Reviews

M-Tech’s Warlock: An Underrated Late ’90s Gem

March 3, 2022 by Sara Century Leave a Comment

*Warlock* #1, cover art by Joe Quesada, J.G. Jones, and Richard Isanove

The M-Tech line of the late 1990s is a mostly forgotten footnote in Marvel’s history today, but that’s not to say it doesn’t hold up. After all, it didn’t have much of a chance to breathe before the whole thing was canceled, which makes it difficult to write it off fully—not a bad idea so much as one that buyers weren’t quite ready for. Regardless of the line’s brevity, tapping into underutilized tech-based characters like X-51 and Deathlok for their own solo series made for some interesting comics, and Warlock Vol. 5 is one of them.

It was in writer Louise Simonson’s run on New Mutants in #95 that the techno-organic being known as Warlock (temporarily) perished at the hands of Cameron Hodge. This was in 1990, immediately before she left the book with #97 and it transformed into X-Force. Here, nine years later, she returns to the character while remaining soundly outside of the X-Line for which they were both known. In the interim, she was one of the main architects behind The Death of Superman and surrounding stories at DC, and Warlock had been through resurrection, a name change, and more than one serious identity crisis.

Discussing Warlock Vol. 5 #1-9 [Read more…] about M-Tech’s Warlock: An Underrated Late ’90s Gem

Welcome Back – Two Downtime Preludes for Big Drama Down the Line: New Mutants #24 & Secret X-Men #1

February 28, 2022 by David Bowen Leave a Comment

[covers by Martin Simmonds (l) and Leinil Francis Yu (r)]

Finally! We’re back to two ensemble X titles in one week! Woo! It’ll be more than a month before that happens again—and then we’ll be going big: A veritable title wave of comics! (Not sorry for the pun! And shout out to the used bookstore of the same name I worked at 20 years ago in Anchorage.) Let’s hope we survive the experience; 2022 should prove quite different from the scheduling chaos of the last two years, supply chains permitting.

Regardless, as to the books at hand, they each bring different strengths, but certainly, it’s increasingly clear that Vita Ayala is entering their early peak as a storyteller with each issue of New Mutants, so we’ll start by covering issue #24, which couldn’t be more perfectly balanced as a kind of intermission between arcs (with “The Labors of Magik” likely to be as decompressed as the Shadow King arc but even more epoch-making judging by this issue’s last panel).

Marvel Then: Morbius Moves Forward in Marvel NOW!

February 26, 2022 by Sara Century Leave a Comment

The Morbius (2013) series seems to come a bit out of left field, considering that the last time we’d consistently seen Michael M. had been back in the early 1990s with Rise of the Midnight Sons. Receiving a hard push into his own series roughly two decades later with a new costume and a full superhero makeover may have seemed like an odd move because… it was!

Morbius isn’t a character who works particularly well as a superhero—he’s much better-suited for horror-adjacent solo series or guest spots in the books of more traditional heroes like Spider-Man. Yet Marvel NOW! was all about bringing old concepts into the modern age whether they liked it or not, so we ended up with a fairly unusual short-lived Morbius solo that sometimes works, though it often does not.

Covering Morbius (2013) #1-9 [Read more…] about Marvel Then: Morbius Moves Forward in Marvel NOW!

Forever Is Where I Live: X Deaths of Wolverine #3 In Review

February 25, 2022 by David Bowen 6 Comments

Moira lays down the cybernetic gauntlet. Heavy spoilers follow.

X Deaths continues to excel and compel in ways that X Lives has yet to achieve, but I’m also less interested in Logan’s many pasts and all in for being at the edge of now, looking to mutantkind’s future. And it looks rockier than at any time since HOX/POX. It’s clear at this point that the current two-series-that-are-one will end in a way that shapes the course of Destiny of X, at least until the next epoch-defining event. [Read more…] about Forever Is Where I Live: X Deaths of Wolverine #3 In Review

Best of Marvel 2021: Defenders by Al Ewing & Javier Rodriguez—Inconceivable!

February 25, 2022 by David Bowen Leave a Comment

The latest iteration of Marvel’s Defenders is writer Al Ewing’s clearest, most comprehensive love letter yet to classic Kirby comics as well as a masterfully composed culmination and recasting of cosmic Ewing ideas going back to what is still my favorite (non-X-related) Ewing run, Ultimates and Ultimates 2 (specifically drawing most from issues #6 and 100 of the latter title, though we also get a dash of his New Avengers #1-6 with Moridun, Dark Wizard of the Fifth Cosmos). Most immediately, however, the story here spins out of the Al Ewing-written portions of the massively oversized 2019 one-shots Marvel Comics #1000 and 1001, and the reader really should read or reread just those fragments to fully understand what the Masked Raider and Eternity Mask are all about*. (Fortunately, these comics are on Marvel Unlimited!)

Of course, artist extraordinaire Javier Rodriguez has always been riding that Kirby wave, most recently in 2019’s History of the Marvel Universe with Mark Waid and inker Álvaro López, his primary collaborator, when he’s not inking himself as here. He also collaborated once before with Ewing, in 2017’s Royals #8-12, which was definitely Kirby cosmic all the way. As often in the past, he’s also the colorist of Defenders, and color theory plays a surprisingly major role in this pretty darn complex allegory for the evolution of superhero comics.

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