Category: Graphic Novels

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Heroes for Hire: Civil War


By Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Billy Tucci, Francis Portela, Tom Palmer & Terry Pallot (Marvel)
ISBN 978-1-7851-2362-8

The Patriot Act changed America as much as the destruction of the World Trade Towers, and it’s fair to say that that popular arts grow from the social climate as much as the target audience. In post 9-11 America the creators and the consumers now think different thoughts in different ways. Thus the company that first challenged the middle-class suburban status quo of the comic industry in the late 1960s made Homeland Security and the exigencies of safety and liberty the themes of a major publishing event in 2006.

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

The Federal government quickly instituted and mandated a scheme to licence, train and regulate all metahumans but the plan split the superhero community and a terrified and indignant merely mortal populace quivered as a significant faction of their former defenders, led by the ultimate icon of Liberty, Captain America, refused to surrender their autonomy and in many cases, anonymity to the bureaucratic vicissitudes of the Superhuman Registration Act.

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

Both sides battled for love of Country and Constitution and both sides knew they were right…

This collection, re-presenting issues #1-5 of the second Heroes for Hire comicbook series (from October 2006 to February 2007), gathers a particularly cogent and impressive sidebar sequence to the overarching epic Marvel Crossover Event which opens in the aftermath of the Stamford incident, as a panicked government attempts to enforce the hastily enacted legislation requiring every super-being in the USA to submit to the law.

Those who resist are guilty of treason, and of course the authorities need creatures as powerful and specialised as the resistors to tackle the problem of costumed malcontents and scofflaws…

Bionic detective Misty Knight and her ninja partner Colleen Wing are former associates of Power Man & Iron Fist and have revived their old firm Heroes for Hire to apprehend metas who refuse to comply.

The exact terms of their contract are revealed in ‘Taking it to the Streets’ parts 1 and 2, scripted by Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti, illustrated by Billy Tucci, Francis Portela & Tom Palmer. Specifically recruited by Iron Man, Spider-Man and Fantastic Four leader Reed Richards, the former Daughters of the Dragon and their team – acrobatic ex-thief Black Cat, Kung Fu Master Shang-Chi, insect avatar Humbug, Atlantean powerhouse Orka, sadistic martial artist Tarantula and veteran mercenary Paladin – will never be asked to arrest any of their errant superhero colleagues, but only take down super-villains who won’t register…

Their first public appearance finds the new team getting to know each other even as they hunt down technologically-augmented samurai dubbed “Mandarin’s Avatars” and a crime-ring led by old arch-foe Vienna offering new identities to a host of minor meta-felons.

Humbug’s ability to communicate with all insects leads the squad unerringly to the mastermind’s hideout but it’s a trap and a massive battle ensues. However, in this harsh new world, there’s no honour amongst thieves – or anyone else – and soon everybody is embroiled in a string of double and even triple crosses…

The saga takes a dark turn after the first rebel fatality incites a bitter argument in the team and Misty agrees to find – but not arrest – the fugitive Captain America and invite him to truce talks. The hunt leads to an illicit lab where villains are being surgically altered with organs culled from shape-shifting alien Skrulls; enabling criminals to alter their physical appearances and even conceal their powers…

In the meantime the search for the leading dissident and rebel bears fruit as the Sentinel of Liberty agrees to talks, only for Paladin to betray his own comrades and capture the ultimate Avenger for the huge bounty on his star-spangled head…

The story concludes in ‘Civil Disobedience’ (with Portela taking on the major portion of the illustration) as Paladin discovers he’s been tricked by Misty’s most honourable team-mate. With Cap and his dissidents allowed to safely escape, Misty and Co. perforce return to the problem of the sinister surgeons – who have been very busy indeed – if only to prove Heroes for Hire is still of use to the government…

After a squad of augmented villains break crime-boss Ricadonna out of prison, she quickly begins taking her long-anticipated vengeance on Knight and Wing. The first step is blowing up the Federal stooges HQ…

This first volume concludes with two untitled tales (inked by Palmer and Terry Pallot) as the maniacal Ricadonna tasks her army of super-powered, Skrull-flavoured minions with ambushing Misty’s team in unguarded moments. The resultant death and destruction provokes a thoroughly understandable and excessively violent response from the Heroes for Hire who raid the finally-found surgical facility and begin cleaning up all those warrants on the Government’s most wanted list.

Unfortunately, Ricadonna has been under the surgeons’ knives and recreated herself as a veritable legion of monsters…

Gritty, witty, fast-paced and spectacularly action-packed, this sharp, edgy collection is a largely forgotten gem from a frequently heavy-handed and often pompous mega-event which offers spills, chills and thrills to delight older fans of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction.

This book also includes a cover gallery by Tucci & Mark Sparacio, and a fun-filled fact page of the wacky master of insects Humbug.
© 2006, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder

New, Revised Review

By Judd Winick & Joshua Middleton (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0923-0

At their most impressive, superhero comics combine all the gravitas of mythology with all the sheer child-like fun and exuberance of a first rollercoaster ride. A perfect example of this is the 4-issue miniseries from November – February of 2006 collected as Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder.

One of the most venerated and loved characters in American comics, (the original) Captain Marvel was created by Bill Parker and Charles Clarence Beck as part of the wave of opportunistic creativity that followed the successful launch of Superman in 1938. Although there were many similarities in the early years, the Fawcett character moved solidly into the area of light entertainment and even comedy, whilst as the 1940s progressed the Man of Steel increasingly left whimsy behind in favour of action and drama.

At the height of his popularity the World’s Mightiest Mortal outsold the Man of Steel by a wide margin and was even published twice-monthly, but as the Furious Forties closed tastes changed, sales slowed and Fawcett saw the way the wind was blowing. They settled an infamous long-running copyright infringement case instigated by DC/National in 1940 and the Big Red Cheese vanished – as did so many superheroes – becoming little more than a fond memory for older fans.

As America lived through another superhero boom-and-bust from 1956-1968, the 1970s dawned with a shrinking industry and a wide variety of comics genres servicing a base that was increasingly founded on collector/fans and not casual or impulse buys. DC Comics needed sales and were prepared to look for them in unusual places.

After the settlement with Fawcett in 1953 they had secured the rights to Captain Marvel and Family, and even though the name itself had been taken up by Marvel Comics (via a circuitous and quirky robotic character published by Carl Burgos and M.F. Publications in 1967) decided to tap into that discriminating older, nostalgia fuelled fan-base, even as the entire entertainment world began looking back in time for fresh entertainments such as The Waltons or Little House on the Prairie…

In 1973, riding that burgeoning wave of nostalgia, DC brought back the entire beloved cast of the Captain Marvel strips: restored to their own kinder, weirder universe. To circumvent an intellectual property clash, they entitled the new comic book Shazam! (‘With One Magic Word…’; the trigger phrase used by the Marvels to transform to and from mortal form and a word that had already entered the American language due to the success of the franchise the first time around.

You know what comics fans are like: they had been arguing for decades – and still do – over who was best (for which read “who would win if they fought?”) out of Superman or Captain Marvel. Eventually, though excised from the regular DCU and stuck on a parallel universe, the old commercial rivals met and clashed a number of times, but until the landmark Crisis on Infinite Earths subsumed all those myriad worlds into one overarching continuity, the most powerful heroes in existence maintained the status of “equal but separate”.

In that new reality everything happened in one cosmos and Captain Marvel was fully rebooted and integrated. The basics remained untouched: homeless orphan and good kid Billy Batson was selected by an ancient wizard to be given the powers of six gods and heroes to battle injustice. He is given the ability to transform from scrawny precocious kid to brawny (adult) hero by speaking aloud the wizard’s acronymic name – invoking the powers of legendary patrons Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury.

After twenty years in this iteration, Captain Marvel’s early days were re-explored in this canny, big-hearted thriller which reveals the details of the first shared case of paragons of power.

Written by Judd Winick and illustrated by Joshua Middleton in a painterly style gloriously reminiscent of the old Fleischer Studio Superman cartoons, this magical treat is chronologically set just after Superman: Man of Steel volume 1 and The Power of Shazam! original graphic novel, and opens with ‘A Face in the Crowd’ as a new hero begins saving lives in West Coast Fawcett City, whilst a continent eastwards in Metropolis, Superman stumbles onto a museum robbery and is surprisingly beaten by thieves employing magic. The robbers belong to a cult – the Temple of Bagdan – and are on a nationwide spree to collect ancient Russian relics for some sinister master-plan…

In Fawcett, Marvel destroys giant robots attacking a new solar powered construction site designed by Doctor Bruce Gordon, unexpectedly inspiring the enmity of billionaire industrialist Thaddeus Sivana. Although the owner of the Solar Center project, Sivana has huge petrochemical interests and only intended his eco-friendly enterprise as a tax-shelter. He certainly has no intention of supplying cheap, clean energy to the proles of “his” city…

In a make-shift shelter, homeless kid Billy Batson talks his day over with Scoot Cooper, another hard-luck kid and the only person who knows his secret, even as Sivana deals with his hated East Coast rival Lex Luthor. The arrogant Metropolis financier has experience with super-powered meddlers and resources to combat their interference. It’s time to make a deal with a devil…

Later when the Bagdan cultists raid Fawcett’s McKeon History Museum, Marvel is waiting for them but is also overmatched by the magical Mallus Trolls employed by the thieves. At least until Superman shows up…

The team-up explodes into action in ‘Odd Couples’ with the heroes battling together, discovering their similarities and major differences even as in Metropolis Luthor sells Sivana the answer to all his superhero problems: an exemplary operative dubbed Spec…

The cultists have again escaped however and are in the final stage of their plan. Having secured the mystic paraphernalia to summon consummate evil they then force disturbed kidnap victim Timothy Barnes to become host to six infernal fiends. Sabbac is the antithesis of Shazam’s agent: a supernatural super-being sponsored by devil-lords Satan, Aym, Belial, Beeelzebub, Asmodeus and Createis in the way the ancient gods and heroes empower Captain Marvel, and he is free to wreak havoc and destruction upon the world.

To make matters worse, at that very moment Bruce Gordon succumbs to his own twilight curse at the Solar Centre as a lunar eclipse allows the diabolical Spirit of Vengeance to escape from his fleshy prison…

‘Titans’ finds Captain Marvel furious battling his dark counterpart as Superman struggles against not only the evil Eclipso but also his possessed army of innocents enslaved by the dark destroyer’s black diamond. When Sivana secretly funded the cultists he intended their tool to simply destroy Gordon and his power plant but now events have spiralled beyond anyone’s control. Even as the hated heroes inadvertently fix both of Sivana’s awry schemes, Spec is hunting through Fawcett. Soon his astounding abilities have ferreted out Billy Batson’s secret and arranged a permanent solution…

The drama roars to a terrific conclusion in ‘Men and Boys! Gods and Thunder!’ as a paramilitary hit squad attempts to gun down the merely human Billy but only hits his best friend instead, leaving Sivana to face the wrath of a lonely, bitter 10-year old boy, amok and enraged with righteous fury in the body of one of the most powerful creatures in the universe…

In the awesome aftermath Superman decides to deal with the shell-shocked Marvel in a way that will change both of their lives forever…

This is a big, bold, grand old fashioned comicbook romp full of big fights, dastardly villains, giant monsters, big robots and lasting camaraderie that will delight all lovers of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction, and whilst not a breakthrough classic like Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns, is an equally mythic retelling of superhero mythology which ranks amongst the very best of the genre.
© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman Chronicles volumes 1 & 2

New, Revised Review

By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Gardner Fox, Sheldon Moldoff, Jerry Robinson, George Roussos & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0445-7 & 978-1-4012-0790-8

For anyone who’s read more than a few of these posts, my tastes should be fairly apparent, but in case you’re in any doubt, here’s a flat-out confession: I’m that shabby, crazy old geezer muttering at the bus stop about how things were better before, and all new things are crap and not the same and…

You get the picture. Now, ignore all that. It’s true but not relevant.

Batman Chronicles is one of many formats re-presenting the earliest Batman stories. The series does so in original, chronological order, foregoing glossy and expensive high-definition paper and reproduction techniques in favour of newsprint-like paper, and the same flat, bright-yet-muted colour palette which graced the originals.

There’s no fuss, fiddle or Foreword, and the book steams straight into the meat of the matter with Volume 1 re-presenting the stunning covers and all Dark Knight material from Detective Comics #27 through #38, (which introduced Robin, The Boy Wonder), and then the landmark Batman #1 covering May 1939-April 1940.

Detective Comics #27 introduced “The Bat-Man” and playboy/dilettante criminologist in ‘The Case of the Chemical Syndicate’ by Bob Kane & collaborator Bill Finger, wherein a cabal of sinister industrialists were successively murdered until an eerie human bat intruded on Police Commissioner Gordon‘s stalled investigation and ruthlessly dealt with the hidden killer.

Issue #28 saw the fugitive vigilante return to crush ‘Frenchy Blake’s Jewel Gang’ before encountering his very first psychopathic killer. ‘The Batman Meets Doctor Death’ was a deadly duel of wits with deranged, greedy General Practitioner Karl Hellfern and his assorted instruments of murder…

Confident of their new character’s potential, Kane & Finger revived the mad medic for the very next instalment and ‘The Return of Doctor Death’, before Gardner Fox scripted a 2-part shocker which introduced the first bat-plane, Bruce’s girlfriend Julie Madison and undead horror The Monk for an expansive spooky saga ‘Batman Versus The Vampire‘. The gripping yarn then concluded in an epic chase across Eastern Europe and a spectacular climax in a monster-filled castle in issue #32.

Detective Comics #33 featured ‘The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom’: a blockbusting disaster thriller which just casually slipped in the secret origin of the Gotham Guardian, as prelude to the air-pirate action, after which Euro-trash dastard Duc D’Orterre found his uncanny science and unsavoury appetites no match for the mighty Batman in ‘Peril in Paris’.

Scripter Bill Finger returned in issue #35, pitting the Cowled Crusader against crazed cultists murdering everyone who had seen their sacred jewel in ‘The Case of the Ruby Idol’, although the many deaths were caused by a far more prosaic villainy, after which grotesque criminal genius ‘Professor Hugo Strange’ (inked by new kid Jerry Robinson) debuted with his murderous man-made fog and lightning machine in #36, and all-pervasive ‘The Spies’ ultimately proved no match for the vengeful masked Manhunter in #37.

Detective Comics #38 (April 1940) changed the landscape of comicbooks forever with the introduction of ‘Robin, The Boy Wonder’: child trapeze artist Dick Grayson whose parents were murdered before his eyes and who joined Batman in a lifelong quest for justice, by bringing to justice mobster Boss Zucco…

After the Flying Grayson‘s killers were captured, Batman #1 (Spring 1940) opened proceedings with a recycled origin culled from portions of Detective Comics #33 and 34. ‘The Legend of the Batman – Who He Is and How He Came to Be!’ by Fox, Kane & Moldoff offered in two perfect pages what is still the best ever origin of the character, after which ‘The Joker’ (Finger, Kane & Robinson – who produced all the remaining tales in this astonishing premiere issue) introduced the greatest villain in DC’s entire rogues’ gallery via a stunning tale of extortion and wilful wanton murder.

‘Professor Hugo Strange and the Monsters’ followed as the old adversary returned with laboratory-grown hyperthyroid horrors to rampage through the terrified city, and ‘The Cat’ – who later added the suffix ‘Woman’ to her name to avoid any possible doubt or confusion – plied her felonious trade of jewel theft aboard the wrong cruise-liner and fell foul for the first time of the dashing Dynamic Duo.

The initial issue and the first Chronicles edition ended with the ‘The Joker Returns’ as the sinister clown broke jail and resumed his terrifying campaign of murder for fun and profit before “dying” in mortal combat with the Gotham Guardian.

 

Volume 2 featured more masterpieces from the dawn of comic-book time, re-presenting Detective Comics #39 through to #45, a story from New York World’s Fair Comics 1940, and Batman #2-3, covering May to November 1940 in original publishing order. Following a superb pin-up of the Dynamic Duo by Kane, the tense suspense and all-out action opens with The Horde of the Green Dragon” – oriental Tong killers in Chinatown – from Detective #39 by Finger, Kane & Robinson, before ‘Beware of Clayface!’ found the Dynamic Duo solving a string of murders on a film set which almost saw Julie Madison become the latest victim of a monstrous movie maniac…

Batman and Robin solved the baffling mystery of a kidnapped boy in Detective #41’s ‘A Master Murderer’ before enjoying their second solo outing in four comics classics from Batman #2 (Summer 1940).

It all began with ‘Joker Meets Cat-Woman‘ (by Finger, Kane, Robinson & extremely impressive new find George Roussos) wherein svelte thief, homicidal jester and a crime syndicate all tussled for the same treasure with the Caped Crusaders caught in the middle.

‘Wolf, the Crime Master’ was a fascinating take on the classic Jekyll and Hyde tragedy after which an insidious  and ingenious murder-mystery ensued in ‘The Case of the Clubfoot Murderers’ before Batman and Robin faced uncanny savages and ruthless showbiz promoters in a poignant monster story ‘The Case of the Missing Link’.

‘Batman and Robin Visit the New York World’s Fair’ from New York World’s Fair Comics which vintage wonderment – by Finger, Kane & Roussos – then followed the vacationing Dynamic Duo as they tracked down a maniac mastermind with a metal-dissolving ray, after which Detective Comics #42 again found the heroes ending another murder maniac’s rampage in ‘The Case of the Prophetic Pictures!’ before clashing with a corrupt mayor in #43’s ‘The Case of the City of Terror!’

An unparallelled hit, the stories perforce expanded their parameters in #44 with the dreamy fantasy of giants and goblins ‘The Land Behind the Light!’, after which Batman #3 (Fall 1940) saw Finger, Kane, Robinson & Roussos rise to even greater heights, beginning with ‘The Strange Case of the Diabolical Puppet Master’: an eerie episode of uncanny mesmerism and infamous espionage…

Next up was a grisly scheme wherein innocent citizens were mysteriously transformed into specimens of horror and artworks destroyed by the spiteful commands of ‘The Ugliest Man in the World’ before ‘The Crime School For Boys!!’ saw Robin infiltrate a gang who had a cruel and cunning recruitment plan for dead-end kids…

‘The Batman vs. The Cat-Woman’ found the larcenous burglar in well over her head when she stole for – and from – the wrong people, and the issue also included a magical Special Feature as ‘The Batman Says’ presented an illustrated prose Law & Order pep-talk crafted by Whitney Ellsworth and Robinson.

This second terrific tome then concludes with a magnificent and horrific Joker jape from Detective Comics #45 with ‘The Case of the Laughing Death’ wherein the Harlequin of Hate devised a campaign of macabre murder against everyone who had defied or offended him…

Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson and their compatriots created an iconography which carried the Batman feature well beyond its allotted life-span until later creators could re-invigorate it. They added a new dimension to children’s reading… and their work is still captivatingly accessible.

Moreover, these early stories set the standard for comic superheroes. Whatever you like now, you owe it to these stories. Superman gave us the idea, but writers like Finger and Fox refined and defined the meta-structure of the costumed crime-fighter. Where the Man of Steel was as much Social Force and wish fulfilment as hero, Batman and Robin did what we ordinary mortals wanted to do. They taught bad people the lesson they deserved.

These are tales of elemental power and joyful exuberance, brimming with deep mood and addictive action. Comic book heroics simply don’t come any better.

The history of the American comicbook industry in almost every major aspect stems from the raw, vital and still powerfully compelling tales of twin icons published by DC/National Comics: Superman and Batman. It’s only fair and fitting that both those characters are still going strong and that their earliest adventures can be relived in chronological order in a variety of formats from relatively economical newsprint paperbacks to stunning, deluxe hardcover commemorative Archive editions.

One final thing: I’m still that guy in paragraph one, right? I’ve read these stories many, many times, in every format imaginable, and I’d like to thank whoever decided that they should also be available in as close a facsimile to the originals as we can get these days.

More than anything else, this serves to perfectly recapture the mood and impact of that revolutionary masked avenger and, of course, delights my heavily concealed inner child no end.
© 1939, 1940, 2005 DC Comics and © 1940, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman: Trinity

New, Revised Review

By Matt Wagner with Dave Stewart & Sean Konot (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0187-6 (TPB)         978-1-4012-0309-2 (HC)

Comics fans – especially aficionados of the superhero genre – have an innate appreciation and love of mythologizing. It lures like a siren, hits like a titan and dictates our lives and fate like Ragnarok arrived. We just can’t help ourselves…

DC comics have been compiling just such a feast of legend since the very creation of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, slowly interweaving these undying fantasy favourites into a rich tapestry of perfect adventure which has taken on a life of its own, inextricably entrenched in the dream-lives of generations of children and the adults they became.

However it was only relatively recently that DC tacitly acknowledged or even realised the imaginative treasure-trove they were sitting on. However, the publishers were quick to respond when they did wise-up, cannily building on the epic, cross-generational appeal of the elder statesman appeal of their stars. Amongst the most impressive of the efforts is this tale, originally released as a three-part (of course) Prestige Format miniseries in 2003.

Auteur Matt Wagner – who has an uncanny gift for re-imagining and updating the raw power of Golden Age classics (as seen in Batman and the Mad Monk or Sandman Mystery Theatre for example) – was tapped to reveal a new, canonical first meeting of the all-conquering triumvirate and he did not disappoint…

Following an effusive Introduction from novelist and A-List comics-scribe Brad Meltzer, the story opens in the Art Deco Metropolis as oafish Clark Kent‘s morning is ruined by an assassin who shoots a commuter train driver and brings the morning rush-hour to a screeching, crashing, cataclysmic halt…

It soon becomes clear that the subsequent near-disaster has been devised simply to distract and properly assess the mighty Man of Steel. That night a daring raid on S.T.A.R. Labs is ruthlessly foiled by a silent, caped visitor to the “City of Tomorrow” but Superman knows nothing about it until it’s all over.

…And at the bottom of the world more mysterious masked minions at last liberate Superman’s warped and retarded clonal antithesis Bizarro from its icy imprisonment deep beneath the Antarctic mantle…

Another promising day is spoiled for the reporter by a visit from Bruce Wayne, a reluctant occasional ally, and equally obnoxious whether in his playboy charade or as his true self: the dread Batman.

The visit is a courtesy call between distant colleagues. A terrorist group called “The Purge” would have obtained samples of Kryptonite if the Dark Knight hadn’t intervened, but now they plan to raid Lex Luthor’s citadel and professional courtesy demanded that Superman be fully apprised…

Meanwhile in a most secret hideaway a strangely formidable young girl named Diana auditions for the Most Dangerous Man on Earth: an overlord in need of a perfect warrior to lead his massed forces…

Ra’s Al Ghul always gets what he wants and after the charismatic Demon’s Head charms Bizarro with honeyed words of friendship, the freakish doppelganger is only too happy to bring him a present.

Tragically, Russian nuclear submarines are a bit tricky to handle and the super-simpleton manages to drop one of the atomic missiles en route. The lost nuke explodes far from any regular shipping lines, however. Apart from fish, the only creatures affected are a race of immortal women warriors, invisible to mortal eyes and forgotten by Man’s World for millennia…

As mysterious mercenary Diana prepares to carry out The Demon’s orders, in Metropolis another Amazon tracks down Superman and politely enquires why he dropped an A-Bomb on her home. Eschewing rash accusations or pointless fisticuffs they soon come to realise the true nature of the horrific event and unite to track the stolen sub to the Sahara, promptly falling into an ambush by Al Ghul’s fanatical forces.

The guns, knives, nerve gas and suicide bombers prove no problem but the booby-trapped nuke is another matter entirely…

Barely surviving the detonation, Man of Steel and Princess of Power head for GothamCity to seek the grudging assistance of The Demon’s most implacable foe, but the Dark Knight is already on the case, having just unsuccessfully engaged with Al Ghul’s Amazonian field commander.

Reluctant to admit a need for allies and inherently suspicious of bright and shiny super-people chronically unable to make hard decisions or get their hands dirty, Batman nevertheless enters into a tenuous alliance with the dilettante champions to stop the insane plans of an immortal madman determined to wipe out modern civilisation and cleanse the Earth of toxic humanity…

Hard-hitting, epic and spectacular, this Wagnerian (you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to use that) saga superbly illustrates the vast gulfs between the so-different heroes and how they nevertheless mesh to form the perfect team. Strongly character-driven throughout, the protracted struggle to defeat Al Ghul and his infamous allies offers tension, humour, mystery and powerful plot-twists galore, all wrapped up in a bombastic feast of frenzied action and supplemented with savvy cameos and guest shots by other, albeit lesser, keystones of  the DCU.

Stunningly illustrated by Wagner, lavishly coloured by Dave Stewart and subtly lettered by Sean Konot, the book also includes a glorious cover gallery and a beautiful Sketchbook section featuring many of the artist’s preliminary drawings and ideas.

When producing this type of tale there’s always the dilemma of whether to trade on current continuity or to deconstruct and attain a more grandiose, mythic feel, but part-time and casual readers need not worry. Wagner has hewn to the evergreen fundamentals to craft a gratifyingly “Big” story which still manages to reveal more about the individual stars involved than a year’s worth of periodical publishing.

Trinity is primal adventure: accessible, exciting and rewarding, with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman as they should always be but so seldom are. Team ups and retrofits should all be this good.
© 2003, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks volume 12: The X-Men 101-110


By Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-628-7

In 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a cerebral, scholarly wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants dubbed Homo Superior.

After years of eccentric and spectacular adventures, the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 (issue #66 cover-dated March) during a sustained decline in costumed hero comics, when mystery and all things supernatural once more gripped the world’s entertainment fields.

Although their title was revived at the end of the year as a reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel Universe and the Beast was transformed into a monster to cash in on the horror boom, until new editor-in-chief Roy Thomas green-lighted a bold one-shot in 1975 as part of the company’s line of Giant-Sized specials…

This superb second deluxe hardcover compendium recaptures the stellar excitement of those exuberant days through X-Men #101-110 of the decidedly “All-New, All-Different” X-Men (from October 1976 to April 1978) when the merry mutants were still young, fresh and delightfully under-exposed and only beginning their inexorable rise to mega-stardom. Moreover scripter Chris Claremont & artist Dave Cockrum were on the on the verge of utterly overturning the accepted status quo of women in comics forever…

What You Need to Know: The team now consisted of old acquaintance and former foe Sean “Banshee” Cassidy, Hulk villain Wolverine, and new creations Kurt Wagner, a demonic German teleporter codenamed Nightcrawler, African weather “goddess” Ororo Monroe AKA Storm and Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin, who could transform into a living steel Colossus and joined field-commander Scott (Cyclops) Summers and Jean Grey – still labouring under the nom-de guerre Marvel Girl…

But not for much longer…

For months a long-running, blockbuster-widescreen plotline had been building. Xavier, plagued by visions of interstellar wars and alien mind-mates, was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Not coincidentally, former students Havok and Polaris had attacked the new team, apparently willing allies of a mysterious madman disguised as Cyclops’ old alias Eric the Red.

That devastating conflict then segued into a spectacular battle as remorseless robotic Sentinels returned under the hate-filled auspices of rogue Federal Agent Steven Lang and his mysterious backers of Project Armageddon. Coordinated attacks successfully snared the semi-retired Jean, Wolverine, Banshee and Xavier himself, compelling Cyclops to co-opt a space-shuttle and, with the remaining team, storm an orbiting space-station to rescue them.

Although the new X-Men were victorious, their cataclysmic clash wrecked their only means of escape and, as an immense solar flare threatened to eradicate the complex, their only chance of survival meant certain death for one X-Man…

Bracketed by a brace of team pin-ups (by Paul Ryan and Javier Saltares respectively and both inked by Al Williamson), the ten tales of stunning power and imagination contained herein begin with the debut of a landmark character in ‘Like a Phoenix from the Ashes’ (by Claremont, Cockrum & inker Frank Chiaramonte) as the shuttle spectacularly crashes back to Earth.

The X-Men had travelled in a specially shielded chamber but Marvel Girl had been compelled to pilot the vehicle unprotected through the lethal radiation storm.

As the mutants escaped the craft slowly sinking in JamaicaBay, a fantastic explosion propelled the impossibly alive Jean into the air, clad in a strange gold and green uniform and screaming that she was “Fire and Life Incarnate… Phoenix!”

Immediately collapsing, the critically injured girl was rushed to hospital and a grim wait began.

Unable to explain her survival and too preoccupied to spare time to teach, Xavier then packs Banshee, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Storm and Colossus off to the Irish mutant’s home in County Mayo for a vacation, blissfully unaware that Cassidy Keep has become a deadly trap for his new students…

Within the ancestral pile, Sean Cassidy’s mutant cousin Black Tom has usurped control of the manor and its incredible secrets and at Eric the Red’s behest has contrived an inescapable ambush, assisted by an old X-Men enemy.

‘Who Will Stop the Juggernaut?’ (inked by Sam Grainger) sees the neophyte heroes in well over their heads and fighting for their lives, but finds room to tell the origin of weather-witch Storm and provide an explanation for her crippling claustrophobia, before ‘The Fall of the Tower’ shockingly concludes the tale as the heroes and the Keep’s Leprechauns (no, really) unite to expel the murderous invaders.

Although bi-monthly at the time, the epic kicked into strident top gear with ‘The Gentleman’s Name is Magneto’ as the weary heroes then divert to Scotland and check up on their gun-toting biologist/housekeeper Moira MacTaggert‘s island lab: a previously secret facility containing many of the mutant menaces the X-Men have defeated.

It’s a bad move as the ever-active Eric has restored the dormant master of magnetism to full power. He’d been turned into a baby – a strangely common fate for villains in those faraway days – but was all grown up again now – and very angry…

Arriving from America, MacTaggert and Cyclops are only just in time to lead a desperate, humiliating retreat from the exultant, triumphant Magneto. Cyclops doesn’t care: he realises the entire affair has been a feint to draw the heroes away from Xavier and Jean…

He needn’t have worried. Although in ‘Phoenix Unleashed’ (inks from Bob Layton) Eric orchestrated an attack by Firelord – a cosmic flamethrower who had been a herald of Galactus much like the Silver Surfer – Jean was now fully evolved into a being of unimaginable power who readily held the fiery marauder at bay…

In the interim a long-standing mystery was solved as the vision which had haunted Xavier was revealed as a fugitive princess from a distant alien empire.

Lilandra of the Shi’ar had rebelled against her imperial brother and whilst fleeing had somehow telepathically locked onto her inter-cosmic soul-mate Xavier. As she made her circuitous way to Earth, embedded Shi’ar spy Shakari had assumed the role of Eric the Red and attempted to remove Lilandra’s potential champion long before she arrived…

During the blistering battle that followed the X-Men’s arrival, Shakari snatched up Lilandra and dragged her through a stargate to another galaxy, but now, aware that the fate of entire universe is at stake, Xavier urges his team to follow.

All Jean has to do is re-open a wormhole to the other side of creation…

A slight digression followed as overstretched artist Cockrum was given a breather by a fill-in “untold” tale of the new team featuring an attack by psychic clones of the original X-men in ‘Dark Shroud of the Past’(by Bill Mantlo, Bob Brown & Tom Sutton, but with a framing sequence from Cockrum).

The regular story resumes in a wry tribute to Star Trek as ‘Where No X-Man Has Gone Before!’ (by Claremont, Cockrum & Dan Green) finds the heroes stranded in another galaxy where they meet and are defeated by The Shi’ar Imperial Guard (an in-joke version of DC’s Legion of Super Heroes), until bold interstellar freebooters The Starjammers arrive to turn the tables and uncover a mad scheme to unmake the fabric of space-time.

Lilandra’s brother Emperor D’Ken is a certified maniac and wants to activate a cosmic artefact known alternatively as the M’Kraan Crystal and “the End of All that Is” in his quest for ultimate power. He’s also spent time on Earth in the past and has played a major role in the life of one of the X-Men …

This tale (from issue #107) was the last drawn by Cockrum for many years. He would eventually return to replace the man who replaced him.

As X-Men and Starjammers battle the Crystal’s impossibly deadly automated guardians, this final chapter sees the newly puissant Phoenix literally save all of reality in a mind-blowing display of power and skill, all whilst trapped in a truly staggering other realm before taking the heroes home, appalled and enthralled by the intoxicating, addictive nature of her own might.

The conclusion of this ambitious extended saga was drawn by John Byrne (with inks from Terry Austin) and his efforts were to become an industry bench-mark as the X-Men grew in popularity and complexity. However, even though the bravura high-octane thrills of “Armageddon Now” seemed an unrepeatable high-point, Claremont & Byrne had only started. The best was still to come…

In ‘Home Are the Heroes’ Wolverine finally began to develop a back-history and some depth of character as technological wonder Weapon Alpha attacked the recuperating team in an attempt to force Logan to rejoin the Canadian Secret Service. Renamed Vindicator he would later return with Alpha Flight – a Canadian super-team which would eventually graduate to their own eccentric high-profile series.

This splendid compilation ends rather limply with another hasty fill-in as ‘The “X”-Sanction’ (illustrated by Tony DeZuniga & Cockrum), finds hired cyborg-assassin Warhawk infiltrating the mansion in search of “intel” for a mysterious, unspecified master before getting his shiny silver head handed to him…

The immortal epics compiled here are available in numerous formats (including softcover editions of the luxurious and enticing hardback under review here), but for a selection that will survive the continual re-readings of the serious, incurable fan there’s nothing to beat the sturdy and substantial full-colour feel of these sturdily Marvellous Masterwork editions.
© 1976, 1977, 1978, 1990 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc/Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Golden Age Hawkman Archives volume I


By Gardner F. Fox, Dennis Neville, Sheldon Moldoff & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0418-1

Although perhaps one of DC’s most long-lived and certainly their most visually iconic character, the various iterations of Hawkman have always struggled to find enough of an audience to sustain a solo title. From his beginnings as one of the assorted B-features in Flash Comics (the others being Cliff Cornwall, The King, The Whip and Johnny Thunder, all adding lustre to the soaraway success of the eponymous speedster at the helm of the comicbook), Winged Wonder Carter Hall has struggled through assorted engaging, exciting but always short-lived reconfigurations.

Over decades from ancient hero to re-imagined alien space-cop and post-Crisis on Infinite Earths freedom fighter (both named Katar Hol – see Showcase presents Hawkman volumes 1-2 and Hawkworld respectively) or the seemingly desperate but highly readable bundling together of all previous iterations into the reincarnating immortal berserker-warrior of today, the Pinioned Paladin has performed exemplary service without ever really making it to the big time.

Where’s a big-time movie producer/fan when you need one?

Created by Gardner Fox and Dennis Neville, Hawkman premiered in Flash Comics #1 (January 1940) and stayed there, growing in quality and prestige until the title died, with the most celebrated artists to have drawn the Winged Wonder being Sheldon Moldoff and Joe Kubert, whilst a young Robert Kanigher was justly proud of his later run as writer.

Together with his partner Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman, the gladiatorial mystery-man countered fantastic arcane threats and battled modern crime and tyranny with weapons of the past for over a decade before vanishing with the bulk of costumed heroes as the 1950s began.

His last appearance was in All Star Comics #57 (1951) as leader of the Justice Society of America, but the husband-and-wife hellions were revived and re-imagined nine years later as Katar Hol and Shayera Thal of planet Thanagar by Julie Schwartz’s crack creative team Gardner Fox and Joe Kubert – a space-age interpretation which even survived 1985’s winnowing Crisis on Infinite Earths. Their long career, numerous revamps and perpetual retcons ended during the 1994 Zero Hour crisis, but they’ve reincarnated and returned a couple of times since then too…

However, despite being amongst DC’s most popular and picturesque strips over the years, Hawkman (and Hawkwoman) always struggled to find sufficient audience to sustain their numerous solo titles.

This spectacular deluxe hardcover re-presentation of the formative years (collecting appearances from Flash Comics #1-22, January 1940 – October 1941) begins with a fond reminiscence by artist Moldoff in the ‘Foreword’ before the magic begins as it should with ‘The Origin of Hawkman’ by Fox & Neville.

In his first epochal episode Carter Hall is a playboy scientific tinkerer and part-time archaeologist with a penchant for collecting old, rare weapons, whose dormant memory is unlocked by an ancient crystal dagger purchased for his collection. Through dreams the dilettante realises that once he had been Prince Khufu of ancient Egypt, murdered with his lover Shiera by Anubis’ High Priest Hath-Set.

Moreover, with his newly returned memories Hall knows that the eternal struggle is primed to play out once more…

As if pre-destined, he bumps into the equally reincarnated and remembering Shiera Sanders just a terrifying electrical menace turns New York’s Subway into a killing field and they realised the deadly Doctor Hastor is their ancient nemesis reborn. Fashioning an outlandish uniform and anti-gravity harness of mystic Egyptian “Ninth Metal”, Hall hunts the deranged electrical scientist to his lair in time to save the mesmerised Shiera from a second death by sacrifice and mercilessly ends the cycle – at least for now…

In Flash #2, ‘The Globe Conquerors’ concentrated on fantastic science as Hall and Shiera tackled a modern Alexander the Great who built a gravity-altering machine in his ruthless quest to conquer the world, whilst ‘The Secret of Dick Blendon’ in #3 saw “The Hawk-Man” expose a wicked scheme by insidious slavers turning brilliant men into zombies for profit to gather riches and find the secret of eternal life.

Sheldon Moldoff debuted as artist in Flash Comics #4 (April 1940), illustrating a splendidly barbarous thriller wherein the Winged Warrior clashed with ‘The Thought Terror’, a sinister mesmerist enslaving the city’s wealthy citizens, whilst ‘The Kidnapping of Ione Craig’ in #5 pitted the crime-fighting phenomenon against Asiatic cultists led by legendary assassin Hassan Ibn Saddah, determined to stop a pretty missionary and secret agent from investigating distant Araby.

Moldoff has received overly unfair criticism over the years for his frequent, copious but stylishly artistic swipes from newspaper strips by master craftsmen Alex Raymond and Hal Foster in his work of this period, but one look at the stunning results here as the feature took a quantum leap in visual quality should silence those quibblers for good…

Maintaining the use of exotic locales, the story extended in issue #6 as Hall and Ione struggled to cross burning Saharan sands to the African coast before defeating Arab slavers and their deadly ‘Sheba, Queen of the Desert’…

Issue #7 further explored the mystical and supernatural underpinnings of the strip which easily lent themselves to spooky tales of quasi-horror and barbaric intensity. “The Eerie Unknown” and deluded dabblers in darkness were much-used elements in Hawkman sagas, as seen in ‘Czar, the Unkillable Man’ wherein the Avian Avenger, back in America and reunited with Shiera, clashed with a merciless golem animated by a crazed sculptor determined to get rich at any cost.

Flash Comics #8 featured another deranged technologist as ‘The Sunspot Wizard’ Professor Kitzoff altered the pattern and frequency of the solar blemishes and created riot, madness and chaos on Earth until the Winged Wonder intervened, whilst in ‘The Creatures from the Canyon’ Hawkman foiled aquatic invaders living in the deeps 5,000 feet below Manhattan Island who decided to expand their ancient empire upwards…

Bidding for an old firearm at an auction in #10, Hall was inexorably drawn into a murder-mystery and the hunt for a lost Colorado goldmine in ‘Adventures of the Spanish Blunderers’, before ‘Trouble in Suburbia’ manifested after a hit-and-run accident drew plucky Shiera into a corrupt and convoluted property-scam. Boyfriend Carter Hall was quite prepared to stand back and let her deal with the villains – even if Hawkman did exert a little surreptitious brawn to close the case…

Another murderous scam involved an old society chum as ‘The Heart Patient’ revealed how a pretty gold-digger and rogue doctor serially poisoned healthy young men and fleeced them for a cure, whilst in #13 ‘Satana, the Tiger Girl’ preyed on admirers for far more sinister reasons, pitting Hawkman and Shiera against scientifically hybridised killer-cats, after which ‘The Awesome Alligator’ saw an elder god return to Earth to inspire and equip a madman in a plot to conquer America with ancient secrets and futuristic super-weapons. None of those incredible threats could withstand cold fury and a well-wielded mace, however…

At this time the Pinioned Paladin usually dispatched foes of humanity with icy aplomb and single-minded ruthlessness, and such supernatural thrillers as #15’s ‘The Hand’ gave Fox & Moldoff ample scope to display the reincarnated warrior’s savage efficiency when he tracked down a sentient severed fist which stole and slaughtered at its inventive master’s command, whilst ‘The Graydon Expedition’ in #16 reinforced the hero’s crusading credentials when Shiera went missing in Mongolia, and the Winged Wonder undertook a one-man invasion of a fabulous lost kingdom to save her.

In Flash Comics #17, ‘Murder at the Opera’ put the bold birdman on the trail of an arcane Golden Mummy Sect with a perilously prosaic origin and agenda, whilst #18 found him investigating skulduggery in the Yukon when Shiera rushed north to offer aid to starving miners during ‘The Gold Rush of ’41’.

Evidently capable of triumphing in any environment or milieu, Hawkman next thwarted deranged physicist Pratt Palmer in #19, when that arrogant savant attempted to become the overlord of crime using his deadly ‘Cold Light’. ‘The Mad Bomber’ in #20 then found the Avian Ace allied with a racketeer to stop mad scientist Sathan destroying their city with remote-controlled aerial torpedoes, after which Hawkman was forced to end the tragically lethal rampage of an alien foundling raised by a callous rival for Shiera’s affections in ‘Menace from Space’…

This first high-flying archive compilation concludes with October 1941’s Flash Comics #22 and ‘The Adventure of the Killer Gang’ as headstrong Shiera witnesses a bloody hijacking and determines to make the bandits pay. Although she again helped Hawkman deal with the murderous vermin as a civilian here, big changes were in store for the feisty, capable heroine.

Already in All Star Comics #5 (July 1941) she had first worn wings and a costume of her own, and in Flash Comics #24 (December 1941) she would at last become an equal partner in peril and fully-fledged heroine: Hawkgirl… but sadly that’s a tale for another volume…

Exotic, engaging and fantastically inviting, these Golden Age adventures are a true high-point of the era and still offer astonishing thrills and chills. When all’s said and done it’s all about the heady rush of nostalgia: trying to recapture that magical full-sensorium burst of smell and feel and imagination-overload that finds kids at a perfect moment and provokes something visual and conceptual that almost literally blows the mind…

We re-read stories hoping to rekindle that instantly addictive buzz and constantly seek out new comics desperately hoping to recapture that pure, halcyon burst, and these lost mini-epics are phenomenally imbued with everything fans need to make that breathtaking moment happen…
© 1940, 1941, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Iron Man: Extremis – Enhanced Edition


By Warren Ellis & Adi Granov (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-527-7

Arch-technocrat and supreme survivor Tony Stark has played many roles in the Marvel Universe since his debut in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963) when, as visitor to an East Asian war-zone, he was critically wounded and captured by sinister, cruel Communists. Put to work building weapons with the dubious promise of medical assistance on completion, Stark instead created the first Iron Man suit to keep himself alive and deliver him from his oppressors.

Since then the inventor and armaments manufacturer became a liberal capitalist, eco-pioneer, space pioneer, Federal politician, Statesman and even Director of the world’s most scientifically advanced spy agency, the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate.

…And, of course, one of the world’s most prominent superheroes with the Mighty Avengers…

First conceived in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis at a time when the economy was booming and “Commie-bashing” was an American obsession, the emergence of a glamorous new Thomas Edison using Yankee ingenuity, wealth and determination to safeguard the Land of the Free and better the World was an inevitable development. Combining the then-sacrosanct faith that technology and Capitalism in unison could solve any problem with the universally evocative imagery of noble knights battling evil, the Invincible Iron Man seemed an infallibly successful proposition.

Of course whilst Tony Stark was the acceptable face of 1960s Capitalism – a sexy millionaire industrialist and secretly a benevolent all-conquering hero when clad in the super-scientific armour he built with his own two hands – the turbulent tone of the 1970s soon relegated his suave, “can-do” image to the dustbin of history.

With ecological disaster and social catastrophe from myriad abuses of big business abounding, the zeitgeists of the young shifted leaving the Golden Avenger and Stark International facing some tricky questions from the increasingly politically savvy readership.

With money, fancy gadgetry and unthinking patriotism not quite so cool anymore, the questing voices of a new generation of writers began posing uncomfortable questions in the pages of a series that was once the bastion of militarised America …

For a popular character/concept lumbered with a fifty-year pedigree, radical reboots are a painful but vital periodic necessity. To keep contemporary, Stark’s origin and Iron Man’s continuity have been drastically revised every so often with the crucible trigger event perpetually leapfrogging to feature America’s most-recent conflicts.

Thus, whereas the debut tale saw the inventor captured by Viet Cong guerrilla Wong Chu, who ordered his dying hostage to build weapons or perish from shrapnel embedded in his chest, later revamps had that life-preserving chest-plate and weaponised armour evolve as defiant responses to oriental mastermind the Mandarin and Chinese bandits before this latest logical upgrade brought the hero fully into the 21st century…

With the third Iron Man movie hurtling like a missile towards us, The House of Ideas has re-released an augmented collection of Warren Ellis’ updating of the legend: one wherein the always-futuristic noble knight got a stunning cyberpunk upgrade in a tale which directly influenced the filmic franchise and led to illustrator Adi Granov working as a designer and producer on the cinema interpretation.

Collecting Iron Man volume 4, issues #1-6 – January 2005-April 2006 – the fable follows the continuity-shattering “Disassembled” publishing event (involving and affecting The Avengers, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, Captain America and Iron Man himself), which rebooted a number of core concepts and repositioned the inventor-hero as a driven futurist attempting to expiate the blood on his hands at any and all costs…

Although Stark has cut himself loose from official Governmental affiliations and all military contracts, abandoning guns and bombs to return to the life of a maverick entrepreneur, happily risking profits for the betterment of humanity, once upon a time he was an inspired deviser of death-dealing inventions…

Everything kicks off somewhere in Texas when dangerous men utilise stolen science to create a volunteer monster even as, in New York, shell-shocked, weary Stark struggles to get his life on course. Things aren’t made any easier by a conscience-shaking interview with journalist John Pillinger: a forthright, honest individual determined to pick at old scabs by reviewing Stark’s deadly contributions to America’s inhuman arsenal of destruction.

In an uncompromising exchange, Stark is reminded again that his cluster-bombs and landmines have killed so many more than enemy combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan…

With his own Board of Directors daily undermining the head of Stark International, trying to sideline him so that they can go back to building weapons, Stark’s only refuge is the good works performed by his secret identity.

So, when a respected researcher kills himself at biological innovation firm Futurepharm, and the company’s latest project goes missing, Tony jumps at the chance to help its founder – and old girlfriend – Maya Hansen…

Once upon a time they were brilliant young idealists who believed their innovations would reshape humanity, both inspired and influenced by scientific philosopher and truly radical thinker Sal Kennedy and both unhappy at the dirty compromises their work demanded, if they were to build a better world. Now, years later, they both seem closer to achieving their naïve dreams…

The stolen bio-package is codenamed “Extremis”: a nano-tube solution designed to overwrite human biology and cure any disease or injury. This also makes it a super-soldier serum capable of making a body, faster, stronger, tougher and able to build new organs with unsuspected capabilities.

In a hidden place, a man named Mallen comes out of the mutative coma caused by taking Hansen’s Extremis solution. He is no longer remotely human…

As Maya and Tony catch up with their old mentor Sal and are forced to ponder some unpalatable ethical dilemmas, Mallen is invading a Texas FBI office, slaughtering fifty agents and innocent bystanders with uncanny powers.

Long ago his radical, white supremacist family were killed in a domestic siege by Federal Agents, and now the vengeful anti-government libertarian militiaman is just starting his campaign to reclaim his America for his people…

He’s quickly tracked and intercepted by Iron Man and a terrifying battle between technology and biology, Government tool and freedom fighter, super-machine and enhanced man ensues. The Armoured Avenger doesn’t have a chance…

Crushed and broken by Mallen, Stark is perilously wounded and trapped inside his broken billion-dollar toy. The Extremis-enhanced terrorist is simply too strong and far too fast. Slowly dying, Iron Man convinces Maya to take him to Futurepharm, where he reveals his true identity to the astounded scientist and convinces her to give him a diluted, specifically-tailored dose of her incredible restorative…

As the serum goes to work, reconfiguring his system and incorporating elements of armour and processing systems within his body, Stark’s mind wanders back to the distant day when he was captured by Al Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan.

Wounded, with shrapnel pressing against his heart, he and fellow prisoner Ho Yinsen were ordered to make weapons for their captors, but instead built a device to hold the lethal metal shards in place. The chest-plate soon evolved into a mobile weapons system and Stark broke free – but not without terrible consequences…

History repeats itself now as Stark again contrives a weapon-suit to overcome his problems – but this time he’s not wearing or piloting it. Now he truly is an Iron Man inside and out…

All that’s left for the new Avenger is the final battle against Mallen, one last duel between brutal past and shining future, and one more breathtaking betrayal…

Short, sweet, shocking and surprisingly engaging, this compelling Fights ‘n’ Tights thriller offers breakneck pace, astounding action and superbly suspenseful realpolitik, ethical and philosophical quandaries that will satisfy any fan who likes their fantasy tinged with a touch of contemporary hyper-authenticity.

This book also includes a stunning cover-gallery by the artist and a selection of features taken from Marvel Spotlight: Iron Man Movie from 2008, such as the Granov interview, ‘Iron Man to the Extreme’, more stunning art samples in ‘Covering Adi Granov’ and a history and appreciation of the Extremis project in Mike Conroy’s ‘Extreme Visions’.

Gritty, clever and hard-hitting, this is another explosively entertaining yarn to delight established fans with the added distinction of being self-contained and readily accessible to new, returning or casual readers.

™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Julio’s Day


By Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-606-5

In the 1980s a qualitative revolution forever destroyed the clichéd, stereotypical ways different genres of comic strips were produced and marketed. Most prominent in destroying the comfy pigeonholes we’d built for ourselves were three guys from Oxnard, California; Jaime, Mario (occasionally) and Gilberto Hernandez.

Love and Rockets was an anthology magazine featuring slick, intriguing, sci-fi tinted hi-jinx of punky young things Maggie & Hopey – the outrageously beguiling las Locas – as well as heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasies from the rural Central American paradise of Palomar.

Supreme synthesists, Los Bros Hernandez Boys enthralled and enchanted with incredible stories that sampled a thousand influences, conceptual and actual; everything from Comics, TV cartoons, masked wrestlers and the emergent exotica of American Hispanic pop culture to iconic German Expressionism. There was also a perpetual backdrop displaying the holy trinity of the young: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll – for which please hear alternative music and punk rock.

The result was dynamite. Mario only officially contributed on rare occasions, but Jaime’s slick, enticing visual feasts explored friendship and modern love whilst destroying stereotypes of feminine attraction through his fetching coterie of Gals Gone Wild, whilst “Beto” exhaustively crafted a hyper-authentic rural landscape and playground of wit and passion created for his extended generational saga Heartbreak Soup: a quicksilver chimera of breadline Latin-American village life with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast.

Everything from life, death, adultery, magic, serial killing and especially gossip could happen in Palomar’s meta-fictional environs, as the artist mined his own post-punk influences through a powerfully effective primitivist style which blended the stylised mythologies and iconographies of comics, music, recreational drugs, gangs, sex, forceful, capable, dominating women and the inescapable bonds of family using a narrative format which is at the graphic vanguard of Magical Realism.

There’s fiction, there’s Meta-fiction and then there’s Gilbert Hernandez. In addition to his astonishingly captivating Palomar tales he has authored stand-alone books such as Sloth, Grip, Birdland and Girl Crazy, all marked by his boldly compelling, disingenuous artwork and a mature, sensitive adoption of literary techniques by writers like Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez: techniques which he has amplified and, visually at least, made his own.

He then went on to examine filmic and literary influences such as Roger Corman, John Cassavetes, Elmore Leonard and Jim Thompson as he broke new ground and reprocessed the cultural influences that shaped all us baby-boomers, with “adaptations” of the trashy B-Movies which featured as perennial plot “maguffins” in his stories and affected his cast of characters. Those became a little more actual in his “adaptations” of thrillers like Chance in Hell, The Troublemakers and Love from the Shadows…

Always winning critical acclaim but seldom financial reward, the brothers eventually went their own ways, but a few years ago creatively reunited to produce annual collections of new material in their particularly peculiar shared or, rather, adjacent pen-and-ink universes and this rapturously beguiling pictorial elegy began in Love and Rockets volume II, #1 but remained unfinished until completed in this stark evocative monochrome hardback.

Here Gilbert foregoes many of the signature elements he invented and the chaotically frenetic youth-fuelled backdrop he’s famous for to patiently detail the moving life-story of an ordinary man… and, of course, once you start looking you realise there’s really no such thing as ordinary…

It’s about families and friends, the secrets we must keep and how, even though the World changes, sometimes we just can’t…

I’d be doing you and the author a huge disservice by going into too much detail, but suffice to say that somewhere in Southern California a baby is born in 1900. From the start Julio is nourished and cherished by a loving family – all except his uncle Juan, whom only the infant’s older sister Sofia realised should be kept well away from all children at all costs…

Over 100 pages, until his passing in 2000, Julio grows up with friends Tommy and Araceli, dimly aware of yet barely affected by humanity’s great crises, although the fierce uncompromising nature of the times and the elements and environment shape the people of the village just as powerfully as any global war or Stock Market crash.

One tragic slip in a mere mudslide would come to affect the family for three tragic generations…

Moreover even in such placid outreaches, bullying, cruelty, bigotry and intolerance exist in abundance to mould young hearts and minds…

As he grows to maturity, Julio loses family, makes new friends and comes to realises he has a secret he cannot share with anyone: one that, despite the way the times change society before his eyes, he just cannot admit…

Dedicated to the proposition that big history happens somewhere else but its effects touch us all, this warm-hearted, deceptively heart-wrenching, challenging, and incontrovertibly groundbreaking epic is a grown-up comics fan’s dream come true and proves how far the medium has progressed.

From traditional world saving, anodyne fist-fights, fanciful fantasies and children’s escapism to the likes of Maus, One Bad Rat, Palestine, Persepolis, Pride of Baghdad Sailor Twain and so many more, comics have been continually evolving until they not only produce material equal to other art forms, but with Julio’s Day – the diamond point of the cutting edge of graphic narrative – at last arrive at masterpieces which can only be truly told as graphic narratives

…As you will surely see…

© 2013 Gilbert Hernandez. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Ultimate Comics Iron Man: Demon in the Armour


By Nathan Edmondson & Matteo Buffagni (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-526-0

The upcoming third Iron Man film has naturally inspired a few new releases and this one, following the latest refit of the alternate Ultimate Marvel Universe (in the Divided We Fall/United We Stand publishing event), is a pretty good place for new or returning readers to get acquainted with the franchise…

The Marvel Ultimates project started in 2000 with a thoroughly modernizing refit of key characters and concepts to bring them into line with contemporary “ki-dults” – perceived to be a completely different buying public to us baby-boomers and our declining descendents.

Eventually even this streamlined new universe became as crowded and continuity-constricted as its predecessor, and in 2008 the cleansing publishing event “Ultimatum” culminated in a reign of terror which apparently (this is comics, after all) wiped out loads of heroes and villains as well as millions of ordinary mortals.

Even after, slowly rebuilding this darker, grimmer continuum, it had to happen again in 2012 as a perilously destabilised world sank into international metahuman anarchy and America succumbed to a mass secession of rogue states resulting in a second Civil War before the remaining heroes, surviving mutants and a new Spider-Man brought a measure of peace and stability to the planet…

From this latest aftermath comes a post-apocalyptic thriller (reassembling issues #1-4 of Ultimate Comics Iron Man from October 2012-January 2013) which simultaneously explores the past and future of Tony Stark: über-genius weapon-smith, world-class philanderer, amiable drunk, cancer victim and the latest arrogant financial Master of the Universe from a dynasty of armaments manufacturers and profiteers.

Demon in the Armour (and yes, it has been spelled differently for this British Edition) opens with the Golden Avenger spectacularly stopping a railway theft of super-guns before flashing back to earlier times when the rebellious son broke away from his overbearing father Howard Stark and attempted to set up his own company with cherished pal and partner Josey Gardner.

It was one of the last times he defied his dad’s demands.

Despite everything Tony tried, Stark senior was determined that his son would assume control of the family business, and as always, what the old man wanted he got. Six months later, Josey died in a plane crash but by then Tony was too busy in his new role to notice much…

Howard Stark was a complex man: over four decades he had built his small firm into a globe-girdling colossus, and although he never had time for family or sentiment there was always room for one more lesson on how Tony should run it once the old boss was gone…

Back in the present, the current owner is apprised of a brutal sabotage attack which masked a hacking attack. When Iron Man investigates the multi-pronged security breach he is completely outmanoeuvred by a mysterious “Mandarin” organisation which has infiltrated the company databases and even overridden control of Stark’s impregnable armoured suit.

The enigmatic ghost company claim they now own Stark Industries, just as they always have…

With the grudging assistance of ex-girlfriend, former boss super-spy and current White House Insider Carol Danvers, Tony and his major domo Jarvis track Mandarin to shell-company South Pacific Financial in Hong Kong, but the group has such strong ties to the Chinese Government – and the clout to make almost any problem go away – that even the USA officially considers them too big to mess with…

None of which matters one iota to Stark who, hot for answers and payback, ignores advice from friends, orders from the government and simple common sense to invade the company HQ in Hong Kong, only to again fall victim to the mal-ware and unlimited resources of Mandarin…

Barely escaping intact and with China personally suing him, the unrepentant Stark calls in a favour from military man James Rhodes (pilot of the US Air Force iteration of Stark armour dubbed War Machine)… who cheerily refuses…

A dedicated patriot, Rhodey has no time for the self-absorbed inventor and his headstrong manner, but when the latest Mandarin ploy compromises America’s Stark-built automated drone-system and causes untold damage, he joins Carol in a last-ditch scheme to destroy the sinister phantom cabal.

Stark and S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite data pinpoints an uncharted PacificIsland as the probable home base of Mandarin, but when Iron Man blazes in, Tony is easily overwhelmed. Mandarin has him exactly where it has always wanted him and the overmatched, outfoxed inventor subsequently discovers the family secrets and appalling obligations he could never have imagined as well as an unobtrusively all-pervasive foe unlike any other he has ever faced…

Luckily the unlikely hero always had plans and allies to match his impulsive nature and selfish indignation…

Cunning, devious, fast-paced and action-packed, this sharp, straightforward thriller perfectly fills the bill as a place to jump on to the Iron Man experience as writer Nathan Edmondson & artist Matteo Buffagni (ably augmented by colourist Andy Troy) fill in some questions about Tony Stark and reboot the Technological Titan just in time for the next movie…

With covers and variants by Frank Stockton & Gabrielle Dell’otto, this is a deliciously wry, cynical shocker: another breathtakingly effective yarn only possible outside the Marvel Universe and one which will resonate with readers who love the darkest side of science fiction and superheroes as well as casual readers who know the company’s movies better than the comicbooks.

Heavy on attitude and action and over almost too quickly, this is another splendid tale that leaves the reader genuinely hungry for more…

™ & © 2013 Marvel. All rights reserved. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.

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Star Trek: the Further Adventures of the Starship Enterprise – Marvel Illustrated Books


By Alan Brennert, Martin Pasko, Tom DeFalco, Luke McDonnell, Joe Brozowski, Mike Nasser, Tom Palmer & Klaus Janson (Marvel/)
ISBN: 0-939766-00-0

The stellar Star Trek brand and franchise might not have actually reached any new worlds, yet it certainly has permeated every civilisation here on Earth, with daily live-action and animated screen appearances appearing somewhere on the planet and comics iterations generated in a host of countries long lying fallow and unseen.

If only somebody could sort out the legal and logistical hassles so we could see again those stunning UK strips which appeared in Joe 90, TV21, TV Comic and Valiant from such fabulous creators as Angus Allan, Harry Lindfield, Mike Noble, Alan Willow, Ron Turner, Jim Baikie, Harold Johns, Carlos Pino, Vicente Alcázar, John Stokes and others, I might die a happy, nostalgia-drowned boy…

In the meantime however, here’s a little-seen lost artefact and another early glimpse at how our industry gradually became mainstream literature or “graphic novels”: a pulse-pounding paperback package for action fans, fantasy freaks and movie-lovers alike.

After a few abortive attempts in the 1960s to storm the shelves of bookstores and libraries, Marvel made a concerted and comprehensive effort to get their wares into more socially acceptable formats and, as the 1970s closed, purpose-built paperback collections and a string of new prose tales tailored to feed into their burgeoning brand began to emerge as the company continued its crusade to break into regular, real-world bookshops.

The company’s careful reformatting of their own classic comics adventures were generally excellent; a superb series of primers and a perfect new venue to introduce fresh readers to their unique worlds. In addition, by judicious partnerships with major film and TV properties, they expanded the market share for their little books in real shops and stores.

In this particular case the fact that the mighty Star Trek franchise’s comicbook requirements were being serviced by a stridently ascendant Marvel (after years with the commercial diffident Western/Gold Key Comics) made for an ideal repackaging opportunity…

The Further Adventures were all set in the days after Star Trek: the Motion Picture (which rebooted the long-dormant phenomenon and allowed Marvel to produce a vastly underrated 18-issue series) and recounted new exploits of the starship Enterprise and older, wiser, re-united Federation voyagers James T. Kirk, Spock, Dr. Leonard McCoy, Hikaru Sulu, Montgomery Scott, Nyota Uhura and Pavel Chekov.

This full-colour delight reformatted three of very best comicbook episodes and begins with ‘Eclipse of Reason’ by Alan Brennert, Martin Pasko, Luke McDonnell & Tom Palmer (originally seen in issue #12, March 1981) wherein the comrades are reunited with former Yeoman Janice Rand.

She has since married Kadan of Phaeton, an alien being composed of pure thought and volunteered for a one-way trip with him and an equally disembodied crew beyond the energy barrier that seals off our galaxy from the rest of the universe. However as in the TV episode “Where No Man has Gone Before”, collision with the barrier produces terrifying psionic anomalies and the exploratory starship U.S.S. Icarus turns back, its conceptual crew driven mad and determined to return home at all costs.

With the anti-matter powered ship on a collision course with the densely populated planet, Kirk, Spock and Rand must overcome extraordinary perils to save an entire world and a unique, extraordinary love…

Pasko, Joe Brozowski & Palmer collaborated on ‘Like a Woman Scorned’ (from previous issue #11, February 1981) wherein the Enterprise was despatched to evacuate a cult leader from a radiation-drenched colony world and Scotty was unhappily reunited with bitter old flame Andrea Manning – and her charismatic guru Carl Wentworth.

Even as the reluctant evacuee began exerting an uncanny persuasion and fomenting actual rebellion aboard ship, the downhearted engineer and his beloved ship began to suffer impossible attacks from creatures out of dark fairytales, leaving Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy to divine the incredible secret to the inimical invasion…

Last included is the marvellously twisted ‘Tomorrow or Yesterday’ (Tom DeFalco, Mike Nasser & Klaus Janson from #7 October 1980) wherein a landing crew beams down to doomed world Andrea IV to rescue the indigenous primitives from a devastating radiation cloud only to find the natives welcoming, aware of the danger but strangely unworried.

To make matters worse the encroaching Rad-storm has made return to the enterprise all but impossible.

In the great square the mystery deepens as destruction looms, when Kirk, Spock and McCoy observe the natives praying to statues of the Saviours destined to save them all: perfect likeness of the Federation Officers sculpted 24,000 years previously…

With time running out, the desperate heroes find themselves trapped amongst blithely unworried masses, all patiently waiting for the prophesied messiahs to save them – just as they have already done…

Smart, effective and lovingly executed, these classic yarns are long overdue for a compilation re-release (as far as I’m aware the stories from this comics series were only ever available in this paperback and as part of a CD-Rom package), and Trekkies, Trekkers and comics aficionados alike should rowdily unite to agitate until some publisher gets the message…
© 1980, 1981 Paramount Picture Corporation. All rights reserved. At that time Star Trek was ™ Paramount Picture Corporation.