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Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar #5 Review

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Mark Turetsky: Once again, we return to the place where it all started, for one final time amidst the carnage of endless battle. And I don’t just mean the winter storm that’s been pounding my neighborhood here in The South. Welcome back, Stu!

Stuart Wellington: That’s just what happens when you live on the ice world of Valhalla, Mark. Luckily your vox signal is pretty clear, and it seems like your cogitator is receiving enough power to get this review done.

*Issue spoilers follow!*

Previously On Marneus Calgar… [Read more…] about Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar #5 Review

Uncanny X-Men Omnibus, Volume 4 Review!

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Uncanny X-Men #185, written by Chris Claremont, art by John Romita Jr., Dan Green, and Glynis Oliver, lettering by Tom Orzechowski

Claremont’s X-Men run is generally referred to as an indisputable comic book classic, one that ran for no less than seventeen years (more if you include his various returns to the books after departing in 1991). There’s no question that it is where the greater world began to take notice and fall in love with X-Men’s suddenly complex and tragic mutants, and the special mix of science fiction, horror, action, and soap opera that Claremont brought to the book continues to define the mood of the franchise all these many years later.

With many of the X-Men’s greatest hits in the bag (The Dark Phoenix Saga, Proteus, The Brood Saga, etc.), this is where we truly start to see the stories diverging and expanding into a more sprawling and convoluted X-Continuity. Soon, Claremont would no longer be the only X-Writer, and we would see more and more of the spin-offs and crossovers that sometimes diluted and sometimes advanced the franchise. Though The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 4 might read as more of a sporadic collection of B-plots than a saga, longtime readers and those newer readers that don’t mind being thrown into the deep end of the pool will be able to appreciate the character dynamics alongside many resolving and developing plot threads alike. [Read more…] about Uncanny X-Men Omnibus, Volume 4 Review!

Some Careworn Hustler’s Tomorrow — 100 Bullets Omnibus Review!

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They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

— Carl Sandburg
“Chicago”

0. The Preface

100 Bullets Omnibus vol 1

Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso, et al

Collects: 100 Bullets #1-58, Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #3; 1376 pages total

$150.00

History loves its monsters. Our mad kings and queens; our despots and serial killers; tyrants, butchers, madmen, and thieves; these are the people who leave the most indelible marks on nations and people. Good men and well-behaved women, as the saying goes, don’t tend to make history in the same way. 

This is true everywhere you go. But nowhere more so than America, with our love of frontier outlaws, true crime podcasts, and gangsters. And nowhere in America is that more true than in Chicago.

We are Capone’s town. Blagojevich’s town. Big Bill Haywood’s town. Chicago is Rev. Billy Sunday playing center field in the “beer and whiskey” before cutting out on his contract to make more money as a temperance preacher. Chicago is its beating subway heart, a joint venture between a ruthless monopolist and the mob. It’s Richard M. Daily’s name in brass on every bridge (especially the ones he didn’t make).

It’s Brian Azzarello’s town. That’s why the story opens here… but it’s not the reason.

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Meet Marc Spector in the Moon Knight Omnibus

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Werewolf By Night, cover artist Gil Kane, written by Doug Moench, art by Don Perlin, Howie Perlin, and Phil Rachelson, lettering by Ray Holloway

Moon Knight is one of the stranger superheroes, and his relationship with violence, heroism, and the ghosts of his own misdeeds have combined to create one of Marvel’s most underrated properties. That’s sure to change with the debut of the pending TV series, but it’s easy to forget that this is a character that has been hanging around in the Marvel Universe since all the way back in 1975. Despite a fair number of solo series and guest appearances over decades, Moon Knight (aka Marc Spector) can be a hard nut to crack.

Fortunately, there are now collections that make it easy to read all of Marc Spector’s earliest stories in the same place. Moon Knight Omnibus Vol. 1 collects Moon Knight’s first appearances in Werewolf By Night, a handful of team-up issues, an offbeat collaboration with the Defenders, his short run as a back-up story in Hulk Magazine, and the first twenty issues of his 1980 solo run. Though it introduces Marc Spector as a guest star to other heroes, this trade proves that his early days can be read as a surprisingly linear character arc. [Read more…] about Meet Marc Spector in the Moon Knight Omnibus

X-Factor Epic Collection: Angel Of Death Review!

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X-Factor exists in a really strange memory limbo. Most people think of the team as the Peter David run with Multiple Man or the government-run era with Havok and Polaris. But if you’re really tuned in you remember the original hook of the team being the Original Five X-Men reunited, and if you’re really really tuned in you remember the additional hook of them masquerading as Mutant Hunters to take and train the mutants they “captured” as the “X-Terminators”. This Original Five era may not be necessarily the most well-remembered era in the concept of the X-Factor team, but it can’t be denied that it gave some incredibly influential building blocks into the X-Universe – including Apocalypse, Archangel, and of course…Nanny and Orphanmaker. 

While Bob Layton was the author of the beginnings of this series, it really started bringing these ideas to life when the great Louise Simonson, primarily joined by her husband Walt Simonson, took the reins. X-Factor Epic Collection: Angel Of Death collects this Simonson era in its full swing. This collection really pushes the scope for what X-Factor as a concept can be by stripping it down and rebuilding what works, what doesn’t, and making it look like it was meant to be there from the beginning. From Archangel to “Inferno”, this collection really captures some of the heights of the Simonsons’ X-Factor run while keeping up the serialized soap opera so at home in this era of X-Books. 

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