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Marvel Reviews

X-Men Red #1 Review! Well Met in the Broken Land – You Are Seen

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X-Men Red #1
[cover by Russell Dauterman and Matthew Wilson]
[Spoilers abound]

X-Men: Red #1 written by Al Ewing with art by Stefano Caselli and Federico Blee opens with a splash page flashback to the brutal challenge for the regency of Arakko that, previously, we had seen only in two panels in last year’s S.W.O.R.D. #8 (also a flashback sequence). The second panel there is now the opener here, masterfully reinterpreted by Caselli’s elegant linework—albeit without the same sense of nightmare brutality and no bruised eye and bleeding nose for Storm. But now we get more (though still incomplete) context and narrative that were totally missing before. [Read more…] about X-Men Red #1 Review! Well Met in the Broken Land – You Are Seen

When the Avengers Ruled, Prelude (Pt. 0)

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[covers by George Pérez; Sal Buscema; and Pérez]
Yes, there was a time when the Avengers ruled, I mean, really ruled—ruled with genuine aspirational coolness! Or maybe, this is just a catchy title for a whole series of articles on Avengers milestones beginning in the midst of the full-steam-ahead Bronze Age and arriving one atop the other with the Roger Stern run, before the abyss of the ’90s, until the revitalization of Earth’s Mightiest with Kurt Busiek and George Pérez triumphant. Yet as much as this will be a love letter to some of my fave superhero comics, there will be plenty of criticism in the early going, especially when it comes to some of the more insufferably entitled men dominating this franchise. Still, I don’t want to focus on the negative even as I won’t shy away from addressing badness where it arises. What’s more interesting is that there is so much good material in this era (which, no doubt, is not lost on Disney!), but for me, the post-Hickman era of Avengers comics has been deeply, deeply, deeply disappointing. While 21st-century professional consistency (corporate streamlining) might be glaringly absent from the earlier comics, we’ll highlight those areas where those raw early times pushed in compelling directions that are almost wholly absent today.

So, hopefully, dear reader, you find this project of interest at least for all the neat ideas and characters that have fallen by the wayside in recent years. The fact that in the 1980s Monica Rambeau was Captain Marvel and held tenure as team leader of the Avengers is just one instance of the rich potential here that has been sorely neglected, especially with the dull and constrained narrowness of Aaron’s current work—which bears only the most superficial trappings of epic adventure (an unfortunate downfall from his legendary Thor). Whether or not you agree on this last, though, I think most Earth’s Mightiest fans will discover and rediscover some fascinating bits of forgotten lore, both in-universe and behind the scenes.

In this prelude piece, we’ll do a brief rundown of two early famous epics that didn’t work successfully as coherent stories. Future pieces will delve such titles as The Serpent Crown Saga, The Korvac Saga, Nights of Wundagore, Absolute Vision, Under Siege, Avengers Forever—and quite a few more! If you’re familiar with these sagas, hopefully you’ll still find something interesting, new or insightful to take away. Of course, enthused readers are welcome to leave a comment for friendly correction or disagreement. Learning anew and reconsidering based on well-meaning debate are essential to a healthy brain 😉. For fans unfamiliar with this earlier material, I hope only to pique your curiosity in seeking out this fascinating content. [Read more…] about When the Avengers Ruled, Prelude (Pt. 0)

X-Men Epic Collection: Bishop’s Crossing Review!

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A scant six weeks after X-Men Vol. 2 #1 became the best-selling comic book of all time, Chris Claremont ended his fifteen-year run as writer of the X-Men. His departure (the final issue credited to him is X-Men Vol. 2 #3) wasn’t unexpected–news of his leaving Marvel had leaked a few months before the launch of the new series, and all three issues had been published after he’d left the company. Claremont had agreed to help launch Marvel’s second X-Men title as a kind of severance package for himself (he has since said the royalties from that launch basically paid for his house). Claremont ultimately left the X-Men because his artistic collaborator at the time, Jim Lee, wanted to do more traditional stories with familiar plot beats and villains. Claremont wanted to continue to push the X-Men forward, breaking new creative ground as he’d been doing for the past fifteen years. When it became clear that Lee’s approach was the one favored by their editor, Bob Harras (as well as with Marvel’s sales and marketing departments), and that Claremont’s time as the ultimate arbiter of the fates of the X-Men was up, he left. Bob Harras was comfortable with letting Chris Claremont–the man who, alongside a series of artistic partners, launched the X-Men to the top of the sales charts and birthed an entire interconnected line of “X-books”–leave, because he still had Jim Lee. [Read more…] about X-Men Epic Collection: Bishop’s Crossing Review!

The Evolution of Marvel Cosmic, Pt 1: Watchers and Skrulls

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[cover by Jack Kirby (p), Paul Reinman (i), Stan Goldberg (c), Art Simek (l)]
[cover by Jack Kirby (p), Paul Reinman (i), Stan Goldberg (c), Art Simek (l)]
This series of articles will track the early rise of all the elements (the recurrent alien beings and venues) that lay the foundation for what will later be known as Marvel Cosmic. So you know this will be a love letter to the wonder-working duo of Stan “the Man” Lee and Jack “the King” Kirby. We’ll focus on moments where some new critical element is added or significantly revised or retconned. We’ll also look at what was happening at the time in US society and global affairs, broadly speaking (obviously, we’ll have many references to and analogies with the [first] peak of the Cold War but also sci-fi and even the counterculture). Our aim is to simply create a chronological guide to this particular (but vast) aspect of Marvel comics that hopefully inspires a deeper appreciation of our favorite cosmic characters and settings as they pop up throughout the Marvel Universe.

With the introduction of each new significant cosmic player or element from the early ’60s on, we’ll look at just the original portrayal, but I’ll try to clarify to the best of my ability how readers of the time would likely have seen these Kirby wonders, distinguishing them from the way we read them now in the 2020s.

Again, we’ll mostly focus on the alien, but the progeny of Earth, humans and otherwise, will be included as they appear, even if they aren’t immediately cosmic players or take their sweet time getting off-planet (like Adam Warlock and the High Evolutionary). (Rick Jones, however, very much to your chagrin no doubt, must wait until he’s bound to Captain Marvel.)

(Also, a side piece on Jack Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown at DC in the late 1950s might be of interest down the line. After all, it would prove, in retrospect, a trial run for exploring many of the zany sf elements he more successfully expanded on in FF—more grounded by Stan Lee’s character-focused melodrama, however much their contrary styles would see the creative team drift apart over time.)

Anyway, it’s going to be hella fun just salivating over some of that classic Kirby crackle and giant hat porn 😉 [Read more…] about The Evolution of Marvel Cosmic, Pt 1: Watchers and Skrulls

Morbius and the Legion of Monsters Review!

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My first exposure to Dr. Michael Morbius, the Living Vampire, was his arc during the “Neogenic Nightmare” storyline in season 2 of Spider-Man: The Animated Series. In that story, Morbius is a rival of Peter Parker’s in school and in romance who steals a vial containing a serum mixed with Peter’s blood in order to get a leg up on his own research. You see, he’s dedicated his life to curing a mysterious disease afflicting his unnamed home country. It doesn’t go well for him, however, thanks to an accident involving bats, lasers, and the stolen serum. Morbius gets transformed into a white-skinned vampiric creature with little suckers on his palms and an undeniable hunger for “plasma”. I thought he was kinda cool but very, very goofy.

While I learned later on that all that plasma talk was there to tone the character down for a younger audience, and that in the Marvel comics universe Morbius was a proper vampire with all the horror and biting (and no palm suckers!) that follows, I never could get the blue-haired, palm-suckered weirdo out of my head. But now, with the Morbius movie in theaters, I wanted to finally get a taste of the good doctor’s comics history. That exploration led me to the Living Vampire’s second go-round with the idiosyncratic Legion of Monsters in a couple of runs from 2010 to 2012. And much to my surprise, what I found there–a leader doing his best to best to help his people, all while combatting anxiety and hubris–positions Morbius in a much more heroic light than I was expecting. [Read more…] about Morbius and the Legion of Monsters Review!