Roach.

This blockbuster rollercoaster epic perfectly ends the saga of Majenta Pryce and signs off the Tenth Doctor in suitable style, but dedicated fans still have a plethora of added value bonuses in the wonderful text section at the back, which includes a commentary from editor Tom Spilsbury, the origins of the saga from McDaid, Doctor Who Story Notes, the Majenta Pryce “Pitch” and an annotated story background, section: all copiously illustrated with behind-the-scenes photos, sketches and production art.

We’ve all got our little joys and hidden passions. Sometimes they overlap and magic is made. This is a superb set of comic strips, starring an undeniable bulwark of British Fantasy. If you’re a fan of only one, this book might make you an addict to both. The Crimson Hand is a fabulous book for casual readers, a fine shelf addition for devotees of the show and a perfect opportunity to cross-promote our particular art-form to anyone minded to give comics another go…

All Doctor Who material © BBCtv.  Doctor Who logo © BBC 2009. Tardis image © BBC 1963. Doctor Who, the Tardis and all logos are trade marks of the British broadcasting corporation and are used under licence. © Marvel. Published 2012 by Panini Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ultimate Comics X-Men: Reborn


By Nick Spencer, Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-506-2

Marvel’s Ultimates imprint launched in 2000 with major characters and concepts re-imagined to bring them into line with the presumed different tastes of modern readers.

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 Magneto which inundated the superhero-heavy island of Manhattan and utterly devastated the world’s mutant population. The X-Men as well as many other superhuman heroes and villains 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 seen by many as an alien, inimical species; a new race destined to take the world from humanity the way we took it from the Neanderthals…

This compilation continues to describe the gradual return of mutants to the post-deluge public gaze which began in Ultimate X: Origins by collecting Ultimate Comics: X-Men #1-6 and pertinent portions of Ultimate Comics: Fallout #4 (published in comicbook form from September 2011 to March 2012) which provided a game-changing new reality and status quo for the latest relaunch of the constantly-changing, grim and gritty alternate universe.

In a stunning story-arc by writer Nick Spencer, artists Paco Medina & Juan Vlasco and colourist Marte Gracia, the slow descent into uncontrolled chaos begins when Presidential Special Advisor on Superhuman and Mutant Affairs Valerie Cooper is forced to admit to the entire world that – rather than a result of inexorable evolution and natural selection – Mutants are the result of a fifty year old American covert program of genetic manipulation which got out of control…

In a world where Homo Superior are registered like guns, kept in internment camps and where good, God-fearing folk would rather execute their children than have them grow up afflicted with the sin of “mutant-ness”, the news instantly causes uproar and riot across the nation and around the planet…

Former X-Man Karen Grant (nee Jean Grey) has been continuing Charles Xavier‘s dream of fostering Human/Mutant co-existence but the news not only rips the rug out from under her; it also proves intolerable for her young charge Jimmy Hudson, who hears on National TV that his dead father Wolverine was the US Military’s ‘Mutant Zero’ and from his initial escape five decades ago has stemmed all the pain and horror and super-powered proliferation…

With a downtrodden, oppressed emergent species suddenly reduced to a virus or failed science experiment, global tensions are explosively high, and when renegade X-survivor Rogue very publicly battles American Nimrod Sentinels, the US President is faced with a civil crisis like no other…

Meanwhile hunted “Mutant Terrorist” Kitty Pryde is holed-up with fellow fugitives Iceman and the Human Torch, all on the run since their friend and fellow teen Peter Parker was murdered in his Spider-Man guise.

With the entire world in crisis (see Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye and The Ultimates: The Republic is Burning), the President consults S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury but is also approached by the deceased Magneto’s son Pietro Lensherr who has since inherited control of the terrorist group known as the Brotherhood of Mutants. The super-swift master manipulator has an arcane Faustian Bargain for the severely embattled Leader of the Free World…

Soon after the deluge hit, fundamentalist preacher Reverend William Stryker seized Sentinel technology and attacked the Xavier School, murdering many of the mutants Magneto’s flood had missed. Now he has returned, intent on capitalising on the troubled times and expediting his genocidal crusade.

Acting as a new X-team and against Pryde’s best judgment Iceman and the Torch rescue Rogue, but are horrified to discover that the fugitive powerhouse has literally “seen God”.

However, as they all hide in subterranean tunnels beneath New York, picking up stray mutant children as they flee, the young misfits have no idea just how far their former comrade has fallen or what lengths Rogue will go to in order to fulfil her divinely ordained mission…

With the nation in chaos Stryker plans a massive event in Times Square, offering a cure for mutantcy and a final solution to the crisis, but his true plan is to ambush the gathered deviants and end their blasphemous existence forever…

In the White House Quicksilver has his own scheme: he knows the secret Stryker is concealing and intends to use it for his own ends, but when the Reverend takes control of the entire Sentinel program and sends every killer robot in America’s arsenal to hunt down all the remaining mutants still in hiding, the cataclysmic battles leads to a stunning series of revelations and a breathtaking cliffhanger…

This welcome return to the bleak and cynical Ultimate fare, with the trademark post-modernity, sharp abrasive humour and darkly brutal action, still delivers the grim ‘n’ gritty punch fans crave, but with so much backstory to absorb Reborn might not be the best book for anybody thinking on jumping on to decidedly different world of Wonder. Nevertheless the striking drama and returning cast-favourites will certainly please those older readers who love this trenchant iteration of superhero sagas and any casual readers who are more familiar with the company’s movies than the comic-books.

A British edition licensed and published by Panini UK, Ltd. ™ & © 2012 Marvel Entertainment LLC and its subsidiaries. Licensed from Marvel Characters B.V. All Rights Reserved.

Beano: How to Draw


By anonymous (Beano Books/Parragon Book Service Ltd)
ISBN: 978-1-40548-745-0

I haven’t covered a “How To” book for ages and as this one’s entertaining, wonderfully fit for purpose, still cheap and readily available and even comes with the appropriate toolkit (a set of coloured pencils), it would well serve any budding artists and prospective animators to seek it out and absorb…

This large-scale, slim yet sturdy book gives away the visual secrets behind the anarchic stars of Britain’s best loved comic; offering Getting Started and Basics, assorted Character Profiles and, divided into Faces, Heads and Bodies, the nuts and bolts of how you too can craft the antics of the scurrilous stars of the show in action.

Said scamps include Dennis the Menace, faithful, frightful Gnasher, Minnie the Minx, terrible toddler and arch-rival Ivy the Terrible, weedy Walter the Softy and Baby Bea – the Menace’s sinister baby sister.

Also included are supporting cast members such as the long-suffering Colonel, Police Sgt. Slipper and willing accomplice-in-mischief Curly, precisely broken down into easy to follow graphic steps and supplemented by a gallery of model sheets and handy stock poses to get you started: everything you need to create your own comics once you’ve read, re-read and re-reread the splendid weekly adventures of all concerned.

Brilliantly colourful and with clear concise instructions covering the undeniable basics that every pictorial storyteller – whatever their age – needs to master, this is an indispensable and tremendously inspiring introduction for the aspiring Artist of Tomorrow.
“The Beano” ® © and associated characters ™© D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Showcase Presents All Star Comics Volume 1


By Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, Wally Wood, Joe Staton & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-810-0

In the torrid and turbulent 1970s many of the Comics industry’s oldest publishing ideas were finally laid to rest. The belief that characters could be “over-exposed” was one of the most pernicious and long-lasting (although it never hurt Superman, Batman or the original Captain Marvel), garnered from years of experience in an industry which lived or died on that fractional portion of pennies derived each month from the pocket-money and allowances of children which wasn’t spent on candy, toys or movies.

By the end of the 1960s comicbook costs and prices were inexorably rising and a proportion of titles – especially the newly revived horror stories – were consciously being produced for older readerships. Nearly a decade of organised fan publications and letter writing crusades had finally convinced publishing bean-counters what editors already knew: grown-ups avidly read comics too; they would happily spend more than kids and, most importantly, they wanted more, more, more of what they loved.

Explicitly: If one appearance per month was popular, extras, specials and second series would be more so. By the time Marvel Wunderkind Gerry Conway was preparing to leave The House of Ideas, DC was willing and ready to expand its variegated line-up with some oft-requested fan-favourite characters.

Paramount among these was the Justice Society of America, the first comicbook super-team and a perennial gem whose annual guest-appearances in the Justice League of America had become an inescapable and beloved summer tradition.

Thus in 1976 Writer/Editor Conway marked his DC tenure (where he had first broken in to the game by writing horror shorts for Joe Orlando) by reviving All Star Comics with number #58; in 1951 as the first Heroic Age ended the original title had transformed overnight into All Star Western with that number running for a further decade as the home of such cowboy crusaders as Strong Bow, the Trigger Twins, Johnny Thunder and Super-Chief. If you’re interested, among the other revivals/introductions in “Conway’s Corner” were Blackhawk, Plastic Man, Secret Society of Super-Villains, Freedom Fighters, Kobra, Blitzkrieg – and many others

Set on the parallel world of Earth-2 and in keeping with the editorial sense of ensuring that the series was relevant to young readers too, Conway reintroduced the veteran team and leavened it with a smattering of teen heroes, combined into a contentious, generation-gap fuelled “Super Squad”.

The youngsters included Robin (already a JSA member since the mid 1960s – as per Showcase Presents the Justice League of America volume 3), Sylvester Pemberton, AKA The Star-Spangled Kid (in actuality a boy-hero from the 1940s who had spent decades lost in time) and a busty young nymphet who quickly became the feisty favourite of a generation of growing boys: Kara Zor-L; soon to become infamous as the “take-charge” dynamo Power Girl.

This superb titanic monochrome volume gathers the four year run of the JSA from the late 1970s into a sublime showcase of different, ever-changing times and includes All-Star Comics #58-74, the series’ continuation and conclusion from giant anthology title Adventure Comics #461-466 plus the seminal DC Special #29 which, after almost four decades, at last provided the team with an origin…

The action begins with ‘Prologue’ – a three-page introduction, recap and summation of the Society’s history and the celestial mechanics of Alternate Earths, by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton & Bob Layton From Adventure #461 (January/February 1979) outlining the history and mechanics of the alternate Earths, after which the two-part debut tale from All- Star Comics #58 (January/February 1976 by Conway, Ric Estrada and Wally Wood) found newly-inducted Pemberton chafing at his time-lost plight and revelling in his new powers (he had been given a cosmic power device by retired veteran Starman) when a crisis propelled him and elder heroes Flash, Dr. Mid-Nite, Wildcat, Hawkman, Green Lantern and Dr. Fate into a three-pronged calamity devastating Seattle, Cape Town and Peking (which you youngsters now know as Beijing) with man-made natural disasters.

The veterans split up but were overwhelmed, giving the new kids a chance to shine in ‘All Star Super-Squad’. With the abrasive, impatient Power Girl in the vanguard the entire team was soon on the trail of old foe Degaton and his mind-bending ally in the concluding ‘Brainwave Blows Up!’

Keith Giffen replaced Estrada in issue #60 for the introduction of a psychotic super-arsonist who attacked the squad just as the age-divide started to chafe and Power Girl began to tick off or “re-educate” the stuffy, paternalistic JSA elders in ‘Vulcan: Son of Fire!’.

The closing instalment ‘Hellfire and Holocaust’ saw the flaming fury mortally wound Dr. Fate before his own defeat, just as a new mystic menace was beginning to stir…

Conway’s last issue as scripter was #62’s ‘When Fall the Mighty’ as antediluvian sorcerer Zanadu attacked, whilst the criminal Injustice Gang opened their latest vengeful assault using mind-control to turn friend against friend…

The cast expanded with the return of Hourman and Power Girl’s Kryptonian mentor, but even they were insufficient to prevent ‘The Death of Doctor Fate’ (written by Paul Levitz and fully illustrated by the inimitable Wally Wood). Attacked on all sides, the team splintered: Wildcat, Hawkman and the Kryptonian Cousins tackling the assembled super-villains, Flash and Green Lantern searching Egypt for a cure to Fate’s condition, and Hourman, Mid-Nite and Star-Spangled Kid desperately attempting to keep their fallen comrade alive.

They failed and Zanadu attacked once more, almost adding the moribund Fate’s death-watch defenders to his tally until the archaic alien’s very presence called Kent Nelson back from beyond the grave…

With that crisis averted Superman made ready to leave but was embroiled in a last-minute, manic time-travel assassination plot (Levitz & Wood) which dragged the team and guest-star Shining Knight from an embattled Camelot in ‘Yesterday Begins Today!’ to the far-flung future and ‘The Master Plan of Vandal Savage’: a breathtaking spectacle of drama and excitement that signalled Wood’s departure from the series.

Joe Staton & Bob Layton had the unenviable task of filling his artistic shoes, beginning with #66 as ‘Injustice Strikes Twice!’ with the reunited team – sans Superman – falling prey to an ambush from their arch-enemies, whilst the emotion-warping Psycho-Pirate began to twist Green Lantern into an out-of-control menace determined to crush Corporate America beneath his emerald heel, which subsequently led to the return of Earth-2’s Bruce Wayne, who had retired his masked persona to become Gotham’s Police Commissioner.

The Injustice Society had monstrous allies who were revealed in ‘Attack of the Underlord!’ (All-Star Comics #67, July/Aug 1977) as a subterranean race of conquerors who nearly ended the team forever. Meanwhile Wayne’s plans to close down the JSA before their increasingly destructive exploits demolished his beloved city neared fruition…

The modern adventures pause here as the aforementioned case from DC Special #29 (September 1977) disclosed ‘The Untold Origin of the Justice Society’

In this extra-length epic Levitz, Staton & Layton, revealed the previously “classified” events which saw Adolf Hitler acquire the mystical Spear of Destiny in 1940 and immediately summon mythical Teutonic Valkyries to aid in the in 1940 invasion of Britain.

Alerted to the threat, American President Roosevelt, hampered by his country’s neutrality, asked a select band of masked mystery-men to lend their aid as non-political private citizens. In a cataclysmic escalation the struggle ranged from the heart of Europe, throughout the British Isles and even to the Oval office of the White House before ten bold costumed heroes finally – if only temporarily – stopped the Nazis’ evil plans…

Back in All Star #68 (October, 1977) the curvy Kryptonian was clearly becoming the star of the show and as ‘Divided We Stand!’ by Levitz, Staton & Bob Layton, concluded the Psycho-Pirate’s scheme to discredit and destroy the JSA, she was well on the way to her first solo outing in Showcase #97-98 (reprinted in Power Girl, but not included here). Meanwhile GL resumed a maniacal rampage through Gotham City and Police Commissioner Bruce Wayne took extreme measures to bring the seemingly out-of-control JSA to book.

In #69’s ‘United We Fall!’ Commissioner Wayne brought in his own team of retired JSA heroes to arrest the “rogue” squad, resulting in a classic fanboy dream duel as Dr. Fate, Wildcat, Hawkman, Flash, GL and Star Spangled Kid battled the one-time Batman, Robin, Hourman, Starman, Dr. Mid-Nite and Wonder Woman. It was a colourful catastrophe in waiting until PG and Superman intervened to reveal the true cause of all the madness.

…And in the background, a new character was about to make a landmark debut…

With order (temporarily) restored ‘A Parting of the Ways!’ focussed on Wildcat and Star Spangled Kid as the off-duty heroes stumbled upon a high-tech gang of super-thieves called Strike Force. The robbers initially proved too much for the pair and even new star The Huntress, but with a pair of startling revelations in ‘The Deadliest Game in Town!’ the trio finally triumphed.

In the aftermath the Kid resigned and the daughter of Batman and Catwoman (alternate Earth, remember?) replaced him.

All-Star Comics #72 reintroduced a couple of classic Golden Age villainesses in ‘A Thorn by Any Other Name’ wherein the psychopathic floral fury returned to poison Wildcat, leaving Helena Wayne to battle the original 1950’s Huntress for an antidote and the rights to the name…

The concluding ‘Be it Ever So Deadly’ (with Joe Giella taking over the inker’s role) saw the entire team in action as Huntress battled Huntress whilst Thorn and the Sportsmaster did their deadly best to destroy the heroes and their loved ones. Simultaneously in Egypt Hawkman and Dr. Fate stumbled upon a deadly ancient menace to all of reality…

The late 1970s was a perilous period for comics with exponentially rising costs inevitably resulting in drastically dwindling sales. Many titles were abruptly cancelled in a “DC Implosion” and All-Star Comics was one of the casualties. Issue #74 was the last and pitted the entire team against a mystic Armageddon perpetrated by the nigh-omnipotent Master Summoner who orchestrated a ‘World on the Edge of Ending’ before the Justice Society triumphed dragged victory from the jaws of defeat…

Although the book was gone, the series continued in the massive 68 page anthology title Adventure Comics, beginning in #461 (January/February 1979) with the first half of a blockbuster tale originally intended for the anniversary 75th issue. Drawn and inked by Staton, ‘Only Legends Live Forever’ detailed the last case of the Batman as the Dark Knight came out of retirement to battle a seeming nonentity who had mysteriously acquired god-like power.

Issue #462 delivered the shocking, heartbreaking conclusion in ‘The Legend Lives Again!’ whilst ‘The Night of the Soul Thief!’ saw Huntress, Robin and the assembled JSA deliver righteous justice to the mysterious mastermind who had actually orchestrated the death of the World’s Greatest Detective.

Adventure #464 then provided an intriguing insight into aging warrior Wildcat, as with ‘To Everything There is a Season…’ he embraced his own mortality and began a new career as a teacher of heroes, whilst ‘Countdown to Disaster!’ (inked by Dave Hunt) saw Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Power Girl, Huntress and Dr. Fate hunt a doomsday device lost in the teeming masses of Gotham. It would be the last modern outing of the team for decades.

But not the last in this volume: that honour falls to another Levitz & Staton landmark history lesson wherein they exposed the reason why the team had vanished at the beginning of the 1950s.

From Adventure #466 ‘The Defeat of the Justice Society!’ showed how the American Government had cravenly betrayed their greatest champions during the McCarthy Witch-hunts; provoking the mystery-men into withdrawing from public, heroic life for over a decade – that is until the costumed stalwarts of Earth-1 started the whole Fights ‘n’ Tights scene all over again…

Although perhaps a tad dated now, these exuberant, rapid-paced and imaginative yarns perfectly blended the naive charm of Golden Age derring-do with cynical yet hopeful modern sensibilities that never doubted that, in the end. heroes would always find a way to save the day.

These classic tales from a simpler time are a glorious example of traditional superhero storytelling at its finest: fun, furious and ferociously engaging, exciting written and beguilingly illustrated. No Fights ‘n’ Tights fan can afford to miss these marvellous sagas.
© 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.