Category: Marvel Superheroes

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks – The Amazing Spider-Man: With Great Power…


By Stan Lee & Steve Ditko, with Jack Kirby & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2977-0 (PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Immaculate Confection… 10/10

As any fule kno, Spider-Man turns 60 in 2022. In advance of that, here’s a little preliminary stocking-stuffer to start next year’s party early. I’m celebrating it here and now… and in a rather controversial new format.

These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before so I’m digressing to talk about format first. The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line has been designed with economy in mind. Classic tales of Marvel’s key creators and characters re-presented in chronological order have been a staple since the 1990s, but always in lavish, expensive hardback collectors editions. These new books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and – crucially – are smaller, about the dimensions of a paperback book. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they’re perfect for kids. If you opt for the digital editions, that’s no issue at all…

Marvel is often termed “the House that Jack Built” and King Kirby’s contributions are undeniable and inescapable in the creation of a new kind of comic book storytelling, but there was another unique visionary toiling at Atlas-Comics-as-was, one whose creativity and even philosophy seemed diametrically opposed to the bludgeoning power, vast imaginative scope and clean, broad lines of Kirby’s ever-expanding search for the external and infinite.

Steve Ditko was quiet and unassuming, voluntarily diffident to the point of invisibility, but his work was both subtle and striking: innovative and meticulously polished. Always questing for detail, he ever explored the man within. He saw heroism and humour and ultimate evil all contained within the frail but noble confines of humanity. His drawing could be oddly disquieting… and, when he wanted, decidedly creepy.

Crafting extremely well-received monster and mystery tales for and with Stan Lee, Ditko had been rewarded with his own title. Amazing Adventures/Amazing Adult Fantasy featured a subtler brand of yarn than Rampaging Aliens and Furry Underpants Monsters: an ilk which, though individually entertaining, had been slowly losing traction in the world of comics ever since National/DC had successfully reintroduced costumed heroes.

Lee & Kirby had responded with Fantastic Four and the ahead-of-its-time Incredible Hulk but there was no indication of the renaissance ahead when officially just-cancelled Amazing Fantasy featured a brand new and rather eerie adventure character.

This compelling and economical full-colour paperback/digital compilation re-presents that auspicious tale from Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1-10, (spanning cover-dates August 1962-March 1964): allowing newcomers and veteran readers to relive some of the greatest moments in sequential narrative.

The initial burst of wonderment came and concluded in 11 captivating pages. ‘Spider-Man!’ offers the parable of Peter Parker: a smart but alienated kid bitten by a radioactive spider on a high school science trip. Discovering he’s developed arachnid abilities – which he augments with his own ingenuity and engineering genius – Peter does what any lonely, geeky nerd would do when given such a gift… he tries to cash in for girls, fame and money.

Creating a costume to hide his identity in case he makes a fool of himself, Parker becomes a minor celebrity – and a vain, self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief flees past him, he doesn’t lift a finger to stop the thug, and days later returns home to find that his Uncle Ben has been murdered.

Crazy for vengeance, Parker stalks the assailant who made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known, only to find that it is the felon he couldn’t be bothered with. Since his social irresponsibility led to the death of the man who raised him, the boy swears to always use his powers to help others…

It wasn’t a new story, but the setting was familiar to every kid reading it and the artwork was downright spooky. This wasn’t the gleaming high-tech world of moon-rockets, mammoth monsters and flying cars… this stuff could happen to anybody…

Amazing Fantasy #15 came out the same month as Tales to Astonish #35 – the first to feature the Astonishing Ant-Man in costume, but it was the last issue of Ditko’s Amazing playground. In this volume you’ll find the ‘Fan Page – Important Announcement from the Editor!’ that completely misled fans as to what would happen next…

However, the tragic last-ditch tale struck a chord with the public and by year’s end a new comic book superstar was ready to launch in his own title, with Ditko eager to show what he could do with his first returning character since the demise of Charlton’s Captain Atom…

Holding on to the “Amazing” prefix to jog reader’s memories, the bi-monthly Amazing Spider-Man #1 arrived with a March 1963 cover-date and two complete stories. It also prominently featured the Fantastic Four and took the readership by storm. The opening tale, again simply entitled ‘Spider-Man!’, recapitulated the origin whilst adding a brilliant twist to the conventional mix…

By now the wall-crawling hero was feared and reviled by the general public thanks mostly to J. Jonah Jameson, a newspaper magnate who pilloried the adventurer from spite and for profit. With time-honoured comic book irony, Spider-Man then had to save Jameson’s astronaut son John from a defective space capsule in extremely low orbit…

Second yarn ‘Vs the Chameleon!’ finds the cash-strapped kid trying to force his way onto the roster – and payroll – of the FF whilst elsewhere a spy perfectly impersonates the webspinner to steal military secrets. This is a stunning example of the high-strung, antagonistic cameos and crossovers that so energised the jaded kids of the early 1960s. Heroes just didn’t act like that and they certainly didn’t speak directly to the fans as in the editorial ‘A Personal Message from Spider-Man’ page reprinted here…

With #2, our new champion began a meteoric rise in quality and innovative storytelling. ‘Duel to the Death with the Vulture!’ catches Parker chasing a flying thief as much for profit as justice. Desperate to help his aunt make ends meet, Spider-Man starts taking photos of his cases to sell to Jameson’s Daily Bugle, making the gadfly his sole means of support.

Matching his deft comedy and moody soap-operatic melodrama, Ditko’s action sequences were imaginative and magnificently visceral, with odd angle shots and quirky, mis-balanced poses adding a vertiginous sense of unease to fight scenes. But crime wasn’t the only threat to the world and Spider-Man was just as (un)comfortable battling “aliens” in ‘The Uncanny Threat of the Terrible Tinkerer!’

Amazing Spider-Man #3 introduced possibly the apprentice hero’s greatest enemy in ‘Versus Doctor Octopus’: a full-length saga wherein a dedicated scientist survives an atomic accident only to find his self-designed mechanical tentacles have permanently grafted to his body. Power-mad, Otto Octavius initially thrashes Spider-Man, sending the lad into a depression until an impromptu pep-talk from Human Torch Johnny Storm galvanises Spider-Man to one of his greatest victories. Rounding out the tense drama is a stunning ‘Special Surprise Bonus Spider-Man Pin-up Page!’…

‘Nothing Can Stop… the Sandman!’ was another instant classic wherein a common thug who gains the power to transform to sand – another pesky nuclear snafu – invades Parker’s school, and must be stopped at all costs, whilst #5 finds the webspinner ‘Marked for Destruction by Dr. Doom!’ – not so much winning as surviving his battle against the deadliest man on Earth.

Presumably he didn’t mind too much, as this marked the series’ transition from bi-monthly to monthly status. Here Parker’s social nemesis, jock bully Flash Thompson, first displays depths beyond the usual in contemporary comic books, beginning one of the most enduring love/hate buddy relationships in popular literature…

Sometime mentor Dr. Curtis Connors debuts in #6 when Spidey comes ‘Face-to-face with… The Lizard!’ with the wallcrawler fighting far from the concrete canyons and comfort zone of New York – specifically in the murky Florida Everglades. Parker was back in the Big Apple for #7 to breathtakingly tackle ‘The Return of the Vulture’ in a full-length masterpiece.

Fun and puckish hi-jinks were a signature feature of the series, as was Parker’s budding romance with “older woman” Betty Brant – Jameson’s secretary/PA at the Daily Bugle. Youthful exuberance was the underlying drive in #8′s lead tale‘The Living Brain!’ wherein an ambulatory robot calculator threatens to expose Spider-Man’s secret identity before running amok at beleaguered Midtown High, just as Parker is finally beating the stuffings out of school bully Flash.

This 17-page triumph is accompanied by ‘Spiderman Tackles the Torch!’: a 6-page vignette drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Ditko, wherein a boisterous wall-crawler gate-crashes a beach party thrown by the flaming hero’s girlfriend… with suitably explosive consequences.

Amazing Spider-Man #9 is a qualitative step-up in dramatic terms, as Aunt May is revealed to be chronically ill – adding to Parker’s financial woes – with the action supplied by ‘The Man Called Electro!’ – an accidental super-criminal with grand aspirations.

The wallcrawler was always a loner, never far from the streets and small-scale-crime, and with this tale – wherein he also quells a prison riot single handed – Ditko’s preference for tales of human-scaled lawbreakers starts to show through: a predilection confirmed in #10’s ‘The Enforcers!’

This is a classy mystery with a masked mastermind known as the Big Man using a position of trust at the Bugle to organise all New York mobs into one unbeatable army against decency.

Longer plot-strands are also introduced as Betty mysteriously vanishes, although most fans remember this one for the spectacularly climactic 7-page fight scene in an underworld chop-shop that has still never been beaten for action-choreography.

And more and even better is yet to come…

The jumbo-economy selection is supplemented by an early 1960s monochrome promotional pin-up, unused covers, and house ads – including one from Fantastic Four #14 (May 1963) that announced the company’s new branding and name… the Marvel Comics Group!

These immortal epics are something no fan can be without, and will make the ideal gift for any curious newcomer.

Happy birthday Spidey and many, many more please…
© 2021 MARVEL

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Marvel Two-in-One Marvel Masterworks volume 4


By Marv Wolfman, Jim Starlin, Roger Slifer, Tom DeFalco, David Anthony Kraft, Ralph Macchio, Peter B. Gillis, Alan Kupperberg, Ron Wilson, Sal Buscema, John Byrne, Bob Hall & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1815-6 (HB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Blockbuster Epic Adventures… 8/10

It’s the anniversary of the Fantastic Four this year and we couldn’t let it go without celebrating the team’s most iconic member…

Above all else, Marvel has always been about team-ups. The concept of team-up books – an established star pairing, or battling (often both) with less well-selling company characters – was not new when Marvel awarded their most popular hero the same deal DC had with Batman in The Brave and the Bold. Although confident in their new title, they wisely left options open by allocating an occasional substitute lead in the Human Torch.

In those long-ago days, editors were acutely conscious of potential over-exposure – and since super-heroes were actually in a decline they may well have been right.

Nevertheless, after the runaway success of Spider-Man‘s guest vehicle Marvel Team-Up, the House of Ideas carried on the trend with a series starring bashful, blue-eyed Ben Grimm – the Fantastic Four‘s most iconic and popular member. They began with a brace of test runs in Marvel Feature #11-12, before awarding him his own team-up title, with this fourth eclectic compendium gathering in hardback or digital editions the contents of Marvel Two-In-One #37-66, MTIO Annuals #2-3 and Avengers Annual #7, covering November 1977 to December 1978.

Preceded by a comprehensive reminiscence in Roger Stern’s Introduction, the action begins with ‘The Final Threat’ by Jim Starlin & Joe Rubinstein) from Avengers Annual #7, wherein Kree warrior Captain Marvel and Titanian mind-goddess Moondragon return to Earth with vague anticipations of an impending cosmic catastrophe. Their premonitions are confirmed when galactic wanderer Adam Warlock arrives with news that death-obsessed Thanos has amassed an alien armada and built a Soul-gem powered weapon to snuff out the stars like candles…

Broaching interstellar space to stop the scheme, the united heroes forestall the stellar invasion and prevent the Mad Titan destroying the Sun, but only at the cost of Warlock’s life…

Then Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2 undertakes a ‘Death Watch!’ (Starlin & Rubinstein) finding Peter Parker plagued by prophetic nightmares, disclosing how Thanos had snatched victory from defeat and now holds the Avengers captive whilst again preparing to extinguish Sol.

With nowhere else to turn, anguished, disbelieving Spider-Man heads for the Baxter Building to borrow a spacecraft, unaware that The Thing also has history with the terrifying Titan. Although utterly outpowered, the mismatched champions of Life subsequently upset Thanos’ plans, allowing the Avengers and the Universe’s true agent of retribution to end the Titan’s threat forever… or at least until next time…

Marvel Two-In-One‘s apparent function as a clearing-house for old, unresolved series and plot-lines was then briefly put on hold as issue #37 teamed Ben with Matt Murdock (not alter ego Daredevil) for legal drama ‘Game Point!’ (Marv Wolfman, Ron Wilson & Pablo Marcos). Ben had been framed for monstrous acts of wanton destruction, and when the case went badly, he faced decades in jail.

However, the Man Without Fear and eccentric street punk “Eugene the Kid” determine the Mad Thinker is behind the plot to place the ‘Thing Behind Prison Bars’ (by Roger Slifer, Wilson & Jim Mooney): tackling the maniac whose ultimate game plan is cornering the future and mass-producing his own android Avenger in #39’s ‘The Vision Gambit’ (inked by Marcos).

Slifer, Tom DeFalco, Wilson & Marcos then detail a spooky international yarn as the Black Panther is involved in a monstrous reign of terror with a zombie-vampire stalking the streets and abducting prominent African Americans. Concluding chapter ‘Voodoo and Valor!’ by David Anthony Kraft, Wilson & Marcos) sees Jericho Drumm (AKA Brother Voodoo) volunteer his extremely specialised services to Ben and T’Challa, in hopes of ending the crisis. The trail takes our heroes to Uganda for a confrontation with Doctor Spectrum and the far more dangerous real-world crazed killer Idi Amin…

Crafted by Ralph Macchio, Sal Buscema, Alfredo Alcala & Sam Grainger, Marvel Two-In-One #42 introduces a new mainstay of Marvel Universe continuity as Project Pegasus debuts in ‘Entropy, Entropy…’

The Federal research station designated Potential Energy Group/Alternate Sources/United States is dedicated to investigating alternative power sources and becomes the most sensible place to dump energy-wielding super-baddies once they were subdued. Ben finds and begins trashing the place whilst tracking down his educationally- and emotionally-challenged ward Wundarr after the kid was renditioned by the Government. The furious Thing is soon confronted and contained by Captain America in his role as security advisor and together they stumble over a sabotage scheme by martial maniac Victorius who unleashes a deadly new threat in the ghostly form of Jude, the Entropic Man…

This phantasmic force easily trounces Cap and Ben but find the macabre Man-Thing a bit harder to handle in concluding episode ‘The Day the World Winds Down’ by Macchio, John Byrne – & Friends – & Bruce Patterson)…

Marvel Two-In-One Annual #3 then hosts a great big, old-fashioned world-breaking blockbuster wherein Nova the Human Rocket battles beside the Thing to free captive alien princesses and save the Earth from colossal cosmos-marauding space invaders: a simple yet entertaining tussle entitled ‘When Strike the Monitors!’ all carefully crafted by Wolfman, Sal Buscema, Frank Giacoia & Dave Hunt.

Back in the monthly comic book issue #44 strays away from standard fare with ‘The Wonderful World of Brother Benjamin J. Grimm’ (Wolfman, Bob Hall & Frank Giacoia) with the Thing telling rowdy kids a rather fanciful bedtime story concerning his recent partnership with Hercules to free Olympus from invading giants…

In issue #45 Kree Captain Marvel’s Cosmic Awareness warns him that the Thing had been targeted by vengeful Skrulls in ‘The Andromeda Rub-Out!’ (Peter Gillis, Alan Kupperberg & Mike Esposito), after which the Incredible Hulk‘s new TV show compels an outraged Ben to head for Hollywood, only to become accidentally embroiled in a ‘Battle in Burbank!’(Kupperberg & Chic Stone) to end this tranche of titanic team-ups on a classic note…

Added interest comes in the form of tantalising house ads and original art by Starlin & Rubenstein.

These stories from Marvel’s Middle Period are admittedly of variable quality, but whereas some might feel rushed and ill-considered they are balanced by truly timeless classics, still as captivating today as they ever were. Even if artistically the work varies from only adequate to superb, most fans of Costumed Dramas will find little to complain about and there’s lots of fun to be found for young and old readers. So why not lower your critical guard and have an honest blast of pure warts ‘n’ all comics craziness? You’ll almost certainly grow to like it…
© 2019 MARVEL.

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Black Widow Epic Collection volume 2: The Coldest War 1981-1998


By Ralph Macchio, Gerry Conway, D.G. Chichester, Jim Starlin, Cefn Ridout, Mindy Newell, Scott Lobdell, Paul Gulacy, George Pérez, George Freeman, Larry Stroman, Joe Chiodo, Charlie Adlard, Bob Layton, Butch Guice, John Stanisci, Sergio Cariello, Randy Green & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2126-2 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: All-Out Action Adventure to Rival Any Cinema Classic… 8/10

Natasha Romanoff (sometimes Natalia Romanova) is a Soviet Russian spy who came in from the cold and stuck around to become one of Marvel’s earliest female stars, using a nomme de guerre first coined for a golden age supernatural superstar. Today’s Black Widow started life as a svelte, sultry honey-trap during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days, targeting Tony Stark and battling Iron Man in her debut (Tales of Suspense #52, April, 1964).

She was subsequently redesigned as a torrid tights-&-tech super-villain before defecting to the USA, falling for an assortment of Yankee superheroes – including Hawkeye and Daredevil – before finally enlisting as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., setting up as a freelance do-gooder and joining (occasionally leading) The Champions and The Avengers.

Throughout her career, she has always been considered ultra-efficient, coldly competent, deadly dangerous and yet somehow cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours. As her backstory evolved, it was disclosed that Natasha had undergone experimental processes which enhanced her physical capabilities and lengthened her lifespan, as well as assorted psychological procedures which had messed up her mind and memories…

Traditionally a minor fan favourite, the Widow only really hit the big time after Marvel’s cinematic franchise was established, but for us unregenerate comics-addicts, her print escapades have always offered a cool, sinister frisson of delight.

This expansive trade paperback and digital compilation gathers the contents of Bizarre Adventures #25, Marvel Fanfare #10-13; Solo Avengers #7; Black Widow: The Coldest War; Punisher/Black Widow: Spinning Doomsday’s Web; Daredevil/Black Widow: Abattoir; Marvel Comics Presents #135; Daredevil Annual #10; Fury/Black Widow:Death Duty and Journey into Mystery #517-519, cumulatively covering March 1981 to April 1998.

Preceded by prose  recaps ‘The Black Widow and Daredevil’ and ‘We are The Champions’, the action opens with an iconic appearance from 1981, first seen in monochrome mature-reader magazine Bizarre Adventures #25, featuring short tales starring female heroes.

Here Ralph Macchio scripted a far more devious spy yarn of double and triple cross with agents betraying each other while trying to ascertain who might be working for “the other side”…

‘I Got the Yo-Yo… You Got the String’ sees the Widow despatched by S.H.I.E.L.D. to assassinate her former tutor Irma Klausvichnova in an African political hot spot. However, as the mission proceeds, Natasha learns that she can’t trust anybody and everything she knows is either a lie or a test with fatal consequences…

The chilling, twist-ridden tale is elevated to excellence by the powerful tonal art of Paul Gulacy who fills the piece with sly tributes to numerous movie spies and the actors – such as Michael Caine and Humphry Bogart – who first made the genre so compelling.

Next up is a saga seen in Marvel Fanfare #10-13 (August 1983-March 1984), wherein Macchio and George Pérez – with inkers Brett Breeding, Jack Abel, Joe Sinnott, Al Milgrom & John Beatty – depict the spy in extreme peril as ‘Widow’finds her tapped again by S.H.I.E.L.D. to extract an abducted asset – her beloved mentor Ivan Petrovich.

As she tracks and trashes assorted killers and crazies, we get a potted rundown of her complex origins before she arrives ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’: infiltrating a top-secret science project and facing the assembled killer elite of a mystery mastermind with a grudge…

As mercenary assassins close in, ‘The Web Tightens!‘ until a last-minute rescue by agent Jimmy Woo and frenzied clash with mad killer Snapdragon at last leads to revelation and full disclosure after ‘The Widow… Alone!’ faces a foe long believed dead and spectacularly triumphs…

A short from Solo Avengers #7 (June 1988) by Bob Layton & Jackson “Butch” Guice) sees the Widow brave unimaginable peril to return to her old dancing teacher ‘The Token’ she no longer feels worthy of before intriguing superhero spy Original Graphic Novel The Coldest War unfolds.

Set in the last days of the US/Soviet face-off – with what looks to be an epilogue added to address the collapse of the Soviet State – the tale was clearly meant as a contemporary thriller (probably for fortnightly anthology Marvel Comics Presents) before events overtook the time-consuming process of printing a comic.

The afterword – set after the fall of the Berlin Wall – doesn’t jar too much and must have lent an air of imminent urgency to the mix at the time.

Gerry Conway provides a typically complex, double-dealing tale set in the dog-days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s “Perestroika” (“openness”) government, where ambitious KGB upstarts undertake a plan to subvert Natasha  and return her to Soviet control. Their leverage and bait is husband Alexei Shostokoff – whom she has believed dead for years. Naturally, nothing is as it seems, nobody can be trusted and only the last spy standing can be called the winner…

Low key and high-tech go hand in hand in this sort of tale, and although there’s much reference to earlier Marvel classics, it can be easily enjoyed by the casual reader or movie convert.

And what art! George Freeman is a supreme stylist, whose drawing work – although infrequent – is always top rate. Starting out on Captain Canuck, he has excelled on Jack of Hearts, Green Lantern, Avengers, Batman Annual #11 (with Alan Moore), Wasteland, Elric, Nexus and The X-Files (for which he won an Eisner Award). Here, inked by Ernie Colon, Mark Farmer, Mike Harris, Val Mayerik & Joe Rubinstein, with colours from Lovern Kindzierski, he renders a subtle and sophisticated blend of costumed chic and espionage glamour to make this tale a “must-have” item all by itself.

It’s followed by 1992’s OGN Punisher/Black Widow: Spinning Doomsday’s Web by D.G. Chichester, Larry Stroman & Mark Farmer. Action-packed and plot-lite, it sees Frank Castle clash with the super-agent as she tracks rogue killer Peter Malum: an atomic scientist with a taste for slaughter and an insatiable thirst to test the deadliest weapon he’s ever built…

Presumably her spicy spy cachet wasn’t deemed enough to garner a regular series but warranted plenty of guest shots. In 1993, Jim Starlin & Joe Chiodo reunited her with an old lover for OGN Daredevil/Black Widow: Abattoir as a duo of depraved psionic predators inflict the tortures of the damned upon the Widow until the Man Without Fear saves her… and she subsequently rescues him…

Released in Late August 1993, ‘Legacy’ by Mindy Newell, John Stanisci & Sergio Cariello, was one quarter of Marvel Comics Presents #135 and sees Natasha touch base with her roots in New York’s Russian enclave only to find prejudice, murder and hidden KGB agents, before 1994’s Daredevil Annual #10 ‘Dead End’ offers a kind of sequel by Newell, Cariello & Rich Rankin as Natasha retrieves a lost bio-agent and is unexpectedly forced into reviewing her own defection to find a supposedly long-deceased old enemy…

Presumably crafted under the aegis of the much-missed Marvel UK sub-division, 1995 OGN Fury/Black Widow: Death Duty is by Cefn Ridout & Charlie Adlard and is a bit of a misnomer.

Don’t be fooled by the title and brace yourself for a disappointment if you’re a huge fan of the World War II Howling Commando and irascible erstwhile leader of the planet’s most advanced espionage agency. Although he gets top billing, Nick Fury is largely absent from the post-Cold War proceedings in this pacy thriller that is in actuality the spiritual conclusion to the saga of the mysterious Night Raven.

The enigmatic wanderer was a masked vigilante who fought crime in New York and Chicago s between World Wars I and II. In later years, he was locked in a bloody, pitiless vendetta with immortal villainess Yi Yang, Queen of the Dragon Tong.

Here, when a S.H.I.E.L.D. asset is murdered inside Moscow’s US embassy soon after the fall of the Soviet system, expatriate Russian super-agent/Avenger Natasha Romanoff is dispatched to unravel the secrets the new rulers don’t want revealed.

What she discovers is the incredible fate of the fearsome urban legend now known as Black Bird as he slaughters his way through bureaucrats and Russian Mafia alike in his single-minded mission to destroy the woman who kept him from a peaceful grave.

Superbly illustrated and tightly scripted, this is nonetheless an uncomfortable blending of genres, with a strange pace to it: as if a propose serial was savagely trimmed and pruned with no thought to narrative cohesion.

Closing the file this time around is a 3-part exploit by Scott Lobdell, Randy Green & Rick Ketcham from Journey into Mystery #517-519 (February to April 1998). ‘The Fire Next Time… parts 1-3’ offers a convoluted hunt for a Far Right terror group’s hidden leader whose scheme to simultaneously murder every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent on Earth revolves around a hidden traitor. But as the plot unfolds, it’s clear to the beleaguered Widow that absolutely nobody is who or what they seem…

Supplemented by Gulacy’s stunning 1982 Black Widow Portfolio (six monochrome plates and the cover image); info pages from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and pin-ups and posters by Al Milgrom, Kevin Nowlan, Terry Austin, June Brigman & Jim Lee and Joe Chiodo, this monumental collection also contains original art pages from Chiodo, Stroman & Farmer and covers by Yancy LaBat, Mark Morales, Pérez & Layton from previous collections of Black Widow: Web of Intrigue combining to create a suspenseful dossier of devious delights no fan should miss.
© 2020 MARVEL.

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Fantastic Four Epic Collection volume 7: Battle of the Behemoths 1970-1972


By Stan Lee, Archie Goodwin, John Romita, John Buscema, Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott, John Verpoorten, Frank Giacoia, Jim Mooney & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2913-8 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Fantastic Fight Fuelled Fun… 8/10

It’s still 60 glorious years of the team who changed comics forever, so let’s revisit some more Mighty Marvel Magic…

Cautiously bi-monthly and cover-dated November 1961, Fantastic Four #1 (by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, George Klein & Christopher Rule) was raw and crude even by the ailing company’s standards: but it seethed with rough, passionate and uncontrolled excitement. Thrill-hungry kids pounced on its dynamic storytelling and caught a wave of change starting to build in America. It and succeeding issues changed comics forever.

As seen in the groundbreaking premier issue, maverick scientist Reed Richards, his fiancée Sue Storm, their close friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s annoying teenaged brother survived an ill-starred private space-shot after Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

All permanently mutated: Richards’ body became elastic, Sue became (even more) invisible, Johnny Storm burst into living flame whilst tragic Ben shockingly devolved into a shambling, rocky freak. After the initial revulsion and trauma passed, they solemnly agreed to use their abilities to benefit mankind. Thus was born The Fantastic Four.

Throughout the 1960s the FF was indisputably the core title and most consistently groundbreaking series of Marvel’s ever-unfolding web of cosmic creation: a forge for new concepts and characters. Kirby was in his creative prime: continually unleashing his vast imagination on plot after spectacular plot, whilst Lee scripted some of the most passionate superhero sagas ever seen.

Both were on an unstoppable roll, at the height of their powers and full of the confidence only success brings, with The King particularly eager to see how far the genre and the medium could be pushed… which is rather ironic since it was the company’s reticence to give the artist creative freedom which led to Kirby’s jumping ship to National/DC in the first place…

And then, he was gone…

With this collection from “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine” a new style develops. Without Kirby’s restless imagination the rollercoaster of mind-bending High Concepts gave way to more traditional tales of characters in conflict, with soap-opera leanings and super-villain-dominated Fights ‘n’ Tights dramas.

This blockbuster bonanza compendium – also available in digital editions – gathers issues #105-125 (spanning December 1970-August 1972) and opens with ‘The Monster in the Streets!’…

Scripted by Lee and illustrated by John Romita & inker John Verpoorten, this is a low-key yet extremely effective suspense thriller played against a resuming subplot of Johnny’s failing romance. When his Inhuman girlfriend Crystal is taken ill – preparatory to writing her out of the series completely – Reed’s diligent examination reveals a potential method of curing the misshapen Thing of his rocky curse.

Tragically, as Ben is prepped for the radical process, a mysterious energy-beast starts tearing up the city. By the time ‘The Monster’s Secret!’ is exposed in #106, the team strongman is almost dead and Crystal is gone… seemingly forever.

Veteran inker Joe Sinnott returns in #107 for ‘And Now… the Thing!’ as John Buscema assumes the illustrator’s reins over Kirby’s other masterpiece (he had already been drawing Thor for four months – starting with #182).

Here and now the unfortunate man-monster gains the power to become human at will. It seems the best of all possible outcomes but something isn’t quite right…

However, before Reed can investigate an old foe pops up again. Sort of…

Fantastic Four #108 was something of a surprise to fans. ‘The Monstrous Mystery of the Nega-Man!’ “reintroduced” a character never seen before.

This was done by recycling large portions of a recently-rejected Kirby & Sinnott tale and adding new framing sequences illustrated by Buscema and Romita. The mysterious Janus had tapped into the antimatter power of the Negative Zoneonce before and “now” resurfaces to steal more by crashing through the portal in Reed’s lab. Unfortunately, this attracts the attention of extinction-event predator Annihilus, who had long sought entry into our life-rich universe…

Forced to follow the utterly mad scientist, Reed, Ben and Johnny once again face ‘Death in the Negative Zone!’ (Lee. Buscema& Sinnott) before FF #110 sees – thanks to a little arcane assistance from sorceress/babysitter Agatha Harkness – Reed escape doom in the anti-cosmos only to realise that “cured” Ben has become lethally sociopathic: a threat to all humanity in ‘One from Four Leaves Three!’

Able to switch between human and monster forms, ‘The Thing… Amok’ rampages through New York, with Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch desperately trying to minimise the damage their deranged friend inflicts on the city even as increasingly marginalised Sue Richards is packed off to tend baby Franklin beside eldritch governess Harkness…

With all of New York apparently against them, the embattled heroes are on the ropes when the Incredible Hulk joins the fracas for #112’s ‘Battle of the Behemoths!’.

As Sue finally and rebelliously returns, The Thing seems to have perished in the brutal battle that ensued when the monsters met, but once again Reed saves – and cures – his best friend just as another menace materialises…

‘The Power of… the Over-Mind!’ reveals another insidious cosmic menace, presaged and prophesised by an ominous warning from omniscient alien spectator The Watcher.

The psionic super-menace further incites civilian antipathy towards the FF in ‘But Who Shall Stop the Over-Mind?’ (inked by Frank Giacoia) before manifesting and physically trouncing the team.

With #115,  Stan Lee surrendered scripting to Archie Goodwin, who promptly revealed ‘The Secret of the Eternals’ (not the earthly proto-gods and blockbuster movie icons created by Kirby, but an entirely different ancient alien race) in a visually stunning sequence limned by Buscema & Sinnott, culminating in Reed being taken over by the Over-Mind and turning on his erstwhile comrades…

The saga concludes with double-sized Fantastic Four #116’s ‘The Alien, the Ally, and… Armageddon!’ as the defeated, embattled heroes – unable to access any superhero assistance – recruit arch foe Doctor Doom to lead them in final battle against the seemingly unbeatable Over-Mind. They are nonetheless crushed and only saved at the crucial moment by a most unexpected saviour in ‘Now Falls the Final Hour!’…

Having helped save the world – and with time on his hot little hands – the heartsick Human Torch heads for the Himalayas and a long-delayed rapprochement with lost girlfriend Crystal in FF #117.

Months previously she had been forced to abandon human civilisation because modern pollutants poisoned her system, but when blazing mad Johnny battles his way into her hidden homeland in ‘The Flame and the Quest!’, he is horrified to discover that she had never arrived back in the Great Refuge of Attilan…

Flying back to New York, Johnny consults part-time nanny and career-sorceress Agatha Harkness who traces Crystal to the Central American dictatorship of Terra Verde. Arriving there exhausted and expectant, Johnny finds his love is the mesmerised slave of arcane alchemist Diabolo.

The mystic has convinced the populace – and Crystal herself – that she is a reborn goddess he needs to seize control in ‘Thunder in the Ruins!’ (inked by Jim Mooney). He would have succeeded too, if not for that flaming kid…

The issue included an intriguing vignette starring the Thing: ‘What Mad World?’ (Goodwin, Buscema & Mooney) finds the Tragic Titan afforded a glimpse of an alternate Earth where an even greater mishap occurred after the fateful spaceflight which created the team…

The Black Panther – cautiously renamed Black Leopard for contemporary political reasons – guest-starred in #119’s ‘Three Stood Together!’ as inker Sinnott returned and Roy Thomas scripted a damning, if shaded, indictment of South Africa’s apartheid regime.

When the heroic ruler of jungle wonderland Wakanda is interned in white-ruled state Rudyarda, Ben and Johnny fly in to bust him out and clash with old enemy Klaw who is attempting to steal a deadly new super-weapon…

Fantastic Four #120 heralded an extended and somewhat overlong epic by Stan Lee which began with ‘The Horror that Walks on Air!’ as a seemingly omnipotent invader claiming to be an angel scours and scourges Earth before declaring humanity doomed.

The tale vividly yet laboriously continues in ‘The Mysterious Mind-Blowing Secret of Gabriel!’ with the recently reunited, utterly overmatched quartet saved by the late-arriving Silver Surfer before facing off against world-devouring ‘Galactus Unleashed’. The end comes and humanity survives another day thanks to Reed who again outsmarts the cosmic god and prevents the consumption of ‘This World Enslaved!’

Although beautifully illustrated, the hackneyed saga was a series low-point, but Lee was back on solid dramatic ground with #124’s ‘The Return of the Monster’ and concluding episode ‘The Monster’s Secret!’, wherein the mystery menace Reed once dubbed ‘the Monster from the Lost Lagoon’ resurfaces to haunt a Manhattan hospital, steal drugs and kidnap Sue… but only for the best and most noble of reasons…

His depredations are soon halted and explained, concluding this tome on a rare quiet note but more calamity was still to come…

Did I say concluding? Not quite; as there’s still room for the Romita/Verpoorten cover to all-reprint Fantastic FourAnnual #8 plus the Kirby & Vince Colletta cover to 1971’s Annual #9; a stunning house ad; original art pages by Romita and Buscema, uncorrected cover proofs; the rare misprinted pink-&-green cover for FF #110 and 6 previous collection covers by Alan Davis & Steve Buccellato to delight and enthral…

Although sacrificing spectacle and wonder for simple continuous conflict, the Fantastic Four remained at the heart of the Marvel Universe for decades, offering furious Fights ‘n’ Tights thrills to delight and beguile. Why not check out how and why?
© 2021 MARVEL.

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Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection volume 5 – 1968-1970: The Secret of the Petrified Tablet


By Stan Lee, John Romita, John Buscema, Larry Lieber, Marie Severin & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2196-5 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Scintillant Superhero Sagas… 9/10

The Amazing Spider-Man was always a comic book that matured with – or perhaps just slightly ahead of – its fan-base. In this superbly scintillating compilation of chronologically corrected webspinning wonderment (available in ponderous paperback or ephemeral eBook formats), the World’s Most Misunderstood Hero barely survives another rocky period of transformation as the second great era of Amazing Arachnid artists moved inevitably to a close. Although the elder John Romita would remain closely connected to the Wallcrawler’s adventures for some time yet, these tales would number amongst his last sustained run as lead illustrator.

After a shaky start, The Amazing Spider-Man quickly became a sensation with kids of all ages. Before long the quirky, charming, thrillingly action-packed comics soap-opera would become the model for an entire generation of younger heroes impatiently elbowing aside the staid, (relatively) old thirty-something mystery-men of previous publications and hallowed tradition.

You know the story: Peter Parker was a smart-but-alienated kid bitten by a radioactive spider during a school science trip. On discovering he’d developed astonishing abilities – which he augmented with his own natural chemistry, physics and engineering genius – the boy did what any lonely, geeky nerd would do with such newfound prowess: he tried to cash in for girls, fame and money.

Making a costume to hide his identity – in case he made a fool of himself – Parker became a minor media celebrity; and a criminally self-important one. To his eternal regret, when a thief fled past him one night he didn’t lift a finger to stop him, only to find when he returned home that his guardian uncle Ben Parker had been murdered.

Crazed and vengeful, Peter hunted the assailant who’d made his beloved Aunt May a widow and killed the only father he had ever known, discovering, to his horror, that it was the self-same felon he had neglected to stop. His irresponsibility had resulted in the death of the man who raised him, and the traumatised boy swore to forevermore use his powers to help others. Since that night, the Wondrous Wallcrawler tirelessly battled miscreants, monsters and madmen, with a fickle, ungrateful public usually baying for his blood even as he perpetually saves them…

The rise and rise of the Amazing Arachnid increased pace as the Swinging Sixties drew to a close. By the time of the tales collected in this fulsome, Epic Collection – featuring Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5 and #68-85 of the monthly title (spanning October 1968 to June 1970) and the usual basket of editorial extras – Peter and his ever-expanding cast of comrades were on the way to being household names and the darlings of college campuses and media intelligentsia.

Stan Lee’s scripts were completely in tune with the times – as understood by most kids’ parents at least – and the increasing use of soap opera tactics kept older readers glued to the series even if the bombastic battle sequences didn’t.

Thematically, there’s still a large percentage of old-fashioned crime and gangsterism and, arguably, an overuse of mystery plots. Costumed super-foes as antagonists were finely balanced with the usual suspect-pool of thugs, hoods and mob-bosses, but these were not the individual gangs of the Ditko days. Now Organised Crime and Mafia analogue The Maggiawere the big criminal-cultural touchstone as comics caught up with modern movies and headlines.

This volume opens with Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5, by Lee and his brother Larry Lieber. Inked by Mike Esposito – still in his clandestine “Mickey DeMeo” guise – it clears up a huge mystery in the webspinner’s life by revealing the secret behind the deaths of ‘The Parents of Peter Parker!’.

Played as an exotic spy-thriller, the tale takes Spider-Man to the Algerian Casbah to confront the Red Skull. Nit-pickers and continuity-mavens will no doubt be relieved to hear the villain was in fact retconned later and designated as the second (Soviet) master-villain – who featured in the 1953-1954 Captain America revival, not the Nazi original that Lee and Co had clearly forgotten was in “suspended animation” throughout that decade when writing this otherwise perfect action romp and heartstring-tugging melodrama…

That annual also provided a nifty Daily Bugle cast pin-up, a speculative sports feature displaying the advantages of Spider powers, a NYC street-map of the various locations where the Spidey saga unfolded, plus a spoof section displaying how the Wallcrawler would look if published by Disney/Gold Key, DC or Archie Comics, or drawn by Al “Li’l Abner” Capp, Chester “Dick Tracy” Gould and Charles “Peanuts” Schulz.

It all wraps up with ‘Here We Go A-Plotting!’: a comedic glimpse at work in the Marvel Bullpen, uncredited but unmistakably drawn by marvellous Marie Severin…

Issue #68 (by Lee, Romita & Jim Mooney) launched a lengthy saga devoted to the pursuit of an ancient stone tablet by various nefarious forces, beginning as The Kingpin exploits a topical moment of student dissent to trigger a ‘Crisis on the Campus!’ When a seemingly inevitable riot erupts, the Big Bad tries to swipe the artefact, leaving a few teenagers we’re all familiar with looking very guilty…

Meanwhile Peter Parker, already struggling with debt, a perpetually at-Death’s-Door Aunt May, relationship grief with girlfriend Gwen Stacy and no time to study, is accused of not being involved enough by his fellow students…

During this period scripter Lee increasingly tapped into contemporary student unrest in various Marvel titles, and ‘Mission: Crush the Kingpin!’ further tightens the screws as dissent explodes into violence whilst the corpulent crime czar incriminates Spider-Man in the tablet’s theft.

Hounded and harried in ‘Spider-Man Wanted!’, the web warrior nevertheless defeats the Kingpin, only to (briefly) believe himself a killer after he attacks personal gadfly J. Jonah Jameson in a fit of rage; causing an apparent heart attack in the obsessive, hero-hating publisher.

At his lowest ebb, and stuck with the tablet, Parker is attacked by sometime-Avenger Quicksilver in ‘The Speedster and the Spider!’ (#71), before John Buscema signs on as layout-man in ‘Rocked by… the Shocker!’

No sooner does Spider-Man leave the stone tablet with Gwen’s dad – former Police Chief George Stacy – than the vibrating villain (don’t bother – all the jokes have been done) attacks, pinching the petrified artefact and precipitating a frantic underworld civil war. The Maggia dispatch brutal over-sized  enforcer Man-Mountain Marko to retrieve it at all costs in ‘The Web Closes!’ (Lee, Buscema, Romita & Mooney) as upstart mob lawyer Caesar Cicero makes his long-anticipated move to depose aged Don of Dons Silvermane…

The frail, elderly crime-lord knows the true secret – if not methodology – of the tablet, and abducts biologist Curt Connorsand his family to reconstruct the formula hidden on the stone and ensure his ultimate victory.

Sadly, nobody but Spider-Man knows Connors is also the lethal Lizard and that the slightest stress might unleash the reptilian monster within to once more threaten all humanity. ‘If this be Bedlam!’ (Romita & Mooney) leads directly into ‘Death Without Warning!’ as the decrypted secret of the tablet sparks a cataclysmic battle that seemingly destroys one warring faction forever, decimating the mobs, but also freeing a far more immediate and ferocious threat…

Issue #76 sees John Buscema become full penciller with suspenseful action yarn ‘The Lizard Lives!’ before concluding chapter ‘In the Blaze of Battle!’ witnesses the webspinner trying to defeat, cure and keep the tragic secret of his friend Connors, all whilst preventing guest-starring Human Torch Johnny Storm exterminating the rampaging rogue reptile forever…

Amazing Spider-Man #78 details ‘The Night of the Prowler!’ and features John Romita Junior’s first ever creator-credit for “suggesting” dissatisfied young black man Hobie Brown. Hobie briefly turns his frustrations and innate inventive genius to costumed criminal purposes until set straight by Spider-Man in concluding chapter ‘To Prowl No More!’

With #80, a string of single-issue adventures was instituted: short, stand-alone fight-episodes delivering maximum thrills and instant satisfaction. ‘On the Trail of the Chameleon!’ sees the criminal charlatan indulging in a robbery spree until the wallcrawler steps in, after which an action-packed if ridiculous punch-up results from ‘The Coming of The Kangaroo!’ It also includes a clear contender for daftest origin of all time…

Romita senior returned to pencil ‘And Then Came Electro!’ with the voltaic villain attempting to slaughter Spidey live on national TV.

Major revelations about the Kingpin came in a 3-part saga spanning #83-85: opening with the introduction of ‘The Schemer’ (Lee, Romita Sr. & Esposito): a mysterious, extremely well-heeled criminal outsider determined to destroy the power of the sumo-like crime-lord and usurp his position in the underworld.

‘The Kingpin Strikes Back!’ (Romita sr., Buscema & Mooney) and ‘The Secret of the Schemer!’ radically reshaped the Marvel Universe, not just by disclosing the family history of one of the company’s greatest villains, but also by sending Parker’s eternal gadfly Flash Thompson back to a dubious fate in Vietnam. It wasn’t the kid’s first tour, but now the war was becoming unpopular at home and the bombastic jingoism of earlier issues was replaced by more contemplative concerns as evoked by authorial mouthpiece Stan Lee…

Also on glorious show are the Romita Snr cover from all-reprint Amazing Spider-Man Annual #6; a reproduction of an earlier collection cover by Romita Snr & Richard Isanove, and a treasure trove (31 pages!) of original art, sketches, designs, rejected pages and covers plus pencils and roughs by Lieber, Romita Snr. Buscema, Mooney, Severin & Esposito.

Spider-Man became a permanent unmissable part of many teenagers’ lives at this time and did so by living a life as close to theirs as social mores and the Comics Code would allow. Blending cultural authenticity with glorious narrative art, and making a dramatic virtue of the awkwardness, confusion and sense of powerlessness most of the readership experienced daily, resulted in an irresistibly intoxicating read, delivered in addictive soap-opera slices, but none of that would be relevant if the stories weren’t so compellingly entertaining.

This book is Marvel and Spider-Man at their peak. Care to see why?
© 2020 MARVEL

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Fantastic Four by Johnathan Hickman – The Complete Collection volume 1


By Jonathan Hickman with Sean Chen, Lorenzo Ruggiero Adi Granov, Dale Eaglesham, Neil Edwards, Andrew Currie, Paul Neary, Scott Hanna & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1336-6 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: World’s Greatest Comic Conceptualists… 9/10

The Fantastic Four is generally considered the most pivotal series in modern comic book history, introducing both a new style of storytelling and a decidedly different manner of engaging the readers’ impassioned attentions.

More family than team, the roster has changed continuously over the years but always returning to the original configuration of Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Thing and Human Torch, who together formed the vanguard of modern four-colour heroic history.

The quartet are also known as maverick genius Reed Richards, his wife Sue, their trusty college friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s obnoxious younger brother Johnny Storm; driven survivors of an independently-funded space-shot which went horribly wrong after Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding.

When they crashed back to Earth, the foursome found that they had all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks. Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible and, eventually, project force-fields, Johnny could turn into living flame, and poor, tormented Ben was mutated into a horrifying brute who, unlike his comrades, could not return to a semblance of normality on command.

The series has always been more about big ideas than action/adventure, and that was never more true than in this compilation when the FF were steered by writer, artist designer and stellar modern imagineer Jonathan Hickman (Nightly News; Pax Romana; East of West; Infinity; House of X; Secret Wars).

This chronological compilation opens during the Dark Reign that followed a successful conquest of Earth, when the draconian Federal mandate known as the Superhuman Registration Act led to Civil War between costumed heroes. Tony Stark was hastily appointed the US government’s Security Czar – a “top cop” in sole charge of the beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom. As Director of high-tech enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. he became the very last word in all matters involving metahumans and the USA’s vast costumed community…

Stark’s subsequent mismanagement of various crises led to the arrest and assassination of Captain America and an unimaginable escalation of global tension and destruction, culminating in the Secret Invasion by shape-shifting alien Skrulls. Discredited and ostracised, he was replaced by apparently rehabilitated, recovering schizophrenic Norman Osborn – the original Green Goblin – who assumed full control of the USA’s covert agencies and military resources, disbanded S.H.I.E.L.D. and placed the nation under the aegis of his own new organisation H.A.M.M.E.R.

The erstwhile villain had first begun his climb back to respectability after taking charge of the Thunderbolts Project: a penal program which offered a second chance to super-criminals who volunteered to undertake Federally-sanctioned missions…

Not content with legitimate political and personal power, Osborn also secretly conspired with a coalition of major malevolent masterminds to divvy up the world between them. The Cabal was a Star Chamber of super-villains working towards mutually self-serving goals, but such egomaniacal personalities could never play well together for long and cracks soon began to show, both in the criminal conspiracy and Osborn himself…

As another strand of his long-term plan, the Homeland Metahuman Security overlord fired Iron Man‘s Mighty Avengers and created his own, more manageable team consisting of compliant turncoats, tractable replacements and outright impostors. Constantly courting public opinion, Osborn launched his Avengers whilst systematically building up a personally loyal high-tech paramilitary rapid-response force.

During this Dark Reign, the rapidly destabilising madman – through means fair and foul – officially worked to curb the unchecked power and threat of meta-humanity, whilst his clandestine cabal of dictators divvied up the planet between them. The repercussions of Osborn’s rise and fall were felt throughout and featured in many series and collections covering the entire Marvel Universe.

Reed Richards had been a major supporter of Stark and key proponent of the Superhuman Registration Act even though his actions tore his family apart; driving his wife Sue and brother-in-law Johnny Storm into the opposing camp of costumed resistors dubbed the Secret Avengers. His best friend Ben Grimm – unwilling to choose sides – left the country to become an exile in France…

This collection opens with 5-issue miniseries Dark Reign: Fantastic Four and portions of Dark Reign: The Cabal (spanning May to September 2009): exploring and explaining Mister Fantastic’s side of the argument, as well as the terrifying motivations which prompted his uncharacteristic behaviour even as the still-wounded family painfully try to reconcile in their old home The Baxter Building……

The drama begins with a prelude a week after the Skrull invasion as Earth’s greatest mind constructs a colossal interdimensional transit threshold. ‘The Bridge’ – illustrated by Sean Chen & Lorenzo Ruggiero – is a pathway to alternate Earths. Demoralised and confused, Richards wants to explore all the other Earths to see if the Civil War and subsequent tragedies which followed happened elsewhere and how a plurality of other Mr. Fantastics dealt with it.

He needs to know how to prevent such a catastrophe ever happening again, but only just convinces Sue, Ben and Johnny that he must go before the metaphorical roof caves in…

Acting with sublime overconfidence and seemingly blessed by good fortune, Osborn chooses that moment to invade the Baxter Building with his H.A.M.M.E.R. troops, determined to shut down the Fantastic Four and confiscate all their incredible technologies.

Outraged and ready for trouble, Invisible Woman, the Torch and the Thing head for the ground floor just as Osborn’s men cut power to the building. The resultant surge in energy interacts with Reed’s Bridge and collapses space-time. When the elevator doors open they find themselves in another realm: a primitive jungle where men, dinosaurs and space gods co-exist…

With the adults out of action, children Franklin and Valeria take charge of the situation, bluffing the H.A.M.M.E.R. heavies into leaving, but little Val knows it’s only a matter of time until Osborn comes in person. She might be only three, but she’s already as smart as her father…

Setting to, Val begins repairing the building’s electrical and defence systems even as somewhen else her devoted guardians battle hordes of time-lost terrors and, in a region where all places meet, her dad views universe after universe and sees few happy outcomes…

As hours pass in the normal world, Sue, Johnny and Ben are bounced from one bizarre alternity to the next, gradually gathering a stout band of like-minded heroes about them.

In fact they are strange variations of themselves: a gentle, noble erudite Thing, chamberlain to the court of the Virgin Queen; a blazing pirate Torch on a flying galleon, sharp-shooting sheriff Black Susan from an extremely wild, Wild West frontier town and so many more, all assisting as they determinedly fight their way to somewhere they can get home from…

After a night on their own, Val and Franklin are awoken by Security Czar Osborn and his forces, accompanied by Dark Avenger “heavy” Spider-Man (actually deranged impostor Scorpion possessed by the Venom symbiote). In a moment of sublime bravado, the forces of Big Bad Government are stalled and legally finessed by the really annoying little girl…

In Collapsed Time, Sue, Johnny and Ben inexorably carve their way through a cascade of colliding realities whilst, in No Space, Reed – having analysed an infinity of alternate Earths – is forced to accept a truly humbling hypothesis…

His switching off The Bridge instantly returns the displaced FF to the Baxter Building where Osborn, having lost all patience, is trying to shoot the kids. After a brief but brutal battle the Federal forces are routed. When Osborn tries to shoot Reed in the back after surrendering, Franklin displays a burst of the dormant power which will make him the terror of reality in years to come…

In the tense aftermath of a temporary, portent-laden standoff, Mister Fantastic dismantles The Bridge at Sue’s insistence, but keeps from her the incredible beings he met before returning and the new resolution he has made: a decision that will also have devastating repercussions for all the universes in the months to come…

Rounding out this spectacular segue into the unknown is a sinister snippet from Dark Reign: The Cabal. ‘And I’ll Get the Land’ (limned by Adi Granov) gives a salutary glimpse into the scary mind of Doctor Doom as he negotiates a side deal with fellow Cabal associate Sub-Mariner whilst pondering what to do with maniac upstart Osborn once his usefulness is ended…

The wonderment resumes with Hickman’s initial arc on the monthly Fantastic Four title – #570 to 574 from October 2009 to February 2010 and dubbed Solve Everything. These first forays of a truly mind-boggling confirmed Hickman as someone who truly lived up to the series’ “Big Sky Thinking” antecedents…

Illustrated by Dale Eaglesham ‘Is It Playing God If You’re Truly Serious About Creation?’ sees certified super-genius Richards – driven by childhood memories of his demanding father – face the greatest challenge and most beguiling seduction of his fantastic life.

After foiling the latest mad assault by scientific criminal Bentley Wittman – AKA the Wizard – involving giant robots piloted by hideously modified clones of the deranged hyper-intellectual, Wittman upsets and destabilises the victorious Richards by challenging him to examine some cold hard facts. He postulates that the world is broken and about to tear itself apart, but everyone is too busy applying band-aids to try fixing it…

The exchange stays with Richards. Even as the family goes about its usual business, Mister Fantastic discusses things with 3-year old Valeria – a prodigy even smarter than he is – before retiring to his private lab to mull things over.

The Room of 100 Ideas is the place where Richards has made his greatest breakthroughs and triumphs, the sanctum from which he has changed the world over and over again, but it also harbours one last dream and goal – Idea 101: Solve Everything…

Now, he contacts a mysterious inter-dimensional organisation of intellectual supermen to help him fix the world and at last discovers that the benevolent Council is completely composed of alternate Earth iterations of himself, all waiting patiently for him to join their elevated ranks. The self-appointed champions of rationality and guardians of the multiverse feel it is time he lived up to his true potential. He is sorely tempted…

The grand tour of perfect possibilities continues in ‘You Stood Beside Me, Larger Than Life and Did the Impossible’ as the newcomer proves his worth by killing a planet-devouring Galactus and army of Silver Surfers on Earth 2012, all before popping home to touch base with his friends and family at breakfast.

They’re preparing for Franklin’s birthday and, even though Richards cannot share his new experiences, Sue knows something big is troubling him. After a frank but vague discussion, the distracted super-mind promises to have everything sorted one way or another in seven days…

His time “in the lab” actually finds him travelling to every incredible corner of Creation where his agglomerated alternates police and improve the lot of all humanities. Over and again their combined efforts have created a fantastic technological paradise but still Richards has unresolved, inexplicable reservations, especially at night in bed, thinking about his family and recalling conversations with his own father…

The intellectual idyll is rudely shattered in ‘We Are Men We Have No Masters’ when the multiversal Council is attacked by Celestials: Space Gods intent on taking control of all realities. The apocalyptic battle decimates the ranks of the Richards before a solution and ultimate victory is achieved. As the cosmic dust settles, Reed at last makes his decision – the only one a really smart man can…

Originally published as ‘Adventures on Nu-World’ (and illustrated by Neil Edwards & Andrew Currie) the next tale focuses on the Thing and Human Torch as they take a long-anticipated vacation-break on an artificial resort much like a cosmic Las Vegas, blithely unaware of two extremely important facts…

The first is that Reed and Sue’s kids have stowed away aboard their transport, but probably more critical is the realisation that the man-made world is in the midst of civil war prompted by the entire planet having slipped into the event horizon of a Black Hole…

With a host of guest including Skaar, Son of Hulk, ‘These Are the End Times’ follows the slow procession and brutal struggle to total obliteration, highlighting the astounding gifts of toddler Valeria who secretly solves the problem and gets (almost) everyone home safely…

The story portion of this splendid celebration of all things Fantastical continues with ‘All Hope Lies With Doom’(Edwards & Currie again) as the boy’s birthday finally arrives and the extended family – including Dragon Man, uncle Spider-Man, the kids from Power Pack and mutant orphans Artie and Leech – enjoy the party of a lifetime. It’s only slightly spoiled when a time-travelling raider crashes the affair, and he’s soon sent packing by the adults – but not before he delivers a secret warning to Valeria and a unique gift for the birthday boy.

Valeria isn’t worried: after all, if there’s one person she can trust, it’s her grown up brother Franklin…

Originally collected as graphic compilation Prime Elements, FF #575 to 578 (October 2009-February 2010) follows, as the author and illustrator Dale Eaglesham set the scene for future epics with a series of exploratory fables classified as ‘This is a Summoning’…

It begins as the Mole Man dumps mutated moloids on the Richards’ clan, alerting them to ‘The Abandoned City of the High Evolutionary’ deep beneath the world. Here, hyper-evolved beings are apparently running rampant and will soon be let loose on the surface world…

Alerted to secrets in the Earth, the team head into the oldest lake in existence in #576, encountering incredible ancient beings who claim to be ‘The Old Kings of Atlantis’…

In #577, the secrets of primordial Kree genetic tampering seems to signal the end for the lunar colony of Black Bolt: revealing links to four other cosmic species and the rise of all-conquering ‘Universal Inhumans’…

The innovation revolution then concludes – for now – with #578 as ‘The Cult of the Negative Zone’ ominously reveals that the insectoid hordes of Annihilus have established a deadly fifth column on Earth, but are unable to maintain dominance in the antimatter realm that spawned them. Are they then prepared for an assault by the new Inhuman alliance’s war-hungry Light Brigade?

Fast-paced, action-drenched, profoundly imaginative and wickedly funny, this sharp sortie into strange worlds includes a covers-&-variants gallery by Simone Bianchi & Simone Peruzzi; Pasqual Ferry & Dave McCaig; Alan Davis, Mark Farmer; Marko Djurdjevic, Jelena Kevic Djurdjevic, Daniel Acuña, John Rausch, Javier Rodriguez, Eaglesham & Paul Mounts, John Cassaday & Laura Martin, Marcelo Dichiara, Christopher Jones & Sotocolor, to deliver the perfect package for all tried-and-true Fights ‘n’ Tights aficionados with a hunger for mind-expanding marvels…

Smart, tense, thrilling and exhibiting genuine warmth and humanity, this is a grand starting point for new or returning readers with a view to recapturing the glory days of fantasy and science fiction, and especially a different kind of Fights ‘n’ Tights theatre…
© 2019 MARVEL

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Mighty Marvel Masterworks -The Fantastic Four volume 1 : The World’s Greatest Heroes


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, with George Klein, Christopher Rule, Sol Brodsky, Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnott & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2979-4 (PB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: An Immaculate Concoction… 9/10

In August 1961, a rather peculiar new comic hit US newsstands. At first glance it looked not dissimilar from lots of other monster books, but it was the start of an actual revolution. Because it had a November cover-date – specifying when unsold copies had to be returned – I’m celebrating it here and now… and in a rather controversial new format.

I’m partial to controversy so I’m starting off by declaring that Fantastic Four #1 is one of most important American comic book of all time. Feel free to disagree…

After a troubled period at DC Comics – National Periodicals as it then was – and a creatively productive but disheartening time on the poisoned chalice of the Sky Masters newspaper strip (see Complete Sky Masters of the Space Force), Jack Kirby settled into his job at a small, struggling outfit that used to be publishing powerhouse Timely/Atlas.

He crafted mystery, monster, war, romance and western material for a market he suspected was ultimately doomed but, as always, did the best job possible. That quirky genre fare is now considered some of the best of its kind ever seen.

However, his fertile imagination couldn’t be suppressed for long and when DC’s Justice League of America enflamed the readership’s attention, it gave him and writer/editor Stan Lee an opportunity to change the industry forever.

When publisher/owner Martin Goodman ordered his nephew Stan to try a group of super-characters like the one DC was doing, the result quickly took fans by storm. It wasn’t the powers: they’d all been seen since the beginning of the medium. It wasn’t costumes: they didn’t have any until the third issue. It was Kirby’s compelling art and the fact that these new guys weren’t anodyne cardboard cut-outs. In a real and a recognizable location – New York City – fractious, imperfect, raw-nerved, touchy people banded together out of tragedy, disaster and necessity to face the incredible.

The groundwork for all the wonders to come had been laid with 1957’s Challengers of the Unknown (Kirby’s prototype partners-in-peril at National/DC) but that company’s staid, cautious editorial strictures could never have allowed the undiluted energy of the concept to run all-but-unregulated. The Fantastic Four was the right mix in the right manner at the right moment and we’re all here now because of it. These stories are timeless and have been gathered many times before so I’m diverting to talk about format here.

The Mighty Marvel Masterworks line has been designed with economy in mind. Classic tales of Marvel’s key creators and characters re-presented in chronological order have been a staple since the 1990s, but always in lavish, expensive collectors editions. These new books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and – crucially – are physically smaller, about the dimensions of a paperback book. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but they’re perfect for kids and if you opt for the digital editions, that’s no issue at all…

This first compilation represents the tentatively bi-monthly Fantastic Four #1-10, spanning November 1961 – January 1963 and opens as it means to go on. Courtesy of Lee, Kirby, George Klein & Christopher Rule the introductory adventure is crude, rough, passionate and uncontrolled excitement. Thrill-hungry kids pounced on it.

‘The Fantastic Four’ is exactly as seen in that groundbreaking premier issue, with maverick scientist Reed Richardsperemptorily summoning his fiancé Sue Storm, close friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother before heading off on their first mission. They are all freakish survivors of a private space-shot that went horribly wrong after Cosmic rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding and mutated them all.

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible, Johnny Storm could turn into living flame and tragic Ben morphed permanently into a hideous freak trapped in a shambling, leathery body.

The second half of the issue reported how ‘The Fantastic Four meet the Mole Man’: promptly foiling a mad scheme by another outcast who controls monsters and enslaves humanoids from far beneath the Earth.

This summation of the admittedly mediocre plot cannot do justice to the engrossing wonder of that breakthrough issue – we really have no conception now of how different in tone, how shocking it all was.

“Different” doesn’t mean “better” even here, but the FF was like no other comic on the market at the time and buyers responded to it hungrily. The brash experiment continued with another old plot in #2. Inked by Klein, ‘The Skrulls from Outer Space’ were shape-changing aliens who framed the team in the eyes of shocked humanity, before the genius of Mister Fantastic bluffed them into abandoning plans for conquering Earth. The issue concluded with a monstrous pin-up of the Thing, proudly touted as the first in a series…

Sure enough, there was a pin-up of the Human Torch in #3 (inked by Sol Brodsky), which headlined ‘The Menace of the Miracle Man’ whose omnipotent powers had a simple secret. The tale is most notable for the first appearance of their uniforms, and a shocking line-up change, leading directly into the next issue (continued stories were an innovation in themselves) which revived a golden-age great.

‘The Coming of the Sub-Mariner’ reintroduced the all-powerful amphibian Prince Namor of Atlantis, a star of Timely’s Golden Age but one who had been lost for years.

A victim of amnesia, the rowdy relic recovers his memory thanks to some rather brusque treatment by the delinquent Torch. Namor then returns to his sub-sea home only to find it destroyed by atomic testing. A monarch without subjects, he swears vengeance on humanity and attacks New York City with a gigantic monster. This saga is when the series truly kicked into high-gear and Reed was the star of the pin-up section…

Until now the creative team – who had been in the business since it began – had been hedging their bets. Despite the innovations of a contemporary superhero experiment, their antagonists had relied heavily on the trappings of popular trends in the media – and as reflected in their other titles.

Aliens and especially monsters played a major part in the earlier tales but Fantastic Four #5 embraced the unique basics and took a full-bite out of the Fights n’ Tights apple by introducing the first full-blown, unrepentant super-villain to the budding Marvel Universe.

No, I haven’t forgotten Mole Man: but that tragic little gargoyle, for all his plans of world conquest, wouldn’t truly acquire the persona of a costumed foe until his more refined second appearance in #22.

‘Prisoners of Doctor Doom’ (July 1962, and inked by the sublimely slick and perfectly polished Joe Sinnott) has it all. An attack by a mysterious enemy from Reed’s past; super-science, magic, lost treasure, time-travel, even pirates. Ha-Haar, me ‘earties!

Sheer magic! and the creators knew they were on to a winner, as the deadly Doctor returned the very next issue, teaming with a reluctant Sub-Mariner to attack our heroes as ‘The Deadly Duo!’ (inked by new regular embellisher Dick Ayers). It also introduced the concept of antiheroes as the conflicted Sub-Mariner falls out with the demon doctor and saves the day…

Alien kidnappers were the motivating force behind another FF frame-up, resulting in the team becoming ‘Prisoners of Kurrgo, Master of Planet X’: a dark, grandiose, cosmic-scaled off-world thriller in #7 (the first monthly issue), whilst a new returning villain and the introduction of a love-interest for the monstrous Thing were the breakthrough high-points in #8’s ‘Prisoners of the Puppet Master!’

The emotional saga was balanced by a Fantastic Four Feature Page explaining how the Torch’s powers work. The next issue offered another, detailing with endearing mock-science ‘How the Human Torch Flies!’

That issue – #9 – trumpeted ‘The End of the Fantastic Four’ as Sub-Mariner returned to exploit another brilliant innovation in comic storytelling. When had a super-genius superhero ever messed up so much that the team had to declare bankruptcy? When had costumed crimefighters ever had money troubles at all? The eerily prescient solution was to “sell out” and make a blockbuster movie – giving Kirby a rare chance to demonstrate his gift for caricature…

1963 would be a pivotal year in the development of Marvel. Lee & Kirby had proved that their new high concept – human heroes with flaws and tempers – had a willing audience. Now they would extend that concept to a new pantheon of heroes. Here is where the second innovation would come to the fore. Previously, superheroes were sufficient unto themselves and shared adventures were rare. Here, however, was a universe where characters often tripped over each other, sometimes even fighting each other’s enemies! The creators themselves might turn even up in a Marvel Comic!

Although cover-date January 1963, Fantastic Four #10 was released in October of 1962 and featured ‘The Return of Doctor Doom!’. Here, the arch-villain used Stan & Jack to lure Richards into a trap where his mind is switched with the bad Doctor’s. The tale was supplemented by a pin-up of ‘Sue Storm, the Glamorous Invisible Girl’…

Although possibly – just a bit, perhaps – somewhat dated in tone, these are still undeniable milestones of comic storytelling illustrated by one of the world’s greatest talents approaching his absolute peak. They are fast, frantic fun and a joy to read or re-read. This comprehensive, joyous introduction (or reintroduction) to these characters is a wonderful reminder of just how good comic books can and should be.

Happy birthday and many, many more please…
© 2021 MARVEL

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Eternals


By Neil Gaiman & John Romita Jr. & various
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2518-5 (HB 2020) 978-1-3029-1312-0 (TPB 2018)

Nobody ever did “epic” bigger or better than Jack Kirby. He was – and remains – the most important single influence in the history of American comics. There are millions of words about what the man has done and meant, and you should read those if you are at all interested in our medium. You should also familiarise yourself with all his graphic works.

For a long time after his departure, other creators sought to capitalise on his creation – as I’m sure you’ll soon become aware as the movie momentum takes hold. This particular revival from 2006 is a strikingly enjoyable graphic experience very true to the power and enthusiasm of ‘The King’ and should probably top your wish list, just below the many collected iterations of the original saga.

When the comic series debuted in 1976 we met anthropologist Professor Damien and his daughter Margo whose explorations revealed that giant aliens had visited Earth in ages past: sculpting proto-hominids into three distinct species: Human Beings; the monstrous, genetically unstable Deviants and god-like super-beings who called themselves Eternals. Moreover those humungous Space Gods had returned a few times to check up on their experiment…

Never a comfortable fit with the rest of the Marvel Universe, the comic explored Kirby’s fascinations with Deities, the immensity of Space and potential of Supernature through the lens of very human observers. Once the series ended and Kirby left, other creators eagerly co-opted the concept – with mixed success – into the company’s mainstream continuity.

Now, back to the present collection. When Mark Curry, a struggling hospital intern, meets Ike Harris his delicate mental state seems to fragment. His dreams of monsters and gods return in force, and even though super-powered people are commonplace in a society that mandates that all super-humans register with the government, Harris seems somehow… different. And there are others. Such as Sersi, a cute chick he met at the coffee-shop, or Thena or ever-so-creepy Druig…

For inexplicable but pressing reasons, Harris believes they are all Eternals, built by space-spanning Celestials as caretakers for the planet, but something hidden has deactivated them.

He cannot find any others.

A crisis is brewing.

Without Eternals in the picture, the malignant deviants are on the rise again.

There may be another hidden foe. Harris wants Curry’s help to find those missing guardians…

…And now Mark discovers that he has superpowers too…

Another strand in play is the secret foe’s plan. Someone has somehow excised the entire Eternal race, leaving only these shadowy potential immortals. Although the reason is unclear random clues are beginning to gel. Long ago, the Space-Gods punished one of their own for an unknowable sin by burying him/it deep in the Earth. Now, that sleeping giant is being awakened, an action that will lead to the destruction of all life on Earth…

Kirby and Gaiman are different writers, and frankly their work is generally addressing different readerships. Kirby’s heroes and villains are simplified, pared down archetypes. Whether fighting for us or searching for great things to which an uncomprehending humanity can only guess, they are generally beyond our clay-footed ken. For Kirby, there would always be an Unknown. That’s why there was always a Rick Jones or Margo Damien or Dr. John Watson. Such everyman characters are there to counterpoint, clarify and highlight the wonder. Readers tuned in to have their minds blown.

Gaiman’s forte is personalising those unknowables. Whether Gods, sentient Concepts, fallen Angels or super-humans, he takes us inside their lives and their heads, showing us creatures not dissimilar to ourselves. Our modern world is not happy with mystery and ‘getting to know the real you’ has become a media obsession and industry. And that’s the crucial difference in this book. Pedestrianising the metaphysical isn’t better or worse, it’s just different.

All of which is, I suspect, irrelevant to most readers. Here is a good comic book read that will happily pass most personal taste tests. And I must – saving the best ’til last – utterly rave over the artwork of John Romita Jr. The power and grandeur of his drawing (augmented with inks from Danny Miki, Tom Palmer, Tim Townsend, Jesse Delperdang & Klaus Janson, colours from Matt Hollingsworth, Paul Mounts & Dean White and lettered by Todd Klein) is absolutely breathtaking! Whether a close, veiled look or a panorama of galactic proportions, he produces that mind-grabbing visual to elicit a whispered “Gosh, Wow!” from even the most jaded viewer. Jack would be proud.

Contextualised by an Introduction from long-time Kirby insider Mark Evanier, this mighty tome – available in hardback, trade paperback and digital formats – also includes copious character sketches, original and unused art pencils, a cover and variants gallery by Romita Jr., Rick Berry, Olivier Coipel and more, plus an extensive text feature ‘The Spotlight Interview with Neil Gaiman’ (by John Rhett Thomas), as well as Gaiman’s ‘Eternal Proposal’ and ‘Jack Kirby and the Eternals’: a critical overview by Robert Greenberger, illustrated by the King himself.
© 2019 MARVEL

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Black Widow: Marvel Team-Up


By Chris Claremont, Tom DeFalco, Marv Wolfman, Roger McKenzie, Bill Mantlo, Priest, Fabian Nicieza, Robert Campanella, Dan Slott, Bob Brown, Sal Buscema, Will Meugniot, Ron Frenz & Greg LaRocque, Rob Liefeld, Larry Alexander & Dwayne Turner & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-3029- (TPB)

The concept of team-ups – an established star pairing or battling (usually both) with new or less well-selling company characters – has been with us since the earliest days of comics, but making the temporary alliance a key selling point really took hold with DC’s The Brave and the Bold before being taken up by their biggest competitor.

Marvel Team-Up was the second regular Spider-Man title, launching at the end of 1971. It went from strength to strength, heralding expansion and spawning a second collaborative vehicle in Marvel Two-In-One (with the Fantastic Four‘s strong man The Thing), both offering regular venues for uncomplicated action romps in addition to the House of Ideas’ complex sub-plot fare.

However, even in the infinite Marvel Multiverse, certain stars shine more brightly than others and some characters turn up in team-ups more often than others…

In recent years, carefully curated themed collections from the back-catalogue have served to initiate new readers intrigued by Marvel’s Movie and TV endeavours, and this engaging trade paperback/eBook compilation gathers a selection of potent pairings starring superspy The Black Widow, taken from MTIO #10; Marvel Team-Up #57, 82-85, 98, 140-141 and short tales from fortnightly anthology Marvel Comics Presents #53, 70 and 93: collectively spanning July 1975 – January 1992.

Natasha Romanoff (sometimes Natalia Romanova) is a Soviet Russian spy who came in from the cold and stuck around to become one of Marvel’s major female stars. She started life as a svelte, sultry honey-trap during the early “Commie-busting” days, targeting Tony Stark and battling Iron Man in her debut (Tales of Suspense #52, April, 1964).

She was subsequently redesigned as a torrid tights-&-tech super-villain before defecting to the USA, falling for an assortment of superheroes – including Hawkeye and Daredevil – before finally enlisting as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., setting up as a freelance do-gooder and joining/occasionally leading the Avengers.

Throughout her career she was always ultra-efficient, coldly competent, deadly dangerous and yet somehow cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours. As her backstory evolved, it was revealed Natasha had undergone experimental processes which enhanced her physical capabilities and lengthened her lifespan, as well as assorted psychological procedures which had messed up her mind and memories…

Traditionally a minor fan favourite, the Widow only really hit the big time after the Marvel Movie franchise was established, but for us unregenerate comics-addicts her print escapades have always offered a cool, sinister frisson of delight.

The multi-player mayhem opens with Marvel Two-In-One #10 by Chris Claremont, Bob Brown & Klaus Janson: a slice of inspired espionage action-intrigue with Ben Grimm joining the Widow’s war against suicidal terrorist Agamemnon who plans to detonate the planet’s biggest nuke at the bottom of the ocean in a blockbuster 007-styled thriller ‘Is This the Way the World Ends?’.

With artists Sal Buscema & Dave Hunt, Claremont continues defining the Widow’s ways in Marvel Team-Up #57 (May 1977) starting a complex extended thriller embroiling Spider-Man in a devious and deadly espionage plot which begins ‘When Slays the Silver Samurai!’ After being saved from a lethal ambush by Natasha and implausibly holding up a collapsing building, Spidey takes reluctant possession of a strange statuette but soon forgets all about it

The scheme comes to fruition in MTU #82 (June 1979) when Claremont, Sal B & Steve Leialoha craft a 4-part, multi-operative conclusion starting with Spider-Man saving Natasha from street thugs. In ‘No Way to Treat a Lady’ the lethal superspy has escaped capture and torture by retreating into a timid, ineffectual cover personality, and the Arachnid must keep “Nancy Rushman” alive until he learns how and why. The job gets even harder after S.H.E.I.L.D.’s Strike Forcecome mercilessly gunning for her…

The first (white) Nick Fury joins the fray in ‘Slaughter on 10th Avenue!’ capturing Nancy before discovering – when Spidey steals her back – that his entire organisation has been taken over by hidden mastermind Viper and her super hench-thugs Silver Samurai and Boomerang…

‘Catch a Falling Hero’ (MTU #84) reveals the purpose of that long-forgotten statuette, as Viper targets Washington DC and President Jimmy Carter. Meanwhile Spider-Man and the slowly recovering Nancy infiltrate the compromised flying fortress Helicarrier and Fury calls in British operative Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu for a distracting frontal assault, culminating in all-out war above the Capitol and the closest of close shave conclusions for all concerned in ‘The Woman Who Never Was!’

A far simpler motive reunited the widow and the webspinner when separate cases overlapped in MTU #98 (October 1980, in an untitled tale by Marv Wolfman, Roger McKenzie, Will Meugniot & Bruce Patterson). Here dockside gunrunners and ambitious mobsters draw the heroes into a clash with The Owl, after which we jump to April 1983 and MTU #140 for the first part of a morally trying dilemma posed by Bill Mantlo, Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz & Mike Esposito with ‘Where Were You …When the Lights Went Out?’

A city-wide blackout provokes riots and looting and Spider-Man is on scene when a skeevy pawnshop owner is shot dead. The next day, lawyer Matt Murdock is appointed to defend gangbanger teen Juan Santiago who is indicted for the murder. Press photographer Peter Parker is also in attendance, and both know the kid is not guilty. As Spider-Man resolves to investigate further, Daredevil‘s old flame Natasha Romanoff volunteers to fact-find for the overworked attorney. When investigations overlap a street gang are exposed as behind the incident, but the new murder suspect triggers a deadly car chase and hostage situation before being apprehended.

Frustratingly, although responsible for much of the tragedy on that night, he quickly proves to also be innocent of the pawnbrokers’ death…

This yarn takes place at the beginning of Marvel’s Secret Wars event and pauses for Spidey to go to The Beyonder‘s Battleworld; fight lots and come back with his all-black Symbiote uniform, so it’s a much-altered Spider-Man who joins Daredevil and the Widow in obtaining ‘Blind Justice’ in #141 (DeFalco, Jim Owsley AKA Priest, Greg LaRoque & Esposito) as the heroes uncover mob connections and a trail to Kingpin Wilson Fisk, the real killer and the true nature of the kid they’ve been defending…

The team-ups conclude with a selection from twice monthly rotating anthology Marvel Comics Presents, starting with ‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’: a jurisdictional clash between Natasha and mercenary antihero Silver Sable from #53 (July 1990) by Fabian Nicieza, Rob Liefeld & Bob Wiacek, and continuing with ‘One into Three Won’t Go!’ (#70, February 1991 by Robert Campanella, Larry Alexander, Jack Abel & Al Milgrom) as the Widow and fellow former Champion Darkstar battle the hyper-irradiated Red Guardian when her master The Presence orders her to capture them for his harem.

Their valiant resistance inspires Tania Belinskaya to overthrow her own mental shackles and transform into new hero Starlight before this collection closes with an early outing for superstar scripter Dan Slott & artist Dwayne Turner who end the ultra-espionage alliances with a ‘Split Seconds’ reunion for the Widow and Daredevil from MCP #93, battling Hydra goons and deactivating deadly booby traps in a midtown building.

The book’s bonus section offers original art from Meugniot & Patterson; Frenz & Esposito and cover-art by Ed Hannigan & Klaus Janson, plus data pages of Black Widow and her weapons and gear from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and a painted cover by Al Milgrom.

These stories may vary in quality, but all stem from an honest drive to entertain and most fans will find little to complain about. Although primarily a tome for casual or new readers – who will have a blast – there’s also a ton of nostalgic delights and patented Marvel mayhem to be had by veteran viewers, and surely that’s reason enough to add this titanic tome to your secret stash of great reads…
© 2020 MARVEL

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Captain America and the Falcon: The Swine


By Jack Kirby, with Frank Giacoia, Mike Royer, Dan Green, John Verpoorten, John Tartaglione & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2078-0 (TPB)

These days Captain America is as much a global symbol of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave as Uncle Sam or Apple Pie ever were. Add to that this year is his 80th anniversary and you have all the excuses you need to revisit some classics comics…

Created by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby in an era of frantic patriotic fervour, Captain America was a dynamic and highly visible response to the horrors of Nazism and the threat of Liberty’s loss. However, the concept quickly lost focus and popularity after hostilities ceased. Fading away during post-war reconstruction only to briefly reappear after the Korean War: a harder, darker sentinel ferreting out monsters, subversives and the “commies” who lurked under every American bed.

Then he vanished once more until the burgeoning Marvel Age resurrected him just in time to experience the Land of the Free’s most turbulent and culturally divisive era.

He quickly became a mainstay of the Marvel Revolution during the Swinging Sixties, but lost his way somewhat after that, except for a glittering period under scripter Steve Englehart. Eventually, however, he too moved on and out in the middle of the 1970s.

Meanwhile, after nearly a decade drafting almost all of Marvel’s successes, Jack Kirby had jumped ship to arch-rival DC in 1971, creating a whole new mythology and dynamically inspiring pantheon. Eventually he accepted that even he could never win against any publishing company’s excessive pressure to produce whilst enduring micro-managing editorial interference.

Well aware of which way the winds were blowing and bolstered by a signed promise of editorial free rein, Kirby exploded back into the Marvel Universe in 1976 with another stunning wave of iconic creations. These included Machine Man, The Eternals and Devil Dinosaur plus media adaptations 2001: A Space Odyssey, and – so nearly – seminal TV paranoia-fest The Prisoner. The King’s return was capped by a regular gig crafting a veritable blizzard of bombastic covers for almost every title in the company, bestowing the Kirby magic on old stalwarts like Thor, Iron Man and the FF, and fresh stars like Skull the Slayer and Nova.

Crucially, Kirby was also granted absolute control of two of his most iconic co-creations: firmly established characters Black Panther and Captain America – to do with as he wished…

His return was much hyped at the time but swiftly became controversial since his intensely personal visions paid little lip service to company continuity: Jack always went his own bombastic way. Whilst those new works quickly found many friends, his tenure on those earlier inventions drastically divided the fan base.

Kirby was never slavishly wedded to tight continuity and preferred, in many ways, to treat his stints on Cap and the Panther as creative “Day Ones”. This was never more apparent than in the pages of the Star-Spangled Sentinel of Liberty…

This collection – available in trade paperback and relatively carbon neutral digital formats – reprints Captain America and the Falcon #206-214 plus the third and fourth Captain America Annuals, cumulatively spanning January 1976 to October 1977.

Previously, the original Fighting American had saved the nation from a conclave of aristocratic oligarchs attempting to undo two hundred years of freedom and progress with a debilitating “Madbomb”, before rescuing a lost tribe of lunatics trapped in extra-dimensional space and repelling an invasion by a manic refugee from the future. Now it was time for a radical change of pace and emotional impact…

Inked by Frank Giacoia, Kirby sets a tone of malevolent moodiness and uncanny mystery as the freedom-loving warrior comes ‘Face to Face with the Swine!’ which sees the Star-Spangled Sensation illegally renditioned by secret police to deepest Central America. Here he endures torture and terror to topple the private kingdom and cruel personal playground of psychotic sadist Comandante Hector Santiago, unchallenged monarch of the prison of Rio del Muerte…

Never one to go anywhere meekly, Cap soon escapes and engineers the tormentor’s downfall in ‘The Tiger and the Swine!!’, but soon finds the surrounding jungles conceal actual monsters. When they exact primal justice on the petty tyrant and his gang of willing bullies, Cap’s escape with the Swine’s cousin Donna Maria down ‘The River of Death!’ is soon interrupted by the advent of another astounding Kirby Kreation… ‘Arnim Zola… the Bio-Fanatic!!’

The former Nazi geneticist is absolute master of radical biological manipulation: abducting Cap and Donna Maria to his living castle. Even as the Falcon is closing in on his long-missing pal, Zola inflicts upon them a horde of diabolical homunculi: all done at the behest of a mysterious sponsor…

Indomitable against every kind of shapeshifting horror, Captain America battles on, enduring a terrible ‘Showdown Day!’ (Mike W. Royer inking) whilst back home, Rogers’ beloved Sharon Carter uses her resources as SHIELD Agent 13 to investigate wealthy Cyrus Fenton: subsequently exposing ‘Nazi “X”!’ as Zola’s patron and the Sentinel of Liberty’s greatest nemesis…

With his tenure on the title inexorably counting down, Kirby ramped up the tension for #212 as ‘The Face of a Hero! Yours!!’ sees Zola preparing to surgically insert the personality of the Red Skull into Cap’s form, triggering a cataclysmic clash leaving our hero bloodied and blind, but ultimately victorious…

With Cap recuperating in a US hospital, Dan Green steps in to ink #213 as ultimate assassin ‘The Night Flyer!’ targets the impaired warrior on the orders of unfettered capitalist despot Kligger (agent of the ubiquitous, insidious Corporation). With Royer inking, the shocking clash inadvertently restores the far-from-helpless victim’s vision in time for spectacular – if abrupt – conclusion in #214’s ‘The Power’…

Filling out this King-Sized Kompilation are a brace of out-of-continuity yarns originally gracing the Annuals for 1976 and 1977, with the Star-Spangled Avenger revelling in the business basics of super-heroism.

With inks from Giacoia and John Verpoorten, Captain America Annual #3 offers a feature-length science fiction shocker eschewing convoluted back-story and cultural soul searching by simply pitting the valiant old soldier against a cosmic vampire: ‘The Thing from the Black Hole Star!’. This is a rollercoaster riot of rampaging action and end-of-the-world wonderment featuring a fallible but fiercely determined fighting man free of doubt determined to defend humanity at all costs…

Captain America Annual #4 (inked by Verpoorten ana John Tartaglione) then brings the fury and furore to a close with‘The Great Mutant Massacre!’: a feature-length super-shocker pitting America’s Super Soldier against humanity’s nemesis Magneto and his utilitarian recruits Burner, Smasher, Lifter, Shocker, Slither and Peeper: a Homo Superior hit-squad aiming to take possession of a potential mutant being whose origins are far stranger than anybody could conceive…

This tome concludes with biographical secrets and career background courtesy of fact-packed prose essay Marvel Spotlight: Jack Kirby – Official Handbook and Matt Adler’s historical appreciation of the early days of Marvel in Simon, Kirby and Captain America.

King Kirby’s commitment to wholesome adventure, breakneck action and breathless wonderment, combined with his absolute mastery of the comic page and unceasing quest for the Next Big Thrill, always make for a captivating read. These late adventures are cruelly overlooked romps as good as anything Jack crafted over his decades of creative brilliance: fast-paced, action-packed, totally engrossing Fights ‘n’ Tights masterpieces no fan should ignore and, above all else, fabulously fun tales of a true American Dream…
© 2020 MARVEL.