Essential Thor volume 7

Essential Thor volume 7 contains issues #248 to #271 (issue #254 was a reprint represented here by the cover and a copy of the apology caption) plus Annuals #5 and #6. Bonus material includes an unused cover for issue #264. The writing is nearly all by Len Wein, including one annual, with one issue co-plotted and scripted by Roger Stern, a couple of back-up tales written by David Anthony Kraft and the other annual written by Steve Englehart. The art is mainly by John Buscema, Tony Dezuniga and Walter Simonson with the back-ups by Pablo Marcos whilst one annual is by John Buscema and the other by Sal Buscema.

The first annual in this volume is quite a curiosity, sitting outside the present day narrative and maybe outside of continuity altogether. It starts with a prologue that narrates the creation story from Norse mythology, showing how the worlds came about and Odin's rise to power. Then it embarks upon an alternate telling of the first encounter between Thor and Hercules, with Loki manipulating the situation to provoke conflict between Asgard and Olympus but Odin and Zeus have their own plans. It's also shown how each set of gods is reliant upon worship and the Asgardian attempt to capture the Ancient Greeks' loyalties completely flounders. The implication, though not explicitly stated, is that each set of gods were created by the worship of their followers, bringing the mythology to life, hence the contradictions created by their simultaneous existence. The story is also one of the first to rewrite modern Marvel history by showing a very different first encounter with Hercules from the original annual, but hand waves this away by pointing to the confusion and uncertainties of mythology that throw up stories that directly contradict one another. This tale was originally written for a black and white magazine series that never happened and then got modified into colour for the annual so it's nice to see it as close to the original intention as is now possible. The art is some of the best in the whole volume, showing John Buscema at his most mythic.

The other annual is, in itself, more mundane fare but would go on to have a big influence outside the title. It sees Thor transported to the future where he winds up in a team-up the Guardians of the Galaxy to battle Korvac, previously seen in the pages of the Defenders but who would go on to be a significant player in the Guardians' own timeline. This annual seems a rather tame beginning but it would subsequently form the basis for one of the most memorable of Avengers storylines. Otherwise it's a typical example of the annuals of the mid Bronze Age and its placing here between issues #266 and #267 is a little surprising as it pre-empts Thor's return to Earth. The two-part back-up "Tales of Asgard" is also tame, telling of how a young Thor learnt there is more to battle than weapons and that he must always use his brains first.

But the main interest comes in the regular issues as this volume contains an eighteen part epic saga (with the reprint falling one third of the way through) that focuses upon Odin's displacement from the throne of Asgard and his eventual return. Apart from some brief comedy at the outset, most notably the scene where Thor sorts out a traffic jam by physically lifting each car out and carrying it to the correct lane, this saga is set completely off Earth. Instead it combines Asgard, the various other realms such as Valhalla or Nornhein and a quest into deep space. The length may seem off-putting but it's never billed as a single piece and instead sees a series of adventures starting with the problems in Asgard due to Odin seemingly going corrupt and mad under the influence of new advisor Igron, then follows a search for the real Odin whilst Balder seeks to uphold the realm against an attack, concluding in a showdown back in Asgard.

It's a storyline with ambition but also at times it seems a little too willing to use almost every single aspect of the Thor stories that isn't connected to Earth, and even one or two that are. So for much of the epic Thor is allied with Sif and the Warriors Three with additional help from variously Balder, Karnilla, the Grand Vizier, Hildegarde and the Recorder. Many of the longstanding villains return, including Mangog, Hela, Ulik, the Grey Gargoyle, Amora the Enchantress, Skurge the Executioner, Loki and the Destroyer armour. There's even a return of the Stone Men from Saturn whom Thor battled in his very first appearance. The quest itself brings another piece of mythic conceit as Thor, Sif and the Warriors Three embark aboard the Starjammer (the name just predates the group from X-Men), a space ship that looks like, and is piloted as though it were, a Viking sailing ship. Towards the end of the quest it's fitted out with weaponry, but it still makes for a striking visual that reinforces that the Asgardian civilisation is built on magic, not science. And there's a strong menace, with even Ragnarok being threatened when Mangog arranges to have the Odinsword in its scabbard placed beneath the stolen throne so that he can kick the sword out and trigger the great destruction in the event of being overwhelmed.

But as well as all the returns there are lots of new ideas, with Mangog's restored power depending upon the worship of the Asgardians due to his disguise as Odin, and his downfall comes when he acts in anger to destroy their trust. Hela allows Thor to walk free of her realm as she reasons death would be preferable to what is to come to him. In space the quintet come across a derelict spaceship where the weaker passengers are being picked off by a monstrous tentacled beast called Sporr - but not for the reason everyone assumes. The Grey Gargoyle turns up as the captain of a ship of anthropomorphic animal space pirates. There's a dying alien race who seek to use the Asgardians' life-forces and magics to revive their fortunes, worshipping Thor and the others even whilst sending them to their deaths.

Less original moments come when the epic mines either the well-worn clichés of fables or the more predictable elements of the series itself. At one stage Thor petitions the spirit Mimir for the real Odin's location and is sent on a quest for a jewel; in the process Thor is forced to sacrifice the jewel to save the Trolls from the beast called Trogg having pledged to save them another way in order to prevent fighting over the jewel. Astonishingly Mimir gives him the information anyway, as the real quest was not for the jewel but to show Thor was worthy. This secret test of character has been done too many times in mythology to not be predictable. And there's the revelation that the mastermind behind the Enchantress and Executioner's attack on Asgard is none other than Loki, who once again secures the throne. Loki has frankly been done to death in the series and it would have been a greater surprise had he not appeared in this saga. Instead it makes the last few issues quite a comedown. There's an attempt to enhance his villainy with a moment when he sends the Enchantress and Executioner to their apparent deaths, but otherwise it's business as usual.

One of the more unfortunate effects of such a lengthy saga is the disappearance of Jane Foster as a character with barely a word. She insists on coming to Asgard with Thor and the others, pointing to Sif's spirit within her giving her strength, but once there she picks up Sif's sword and finds that when she slams it against the wall she is replaced by the goddess herself. Although the relationship between Donald Blake and Thor was messy for years and subject to retcons, there was a time when it seemed that the two were different personalities with separate histories who alternated, but this was never fully explored before it was established Thor had been Blake all along. Now for the first time we get the potential alternation of two distinct characters who cannot be so easily retconned into the same person, with the added complication that they are rivals for Thor's affections. There is a huge amount of potential in this... so it's a pity that Jane is forgotten for the rest of the volume and Sif treated as the sole entity occupying the body. When Thor opts to return to Earth Sif stays behind with no mention of Jane; nor is her absence addressed on Earth as Donald Blake seeks to re-establish himself there. It's as though she's been forgotten by all including the writer; a very arbitrary solution to the long running question of which of the two women is the right one for Donald/Thor, seemingly destroying a character in the process and ignoring all the potential story possibilities that could stem from the different aims and objectives of Jane and Sif.

But in spite of the individual problems, overall this storyline is fairly strong. Because of the twists and turns it's entirely possible to come in midway without missing important details for later, and so back in the 1970s this must have been more of a treat than an infuriation with the length, but it's all the better for having been collected in a single volume rather than being broken across more than one collection as indeed some releases do.

The last few issues see Thor return to Earth on his own, Odin having given the Warriors Three another mission that keeps them away whilst Sif also remains in Asgard. On Earth Thor finds he's been away for over a year (which will give the chronology mappers a headache), the building his surgery was in has been torn down and his regular patients scattered. Thus there's a clean slate for Donald Blake's life on Earth, though within these issues the only step taken is the suggestion of volunteering at a free clinic. Otherwise Thor battles a variety of foes he's not faced before, including the techno criminal Damocles, Stilt-Man, Blastaar and the computer F.A.U.S.T. The Damocles story is well constructed in the way it focuses upon the criminal and his brother Eric in conflict without being explicit in comparisons with Loki and Thor, and the climax where Eric finds himself with no option but to shoot his brother is very moving. Otherwise the adventures form a mini-epic as Stilt-Man is manipulated by Blastaar who in turn is manipulated by F.A.U.S.T. Stilt-Man has a new set of armour with a number of upgrades that make at least a semi-credible foe but Thor's power level means intervention by Blastaar is necessary. The chain of manipulation and betrayal eventually culminates in F.A.U.S.T. building itself a spaceship to attack humanity from orbit. But the conclusion feels rushed and undermining the title character as he turns to the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. for help. It would have made a much better ending to the story and the whole volume if Thor had tackled and defeated the menace on his own.

Although there are some individual letdowns in the volume, overall it's very strong and shows a very good use of many of the series's elements yet doesn't deploy every single one of them. The grand epic is the high point of not just this volume but this period of Thor as a whole and having it all in one place makes for a very strong volume.

Essential Marvel Two-in-One volume 4

Essential Marvel Two-in-One volume 4 contains issues #78 to #98 & #100 and annuals #6 & #7. (Issue #99 is a team-up with the licensed character Rom and thus unavailable here.) The writing is mainly by Tom DeFalco with some by David Michelinie, David Anthony Kraft and Jan Strnad with the final issue by John Byrne. One annual is by Doug Moench, the other by DeFalco. Most of the art is by Ron Wilson bar a few issues by Alan Kupperberg.

As this is a team-up title, here's the usual list of the titled guest stars in each issue:

78. Wonder Man
Annual 6. American Eagle
79. Blue Diamond
80. Ghost Rider
81. Sub-Mariner
82. Captain America
83. Sasquatch
84. Alpha Flight
85. Spider-Woman
86. Sandman plus a back-up with the Impossible Man
87. Ant-Man
88. She-Hulk
89. The Human Torch
90. Spider-Man
91. [None billed but this issue supplies the volume's cover so have a guess]
92. Jocasta
93. Machine Man
94. Power Man and Iron Fist
95. The Living Mummy
Annual 7. [None billed]
96. [None billed]
97. Iron Man
98. [None billed]
100. Ben Grimm

Note the increasing number of issues not promoting a second star towards the end of the series; a sign of where things would eventually go. These stars are once again taken mostly from the more obscure side of the Marvel universe but with some exceptions and some attempts to build up their profiles.

This period of the title sees an initial drift back to the book's roots as a team-up title first and a Thing series second. There are a few times when the book gets used to either wrap up left-over matters from another series or else make significant changes to one of the guest stars. An example of the former comes in issues #92 & #93 which serve as a two-part tale that seems to be more about giving Machine Man one great final adventure following the cancellation of his own title (whose last issues were written by DeFalco) than about advancing the events in the Thing's life. It brings Machine Man into conflict with Ultron and introduces him to Jocasta for the first time, forming the basis on which DeFalco would later build the brilliant Machine Man limited series set in 2020 and often reprinted (including twice in the UK in the back-up pages in Transformers). In all this the Thing feels a bit like a spare part, at times relegated to a hypnotised state as a mindless minion of Ultron whilst the focus is upon Machine Man and some of his supporting cast such as mechanic "Gears" Garvin and psychologist Peter Spaulding, or upon Jocasta as she seeks to find a purpose in the world and make friends, both human and mechanical. It's a good tale but it's also one of the last examples of how team-up books could often get conscripted into sorting out things when a regular series bit the dust.

A rather odder development comes with the appearance of Spider-Woman in the final part of the volume's only real epic. A succession of issues see the Thing and Namor the Sub-Mariner then Captain America and Giant-Man (Bill Foster) battling Modok and Aim, with the Thing being infected by an experimental virus but a cure being obtained. Meanwhile Giant-Man is slowly dying of radiation poisoning but declines his one chance of a cure in favour of saving Ben's life. Ben in turn goes searching for the one expert on radiation who may be able to cure Bill - Walter Langkowski aka Sasquatch of Alpha Flight. The search leads to the Canadian wilderness and a battle with the spirit Ranark in which the rest of Alpha Flight get drawn in as the battle rages across much of Canada. But it's too late for Langkowski's treatment to have an effect and so Bill heads for Los Angeles to tie up his affairs with the Thing in tow, where they join with Spider-Woman in battling a new Atom Smasher who replaced the foe who gave Bill the poisoning in the first place. Salvation ultimately comes for Bill but at the cost of Spider-Woman's special immune system that makes her invulnerable to poisons, drugs and gases. It's a nice moment to see one hero sacrifice part of their powers to help another but it's very odd to remove a key power of a hero with their own title in what is, from their series's perspective, a throwaway guest appearance. Spider-Woman's series was still going at this time, having reached issue #42, and that should have been the place for this to take place in. But instead the issue has been treated as such a throwaway that it's not even included in Essential Spider-Woman volume 2. A development that does make more sense here is that of the Blue Diamond, as the Second World War hero, who has been little seen in the present day, gets a radical makeover at the hands of Shanga the Star-Dancer, and the two head off together.

Both the annuals see new characters introduced but one tale has more of an impact than the other. The first annual included here sees the debut of the American Eagle, a rather minor and somewhat stereotyped hero in an adventure that also sees Ka-Zar and Wyatt Wingfoot caught up in a battle with Klaw. The last annual is more spectacular, with no specific guest star billed but instead the Thing is one of many strong heroes kidnapped for an intergalactic boxing match with the Champion of the Universe, an Elder devoted to physical fights. Doc Samson and Namor the Sub-Mariner both drop out in training whilst Thor is disqualified and the Hulk is dismissed when he reverts to his mindless savage form. Then in succession Sasquatch, Colossus and Wonder Man fail leaving it down to the Thing to try to achieve what no other being has ever done - last more than two rounds in the ring with Champion. It's a tough battle with just about all the Marvel heroes watching. It leads to a fun follow-up in the regular series as Ben lies injured in hospital with a horror of a nurse who blocks most visitors whilst outside many old foes decide to take advantage of the situation and attack a vulnerable Thing yet the other heroes stand in their way and eventually both sides resort to uniting their forces. This may be one of the earliest times all the Marvel heroes got together to battle a veritable legion of villains and yet little is made of it as it's mostly played for laughs. But whilst the battle is raging there's a strong serious and moving moment inside the hospital as one old foe finds his way to Ben's room.

Between issues #86 & #96 the Sandman is taken forward light years. Having only just escaped from his last mess when he accidentally merged with Hydro-Man into a giant mud monster, the Sandman is now reassessing his life, starting with a drink in a bar where he declines to fight when the Thing turns up. Instead they just sit and talk, realising how they have much in common, and we learn a lot about the Sandman's life before the explosion that gave him his powers. It's a very sympathetic look at a villain who is given a second chance and his freedom by the Thing and doesn't disappoint - when he shows up at the hospital it's to deliver cigars and beer. The nurse might not approve but these issues have done much to make the Sandman a more sympathetic and human character and show there is a chance of redemption. The character has had quite a mixed handling over the years but it's here that he stepped up and it also reflects well on Ben in his handling of the situation.

There aren't too many other recurring villains or themes throughout the volume with most issues being a done-in-one conventional team-up. A few exceptions pop up, starting with a team-up with Wonder Man on the set of a rather dire television series called "Monster Man!", based on the Thing's exploits but sufficiently changed for legal reasons. The show is being manipulated by Xemnu the Titan, with the producer Ted Silverberg left searching for new material to rip off. He shows up again when he seeks revenge on the Thing with a dire monster movie but things get out of hand when the dinosaur special effects prove more realistic than anyone realised, forcing the Thing and Iron Man to clean up with Tony Stark using his business interests to mop up the aftermath. Otherwise it's a run of one-off tales including a confrontation with the Ghost Rider who has now become a separate personality from Johnny Blaze and is getting out of control. Easier to control is the Impossible Man who has now reproduce, forcing Ben to find ways to keep the whole Impossible Family entertained whilst he finds a new home planet for them.

There's a visit to a world in a micro universe where Ben has been taken to champion the ruler Pearla against Zorak of the Lizard People and only Ant-Man, now a role fulfilled by Scott Lang can save him. Back at normal size Ben gets hired to protect Los Angeles from a terrorist called Negator - and also fend off the advances and demands of the She-Hulk in her most flirtatious mood yet. David Anthony Kraft enjoys revisiting another aspect of She-Hulk's first series when he pits the Thing and the Torch against the cultist the Word and his daughter Ultima. There's also a battle with Sardeth the Sorcerer at a mediaeval recreation fair, with Spider-Man showing up to help and irritate the Thing. Elsewhere Ben gets caught up in some chaos as a rich eccentric inventor goes on the run with the Thing trying to help him but Power Man and Iron Fist have been hired to recover him for a company. Ben also finds himself visiting Egypt twice, including an encounter with the Living Mummy in which they battle the ancient High Priest Nephrus - who has transformed Alicia into his bride.

The last couple of issues in the volume veer away from the traditional approach of the series, with an issue that's more of a solo story in which Ben and Franklin Richards meet a video game inventor and get transported to a dimension where the elements of the video game come to life. The Tron influence is all too clear but fortunately the art doesn't try to accurately depict the world - there's nothing that dates faster than computing. The final issue sees Ben return to what he thought was an divergent timeline created by his attempts to cure himself of being the Thing at an earlier stage in his life but finds instead it's a pre-existing alternate timeline which has collapsed into a dystopia ruled by the Red Skull and it's down to Ben and his counter-part to save the day.

The final story addresses a minor subplot about whether or not Ben is better off being the Thing or not, with an earlier issue seeing Reed Richards privately speculate that the reason successive cures have always been unsuccessful is because Ben is secretly scared Alicia prefers him as the Thing and would reject him in human form. The visit to the alternate world has an effect and the last page show Ben deciding overall if he could pick between human and Thing form he'd pick the Thing. His relationship with Alicia remains much the same throughout the volume, with a brief period where she moves into the Baxter Building to be safer - only to find that with all the madness in there it's anything but safe.

This volume concludes the whole series as it was replaced after this by a solo Thing title, suggesting it was felt the team-up format had had its day. As this was the first of Marvel and DC's four main team-up titles to end it's arguable that it was killed too soon but it's certainly the case that much of this volume is more conventional team-up than the adventures of the Thing and an ever changing set of guest stars, insofar as the distinction was made. This volume maintains the general fun of two heroes working together that team-up titles always bring but it's not as strong or as coherent as some earlier periods. Still overall it offers lots of good individual adventures and makes for a strong collection.

Essential Captain America volume 6

Essential Captain America volume 6 consists of Captain America and the Falcon #206 to #230 ("and the Falcon" is dropped from #223 onwards) plus Annual #4 and the crossover issue Incredible Hulk #232. The early part of the volume, including the annual, is written and drawn by Jack Kirby. The rest of the run sees a lot of creators including writers Roy Thomas, Don Glut, Steve Gerber, David Anthony Kraft, Peter Gillis, Roger McKenzie and Roger Stern plus a couple of back-ups by Scott Edelman. The most persistent artist after Kirby is Sal Buscema; others include George Tuska, Dave Cockrum, John Buscema and Mike Zeck plus Bob Budiansky and Steve Leialoha on the back-ups. One issue also contains a framed reprint of a Human Torch story from Strange Tales #113 drawn by Jack Kirby and scripted by Stan Lee. The Incredible Hulk issue is plotted by Roger Stern, scripted by David Michelinie and drawn by Sal Buscema. And with so many creators, invariably there's a separate labels post.

The early part of this volume contains the tail end of Jack Kirby's 1970s return to the title. And whilst the art remains as powerful as ever, the writing still doesn't feel terribly spectacular with the only long term addition of note being the geneticist Arnim Zola. Truly an artist's creation he has replaced his original body with a new one that has the brain in the more protected chest, with a camera in place of a head and a video screen to display a face on his chest. Zola has created all manner of creatures that he deploys, of which the most notable is Doughboy, an organism that can adjust its entire body to form itself into the equipment Zola needs to hand. Zola is certainly a bold creation but some of his impact is limited by the revelation that he's working for the Red Skull and undertaking a project to give Hitler's brain a new body. Hitler surviving by some strange scientific means was a common trope in 1960s and 1970s science fiction but today it feels cliched. It's also a sign of Kirby's habit of ignoring Marvel continuity where it suited him and it would eventually fall to the final issues of Super-Villain Team-Up to tidy the various Marvel accounts of the last days of Hitler.

Issue #207 contains a scene that has caused quite some debate, especially due to the panel on the right. As Steve changes costume in the Latin America jungle, he thinks about his experiences and the sadistic prison commandant:

Whoever runs that banana jail seems to get his kicks out of kicking the inmates! This man they call "The Swine" must be typical of the kind of bully that flourishes in these two-bit dictatorships. But this is not my country and not my place to fight for causes I know nothing about. My immediate problem is to beat this jungle -- find my way to a fair-sized town and... home!

This triggered off some debate in the blogosphere a few years ago - see Scott Edelman: Shame on you, Captain America!, Kirby Dynamics: "Shame on you, Captain America?" Part 1 and Kirby Dynamics: "Shame on You Captain America" Part 2 for the main posts on this (although be warned they drift into the different matter of 1970s Marvel staffers' attitudes about and actions to Kirby). On its own though this feels like a very clumsy attempt both to move beyond the simplistic morality of Golden Age and early Silver Age comics and also to reflect the changed outlook on US foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era. The idea that every situation has clear-cut goodies and baddies and that heroes should jump aboard every rebellion going was now being challenged, not just in the comics themselves but also in the wider world as once heroes of liberation and independence had become authoritarian dictators. The problem is the dialogue isn't terribly nuanced and the situation up to now hasn't really been presented as such. Instead the Swine has been portrayed as a latter day Nazi, right down to the uniform (but not insignia) and even drawn to resemble Himmler whilst dealing out sadistic torture. Nor is Captain America acknowledging the complexities of the situation. Instead he's just turning his back on the matter and looking to flee the land. This is not a man weighing up the difficulties of what is worse out of the current situation or the potential chaos that can be unleashed by simply overthrowing a regime without a clear successor infrastructure. Nor is he declining to back an ambiguous group of unknown rebels because they may contain even worse elements. Rather this comes across as a "None of my business" dismissal even if such cack-handedness was never the intention. And indeed the story doesn't see Cap take on the dictator but instead the Swine is killed by one of Zola's creatures, with Zola himself taking Cap back to a castle in Switzerland for the rest of the story.

There's some improvement on Kirby's earlier issues in regards the treatment of women with both Leila (who has had a massive quick recovery from her brainwashing at the end of the previous volume) and Sharon showing greater boldness and intelligence. In particular Sharon holds her own with the Red Skull. However it's also clear that Kirby had little time for the Falcon, keeping him largely out of the picture during most issues. The final two see a temporarily blinded Cap in hospital where the shady Corporation sends the Night Flyer to assassinate a patient known as "the Defector". The Falcon has a run-in with the Night Flyer but it's Cap who ultimately triumphs despite his temporary blindness. The final piece of 1970s Kirby work in the volume is the annual which sees Cap battling Magneto for the fate of a strange mutant with two separate bodies. It feels rather run of the mill with Magneto a rather generic cackling villain who wants the smaller body to investigate a tiny spaceship. All in all the Kirby run on the title has been so-so and not the return to the greatest ever days of Cap that it was hyped as.

Kirby's departure leaves a hole in the series and its not really filled for the remaining sixteen issues in this volume. Instead we get all the hallmarks of a series in creative chaos as no less than seven writers (not including the reprint or the Incredible Hulk issue) struggle with key storylines without really knowing where they're going or how long they'll last for. (The art is, however, more stable from issue #218 onwards with Sal Buscema providing at least breakdowns on all but one issue.) There are fill-ins, although efforts are made to actually include them in the ongoing narrative, and two other staples of a series in a rush - a retelling of the origin and a reprint.

These both come at the start of a run in which Captain America is slowly exploring his past to find out just who he is and who Steve Rogers is, The reasons behind this level of introspection are never made totally clear; nor is it explained just why Cap appears to have amnesia about his life before he received the Super Soldier Serum. But the result is an exploration that doubles as an exercise in retroactive continuity as new elements are added and some of what we were told before is shown to be questionable at least. The origin retelling in issue #215 runs through all the basics but for the first time in the series the two replacement Captain Americas of the late 1940s are included, following a What If? story that reinstated to continuity the Cap stories published in 1945 to 1950 as well as the All-Star Squadron. Also recapped is the previously seen Captain America of the 1950s. Following this we get a single new page as the real Cap sets out to discover about the one other Captain America, but we never learn if he does and instead enjoy a reprint of the Strange Tales story where the Human Torch battled a fake Captain America who was actually the Acrobat in disguise, complete with a floating helicopter platform including a rocket ship & launcher plus an asbestos lined lorry. It's reprinted as in the original with no attempt to explain away some of the early Silver Age silliness or just how Cap could maintain a secret identity when it was published in comics the Torch read as a child.

Back in the present, Cap's quest for his past brings up the notion that his childhood in New York was an invention and he was actually from a small town in Maryland. Through returning memories and a chat with a local he learns how Steve Rogers was a weak younger brother, more interested in art than in following in his elder brother's footsteps as first a sports star and then a soldier, much to his father's disapproval. However news reports from Europe and his brother's death at Pearl Harbour led him to attempt to enlist but he was rejected on medical grounds until a government agent identified him as suitable for a project. Although Steve's weak physique had long been an established part of the character, his family background feels like an attempt to increase his identifiability with the presumed readership of this era. It also feels like an attempt to root him in a stereotypical small town America rather than the exceptional urban New York, though with his family all dead it seems hard to build much on this at this stage and it's not followed up on in this volume.

More bizarre is another adventure told in flashback as the series sets out to explain how, in looking back at the end of the Second World War, Cap could recall falling off a missile launched from the coast of the English Channel and land in waters off Newfoundland. This could have been explained away as a confusion caused by a disoriented man just revived from suspended animation or a case of poor geographic knowledge, or just become a lettering error to be corrected in reprints. But instead we learn how Cap was picked up by a submarine commanded by renegade Nazi scientist Lyle Dekker, then taken to a base on Newfoundland before escaping in a plane carrying nerve gas , only to be shot down with the gas interacting with the Super Soldier Serum to put Cap in suspended animation with amnesia of his last battle.

There was simply no need to complicate the wonderful resurrection story by adding on this interim adventure. Nor is Dekker a particularly memorable foe even after he transfers his consciousness into the oversized artificial body dubbed the Ameridroid, who soon realises he has sacrificed his humanity for no great gain. This is retroactive continuity for the sheer heck of it and adds no more than another flashback tale in which Cap plays himself in a wartime movie serial of his life. Ultimately the search for Cap and Steve Rogers's past just rings hollow and seems to make no significant addition to the character or the series at all.

Making an addition of a rather different nature is the Corporation storyline. Picking up a thread from the last of Kirby's issues the battle with this sinister organisation runs through the second half of the volume, and also in the contemporary issues of the Incredible Hulk, before climaxing in the crossover at the end. There are a number of long-term changes in the series in the interim, including the ending of the team-up between Cap and the Falcon. Sam has been largely relegated to a bit part in many adventures here before he accepts the role of leading the Super-Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a short-lived team of new and obscure super powered beings including Marvel Man (later Quasar), the Texas Twister, the Vamp and Blue Streak. The team doesn't last long with the last two members revealed as agents of the Corporation whilst the Texas Twister leaves in disgust at the Vamp's brutal killing of Blue Streak (in fact to silence her fellow agent). Another Corporation agent is Veda, supposedly the daughter of a wartime agent present when Cap first received the Super Soldier Serum. She briefly becomes Cap's new romantic interest, with Sharon running away in pain, only to be killed off in internal power struggles within the Corporation without Cap even realising it. Other Corporation agents include the Hulk's past foes the Constrictor and Moonstone, plus the alien Animus who turns out to be the real form of the Vamp. There's also a separate attack on Cap and S.H.I.E.L.D. by the Red Skull. Tensions between Cap and Nick Fury are increasing ever more, with the former sick of being used by the agency so often.

The crossover at the end is a rare one that builds on events in both series, bringing a climax to the separate struggles with the Corporation as well as establishing the Falcon as the uncle of the Hulk's sidekick Jim Wilson. All the plot threads are tidied up which is no small achievement given the high turnover of writers. However some of the characters and events from the Incredible Hulk are not really introduced for readers of Captain America only. Consequently the whole thing can be a little confusing when read on its own.

Overall this is frankly a dull pedestrian volume. Neither Kirby nor those who followed him have been able to lift the series to new heights and instead we've had a mix of rather slow and dull adventures plus some needless retcons that try to fix things that frankly weren't broke in the first place. Captain America is a difficult series to do well and needs good long-term writers to have a real impact. This volume fails to find them.

Essential Defenders volume 4

Essential Defenders volume 4 contains issues #61 to #91. The writing is mainly by David Anthony Kraft and Ed Hannigan with other contributions by Mary Jo Duffy and Steven Grant. The art is mainly by Herb Trimpe and Don Perlin with other issues by Ed Hannigan and Sal Buscema.

This is an odd volume with Defenders enjoying an overall period of membership stability and yet at the same time it sees the team disband for a period, the originals reform and probably the largest single influx of members a team has ever known. At its heart is the long running question over whether the "non-team" is a grouping of heroes who come together to protect the world from menaces or else a club of heroes with an open door policy. Historically it's clear that the former is Namor the Sub-Mariner's view of the Defenders whilst the latter is Nighthawk's. But the series works best with a core group of characters who want to be with each other and spend time together when they're not saving the world. There's room for other heroes to join them for adventures - and this volume sees the likes of Moondragon, the Wasp, Yellowjacket, the Black Panther and Daredevil all working alongside the team although Spider-Man's involvement is more clearly an accidental encounter - but at it's core are the regulars, the Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk and Hellcat. That's not to say there aren't some other Defenders within these pages though.

The nature of the Defenders as a very loose association of heroes and Nighthawk's problems leading them are both explored to the fullest extent in issues #62 to #64 which contain the "Defenders for a day" storyline. Dollar Bill produces a documentary about the team that includes their address and a declaration that anyone can be a Defender simply by declaring themselves so. The next day this is put to severe test as Nighthawk steps outside to meet new recruits Black Goliath, Captain Marvel, Captain Ultra, Falcon, Havok, Hercules, Iron Fist, Jack of Hearts, Marvel Man (later known as Quasar), Ms. Marvel, Nova, Paladin, Polaris, Prowler, the Son of Satan, Stingray, Tagak, Torpedo and the White Tiger. It's possibly the single largest membership expansion of any established team in the history of superhero comics. But it also exposes the mess that can come with such a loose set up as the new heroes start messing about with each other, try to impose Hercules as the team's leader and decide to attack the Hulk without realising just how important the Defenders are to keeping him calm. Then things get worse as Iron Man drops by to announce that a whole load of villains have also declared themselves Defenders and are causing chaos in New York. Nighthawk's Defenders split into multiple teams to tackle the rival group, consisting of Batroc, the Beetle, the Blob, Boomerang, Electro, Joe the Gorilla, Leap-Frog, Libra, the Looter, the Melter, Pecos, Plantman, Porcupine, Sagittarius, the Shocker, the Toad and Whirlwind, but the results just add to the chaos. It rapidly becomes clear that there are too many heroes to be able to effectively work together and the new members all quickly decide to leave. The whole thing stands as a good exposure of many of the spare and lesser heroes in the Marvel universe at this time but also demonstrates how many of them just aren't able to fit into any team at random. I don't know if the heroes featured reflect any demands in the contemporary letters page but it wouldn't surprise me if the whole storyline was a rejoinder to those who believe a non-team can literally include absolutely anyone for no particular reason and show why some of the heroes just can't work well with the regular membership. It also shows the mess of loose organisations that allow anyone to proclaim themselves a member without any process of approval or verification. Maybe this was a subtle dig at certain real life groups who seek various organisational protections and benefits whilst allowing anybody at all to access them, with the result that chaos can ensue as they exercise these rights.

Much of the rest of the volume follows a similar pattern of somewhat oddball adventures against some bizarre foes. It kicks off with a continuation of the low key battle with Lunatik, initially presented as a vigilante killer but subsequently revealed to be multiple beings who are the fragmented parts of Arisen Tyrk, the banished ruler of another dimension from the Man-Wolf stories, now serving the Unnameable. The role of mad killer is taken over by the Foolkiller, this being the second one from the pages of Omega the Unknown after the original appeared and died in Man-Thing. This is followed up by the wrapping up of threads from Omega's series but it feels very confusing if one hadn't been reading that title and so it's just a confrontation with some aliens and a lot of flashbacks, plus Moondragon getting angry with the Defenders over the way they handle the situation. Elsewhere Doctor Strange assembles the original Defenders, the Hulk and Sub-Mariner, to journey to Tunnel World to deal with the threat of the Unnameable and his minions, commanded by the humanoid buzzard Ytitnedion. Meanwhile back on Earth the other Defenders encounter first the Mutant Force, a set of old Captain America foes, and then the all female Fem-Force, working for Daredevil's old foe the Mandrill. There's also a return of the Omegatron where a man has somehow become lied to it to become the Anything Man. Tensions flare between Atlantis and Wakanda due to the intervention of a rogue Wakandan stealing technology and selling it on behalf of the Mandrill, leading to a rematch with Fem-Force.

Early on Valkyrie gets some interesting material as she is taken back to Asgard to take part in a war in the afterlife realm of Valhalla between the Norse god of death, Hela, and Ollerus the Unmerciful. In the process Valkyrie comes up against her own body animated by the soul of Barbara Norris, who kills the other Defenders to bring their souls to the afterlife. Eventually Hela banishes the invaders and restores the Defenders to life but the story adds to the confusion and mess with Valkyrie that it's unclear just how much of a past she actually has whilst she is still occupying the body of another woman despite one of her own existing and no opportunity is taken to put her back in her own body. Later she briefly leads the Defenders in Nighthawk's absence against the Foolkiller but the result is the destruction of the riding academy and the disbandment of the team, though this ultimately proves only temporary.

Hellcat gets mixed developments with some abilities little used and even phased out whilst there are some appearances from her past from before her days in the superhero community. Noticeably little used is her Shadowcloak despite its potential to boost her abilities and provide key protection at critical moments. Maybe it's just because of the black and white but there are times when she's wearing it and so similar to Batgirl that I'd be amazed if someone didn't start getting copyright jitters. Her mental powers are also little used except for an accidental discharge that hurts ally as much as foe and drives off a number of the "Defenders for a day" recruits. Later on Moondragon absorbs them out of necessity when injured in battle, leaving Hellcat with her acrobatic skills and her convoluted past. It becomes clear that she's trying to avoid it, with a letter from Millie the Model taking a while to reach her. Later on we find out that she's been avoiding her mother for a long time and they don't reconcile before the latter's death. After the funeral we learn how the Patsy Walker comics were a fiction-within-fiction created by her mother who sheltered the real Patsy from the world. Many a real life child star endured an awkward childhood with their parents more concerned to display them and maximise the returns rather than helping them develop properly and Patsy seems to have similarly suffered, which probably explains her woman-child light hearted approach to the world. The recasting of her comedy and soap era also allows for alterations to those around her, with Buzz Baxter now her jerk of an husband whilst the age gap between Patsy and Millie has noticeably widened since their encounters in the 1960s, with the latter now a friend of Patsy's mother and head of her own modelling agency. Millie's guest appearance is a reminder of how many of us move on in life and looks back on hopes and ambitions, whilst some, like Patsy, are left contemplating the future.

There are other threads that go nowhere. Early on there's a subplot in the Soviet Union as the Red Guardian and the Presence battle a giant amoeba but after defeating it they decide to live together and it isn't followed up on; with no interaction with the rest of the title it just feels like an unfinished idea. This may, however, be down to a change in writers.

This volume encompasses the entirety of Ed Hannigan's run. And the whole thing is a rather stumbling mess. Plotlines drag on for ages, particularly one about Nighthawk being investigated by the FBI for a number of alleged personal and corporate offences, with the result that on more than one occasion he is barred from operating in his costumed identity. The precise charges are never made clear and by the final issue the whole thing has got no further than a bail hearing. Tax and corporate cases in the real world may well drag out for years before ever reaching a courtroom, but it doesn't make for especially good drama. Worse still there's no real indication as to why he is now being investigated or whether some foe is behind it all. It's as though Hannigan had no idea where he was going with the storyline and so just dragged it out for as long as possible until something could be done with it. Eventually the court appearance coincides with an attack by the Mandril and an extended appearance by Daredevil but it's impossible to believe that this had been the plan all along. There are also odd moments such as the Hulk's encounter with a beached whale that he returns to the sea complete with the address for Greenpeace in one of the most blatant pieces of campaigning yet seen in a regular comic book, though it's followed up in a later issue when the Defenders save a herd of whales from Russian whalers.

Overall this volume is a complete disappointment. Other than the "Defenders for a day" there are no particular striking stories and much of the book is an endless search for direction. Too many of the foes are rather abstract and make for not very understandable threats, compounded by the growing gulf in focuses between Doctor Strange and Nighthawk. There are too many plotlines that either ramble on forever or just get forgotten about and the overall result is just a dull mess.

Essential Defenders volume 3

Essential Defenders volume 3 reprints issues #31-60 and Annual #1. Bonus material consists of Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for Doctor Strange, Hellcat and Valkyrie and the team entries for the Defenders and Zodiac. Most of the writing is by Steve Gerber, who also does the annual, and David Anthony Kraft with contributions Gerry Conway, Roger Slifer, John Warner and Chris Claremont and back-ups by Naomi Basner and Scott Edelman. The art is mainly by Sal Buscema, who also does the annual, and Keith Giffen with other work by Dave Cockrum, Michael Golden, Carmine Infantino, George Tuska and Ed Hannigan with the back-ups by Sandy Plunkett and Juan Ortiz. Inevitably there's a separate post for some of the labels.

It's amazing that this is volume 3 of a series and yet it begins as early as issue #31 without a preceding substantial run under another title. This been mainly been down to a combination of the Giant-Sizes and the crossover with Avengers, but it has also meant that previous progress has been slow for the team. Now we get a run of thirty issues with only an annual for additional material and so the team can develop more quickly. And it's increasingly clear that the Defenders aren't really a "non-team". It's clear who's a member and who is a guest star, with Devil Slayer's arrival having some trappings of a formal initiation with welcomes and handshakes, putting lie to the idea that any hero who hangs around for even a single adventure is a Defender. There may not be a formal constitution or salary scheme - Nighthawk finds himself covering just about all expenses from damages to Power Man's fees - but there's a recognised post of leader, which changes hands in this volume, and a flow of recruits.

Of the new or returning members, Power Man has the weakest ties and soon leaves, feeling he's more of a loner and just not suited to being on a team. As he was initially called in by Jack Norriss as reinforcements to protect Nighthawk in his hospital bed from Plantman whilst the other Defenders are overwhelmed or busy elsewhere, his attachment to the team was never that strong. Devil Slayer joins right near the end and so it's not possible to see here how he will last. The new Red Guardian seems to have more staying power but is soon blackmailed into returning to the Soviet Union where she is captured and subject to experiments by the Presence who is seeking to enhance his own power with nuclear energy and has selected her to be his mate. After this she remains under Soviet custody. An interesting hero who combines a day job as a top neurosurgeon and a secret role as a street champion of the ordinary people who has taken up the identity previously used by an Avengers foe, Tania Belinsky offers some potential but falls into the same problems so many female heroes have of having her powers changed fairly early on whilst her identity isn't original. Consequently her departure isn't that big an impact on the series, especially as other women are coming to the forefront with Doctor Strange's girlfriend Clea now playing a role in several adventures and even getting her own solo story when the series briefly switches to a two story format, allowing her to defeat the sorcerer Nicodemus.

But by far the most significant new recruit is Hellcat. She actually opts to hang around with the Defenders instead of taking up a longstanding offer to join the Avengers, and offers a delightful approach to heroing. She has a light hearted, fun loving adventurous approach and talks like - well maybe not a normal person in the real world of the late 1970s but certainly much less formal than many a hero. She is a welcome addition to the team and it's already easy to see she will become one of the core Defenders in the long run. Not acknowledged at all is her past as Patsy Walker, star of multiple teen soap comics that were Marvel's answer to Archie, bar references to her ex-husband Buzz's attitudes, but that doesn't seem to matter at the moment. Appearing as clear guest stars are the likes of Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel, whilst the Sub-Mariner returns but very much in guest star mode.

The first third of the volume is taken up with a length saga involving the Headmen - who have recruited a fourth member, the female Ruby Thursday with an artificial shape changing head - and Nebulon, now operating through a strange cult devoted to "Celestial Mind Control". The early issues have the pretty outlandish idea of the Headmen capturing Nighthawk and replacing his brain with that of Chondu of the Headmen in order to infiltrate the Defenders. It gets more complex when Jack Norriss's spirit is put into Nighthawk's body whilst Chondu's spirit is displaced to "Bambi", a young deer the Hulk has befriended. Whilst a disembodied brain Nighthawk relives his past and we learn about how he grew up monetarily rich but emotionally poor, sadly an all-too common combination, and see a succession of tragedies that made him the man he now is. Eventually Jack's spirit and Nighthawk's brain are restored to their own bodies, albeit with Nighthawk experiencing a crisis of awareness as he wonders just what is and isn't real, but Chondu ends up in a new composite body at the cost of "Bambi". Elsewhere Valkyrie is arrested and sent to a women's prison, with the other Defenders unaware of her fate. Inside the jail she faces bullying from other inmates, made worse by her inability to harm another woman, and a warden who tries to rape her. However she grows in popularity with other prisoners to the point that a riot starts for better conditions and her work in diffusing it helps to get her released with all charges dropped. Meanwhile Nebulon, leading a race of fish-like lizards called Luberdites, has set up the Celestial Mind Control cult to take over and "liberate" the world through advancing humanity. Amongst those drawn in are the old Marvel foes the Eel and the Porcupine. The CMC movement seeks presidential endorsement and a United Nations posting but the Headmen try to take it over for their own scheme. In the end the Defenders beat the Headmen and show Nebulon how his movement would undermine humanity's will. It's a complex story that lasts nearly a year, with the climax placed in the annual; one of the first times Marvel resorted to such a method in the superhero titles. It's also almost the last story by Steve Gerber on the series though he does one further issue with Doctor Strange's old foe Shazana reappearing; this feels like a fill-in idea being used up in a hurry.

In general Gerber's issues don't show much of his often used overt social commentary beyond the contemporary fad for cults that took an alternative mental approach, and whilst Tania's presence is used for occasional contrasts between the way things are in the United States and the Soviet Union but it's more of an aside to reinforce her outsider character rather than either propaganda about the superiority of the west or an exploration of alternatives. Instead the focus primarily on weird action, bar a brief use of a female presidential candidate as an alias for the Headmen's activities. However there's a brief scene in the annual that is set in New Delhi and the captions feel highly polemical, portraying India as a backward, illiterate and superstitious country, criticising the capital as primitive and expressing outrage that such a country can be a nuclear power. This is beyond a critic of nuclear weapons in general and feels very much a piece of American superiority pouring scorn on other countries for daring to raise themselves to a similar level of defence and independence. And nothing in these captions is remotely relevant to the story at hand.

Gerber's departure leaves one particular subplot still unexplained - the mysterious Elf with a gun who pops up at random to kill random people. And the new writers don't explain why. Instead issue #46 sees the Elf about to shoot the paper boy at the Richmond Riding Academy when suddenly a lorry thunders down the road and runs over the Elf. Consequently we're left with an unexplained and somewhat random chain of events that show that in life not everything has an explanation and instead we sometimes only get to glimpse a bigger pattern without ever knowing the reason why. It's a good little metaphor for life though it's the kind of approach that doesn't satisfy all comic readers so it remains to be seen if any later writers will instead seek to explain the Elf. All in all Gerber's run on Defenders has been solid though not spectacular and he has made the series quite distinct.

Some of the distinctiveness remains with successive writers as the threats remain a mixture of the unusual and off the wall but there are some stock ideas in use, especially in the middle of the volume when it takes some time to settle a new writer.  Egghead founds a team of existing villains called the Emissaries of Evil, including the Rhino, Solarr and the Cobalt Man, but it doesn't last and is ultimately consumed by infighting. Then Doctor Strange succumbs to the control of the Star of Capistan and assumes the villainous identity of Red Rajah. After his defeat he opts to leave the team for the time being with Nighthawk taking over as leader and the team's de facto base shifting to the Richmond Riding Academy on Long Island. Both Doctor Strange and his Sanctum Sanctorum return within this volume but it's a sign of how the series has grown strong enough to no longer rely on the good doctor and his villains as the core of the series.

Nighthawk's leadership faces a baptism of fire in another mini-epic as the villain Scorpio - actually Jake Fury, the S.H.I.E.L.D. director's brother - tries to create a new Zodiac society, this time with the other eleven as artificial lifeforms. However not all are "born" successfully and he's especially distraught at the "still birth" of Virgo. Feeling lonely, old, unachieving and depressed he opts to take his life. Suicide should always be handled carefully in media and reasons never casually given, making this downbeat ending a rather dubious move. After this we get a string of new foes in short tales, such as the Ringer, a fighter who can expand and throw constraining rings, Lunatik, a vigilante attacking people on the university campus, and a cult worshipping the demon Belathauzer. The main extended foe in this period is the aforementioned Presence. There's a guest appearance by Ms. Marvel as the Defenders go against AIM in a sequel to one of her solo adventures and it feels as though the issue was written as a potential fill-in that could be dropped into either series as and when necessary.

The other main character developments come with Valkyrie as she continues to adapt to the unfamiliar world. Jack Norriss remains devoted to her but she is increasingly unable to return the emotion and has to forcibly explain she just isn't his wife despite occupying her body. Her unfamiliarity with the world around her shows, especially during her time in prison, and on Nighthawk's suggestion that she enrol at a local university under Barbara Norriss's name, enduring the mess of bureaucracy and bringing further culture clashes whilst she proves rather bad at keeping her identity a secret. Jack proves unable to stay away, even when Nighthawk tries to buy him off, though near the end he accepts an offer to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and goes looking for the spy organisation.

The supporting cast has a few additions, including the first appearance of Kris Keating, a police lieutenant who would go on to be a recurring pain in the Spider-Man titles. (Well actually it may not be afterall but that's for another time.) Valkyrie's enrolment at university brings her into contact with fellow students "Ledge" and "Dollar Bill"; the latter is a film buff who starts hanging around the Defenders and taking over Jack Norriss's role as non-powered helper. Bill even brings along a film camera only to curse the shots he can get. Otherwise he provides a degree of comic relief.

 In general this volume shows a series that's trying hard to offer up a distinctive approach that combines seriousness, alternative looks and comedy. The problem is that a lot of it feels rather flat and just going through motions rather than really setting things on fire. Apart from Scorpio's suicide there are no moments that feel especially badly handled but something seems to be keeping the volume just a few steps above mediocre.

Essential Rampaging Hulk volume 2 - creator labels

Once more we have a volume with a lot of creators so here's a separate post to carry some of the labels.

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 2

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 2 collects issues #26-49 plus Giant-Size Dracula #2-5 (a renaming & refocusing of Giant-Size Chillers hence no #1) and Doctor Strange #14. The regular issues are all written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gene Colan. The Giant-Sizes are written by Chris Claremont then David Anthony Kraft and drawn by Don Heck then Nestor Redondo. The Doctor Strange issue is written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Gene Colan. Bonus material includes an extra page produced for the reprint of issue #45, and Dracula's picture from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

The original release of this volume was surprisingly fast, coming less than six months after volume 1. Was it a fast attempt to ride the Buffy wave, albeit after that series had ended? Or was there some now-forgotten major vampire movie in 2004 that Marvel were trying to feed off the interest? Or were the rights limited forcing a speedy release programme before they lapsed? Or was it just down to someone in the Marvel office with a sense of humour noting both the series's British ancestry and Michael Howard's leadership of the Conservative Party? (Now there's a reference that will leave my international readers scratching their heads.)

Whatever the reason this volume is a letdown after the promise of the first. Gene Colan's art remains great but the general direction of the series is rather meandering, with several plotlines taking an eternity to resolve. The Giant-Size issues are standalone and two of them are even set in the past rather than the present. Whilst it leaves Dracula in the present under the control of a single creative team, their placement here just add to the mess by intruding upon the flow. There's a small amount of crossover with the monthly series with Inspector Chelm of Scotland Yard popping up in both and later supplying the regular vampire hunters with information. Other than this and a brief use of Quincy Harker the characters and situations are all original, with Dracula encountering some especially scary examples of the occult such as the Devil's Heart, a giant disembodied organ that is possessing a small town in the American mid West. Other tales are more downbeat such as Dracula's pursuit of a French government agent across Europe or the vampire's own pursuit by Elainne, the daughter of one of his medieval victims who has gained immortality and assembled a militia to gain revenge. The one character of seeming long term significance introduced here is Inspector Katherine Fraser, a Scotland Yard detective with psychic powers, but she doesn't make the leap over to the monthly. All in all the Giant-Size series is a disappointment and shows that it takes more than the character's name to make a good spin-off series.

Over in the main series things are really dragged out by a long running plot involving Dracula's powers steadily weakening, which ultimately turns out to be the manipulations of Doctor Sun. A disembodied brain may not seem the obvious rival to a vampire, although the name is fitting, but Sun's technology and cunning offers a good counterpoint to a primeval creature, upping the tension. Adding to the counterpoints is Sun's henchman Juno, who has a silver lance in place of a hand. The hunt eventually brings Dracula to the United States via an experimental spy plane and into a protracted showdown in which Quincy Harker and his vampire hunters find they need Dracula more than they realise, forcing them to take some drastic steps.

In the meantime, the vampire hunters are scattered across the globe. Taj has returned to India where his son has become a vampire, forcing Taj and his estranged wife to face the horror of having to kill their child before the local mobs do. Eventually he realises he can't but can only look on in horror as the mobs surge past him and perform the task. After this Taj drops out of the series as he opts to stay in India and rebuild his life with his wife. Perhaps somebody also realised how much of a stereotype a strong, silent Indian manservant is. Frank Drake is lured to South America by a friend who turns out to be working for Dracula who wants his descendent out of the way. This leads to encounters with zombies who are about to kill him when he is saved by a gratuitous guest appearance by Brother Voodoo. The crossing of genres just doesn't work and leaves the characters' presence all too exposed as a promotional puff piece, more so than the average guest appearance. Elsewhere Rachel van Helsing is reassessing her relationship with Drake whilst Quincy Harker is looking back on his long years of fighting the vampire and the huge cost to him both financially and personally. He remains ever resourceful, with his home containing no end of booby traps against Dracula, exploiting crosses, garlic, stakes and more, even right down to the crosses on the collar of his dog, appropriately named Saint. Quincy proves highly resourceful in luring the vampire to his lair and almost slays him but is forced to back down and save his foe when the nearly dead Dracula reveals he has had two other vampires take Rachel hostage.

Elsewhere Blade is used sparingly throughout much of the volume as he continues his own quest to track down and destroy Deacon Frost, the vampire that killed his mother, but this does eventually lead to his crossing paths with Dracula once more, actually allying against Doctor Sun. He then joins with Hannibal King, a detective vampire who refuses to feed on humans, to track down Frost, with the situation complicated by Frost's ability to create duplicates of those he bites, with Blade's duplicate actually absorbing him.

Arriving in Boston Dracula soon meets two more recurring cast members. Harold H. Harold is a hack writer suffering long term from Writer's Block when the appearance of a true-life vampire offers the prospect of an interview. He is also trying, with limited success, to date Aurora Rabinowitz, his editor's secretary. Both characters are played somewhat for laughs but Aurora defies expectations when she shows her resourcefulness when the pair raid the Harvard hospital blood bank to obtain supplies for a weakened Dracula. Harold nearly does get his interview from an amused and grateful Dracula, but the attempt is interrupted by Juno. However when it is all over Harold is able to overcome his Writer's Block and publish "True Vampire Stories" based on his adventure. But Aurora also produces a book called "I Loved a Vampire" and still takes a long time to see yes when Harold repeatedly asks her out on a date.

In the showdown with Doctor Sun, Dracula is actually killed by Juno's lance and then the corpse incinerated. For a few issues it seems as though the vampire is truly gone and all that remains is his legacy, with the vampire hunters left to stop Sun's plans to take over the world. But it soon becomes clear that only Dracula has the power to stop Sun, leading to debate about whether they should resurrect him or not. Soon Aurora's tears prove to be the ingredient they need and Dracula returns to the fight, allying with Blade and seemingly destroying Doctor Sun for good.

There's a continuation of the rewriting of Dracula's history since the events described in the Bram Stoker novel, with the establishment of a greater history of encounters with Blade, backdating them to the 1960s. Although the retcons may allow for a greater cast interaction with Dracula, it gets ever more confusing to try to understand just how long he has been out of operation and just what the consequences are of his actions. It might have been better to follow the lead of the Monster of Frankenstein title and start the series at some point in the past after the famous novel, then slowly bring the lead character to the present day with the back story more clearly set out.

Dracula is also forced to face up to the consequences of his actions when he meets Shiela Whittier, the owner of a castle he settles in during the day. Initially he hopes to use his host as a hypnotised slave to perform actions whilst the sun is up, but after banishing the ghost of her uncle (secretly actually her father) from the castle the two find themselves drawn together. However she subsequently discovers his true nature and turns instead to David Eshcol, a practising Jew and son of the owner of a pawnshop that contains an important magical artefact. David and Shiela fall for each other and flee Dracula after a defeat of Doctor Sun, but David is scared of reprisals and sets out to kill the lord of vampires, only to himself die in the process. Shiela then chooses suicide over servitude, leaving Dracula with two corpses and facing the very dark impact of his nature and actions. Later Dracula finds the pointlessness of revenge as he battles the Faceless Man, the reanimated corpse of a murder victim seeking his killers. Dracula gets caught up in the murders but the Faceless Man disintegrates before either his mission is complete or Dracula can gain his own revenge.

There are some nods to wider trends in society, most notably the encounter with Daphne von Wilkinson, a fashion designer and arch feminist who despises all men, especially her business rivals. She cuts a deal with Dracula to provide information on the location of Doctor Sun in exchange for the elimination of her main rivals. Dracula complies though starts to wonder if he's wasting his time, but both parties deliver their side of the deal. Only there's a twist as all the victims are now vampires who come to feed on von Wilkinson. Later on the 1970s growth in Satanism is reflected when Dracula takes over a cult and marries Domini, one of the followers, planning to create a child to be born on December 25th. Meanwhile the previous cult leader, Anton Lupeski, is secretly plotting to destroy Dracula.

The crossover with Doctor Strange is not especially memorable, being motivated by Dracula's attack on Strange's servant Wong. This leads to a battle as the magician tries to force the vampire to help resurrect the servant, in which Strange's body is transformed into a vampire though his astral self remains free. Eventually he seemingly destroys Dracula and cures both himself and Wong of the vampire curse, making in total for a rather slight crossover that doesn't really add anything to this volume.

The volume ends at a point when many of the story threads are still ongoing, with both Blade and King's battle against Frost's duplicates and Rachel, Frank and Harold's battle against the cultists in mid action. Dracula's plans are ongoing as well. Whilst there are often times when there's no simple clean point to bite off a chunk of a series for a collected edition, this one feels more ragged than most. When combined with the sheer tediousness of the Doctor Sun storyline that takes seemingly forever to resolve, the result is a rather disappointing volume that tries to do things with its main characters but doesn't really feel suitably spectacular. The series has a reputation as a great epic but a lot of epics have turgid middle sections and this is clearly one of them.

Essential Rampaging Hulk volume 1

Essential Rampaging Hulk volume 1 reprints the Hulk stories from the first fifteen issues of the Hulk's late 1970s black & white magazine series, entitled The Rampaging Hulk on the first nine issues and then The Hulk! from issue #10 onwards. A bonus is a short story from Incredible Hulk #269 which addresses the continuity of the magazines. All but one of the magazines' strip stories are written by Doug Moench; the exception is by John Warner. The art is mainly by Walter Simonson, Keith Pollard and Ron Wilson with other contributions by Jim Starlin, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema and Bill Sienkiewicz. Also included is a text story from issue #10 that is written by David Anthony Kraft & D[wight] Jon Zimmerman and drawn by Ernie Chan plus the Moon Knight back-up story from issue #15 that crosses over with the Hulk story, written by Moench and drawn by Sienkiewicz. The Incredible Hulk story is written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Sal Buscema.

Looking back at the period before the mid 1980s it's amazing just how restrained Marvel used to be about giving popular characters additional titles. Even when they did succumb to producing a second book it was significantly different in some way - a quarterly, a magazine or a team-up title instead of just a second ongoing solo book. The main exceptions that I can think of were Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man and A Date with Millie/Life with Millie/Modelling with Millie but otherwise everything was sufficiently different so as to not be interchangeable. It's unsurprising that the Hulk wound up getting an additional book at around the time when his TV series was gearing up to launch. Agents of SHIELD may now be challenging for the crown but up to now the Incredible Hulk is Marvel's only real success with live action television. But boldly this was a series that stood on its own, not only in a different format from the existing monthly but also taking place in a different era.

Adventures retroactively set earlier in the careers of established characters were still rare at this stage in Marvel's history. Some of the Second World War heroes had had a variety of wartime stories, most notably the Invaders, but otherwise Marvel's history was largely confined to reprints, What If?s and the occasional substantial flashback to prepare a modern story. And of course Marvel continuity has long had an ambiguous relationship with material printed before Fantastic Four #1, so even the Invaders and the wartime adventures of Captain America could be excused as replacement material. But now the Hulk was given his own retroactive series set during an obvious part of his career but using the setting in a less than obvious way.

Maybe it's because of the brevity of the original series but the Hulk's earliest adventures have attracted many latter day creators to them. Perhaps it's because the Hulk still had his secret identity and so the stories felt the most superheroey. It could be down to the various early cartoons also basing themselves on this period. Or it could just be the sense of a truly classic era, helped by brevity cutting it off at a clear point instead of fizzling out after several years. Whatever the reason creators have often returned to those days to add more tales. Unfortunately some have been more successful at reaching them than others and this is one of the less successful versions.

The first problem is that the series rapidly ditches the status quo of the Hulk circa 1963 in favour of a global epic that could frankly have been placed at almost any period in the character's history up to this point - and in fact, as I'll come to below, would be a better fit elsewhere. So there's very little of Bruce maintaining his secret around the Gamma Base or the classic dynamic with Betty and Thunderbolt Ross. Later on in the run there's an encounter with the Sub-Mariner who has just lost his people once more but again the character's history and personality is such that it doesn't take much to generate a fight with him at just about any point in his history. The last couple of issues in the sequence try to add something to the history of the Avengers by bringing the five founders together for the first time. Now it's probably true that there is no dialogue in the Avengers' history that explicitly says "And we had never come together before the battle with Loki" but this encounter still feels like a very awkward addition to the team's history, undermining the dynamics seen in the first issue because there was little reason to have discovered they could form a team on the second meeting if they hadn't done so the first time round. Also the series is nominally set in 1963, being one of the last times I'm aware of when Marvel time explicitly matched publication time. However this series doesn't feel like a nostalgia piece, if that's possible at a gap of only fourteen years (which seems a rather small gap but a lot of classic literature was set about as many years before publication) and instead it just feels like an alternate modern take on the Hulk. Indeed at times the series actually forgets it's set in the past, such as when Namor is searching Rome for the "Main Command" and gets told the war ended "thirty years ago" - approximately accurate for 1977 but not 1963. And although the main ongoing plotline about the alien Krylorians trying to invade Earth, including using shapeshifting to disguise themselves amongst us, may reflect some of the paranoid "they walk amongst us" science fiction of the original era, the execution feels much more late 1970s than early 1960s. The same is true of Bereet, a renegade female Krylorian who befriends the Hulk and Rick and helps them fight her race, complete with her many special gadgets. The character is quite well depicted as an advanced, liberated woman but again doesn't feel like someone who would have appeared in such a story in 1963, even if the author was making an effort to have a strong female role like Marvel Girl in the contemporary X-Men or Wonder Woman.

But the biggest problem is the Hulk himself. The "Savage Hulk" is the main personality written in the first nine issues, although the art varies between the classic "Savage" look and the original short haired neater look. Furthermore at this stage of the Hulk's history the transformation to and from Bruce Banner was controlled by exposure to gamma rays, albeit with some bodily resistance creeping in. But here we get a Bruce who changes into the Hulk when stressed and whose only control over the process is to deliberately work himself up into a tense state. Now only a very small handful of the original Hulk stories were reprinted in the 1970s so it's possible Doug Moench assumed he could just depict the more familiar version of the character with nobody noticing. However when reprinted the original stories were also back in print, courtesy of both the Essentials and the Omnibuses, and so the discontinuity stands out the more. The whole thing feels like a bad exercise in nostalgia. And it seems these problems were noticed at the time, leading to a shift in direction from issue #10 onwards and then a later story set out to tidy up the mess.

"Not a hoax, not a dream, not an imaginary story...so what IS it?" proclaims the volume's back cover. It turns out the first nine issues were a metafiction, a film made by Bereet for the inhabitants of Krylor, who are rather more tame and isolationist than their depiction suggests. In the space of five pages Bill Mantlo writes off the entire of the first nine issues, possibly in response to years of questions in the letter columns about how the adventures could have taken place. It's a blunt solution to the problem, though not unprecedented (Marvel had already used metafiction to write off the adventures of the original Two-Gun Kid). Maybe another writer could have produced a multi-part tale that managed to preserve the issues within continuity whilst explaining away the fundamental anachronisms but it would probably have taken too long after so many years. Instead, we get a simple five-page hand wave and that is it.

With issue #10 the magazine undergoes a transformation. The stories are now in full colour, though that doesn't make much difference here as it seems in both the 1970s and the 2000s the respective black and white pages were produced with colour "burned in" to create an greyscale effect. But the series has also shifted to the present, though there's none of the Hulk's status quo from his regular comic and these tales could in fact take place at almost any point in the history of the Savage Hulk. The series has taken its cue from the television series but doesn't want to contradict the comic. So we still have Bruce Banner with his classic look (instead of "David Banner" drawn like Bill Bixby) transforming into a talking Hulk, but rather than interacting with his usual supporting cast, fighting monsters and being pursued by the military we instead have Banner travelling the world alone, seeking both peace and a cure and getting involved with a succession of localised problems. There's the occasional discreet acknowledgement of the television series, most notably in issue #14 when Bruce uses the alias "David Bixby".

The foes are generally one-off non-powered ones of the type who could have easily stepped out of the television series. We get a mixture of unscrupulous businessmen of one kind or another, carnival thugs, terrorists, immoral scientists and fanatical military types. A scientist's experiments with gamma radiation accidentally turn him into a monster who fights the Hulk whilst the military are developing "Cybortrons" - robots mentally controlled from afar by soldiers - but that's the extent of the more fantastic. But in general this feels like an attempt to draw television viewers into the comic character without all the wider elements that would be unfamiliar to those who'd only seen the screen version.

The stories themselves don't pull their punches with some quite brutal deaths, including the casual gunning down of first a reporter infiltrating a mine and later an ill woman who tries to get help when a hijacked aeroplane crashes. Issue #11 focuses on an unfortunate boy who is being routinely beaten by his father. Elsewhere there's racism on the streets of Chicago, paranoia amongst scientists and the military and thugs attacking the isolated. Once again the magazine format shows how to tell strong stories free from the constraints of the Comics Code Authority but without getting gratuitous for the sake of it.

The artwork throughout the volume is generally good but the showcase nature of the assignments can undermine visual continuity. And occasionally there are some unfortunate results - Walt Simonson's pencils on issue #2 are inked by Alfredo Alcala but the printed result feels like a pencil and crayon effect. Perhaps they were aiming for something stylish but it just doesn't come off. But on a better note are the painted covers. They don't always reproduce so well in black and white, and I'm not persuaded the best choices of issues #1 & #9 were made for the volume's front and back covers, but they are an impressive set of mainly standalone images. A decade later several of these were used for the early issues of the Marvel UK series The Incredible Hulk Presents and they proved highly striking on the newsstands as they must have been on the original magazines a decade earlier.

As can often happen with the Essentials, this is a volume of two halves and it's more obvious than most. The first stage is a retro-based epic that totally fails to evoke nostalgia for the original era or exploit its setting and it's easily forgotten, with the retcon to hand wave it away proving surprisingly effective. After that we get a stand alone series of present day tales that could almost have come from the television series and which prove surprisingly effective. There's a real determination to offer something more than just standard Hulk stories in a different format publication, and on the second attempt the series achieves this. It's not the most essential of Essentials but it gives the old magazine series a good revisiting.

Essential Marvel Two-in-One volume 2 - creator labels

Once again we have a volume with a lot of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

Essential Hulk volume 6

Essential Hulk volume 6 consists of the Incredible Hulk #201-225 & Annual #6. Bonus material includes Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for Jarella and the Constrictor. The writing on the regular series sees the end of Len Wein's run and the start of Roger Stern's plus scripting contributions by Gerry Conway and Chris Claremont and plots from Herb Trimpe and Jim Starlin. The art is mainly by Sal Buscema with individual contributions by Herb Trimpe, George Tuska, Keith Pollard and Jim Starlin. The annual is written by David Anthony Kraft and drawn by Herb Trimpe.

When going through the previous Essential Hulk volumes I had concluded that Herb Trimpe is the best Hulk artist yet, but here Sal Buscema more than gives him a run for his money and I may have to reassess the accolade after seeing the rest of the latter's run. As well as handling the ever diverse cast and settings with ease, Buscema captures the full range of the Hulk's emotions from angry brute to kindly, sympathetic child. The Hulk is a tormented soul, often just trying to find peace and tranquillity, and he can be very kind and caring to those he had befriended. It's a tricky task to depict the diverse characterisation of him but Buscema achieves it quite well. The writing is on an upswing, bringing a number of adventures that give both Bruce and the Hulk some strong character moments as well as providing excitement and action.

The greatest tragedy comes early on when the Hulk and Jarella are finally reunited, first in her world where they're set to be married. However they then get transported back to Earth and the slide now containing the atom upon which Jarella's world is located is destroyed. The couple seem set for a life of happiness on Earth, with Jarella used to the transformations between Bruce and the Hulk, and the monster in turn more responsive. But it's not to be as in a battle with the Crypto-Man Jarella dies saving a young child's life. This sends the Hulk into an even more angry rampage than usual, leading to a fight with his fellow Defenders, before Doctor Strange tries and fails to restore Jarella to life. In spite of the comfort offered by the other Defenders, the Hulk has never seemed more alone as he walks away crying.

Whether as Bruce or the Hulk, subsequent encounters with women fail to fill the gap left. Bruce tries to settle some more permanent roots by renting a flat in New York where he attracts the attention of his flirtatious landlady April Sommers who helps him find a job in construction. However April gets ever more suspicious of Bruce, with the complication of the return of the flat's previous tenant, magician Kropotkin the Great. Eventually Jim reveals that Bruce is the Hulk, but April is nearly won over by Bruce's assurances that he has the Hulk under control - until the transformation is triggered. Elsewhere the Hulk encounters a group of circus performers who have escaped the Circus of Crime, and especially befriends a sea nymph called Meriam; however she cannot survive long out of water and eventually he agrees to return her to the sea. It seems that the Hulk will never get the peace and companionship he desires.

And another couple find that the ever after isn't always so happy. Glenn Talbot has now had his mind restored but is a changed man who feels guilty about the grief he's brought to Betty and wishes to find himself. Consequently he and Betty split and go away separately. She decides the time has come to step out of the shadow of the various men in her life and to establish herself as her own woman, settling in a distant unnamed city and undergoing an extreme makeover. Meanwhile her father continues his military work, aware of how often things have gone round and round with the Hulk and other monsters, but still persisting in his mission.

The series has a rather odd time travel story in issue #204 where Bruce's attempt to cure himself of the Hulk results in his being sent back in time, seemingly taking the place of his younger self. This time he made it to a protective shield and so escaped the gamma bomb, going on to a life married to Betty - but Rick died in the blast and Bruce is haunted by both this memory and his time as the Hulk. Eventually his guilt overwhelms him to the point where he opts to go back in time and restore things to how they were. As with many time travel stories there are huge questions over just how the process works and just what memories of the past are retained. Early in the story Bruce and Jarella seem to be under the impression they will still be together in spite of removing the Hulk, but this doesn't come to pass in the resultant future. Nor is it clear whether Bruce has possessed his younger self's body, Quantum Leap style, or if he's somehow removed his younger self from the picture. And as in many a tale, the time traveller retains his memory of the original timeline when he arrives in an altered future. The whole story feels like a rushed filler, which it may well be as it's drawn by a returning Trimpe instead of the regular Buscema, and doesn't really reinforce the long term concept that Bruce will sometimes accept that getting rid of the Hulk isn't always the most important goal. Indeed at the end of the volume when it seems Bruce has been cured purely by means of a natural burn off of his body's gamma radiation, it's Doctor Samson who ultimately turns Bruce back into the Hulk to fight the leader, rather than Bruce himself succumbing to the argument for this course of action. However Samson may come to regret both this and his calling the monster stupid to provoke the right reaction as the very last panel of the volume shows, now that now the Leader is seemingly destroyed, an angry Hulk turns on Samson.

There's a good mixture of foes throughout this volume with some new creations. Although only one has had much impact in the Marvel universe, another may have had an influence elsewhere. The new foes start off with Kronak the Barbarian, a thinly disguised knock-off of Conan the Barbarian, the ruler of a sub-atomic world the Hulk passes through en route to Jarella's world. Then there's the Quintronic Man, a giant robot controlled by five different men (maybe the forerunner of the Transformers Special Teams). And there's a horrific encounter with "Billy", a human child mutated by radioactive waste into a cannibal, who lives in a cave with his brother and sister and consumes other humans. But the biggest new creation is the Constrictor, another in the long line of supervillains with a battle suit and a gimmick weapon, here the use of electrically charged adamantium cables. 

As well as the new creations, there is a horde of foes from other series, starting with Dragonus, a warlock previously seen in Werewolf by Night. The Crypto-Man had made just one previous appearance in Thor and so it seems rather unworthy that such an obscure foe should be the one to (indirectly) cause Jarella's death. A team-up with Doctor Druid brings conflict with Maha Yogi, previously the "Merlin" who fought both Thor and the X-Men in the Silver Age; this story also affords the opportunity to establish him as a phoney who impersonated the real Merlin. Maha Yogi is now accompanied by his henchman the cosmic gladiator Mongu, previously seen in Fear. Later at sea the ship Bruce is on is attacked by the pirate Captain Barracuda, first seen in the Human Torch's strip in Strange Tales. And of course there are return appearances by established foes such as Psyklop, the Absorbing Man, the Rhino and the Leader. There are also encounters with other heroes, albeit from the less well-known end of the Marvel universe. As well as the Defenders, consisting of Nighthawk, Valkyrie, the Red Guardian and Doctor Strange, and Doctor Druid already mentioned, there are appearances by both the Jack of Hearts and Stingray. Meanwhile the annual brings a one to one team-up with Doctor Strange to battle the Hive, originally seen in Fantastic Four, and their new creation Paragon, a product of the same cocoon that birthed Adam Warlock.

Although the writing shows an uptick in maintaining excitement and momentum, there's also the curse of the long running subplot that takes forever to be resolved. In issue #208 an ill and amnesiac man is found in the desert near the now-renamed Gamma Base. Over subsequent issues he fails to recover his memory but instead sneaks into a key laboratory. It's not until issue #223 that the man is revealed to be the Leader, infiltrating the base in order to launch his plan to conquer the world. Though the story itself is strong and makes for an exciting climax to the volume, the subplot drags on for far too long given just how much actual development it contains and tellingly is not actually resolved until a new writer has taken over.

The last handful of issues in this volume coincided with the launch of The Incredible Hulk television series, Marvel's first, and to date the longest lasting success with live action television. Running for five seasons and then three latter day "reunion" television movies, plus no end of reruns, The Incredible Hulk brought the character to much wider public attention for many, many years, However there were some notable changes to the origin, the character's name and the absence of his traditional supporting cast. The television series did have a slight impact on the comics by spurring the creation of She-Hulk, whose debut issue showed signs of the television influence, but in the main series there's no sign at this stage of any changes to match the screen - no change of the name to "David Banner" or any appearance by Jack McGee, although the reporter's quest simply wouldn't work in a comic book series where Bruce's survival and identity as the Hulk is publicly known. Nor is there any sign of the classic line "don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

At this stage the main sign in the comics world of the Hulk's growing profile would come in ever more appearances on the newstand, thanks to a mixture of his second title Rampaging Hulk (although its launch predated the television series by some months) plus appearances in Defenders, Marvel Team-Up (where he occasionally displaced Spider-Man as the lead star), Marvel Two-in-One (where the Thing was luckier) and the occasional Marvel Treasury Edition, plus various reprints. He wouldn't be the first or last character to be spread all over the racks, but rather than the multiple ongoing current titles Spider-Man now had, the Hulk was diversified with past set series, team appearances, guest appearances and one-offs. Consequently the character was not being excessively used in the same way as the wallcrawler and so a single creative team controlled his direction and fate.

And one development is a slight uptick in the Hulk's intelligence level, remembering more names and forming more complete sentences in order to better interact with those he encounters. It's to the comic series's credit that it didn't mimic its television counterpart and switch to an inarticulate version of the monster, but instead developed him a little more to open up the story possibilities. It's a subtle process with no great event causing a transformation, but the result is definitely an improvement for the better. So too is the general trend of the series, as ever putting the Hulk through a wide variety of situations but also emphasising the character in both human and monstrous form. The result is one of the better Essential Hulk volumes.