X-Men volume 1 - 1991

Issues 1 - 5

Marvel

Chris Claremont/John Byrne - 'Plot and Scripts'

Jim Lee - Pencils and Plot

Welcome to the highest selling comic book of all time. If you look at the above image then you will see part of this 'success' is the fact that the first issue was five different covers which made up one huge beast of an image. It sold 8.1 million in pre-orders and eventually racked up just over 3 million books sold. Of course with these numbers and everybody keeping them in perfect, pristine condition you can pick up copies for very small sums today. Even I haven't bothered tracking down all the different covers.

After the success of Jim Lee teaming with Chris Claremont in Uncanny X-Men issues 270 - 275 Marvel jumped at the chance to create a new X-Men book called simply X-Men.

The story opens with the X-Men's most enduring foe, Magneto. He is on the loose and decides to call his Asteroid M base home again. The US Government detects his powers and decides to enact the Magneto Protocols. Something I never quite picked up on - What are the Protocols? The X-Men team consists of Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Iceman, Rogue, Forge, Beast, Marvel Girl, Professor X, Gambit, Psylocke, Wolverine and Angel, with Moira McTaggart and banshee hanging around in the background. Here I have my first problem with the book. How are we going to fit all of these characters into a storyline? The X-Men are in training, which Wolverine wins by 'assasinating' Professor X.
Back on Asteroid M some mutants have come to seek shelter with their Lord Magneto. The Lord himself decides to take a trip to Earth and pinch a heap of missiles from a downed submarine, which leads to confrontation with the X-Men. Despite some good licks, Mags makes off with the bombs. He declares Asteroid M to be a home for Mutants and threatens to launch the bombs at Earth if they interfere with his plans. Obviously this means their is an Earth to Space shuttle service just for mutants, or something like that.

The cover of issue 2 has an image of Magneto strangling Xavier. If doing X-Men covers you can always go to the well on this one. The issue opens with a massive stoush, Magneto deals with the X-Men and Fabian Cortez, his new right hand man, deals with Psylocke with a kiss.
S.H.I.E.L.D is discussing how they will deal with Genoshia and Nick Fury is literally dripping with guns and pouches.
Brushing off the kiss, Psylocke almost delivers the knock-out blow to Magneto, I think she wisely wears no metal when battling their arch-nemesis, but Mags wins the day and returns to Astroid M. He quickly returns to Earth to steal Professor X's house. he is mad because someone has been messing with his DNA. The perpitrator turns out to be Moira McTaggart _ This is off an old storyline where Magneto was regressed into a baby.

Issue 3 has a cover which hints at X-men vs X-Men and is labled as 'Chris Claremont's last'. - Of course he had only done three issues of the new book.
The story itself is basic, where some X-Men get knocked out on asteroid M and others fly up to their rescue. Those handy space craft again.

By Issue 4 Claremont had left his writing duties due to creative differences. The Marvel juggernaut moved on with this issue having the credit to Lee/Byrne/Orzechnowski/Rosen/Harras/De Falco.
The X-Men unwind with a game of basketball which degenerates as more and more powers get used. Moira has a bad dream and we end with Rogue and Gambit going on a date. Of course their alone time is interupted by Omega Red, who was uncovered in the first few panels.

Issue five is Pencilled and plotted by Jim Lee and Plotted and Scripted by John Byrne. The first section is highlighted by a classic fan service shot, as Psylocke is summoned to headquarters while she was swimming laps. It must be summer as she didn't require a towel or robe. Beast, Rogue, Jubilee and Gambit are trapped in the back of an ambulance after being defeated by Omega Red. Gambit frees them with a stealthily hidden playing card. You would think villains would check for that.
Wolverine is having fight of the century with Omega Red. A byword from observers says the fight lasted 17 hours. Thank goodness they sumerised it. Red is victorious and is placed on display where the Strucker Twins look on, not looking very Aryan or twin like.
The X-men split into two teams, one to find Red and Wolvie and one to help a distress call from the Hellfire Club and Emma Frost. Even the X-men guess that might be a trap. Logan escapes on his own with help from a mysterious benefactor.
The last few panels see Dazzler meet up with Longshot in Malibu and ends with Spiral gatecrashing in on them.

If you've followed this summary you will notice it's a bit scattered and all over the place. I can't help feel that the writing of the comic follows a similar pattern. Ideas are thrown up and not followed through on and the constant need for conflict means that it is delivered swiftly, not developed and resolved or forgotten at the same pace. The teams have swollen and characters and sub-plots come across the page at a frenetic pace. While the art does match the story it's also focused on the style and not the substance of the story telling.

It's a Qualified recommendation, mainly because the issues are cheap and easy to find. If you are keen on great X-Men stories there are much better ones you could spend your coins on. If your a collector then I say go for it. Prime examples of the 90's comic experience with flashy covers and lots of variants.

Suicide Squad volume 1 (I think) - 1987

DC

John Ostrander - Writer
Luke McDonnel - Pencils

I picked up the whole pile of these comics for basically postage off of eBay. Obviously not of the best quality they are still very readable. The down side to this is that I have a very random numbering so I don't have many complete stories.

Originally used in the Brave and the Bold waaay back in 1959, Suicide Squad was revived in 1987. The comic book emulates the concept of 'The Dirty Dozen' movie, a bunch of criminals doing tasks to reduce their sentence, and 'Misson: Impossible' parameters thrown in for good measure. Added to this concept was the fact that the writer could, and very often would, kill off characters while the team was on a mission.

Issue 4 is the William Hell Overture. What appears to be Hawkeye with a crossbow (Slower but more powerful???) is bringing down robbers in a rough part of the city and handing over the darker hued members to the Police.
William Hell is a front for a right wing Neo-nazi nutjob. Suicide Squad set him up for a fall with the ever so slightly racist Captain Boomerang in their midst.

Issue 6 see the squad in Russia trying to bring a defector back to the States. By this issue the mission has gone to heck and Deadshot is forced to shoot Enchantress in the head (grazing shot) to stop her wild rampage. Finally the sqaud gets the defector to the Russian Embassy via a train where we learn that she's not so keen to go to America.

Issue seven then sees them fighting The Peoples Heroes. In the 80's each main universe of heroes seemed to have a stash of villains set-up over in what was then the USSR. This one is no different with the heroes called Bolshoi, Molotov, Pravda, Hammer and Sickle. I often wonder what happened to them after the fall of the Berlin Wall? After the large donnybrook on the snowy Russian landscape the Squad escapes. Back in the States the team argues about who was at fault for the Russian shambles.

Issue 8 is a flashback type of story, with Amanda Waller, a great character, sifting over the people in her charge and her passing a very harsh judgement over the lot of them.

Rick Flag Jnr, who is a very Nick Fury like character, gets into fisticuffs with 'The Privateer' who has shown up at Squad headquarters looking like a cross between Snake Plisken and Sean Connery in Zardoz.
The Enchantress is judged as unstable. Deadshot flirts with his councilor. In a background story the Police are after Mirror Master, who is actually Captain Boomerang committing crimes in disguise.

By issue ten Nightshade, Slipknot and Bronze Tiger are listed as injured and the team Doctor, Karin Grave, has been killed. Batman breaks into Squad headquarters where he copies their files onto a floppy disc. Ah, old tech...
Batman has to fight his way past the Squad to escape and we get a mexican stand-off. He does not like the idea of the Squad and vows to shut it down at some stage. Rick Flag Jnr. states that he would rather fight alongside Bats than the rest of his team in the Squad.

Issue 12 sees the Squad taking out a cocaine ring, just to show that they are pretty flexible. The team is incognito, with Captain Boomerang stretching to play a creepy drug kingpin. Vixen succumbs to her animal side and kills the drug czar and rightly shows some remorse about it.

Issue 13 sees the Squad face down the Justice League. They are breaking into a Russian jail cell to free Nemisis, who was captured back in issue 5. The Squad has many links with the League and most of the one on one fights end with a stale-mate or a truce.

The book itself is very interesting and works because you have an eclectic bunch of A-holes and miscreants forced together to work for the government on assignments too messy for the heroes to touch. The stories are well layered and touch on all the characters and sets up lots of threads for each one. The art in the books isn't crash hot, which is both the actual pencil work and the quality of books of this era. Of course you may not like reading about villains simply doing missions to win their freedom but overall I like the way these are told.

Of course DC has now announced a movie starring the Suicide Squad so I would jump in and grab old copies of these books if this interests you before roughly August 2016, when interest will probably ramp up.

Batgirl - Trade paperback New 52 Volume 1

DC

Gail Simone - Writer
Ardan Syaf - Pencils
Vincent Cifuates - pencils and inks

Picked this up very recently and it's a book I don't normally read.

Batgirl is the daughter of Commisioner Gordon who has swiped Batman's motif because, well, if you were going to swipe anybody???

The book is full of Batgirl doing lots of Batmanesque type stuff. She crashes through windows and saves people from deranged killers. She takes down the same sort of crazy and kooky villains of Batman.

The book also weaves her personal life into the narrative and we get a glimpse to the person behind the mask.

Once we drop into the action again we get a villain planting a bomb on a Subway train and Batgirl having to save lives. Of course one of my thoughts here was 'Yay!' Gotham has a Subway. She saves some people but a second bomb goes off.

We then see some more of the extended Bat family as Barbara meets up with Nightwing, the hero formerly known as Robin. They end up fighting but even though I re-read this section, I wasn't sure why.

Further on in the story Batgirl does more saving of innocent victims in alleyways, she narrowly misses taking out a slightly more deranged vigilante before having to defeat a mind controlled Brude Wayne, who fights very well for a rich playboy billionaire...

There are many good things about this book which is why I reccomend it. It does frame Barbara's life balance well and the art is gorgeous. All the villains have a bit of back story and some motivation for their deeds. On the downside of course, the links to Bats himself hang off of every panel. Barbara is part of the extended 'Bat-family' and with no powers and a replicated motif her stories can come across as 'Batman-lite'. Then again, because she isn't the same person you could argue that her story is or could be a lot more interesting...

Tank Girl - book 1 (collection of the first four issues)

Dark Horse

Jamie Hewlett - art and plots
Alan Martin - plots and other things

How to describe Tank Girl? A story about a Neo-punk bounty hunter who lives in the Australian Outback and likes getting drunk.

Of course this is a story which is irreverent with the focus on comedy and a hero who can seemingly do what ever the hell she likes and usually survives death by luck or a huge amount of blood letting.

Each issue involves some shenanighans or another. Tank Girl tracks down a band of blood thirsty kangaroos before snogging one then shooting him. In another she is tracked down by her former commander, keen on bringing her to justice. She defeats him with giant outsized boobs. Later in the stories she is joined by Booga, her boyfriend who is a kangaroo, Jet Girl, Sub Girl and a stuffed Koala called Camp.

Tank Girl is a perfect blend of an irreverent script and artwork that matches, transporting you to a world where Paul Hogan, President of Australia, shits his pants because Tank Girl didn't get colostomy bags to him on time.  I love this book and went on to grab each story that she was drawn in.

Of course the artist went on to form the worlds first virtual band with Damon Albarn - Just showing that you never really know where life is going to take you.

The Invisibles - Counting to None

DC Vertigo

Written by Grant Morrison
Pencils by Phil Jimenez
Colours and Pencils - John Stokes

The Invisibles are a band of psychic fighters at war with the Archons, being interested in creating anarchy for Earth. The team includes King Mob, Lord Fanny,Boy, Ragged Robin and Jack Frost. Just from the names you know this isn't an ordinary comic book. It's published by Vertigo, has a 'Not for kids' label and is packed with sex and violence. 

The story is based around an artifact called 'The Hand of Glory'. The Invisibles have it and it seems a lot of other people really want to get it. It's not clear what it does although the theory that it bends space time abounds. 

The team itself is a fractured bunch, with only King Mob seeming to have any narrative drive. The other members seem to react or act as props for him. King Mob himself spends a chunk of the story astral projecting back to the 1920's in order to help a woman and another sect of Invisibles track down and set up the Hand for use. 

The story likes inserting random scenes from peripheral characters suddenly through the narrative. Some loop back and give you more information others just seem to be there. 

After activating the Hand of Glory in the 1920's King Mob comes back to the present (which is late 1990's) to find Boy has stolen the hand and has taken it to agents of the Archons. The end of the book turns into a bit of a cop out as Boy was being mind wiped and de-programmed because she had been wiped and programmed by a sect of another 'church'. In the end the Invisibles ride off into the sunset looking all cool.

The book is very existential, very melodramatic with some excellent visuals. The story borders on a depth that ultimately missed me. I like a comic book where the art matches the story. This works here. My only let down is that I felt I had been led in a long circle but for no reason. Qualified recommendation if you like deep stories that are set on many levels.

Asterix at the Olympic Games

Hodder - Dargaud

Written by - Rene Goscinny
Drawn by - Albert Uderzo

I read my first Asterix book at the age of eight or nine. The mists of time have made me forget exactly. I bought it through a book club at school and the story instantly had me enthralled.

In this volume Asterix gets invited to compete in the Olympic Games via the Romans. The druid and Obelix offer to tag along but in the end the whole Gaulish village attends.

Once in Greece Asterix and Obelix are shocked to find that they can't compete with any magic potion. Luckily Asterix works his sly wily ways and tricks the Romans into using the potion thus winning a laurel on a technicality.

There are some holes in the story and it spends a long time getting the hero to Greece. Still the art is sumptuous and it's one of these stories where the art matches the text and blends together into something gorgeous. Some of the humour is deeply pun based, which happens to be good for me as I love a good pun.

Recommended

Venus Wars

Issues 1 - 10 (1992)

Dark Horse

Writer and Penciller Yoshikazu Yushiko

I bought the first issue when it first came out then promptly couldn't or didn't get any of the others. Adam was wanting to be rid of a vast swathe of books (most of which I grabbed). In among them all was the rest of the Venus Wars issues. So after 20+ years I finally get to finish the story. In this batching I read the first ten.

 Venus has been struck by a massive icy asteroid which changed it's rotation and made it terra formable. Of course humans colonize Venus and start a war. Our story is about a bike riding lunatic who is head hunted to join the army. - There is a 'Rollerball' style bike based sport that the main character is good at because basically he is a complete nutcase)

After a 'sports' game Ken Seno rides off towards the army base with the 'Queen' of his team in hot pursuit. She is heaping abuse at him because how dare he ride off! He is also following Cute Girl who was watching him perform bike sports. They follow an Army bike to the base, which promptly explodes. Ken Seno rescues a cute girl then we have some war exposition.

In the next issue Ken Seno is doing a stack of PT. We see a new character called Maggie who is trying to track Ken down but only finds his empty apartment. The army interviews the cute girl is interviewd and she is a representative from Terra milatary. The Queen had followed the cute girl and they talk. Ken Seno is part of The Hound Bike Intercept Squad. They drive off to intercept tanks threatening to attack the edge of the city.

 Ken Seno takes out a tank with his attack bike. The queen and Cute Girl escape from the hospital in a comedy sequence. Ken Seno is finally taken out by a tank but has no time to lick his wounds and is sent out to fight again. - He finally destroys a tank - Which means I was confused on the first few panels of the book that's for sure!

Okay, I finally get another MASSIVE info dump. This one is all about the running of the war and touches on things like logistics. Our Hero Team, Ken Seno, Miranda- The Queen, and Helen the Cute, steal some gas. I presume to escape. A section of Venusian society starts and uprising and we have the second massive info dump of the issue. After this one the General of one side of the war rides in front of his army on a sort of sled.
Ken Seno is then in a training montage. he talks back to his drill sergant and then is basically beaten up.
Top brass decides to beef up The Hound unit and the 'regiment' break into the brig and free Ken Seno.

Maggie has arrived at the army camp and visits with Ken. The Hound Regiment is set up for a massive attack on a huge fleet of tanks. The unit leaves for the front and Maggie says goodbye. As they are attacking they are attacked by their Kryptonite; helicopters.

There is a massed retreat. Maggie is attacked and there is an attempted rape scene. Ken Seno saves her and shoots her attacker in the head.

This book has nice art and the pencils were done by the writer. It's in black and white (originally a manga) and then it was made into anime. It's weakness is it's story. I never really hooked into the characters and the action and info dumps break up the story too much. Ultimately the scope is huge and the story never hooks you into any part of it. Much of the dialogue is very much like an anime and also doesn't help get you into each point of view.

I'd give it a qualified recommend if you are a HUGE manga fan, you really love the artwork or some reason like that. After 20 years it wasn't worth the wait. Otherwise not recommended.