Aliens Earth War

Issues 1 - 4

Dark Horse

Mark Verheiden - Writer
Sam Kieth - Artist
Jim Massara - Letterer
Monica Livingston - Colorist

1990

Aliens was a very important movie franchise for me growing up.  One of the true perfect blend of horror/sci-fi and action, the movies where some of the first we all snuck out of the video store and watched in secret without telling our parents. The comics that came out from Dark Horse in the late eighties where very 'hot'. We all wanted them and they where very collectable. It was also hard getting them as they seemed to be scooped up and hoarded.

Aliens: Earth War starts at the end of the Aliens movie. The relationship between between Ripley and Newt is strained. Ripley gets dropped back on LV-426 with remarkably similar outcomes to the movie. We learn that Earth has been over run with Aliens after someone was daft enough to take some eggs back to the home planet. Ripley works out that the Alien creatures all want to be close tot he Queen Alien, so they plan to catch one to trap all the creatures on Earth in one spot and destroy them, I'm guessing by nuking the site from orbit. Ripley wants to work alone but Newt insists on coming with her and helping. From here the book descends into standard Aliens fare.

The art is good. The plot follows the faithful lines forged by the movie franchise and never threatens to touch on anything new. The magic of the movies to me was the special effects and the way that they helped build the tension. Once the action started to unfold you were in the zone, invested and went on the ride. The weakest part of the books is the action sequences. Let's just say that I was never worried about the outcomes.

It's a qualified recommend if you are a massive fan of Aliens as the books, despite seeming to be rare and valuable years ago, are now cheap and easy to find online.

Generation - X

Issues 1 - 10

Marvel

'Created by' - Scott Lobdell (writer) and Chris Bachalo
Inks by Mark Buckingham

November 1994

This book came out towards the end of 1994 and at the time my heavy collecting phase was passing. I headed to Uni and the lure of beer and football took me away from my beloved comic books. These books where in a huge batch given to me by Adam. Of course the easy comparison to make is with Gen 13. Even the names sound similar. I will try to judge it on its own merits.

The first issue has an embossed silver shiny cover. We are introduced to the team. They are Husk (Who is the sister of Cannonball). She can shed her skin to reveal a body composed of any material she has studied underneath. M, who is a low grade super-man type. Jubilee, who is described here as a pyrokinetic, basically she launched fireworks from her hands. Chamber- who has a 'furnace' of sonic energy in his chest that has blown off his chin, making it look like his mouth is on fire. Synch - who has a rainbow aura that allows him to copy other mutants powers. Finally there is skin, who has several feet of extra epidermis. Added to the mix is Emma Frost, she formally known as the White Queen, now a redeemed hero, and finally Banshee, Sean Cassidy. Former X-Man and Interpol agent.
The first issue introduces a villain called Emplate, who feeds off Mutants. He is tracking Chamber. The young British mutant supplies him with two much power and drives him away. The team finds 'Penance' - a young mute with razor sharp talons and hair who is a lovely puce colour.

Issue 2 starts with Jubilee confronting Gateway. - He was the X-Men's teleporter while they where operating out of the Australian Outback. He is supposed to be Aborigional but over the next few issues he starts to look more and more like a munchkin.
M - whose name is Monet. I am unsure if this is where her code-name comes from?- is telling Emma and Sean about the origions of Penance. The mutant herself is resting in a medical bed.
The rest of the team are playing Scrabble. Penance escapes and the team chases her into a nearby wood.

The third issue starts with the team trying to find Penance in the woods. In turn they all get into combat. With her power set she's pretty dangerous.
There is a brief interlude with Nanny- a Villain I first read in Avengers 300, who likes to steal babies.
Gen X chases Penance until Chamber finally subdues her just by talking to her.

Issue four starts with Chamber talking to Gateway. I feel I must point out that Gateway never talks, in fact he rarely does anything.
Skin, Synch and Jubes are shopping in New York when they stumble upon a murder scene - they have to fight a large montrous muntant.
At home Husk gets drunk.

We start issue six with Emma tied up and is being taunted by a Morlock called Marrow.
- The Morlocks have a long and storied history in the pages of X-Men books.
She can't use her powers because Marrow and Hemingway (who is the large massive grey creature from previous issues) are using Leech to dampen her telepathic powers. Synch, Skin and Jubes are wandering the sewers trying to track Emma. Synch uses his aura like a blood hound. Once they get close Leech dampens their powers as well.
Husk is drunk and comes on to Chamber, starting the first love interest in the book.
Frost escapes the villains clutches by booting the crap out of Leech and then brain frying them. There is another giant grey skinned mutant who tries to blow them up.
Back at the Xavier school Husk tries to kiss Chamber, which makes him blow up their dorm rooms.

We have a transition issue. Banshee has a nightmare. The team are living with Emma and the proximity of his dreams means Emma gets inserted into them. Despite Banshee being fully dressed in his dream-scape, Emma is only in her undies. In the next few panels we see she is actually sleeping in the buff...
Chamber broods over his rather wild and alarming power set and Skin and Synch build Artie (Who they rescued from Gene Nation) and Leech a tree-house.
Finally Banshee gets a phone call from Ireland and his Castle has vanished.

The next two issues take the team from Ireland into a magical pixie land where Synch and Chamber fight with medival style weapons and Skin takes on a dragon.
We have an interlude in Hawaii with a mutant called Mondo and another Frost.
We wrap this arc up after a fight with trolls and pixies.

Issue ten starts with the team having a party. They are introduced to Mondo. During the party M finds Banshee almost dead in a fridge. The team rushes to get him medical attention. Frost reads Banshee's mind while the rest of the team walks into a trap with X-Men villain, Omega Red.

The book was one of the many X-titles from the 90's. If I remember correctly in the late 80's they spawned X-Factor. In the 90's we got 2 X-Men books, then X-Force and finally Generation X. An obvious comparison is the Gen 13 book that came out earlier in the year. Gen X has a better cast of characters, each one is ethnically different, and an interesting power set of the team. The first few issues does a good job of introducing the team but the fantasy story let's down the tone, IMO, which is why it only gets a Qualified.
Still I have up to issue 30, and I am keen to keep reading. The interplay is good and the art matches the story. Again the fan service is strong in this one, with Emma Frost acting as the conduit.

The book itself runs to issue #75 and I have a hankering over tracking them down to see how the story arc runs.

Gen 13 - Volume 1 1994

Limited Series Issues 1 - 5

Image

J Scott Campbell - Pencils
Jim Lee and Brandon Choi - Writers
Alex Garner - Inks
Chris Eliopoulos - Letters

Apparently when the first issue of this book came out it had huge publicity. I missed this and only picked it up on the off chance it was any good. Most of the other Image titles had put me off after 2 or 3 issues. Gen 13 didn't. Somehow I grabbed each copy from my LCS, which at that time was in the town of Crawley in West Sussex, England, and only later found out they where sought after...

Issue one starts with an action shot of a family on the run. The mother is gunned down and the father manages to destroy some of their pursuers with his super powers before he two takes a round in the cranium. A pretty brutal start.
We switch to college, where a bookish girl makes her way clutching text books to her chest. Her more adventurous roomate, in our first fan service shot, is off dating a fresh new fella. After she leaves a knock at the door informs our hard studying girl that she's been accepted on a government program.
We switch to Lynch and Ivana, two people running the program. They give us some background. Two Gen actives are warming up by fighting and sitting on gym equipment. The male one murders his sparring partner for being lippy. These must be the villains. We have more fan service but for the girls as well as the boys.
Caitlin, our bookish girl, actually runs into 'Grunge' who is a fellow intern at the government program. She then also meets Bobby and Roxy.
Then we have a training montage. No one questions this. Grunge and Caitlin don't appear to be Gen active so their dosage of drugs is upped. This has an immediate affect on Caitlin. She throws up and has a headache. Or she was drunk. She stumbles on Grunge and Bobby having a sneaky cigarette and they are all accosted by a guard. Caitlins powers activate and she rips through her night dress. See the above shot for the next fan service shot.

Issue two and the team is on the run. It lists them as Fairchild (Caitlin), Roxy Spalding, 'Grunge' Chang, Sarah Rainmaker and Tom Hallinan. The last two are new, or I wasn't paying attention. Each apart from Grunge manifests and uses their powers - and then there is a flashback for those of us who didn't buy issue 1. Fairchild doesn't trust Tom, who is a bit of a murdering A-Hole. She turns out to be right and Tom is actually Threshold, one of the villains. He knocks out the rest of the team. Fairchild grabs a gun and vows to free them.

Issue 3 starts with Fairchild scouting the complex holding her friends. There is a mysterious box. We suspect it contains the large grey hulk thing from the front cover of the issue. Jack Lynch shows up. he is curious as to what is going on. Fairchild, with a gun and some pouches that have shown up from somewhere, is looking for payback. Her team is captured, stripped naked and tortured by Threshold. Once in to the building, using her fists and gun as a club, she rescues a small boy. The big grey thing is 'Pitt'. He escapes his box. He is dripping with chains. After a misunderstanding, both he and Fairchild are trying to rescue the boy, Pitt and Fairchild start pounding each other.
Threshold adds torture to the list of crimes he is prepared to do for fun. He threatens to kill Grunge as he has no powers. This doesn't work so he threatens Roxy. This makes Grunge mad, activate his powers, which are 'Absorbing Man' power set. Grunge breaks free, lays out Threshold and frees the team. Pitt and Fairchild finally realise they are on the same side.

Issue four starts with Ivana and Lynch arguing. Ivana breaks the deadlock by murdering Lynch's henchmen. A massive fight breaks out between the team, as they leap in to rescue Fairchild, and the 'ops' who were holding them. Pitt frees Timmy, the boy.
Lynch reveals that he was in Team 7 with Fairchild's father - in another flashback. Bliss and Threshold were the kids from the first issue who have been brainwashed to be murdering A-Holes.

Issue five starts with our team landing in a dumpster and Grunge taking a close look at Fairchild's butt. They escaped thanks to Lynch but then have to confront Threshold again. With his extensive training he pretty much owns them solo. Lynch confronts Ivana who turns out to be a robot or a cyborg or an android and attacks him. Lynch also has hidden powers which saves him.
Threshold is monologging. Bliss shows up and vamps all over Bobby. Her powers seem to work through snogging. Rainmaker takes her out with mini lightning blasts and threatens her to take out Threshold. Lynch appears with a team of Mecha suits after escaping a 'base detonation' by Ivana. Lynch just lets Bliss and Threshold escape and Gen 13 decide that this super hero lark is the one for them.

I loved this book when it came out. Despite the cookie cutter power sets and team set-up, Gen 13 had a certain pizzaz about their stories and again, the art matched very well. Of course the book is full of 'posters', fan service and some of the hero/villain actions have to be glossed over with a wide brush. The fact that the murdering a-holes get let off scott free only to return to their murderous ways is a prime example.
With all these elements I can only give it a Qualified recommend. If you don't mind these things it's an enjoyable read, certainly to 18/19 year old me. If these things bother you I would avoid.

In the back of one of the issues the artist, J Scott Campbell, answers some questions posed by a fanzine about 'How to make a successful comic book', where he answers the questions about the style and content rather glibly. Of course eventually Image titles took a nose dive after the overall shallow style of their books couldn't maintain fan interest. Gen 13 is similar to this, not really working hard on an overall reason for the team to be supers. Of course these days Image titles tend to be very different. Good to see they could change and adapt.

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.

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.

Freak Force

Issues 1 - 5 (1993)

Image

Writer - Erik Larsen, Keith Giffen

Pencils - Victor Bridges

I collected these around the time they came out and my collection started at issue 12. Recently I got given a stack of books and 1 - 11 were there. Complete run! Please don't start me on that path.

Freak Force are a team of heroes, based in Chicago and they consist of Dart (the leader), Rapture, Richochet, Barbaric, Mighty Man (labled as the most powerful man in the world), Superpatriot and Horridious. Already there is a bit of a gap as only two of the team appear as 'Freaks'. The rest of the team seem like normal humans.

The team is set up and established as something of a 'heroes for Hire'. They start by being paid to take down an Eco-terrorist called Major Disaster. Dart bemoans their lack of co-ordination and they start to look for a headquarters building.

The second issue has a cover of a man with the head of a shark. Dart is having trouble hiring help to run their outfit. The villains in this issue are 'The Coven' and they hire a team of goons (which includes a very close match to my own nemesis 'Doom Squid') to kill Superpatriot. Another stoush ensues which Freak Force wins quite easily.

Onto the third which is yet another fight, which the Freak Force easily wins again. The villain in this one is in the background, developing her set-up to take down the team. She is making replicas of Freak Force. Superpatriot and Mighty Man have a chat and Mighty Man has a secret he can't divulge. The villain creates her replicas and sets themto destruct downtown Chicago. She is using Mighty Man, Richochet and 2 Barbarics. There is mass destruction as a gas main bursts and the fake Richochet is blown up along with a lot of innocent civilians. The ladies of the team confront fake Mighty Man, who holds the real Richochet hostage.

The ladies fight the fakes, with help from another Image hero who was record shopping. They finally take the powerful bad guys down as they turn into protoplasmic jelly when they take too much damage. At the end of the issue the villain behind the plot turns up and takes the receptionist/Office job at Freak Force headquarters.

The fifth issue has the team explaining that they are not evil and the city was attacked by clones. There is a random attack in the office by a villain with matter control. Mighty Man finds 'his' car stolen, arrest the perp, but then drops the car.
Superpatriot is randomly attacked by another goon squad, this time the Fantastic Force. Again, easily defeating them. It was all a set-up for Absorbing Junior who touches Mighty Man and sucks out his power. He beats Superpatriot to a pulp before Mighty Man revelas his big secret - which is in the next issue.

These issues are nicely drawn and coloured. The stories are great for leading into each other, with threads starting and finishing. Keith Giffen had a long run I liked on Justice League. With lesser heroes with no history the going is a little tougher. Although it's called Freak Force, three of the ladies are human with two being typically tall, lithe beauties, even if one is Afro-American. They both wear very hugging costumes. The big reveal is that Mighty Man is a woman with the hero powers and this adds to the narrative. There was lots of potential on this one and although enjoyable it lacks that real killer punch.

Excalibur

Issues 100 - 110 - 1996

Marvel

Writer - Warren Ellis (100, 101, 102, 103) John Acadi + James Fielde (104), Keith Giffen (105) Ben Raab (106, 107, 108, 109, 110)
Pencils - Casey Jones, Randy Green, Rob Haynes (101) Casey Jones (102), Carlos Pachiero (103) Brian Hitch, Rob Haynes, Scott Kobbish (104), Brian Hitch (105), Andy Green, Casey Jones, Rob Haynes, Aaron Lopatis (106), Salvador Larroca (107, 108, 109, 110)

For this run the team is: Captain Britain, Meggan (his girlfriend), Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Wolfsbane, Colossus, Douglocke and Pete Wisdom.
(The first four were in the origional line-up)

And straight away you can see that these issues are a book in a state of flux.

Excalibur was created by Chris Claremont and Alan Davies and focused on a mixed team of Mutants with Captain Britain (who's sister was an X-Man) who were based in the UK.

Issue 100 starts with the team defending London from the Red Queen, who is part of the British version of the Hellfire Club. She is using the skull of team member Douglocke to open a hellish portal of demons in the centre of London (Not sure if anyone would notice that?). The team has to work together to keep it trapped while the X-Men themselves appear to take Professor Xaviers secret plans to help them defeat Onslaught (Which is the multiple issue story that's running in other books).

Excalibur return from London - Onslaught has appeared and they want to fly across to America to help but they can't because *reasons*. They watch the carnage on TV and say that they will be needed elsewhere.

Pete Wisdom, the laconic Englishman in the team, has a fry-up and a pint for breakfast. He also smokes constantly. The stereotype is strong in this one. Kitty Pryde looks on and we find out that these two are in a relationship. Maybe she likes the fried egg stains on his white shirt? Excalibur is shipping off super villains in large cages by chinook helicopter. Pryde and Wisdom have their breakfast disturbed by bullies. We end with everyone happy the X-Men survived Onslaught. Only the Avengers died. *phew!*

We open with some classic Excalibur shenanigans with a Universe seemingly full of Colossus's, Nightcrawlers's and Shadowcats. But of course it was only a dream.

Douglocke (who is a techno-organic creature made from Warlocke and Doug Ramsey aka; Cypher) is having nightmares. Pete Wisdom doesn't like him, either because Kitty had a thing with the now dead Doug or maybe he doesn't like bacon? Pete winds Douglocke up so much he chucks himself out of the window. The team discusses what to do. While the rest of the team is attacked by the Mutant liberation Front, Shadowcat checks out Doug Ramsey's grave.

Kitty finds Doug's corpse in his grave and Douglocke insists he is not Doug Ramsey. The MLF are trying to steal the Xavier Protocols (Which give his views on how to kill all of the X-Men). Kitty takes Wolfsbane and Douglocke out for pizza. Moira traps the MLF with a force field and Kitty comes to terms with Doug dying - A number of years after it happened.

Peter (Colossus) is painting and reflecting on life and in a running gag, there are more comments about Nightcrawler's brimstone 'whiff'. There is a message from the Acolytes, a team of villanous mutants who used to be aligned with Magneto, and the team travels to Australia to see them.

Meggan and Captain Britain travel the roads of London in a flying/transforming Ferrari - I don't know why it's not an Aston Martin? The rest of the team is on Muir Island re-building a Cerebro machine. Recent history tells me this will end in pain. Captain Britain broods for a while before proposing to Meggan. before she can answer she is launched through the jewelery shop window. The 'magical cyborg samurai mutant' Spiral appears. Cap is attacked by The Dragons of the Crimson Dawn.

Nightcrawler and Colossus are fencing. The Dragons fight Captain Britain. Kitty tries to woo Pete Wisdom. Wolfsbane and Shadowcat do some bonding at the hair salon. Spiral magics Captain Britain away and tricks Meggan (who was laid out for almost the whole issue) to Muir Island to get the rest of the team.

Nightcrawler is working on Cerebro. Of course, it blows up. (I thought you had to be a telepath to use it?)
Spiral appears and has a swordfight with Nightcrawler. Spiral bests him and is then taken out by Kitty. Meanwhile the Dragons have Captain Britain and are using his magical powers to open a portal of the Crimson Dawn (or something). Spiral convinces Excalibur to rescue.

A wandering monk appears as Spiral ports the team to Hong Kong. Although Cap's powers are linked to the UK, maybe they will work on bits of land that used to 'belong' to the old Empire? There is a heap of exposition from the monk. There is the big stoush, Spiral turns evil. Captain Britain closes the portal but at the cost of his powers.

These issues touch on many of the established Excalibur stuff, the team having issues, the team working out their issues, kooky end of the spectrum villains and tenuous 'British' links. The book always worked best with Claremont and Davies and I suspect is was because both are/were British. The first run of books has the team idly reflecting on Onslaught. Of course they were formed because everyone in the origional team, bar Meggan, lost someone in The Fall of the Mutants storyline. Pete Wisdom shows some promise but is reverted to British stereotypes and generic villany loses it's way. As I said at the start, a book in flux. A Qualified recommendation if you are an Excalibur fan (there is some classic Excalibur bits) - but skip and find the early Claremont/Davis  run if you want the best of this team.

Wild C.A.T.S

Issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 + Sourcebook

Image

Written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi. Art by Jim Lee. Inks by Scott Williams. Lettering by Mike Heisler.

Published in 1992.

I got this book as a gift from my friend Peter, who is a writer and also the GM of the Super Hero RPG I play. Maybe more on that later. Anyway, Peter was moving into a new apartment and needed space so he offloaded 'most' of his comic books onto me. TBH I don't know if he has any left.

Before the review a little bit of comic book history. In the late 80's a plethora of hot artists and creators came through the ranks and each one worked on one of the big two's titles. The 'worked for hire' and any characters or storyline ideas they came up with were owned by the company.

"In December 1991, a group of these illustrators approached Marvel president Terry Stewart and demanded that the company give them ownership and creative control over their work. Accounts vary as to whom this group included, but it is generally accepted that Todd McFarlane and Liefeld were among its leaders. Marvel did not meet their demands.

In response, eight creators announced the founding of Image Comics: illustrators Todd McFarlane (known for his work on Spider-Man), Jim Lee (X-Men), Rob Liefeld (X-Force), Marc Silvestri (Wolverine), Erik Larsen (The Amazing Spider-Man), Jim Valentino (Guardians of the Galaxy), Whilce Portacio (Uncanny X-Men) and longtime Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont. This development was nicknamed the "X-odus", because several of the creators involved (Claremont, Liefeld, Lee, Silvestri and Portacio) were famous for their work on the X-Men franchise." - Snipped from Wikipedia.

Wild Cats (I can't be arsed typing out C.A.T.S every time) was one of Jim Lee's contributions, and was based around the war between the Kherubim and the Deamonites here on earth. The Wild Cats are a team of meta humans, sponsored by a billionaire, who are mixed Kherubim and humans (Half breeds) and are trying to protect Earth from a Deamonite invasion.

The book started out as a 4 issue limited run. It was probably huge sales that prompted it to be pushed into an ongoing series. Jim Lee had just come off a successful run on Uncanny X-Men where he illustrated some of Chris Claremont's stories and if memory serves me right, won an Eagle Award.

The story starts with the Wild Cats gang rescuing another meta from a strip club, where she is 'the best dancer', mainly due to her abilities to woo punters with her meta powers. Because we are launched right into the story the exposition is blasted across the page and we are then launched into a battle between our Wild Cats and the Deamonites, who are led by the flame headed Helspont. In what was to be a running theme in Image comics, a second team of meta-powered people show up. This turns out to be Youngblood, which was Rob Liefields first product for Image. The action now comes thick and fast into the story, with a second set of bad guys added and plots swinging across the screen at a rapid pace. The Wild Cats are laid low, but one of the team manages to crawl along in the background and shut down Helspont and the giant orb he was using to summon nasty Deamonites to Earth. Spartan, the saviour, dies but we don't have to panic as he is a robot and his conciousness is simply loaded into a fresh body and we launch into issue 5, which is the first of the now ongoing series.
This issue starts with two massive fold out pages where The Grifter and Zealot are busting into a place and murdering goons while exchanging banter. Grifter's weapon of choice is souped up pistols and Zealot uses a katana and lethal parts of her costume. The whole team arrives and spends a long time fighting a feisty red head called Misery. Warblade really doesn't like her and he launches into the auto self destructing space craft to battle to the death with Misery as the rest of the Wild Cats flee, leaving him to be the second team member to die in the first five issues.

The 'Sourcebook' for Wild Cats basically fills, or tries to fill, lots of blanks that were missing in the first five issues. We have images of the gang, Spartan, the robot with bio energy powers, The Grifter; who loves guns, Zealot; who is NOT Psylocke at all, Maul; the muscle, Warblade; who is NOT Wolverine, Voodoo; the exotic dancer mentalist, Void; a teleporter, and Lord Emp; the rich backer he may have powers. We also have the rogues and I am guessing their nefarious schemes laid out as well. The images are nice but the text is hidden by the background and hard to read. I love source books but this one is a bit ...meh.

Overall the books are very well drawn for the style they are going for and the books are very much schlocky meta-human fun. The Image Creators rode the crest of a comic book wave, which was a combination of speculation and a particular genre, and rode it for all it was worth. Wild Cats is one of these wave riding books. The Image Creators left Marvel to have creative control then they basically replicated extra teams of X-Men, with solid rip off of stuff Marvel had done for years. The first Wild Cats books are all style, beautifully drawn ladies, guns and wall to wall meta powered peoples going at it and yelling at each other. When a second team shows up, the formula is laid bare.

The Image creators left to do their own thing but seemed to have stolen the blueprints from Marvel.

I recommend these books with the qualification that you like Jim Lee's art or you love very simple action books. There was also many hundreds of thousands of copies purchased by speculators so they are still relatively cheap and easy to obtain.

Dracula Lives

Marvel

No's 15 + 23, 1975

I purchased these books in a bulk buy from a colleague when I used to work for British Airways. I bought a holdall full for fifty pounds. One book inside was worth the money on it's own and I managed to convince myself I had made masses of money. Of course I've never sold a single book so in reality I'm still fifty quid down.

These comics where Marvel's idea to sell into the British market. They took titles from the states in their 'American' format and converted them. This meant larger sizes and removing all the colour. I'm not sure as to the exact reasons why this occured. By 1978 I could buy Marvel and DC books in the newsagent in their original format. They did this with titles like Dracula, Star Wars and Planet of the Apes as well as making X-Men and Avengers stories into UK 'magazine' format.

Dracula Lives was Marvel buying into the 'Hammer Horror' market and making watered down passes at this type of content (much milder than the 1950's EC brand of horror).

Each book gives us three or four stories, from Dracula, the Werewolf and Frankenstein. All three are footnotes in the Marvel Universe canon.

No.15 has the Vampire written by Marv Wolfman and art by Gene Conlan and Ernie Chia. Dracula is poisoned by the 'Van Helsing' crew (descendents of the Origional trackers of the fanged villain). He escapes with the help of a Doctor he has munched and converted.
Werewolf by night is written by Gerry Conway with art by Mike Ploog. The Werewolf (who's real name is Jack Russel) is up against flesh melting fog and has to fight a bull headed steel golem called Dragonius.
Frankenstein is written by Gary Friedrich and the art is by John Buscema. In this story Frank accidentally frees Dracula.
The last story is a small horror short written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko. A burglar using shrinking pills gets trapped in a rats nest.

No. 25
Dracula story written by Marv Wolfman, art by Gene Conlan. Dracula is out for revenge against a motorcycle gang. In this end he hypnotises them into driving off the white clifs of Dover on their bikes.
Werewolf is written by Len Wein and art is by Mike Ploog and Jim Mooney. The Werewolf has been caught by a circus and is forced to fight lions. The whole thing is a front for a hunt for the Bloodstone. Which makes me wonder if it is 'The' Bloodstone or if theres more than 1?
Frankenstein is written by Doug Moench, art is by Val Magrich. A tanker find Frank encased in a block of ice. They thaw him out and try to use him as an act in the circus. Frank escapes to walk the streets, sort of like a homeless Captain America.

These books are fascinating looks into how the medium has changed over time. Mass churned stories which are simple tales probably aimed at boys aged between about 10 and 19. The art has lost something in the black to white conversion. I give them a Qualified recommend if you are a fan of the history of comics but suggest you look up the origonal colour American issues.

 

 

Extermination

Boom Studios. Written by Simon Spurrier and art by Jeffrey Edwards. Limited Issues 1 - 8.

These comics were a gift from my good pal Allan, aka: The TARDIS Guy. He announces 'I am getting rid of books because I either have them in Trades or I don't want them, so naturally I said 'Yo, I'll take them'.

The first batch I read was from a Studio I hadn't read and a story I didn't know. The two main characters were Nox, a 'Batmanesque' crime fighter, and Red Reaper, his villanous counterpart. Because they are trapped in a blasted dystopia, they must team up to survive giant crabby blob creatures. The story progresses as we reveal more and more. The whole planet was smashed and the roving crab-blobs are feasting on the flesh of the last remaining humans. Backgrounds are introduced in flashbacks as we learn more and more about Nox. The Red Reaper plods along laying the seeds for his arc in the 'current' time.

SPOILERS: The whole premise in this universe was set up during a fight between Nox and Absolute, a very Supermanesque character. The fight is over a woman, a very Catwomanesque villain (You can see a theme?). Nox placed Absolute in a machine that opened up the apocalypse. Nox secretly is powered, something he does not reveal until the last few issues. Of course The Red Reaper has been playing, and murdering, everyone and destroys both vowing to rule the world and re-build it.

Verdict: The art is good but the backgrounds are mainly blasted deserts. The 'villains' are just dressing that hover around and the real bad guys are your protagonists. I enjoyed this book but it certainly didn't have a wow factor or a dynamic that really hooked me. A qualified recommendation.

As a side note, from a collecting point of view, a lot of these books had 8 'Variant' covers (Which Allan failed to buy... I wonder why?), so to collect the 'set' you would have to buy 64 issues. I will touch on this aspect of collecting (I hope).