Essential Wolverine volume 6

Essential Wolverine volume 5 consists of issues #111 to #128 including the oddly numbered #-1 issue from "Flashback Month" and also "Wolverine '97", that year's annual. The writing sees the end of Larry Hama's run, including #-1, followed by stints by Warren Ellis, Tom DeFalco and Chris Claremont with the annual by John Ostrander and Joe Edkin. The artwork is mainly by Leinil Francis Yu, with contributions by Anthony Winn, Cary Nord, Denys Cowan, Stephen Platt and Angel Unzueta plus issue #127 by, get ready for it, Leinil Francis Yu, Carlos Pacheo, Cary Nord, Jeff Matsuda, Melvin Rubi and Mike Miller. The annual is by Leonardo Manco. With lots of creators, naturally there's a separate labels post.

This volume contains a five issue run consisting of issues from one event and then one crossover, coming at an unfortunate moment for the title. "Flashback Month" was a curious event run by Marvel in May 1997 whereby nearly every title had a special issue set way back in the pre-super-hero days before Fantastic Four #1, with the logo, art, lettering and colouring all adopting a simpler form reminiscent of those days, Stan Lee introducing each story in person and the regular numbering being set aside in favour of "Minus 1". The odd numbering alone has made these issues rather a pain to find at times and it wouldn't have been to surprising if this one had been left out of this volume by mistake. But the event is also remembered for the way it backfired heavily on Marvel with sales actually dropping and many retailers finding even their caution was insufficient with some regular buyers rejecting the Flashback issues as out of continuity and out of sequence and thus easy to ignore. The event seems to have put off special odd numbering for a good while but otherwise carries a reputation for retro set issues that rudely interrupted series mid-story, random continuity based adventures featuring characters with no powers interacting with odd combinations of guest stars, dodgey continuity by newer writers not yet up to speed on the rather random histories of certain characters, and the seeding of big plans by writers who would be off the title before they could get round to following them up. It was further hampered by most of the Marvel titles at the time not actually featuring characters who had been around in the Silver Age - a big chunk was temporarily absent due to the Heroes Reborn experiment - and so the stories would be even more strained.

The Wolverine #-1 issue is a mixed offender. It actually came out between storylines, with "Operation: Zero Tolerance" starting the following month, and is written by the series's long term writer who by now was very familiar with the character and what had been revealed of his background. It also has the advantage of being set after Wolverine acquired the adamantium and claws and so provides a suitable dose of nostalgia as we see an amnesiac Wolverine on an early adventure encountering Sabretooth and not knowing him, then facing off against Hydra agents amidst a backdrop of various agencies of various governments all having their own agendas for Wolverine. There are cameos by James and Heather Hudson, Ben Grimm, Nick Fury, Carol Danvers and the Black Widow, all trying for false nostalgia but not really generating the spark. Ultimately tales of sinister government agencies are a more recent phenomenon and rather undermine the attempts to create a pseudo-1961 style whilst most of the cameos have been thrown in for the sake of it. There's no real revelations in this story beyond showing how Wolverine came to like cigars - hardly the most pressing thing needing an origin - and nothing set up for the future. It doesn't even serve as a good introduction to the series for any readers drawn to the special issue. All in all this is one of the worst examples of event comics.

After such a long run, it's a pity that the last five months of Larry Hama's time on the title are taken up with one event or another. "Operation: Zero Tolerance" was the big X-Men crossover in the summer of 1997, seeing the mysterious Bastion utilising a new type of Sentinel/human hybrid to bring mutants under control with government backing. A number of the X-Men get captured and taken to the old Hulkbuster base where they seek to escape, rescue other captives including Jubilee and fend off another round of Sentinel hybrids. It's rather dragged out over four issues that at times feel like they belong more in the pages of X-Men or Uncanny X-Men than in Wolverine, though at least this part of the storyline doesn't weave in and out of different titles and thus slow down this collection. What makes the story hard to follow here is that it starts with the X-Men already captured and arriving at the Hulkbuster base and then after four issues it ends on a cliffhanger involving Cyclops that is resolved in another title and thus not in this volume. It's a pity as this series has normally managed to stand pretty well on its own without needing lots of additional comics just to understand what's going on but here it rather slips up and the result is four inconsequential issues that make for a very disappointing end to Larry Hama's run.

It appears this wasn't planned, as Hama's last non-event issues seem to be building up both a new status quo and long-term threads. After coming back to the X-Men's mansion Wolverine decides he is better heading out on his own elsewhere and settles in a suburb of New York, taking a job at a construction site and developing a friendship with his female foreman. At the same time, Zoe Culloden of Landau, Luckman and Lake entrusts Wolverine with protecting a mysterious cube. The spirit of Wolverine's old mentor Ogun attacks, possessing a succession of Wolverine's friends and the affair also attracts the interest of Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan. All in all it's a very so-so take that is clearly meant as the foundation for something bigger, but as is so often the case with a change of writers, and particularly with fill-ins between them, both the new status quo and the grand plans are abandoned amidst the changeover. As a result even Hama's last non-event storyline is a disappointment and so he leaves the title with his best days clearly behind him.

Hama's departure is followed by a variety of fill-in writers, none of whom lasts any distance of time. The most common feature is a resort to Wolverine's past to pull out a previously unmentioned character to drive the story, starting with the annual in which he revisits the time he was on a mission to aid a scientist defecting from the Soviet Union only for the Soviet agent "Wolf" to intercept them, killing the scientist but letting Wolverine and the scientist's daughter escape. Now the Wolf has returned, having been genetically enhanced with the DNA of his animal namesake and seemingly seeking revenge on Wolverine and the daughter. Over in the regular series there's a four-part epic involving a mercenary known as McLeish or the "White Ghost" from Wolverine's time in Hong Kong who killed Logan's girlfriend's father for the Triads and in return Logan believed he'd killed him. Now it seems McLeish has survived and is subjecting Wolverine to a gauntlet of hire killers in revenge. It's a tough thriller but it's also about two issues too long for all that it actually does.

There's another encounter with Roughouse and Bloodscream from the Madripoor era, followed by a team-up with Captain America against a bunch of killers using invisibility technology. The final showdown takes place before an audience at a time when Cap is experiencing a huge surge of popularity to almost religious levels, making for quite a contrast between his reception and the way Wolverine is normally responded to, if at all. But both these tales are simply marking time.

The final four-part storyline in this volume sees the return of Chris Claremont to the series, after having been away from the mutant titles and Marvel as a whole for nearly seven years. And it's a story arc that suggests that his absence was for the better as we get a storyline packed with guest appearances, silliness and unexplained developments. The anniversary issue #125 brings together a wide range of Wolverine's female allies from over the years, serving to underline his ties and also to allow for a passing back of the torch from Jubilee to Shadowcat as the innocent youthful sidekick. But the whole thing gets messier and messier as the Viper brainwashes many of the women and both Jubilee and Wolverine are forced to relive past actions by both themselves and others. Most of this part of the plot is ditched once the anniversary issue is over and the focus turns to the wedding of Wolverine and the Viper for frankly incomprehensible reasons. Just to add to the mix, Hydra and the Hand team up to take over Madripoor whilst Sabretooth, now enhanced with an adamantium skeleton, shows up to attack Wolverine but then unites with Shadowcat to save Madripoor from take-over. It's a tangled web of shifting alliances, complicated further by a protracted sequence in which Wolverine seeks to pick off Hydra agents by convincing them the Hulk and members of the Avengers, Fantastic Four and X-Men are all in town, simulating various heroes' powers with movie effects. The whole thing reads like a mishmash of various Claremont obsessions over the years that have been shoved in a blender and poured out in an incoherent whole, made worse by some rush work on the art including issue #127 having no less than six different artists. The one good idea in the whole mix is Sabretooth being enhanced and deadlier than ever, making for very tense encounters between him and Wolverine, but it is sidelined in the rush to get through everything else. All in all it's a rather messy ending to the volume but a symbolic sign of the incoherence that has plagued it.

This volume is a classic example of how a series can get into a mess when a long term writer moves on and there's no clear plan in place for what to do with the series, resulting in a protracted set of fill-ins and overlong storylines that meander about, doing nothing to develop the character or take the series forward. What should have been a triumphant return by Claremont, and which was doubtlessly highly anticipated as such, instead turns into an incoherent mess as far too many elements get chucked into a single storyline without proper explanation. The volume is also let down by having to contributed to the overlong "Operation: Zero Tolerance" crossover and the "Flashback Month" event where neither of these contributes anything of significance to the series. Overall this is quite a poor volume.

Essential Power Man and Iron Fist volume 2 - creator labels

We have yet another volume with lots of creators so here's a separate post to carry the labels for them.

Essential Moon Knight volume 2

Essential Moon Knight volume 2 carries issues #11-30 of his first series. Most of the issues are written by Doug Moench with some back-ups and/or fill-ins by Jack C. Harris, Alan Zelenetz, Denny O'Neil and Steven Grant. The art is mainly by Bill Sienkiewicz with other contributions, mainly on back-ups, by Denys Cowan, Jimmy Janes, Vicente Alcazar, Greg LaRocque, Keith Pollard, Joe Brozowski and Kevin Nowlan.

Issue #15 represents a minor landmark in US comics history as it saw the series shifted to become a direct market only title, also receiving an increase in both pages and price. Together with Ka-Zar and Micronauts, the title had experienced strong sales in comic shops but poor returns on the newsstands and this move allowed each series to survive and even specialise without the restrictions of the newsstands - for one thing the Comics Code Authority stamp disappears after issue #15. However it also made the title inaccessible to those without easy access to a comic shop (and there were several reasons why subscriptions weren't a viable solution for all) and it effectively marked the beginning of a slow market retreat to the ghettos of the comic shops. In cases where a book appealed primarily to the niche of buyers that had already moved over to the direct market it doubtlessly made more sense to do this than try to raise newsstand sales but in the long term it contributed to much of the industry deserting a broader market and making it harder to recruit new readers to keep up overall interest.

However the direct market switch brings with it a much more experimental approach. Story lengths now vary considerably, ranging from lengthy multi-part epics to stories that only take up part of a single issue. The rear of the issues are sometimes enhanced by features such as editorials, commentary by creators, guides to equipment, galleries of images and so forth. Even the covers experiment a bit including a striking black and white cover on issue #24, reproduced as the volume's cover. Only two guest stars appear in the direct market only issues and one is the Werewolf, appropriately returning after the conclusion of his own series to now encounter its breakout character. The character's intervening time is explained by having been on the run from a cult. The other is Brother Voodoo, stepping out of a similar limbo to appear in a story set in Haiti complete with zombies. Daredevil and his foe the Jester appear in one of the last issues also available on newsstands, and the Thing makes a two-page cameo billed on the cover of one of the first direct market only issues (an appearance probably planned when the series was still on general release) but otherwise the series keeps very much to itself. Again this makes sense given the direct market only format as it could needlessly annoy newsstand fans of other characters to deny them the chance to see a guest appearance. And the Micronauts and Ka-Zar, the only other characters for whom this would not be an issue, are not exactly naturals to appear in the grim and gritty world Moon Knight inhabits.

In contrast to the turmoil of the first volume, this one shows a remarkable degree of stability with a firm focus of the character's crime fighting side, with occasional dipping into his mercenary past but with the Egyptian deity elements largely confined to statues that may have powers or it may just be the beliefs of those around them. The supporting cast is primarily that already established albeit with the addition of Detective Flint, a police officer who regularly supplies Moon Knight with information. For the most part the supporting characters remain on the sidelines though the very first issue here deals with Frenchie's revenge when an ex-girlfriend reappears only to be murdered for failing to deliver a supply of cocaine.

Marlene is the main exception, with some prominent roles throughout the run and her continuing displeasure with the way Moon Knights various identities are becoming personas in their own right, feeling that she has helped create a monster. One storyline sees her brother Peter, a doctor, suffering at the hands of his patients who has been twisted by drugs into Morpheus, a being who cannot voluntarily sleep and who can project nightmares into others via a mental link with Peter. At first it seems that Morpheus could be a recurring foe but his powers are neutralised in his return appearance when Peter exploits the link to feedback psionic energy, dying in the process. Marlene's grief is wisely not dwelt on but it adds to her growing dissatisfaction with Moon Knight's approach and identities to the point where she decides to leave him. When new foe the Black Spectre turns out to be an outside candidate for Mayor, Marlene agrees to go under cover but comes to believe in Carson Knowles and sees Moon Knight's public accusations as persecution. She subsequently discovers the truth and returns to him but it's a reminder of how strong and independent she can be. In another storyline she winds up taking the job of bodyguard for a terrorist and the series all but shows her sleeping with him as part of her mission. The character is a far cry from the average superhero girlfriend.

And Moon Knight is not the average superhero. His identity crisis continues to bubble away, with ever increasing - and sometimes contradictory - insistence that he is any particular persona at a precise moment, to the confusion of those around him. During his second encounter with Morpheus he experiences a nightmare in which Steven Grant, Jake Lockley and Marc Spector all attack him, showing up his worst nightmare. Later on Grant is sitting at home when he witnesses a vision of Marc Spector angrily lashing out at others but unable to finish himself off, with Grant commenting that through Moon Knight they are all paying for Spector's sins. Of all his identities it's Marc Spector that he tries to avoid the most, yet Spector is his original persona. For the most part Moon Knight seems able to keep on top of the confusion but there are indications that he may eventually break down into a mess of contradictory and warring selves. Otherwise the character continues in what appears to be a Batman mould but coming out some years before Frank Miller reached Gotham City it seems the flow of inspiration was not all one way. Moon Knight continues to be put through a variety of problems both at home and abroad, including facing the loss of everything he has, but he manages to come through thanks to his guile and gadgets.

His Marc Spector persona is not completely sidelined as a number of issues carry back-up stories highlighting aspects of his career, including some set during his days as a mercenary - there's a particularly dark story where he's commissioned to steal a box from one sculptor for another and it turns out to contain the head of the Gorgon Medusa. In a reversal of the traditional myth Spector uses a mirror to turn the head's back on itself and upon its wielder. Other back-up stories range from present day tales by alternate creators, some of them perhaps auditioning to take over the series if needs be, to tales of the statue of Khonshu and how the statue scared a crook in a museum into locking himself in a sarcophagus or how it seemingly used its power to clear a minefield and help a bunch of stereotypical British soldiers in American uniforms to win the battle of El Alamein. Such tales wouldn't appear in most Marvel series but here they help to enhance the background to the series and were doubtlessly a welcome change from adverts when the series's price increased.

Although a lot of the issues have single part stories mainly dealing with one-off urban villains, there are some that take the series in different directions and introduce potential recurring adversaries, though not all survive. As noted above the threat of Morpheus is neutralised early on, but in the opposite direction the character of Stained Glass Scarlet seemingly starts out as a one-off, a sorrowful nun turned mother turned recluse living in an abandoned church who finds herself shooting her gangster son dead. But subsequently she becomes a crossbow-wielding vigilante, declaring war on mobsters in general and Moon Knight finds himself ultimate missing on purpose and letting her escape. The difference between Moon Knight, operating outside the police but usually with their tacit approval and individual support as he generally seeks to bring crooks to justice, and Scarlet, operating completely on her own as she seeks to execute them, may seem a hair split at first but it's a core dividing line as to how vigilantes are usually portrayed in comics and the source of much philosophical debate. Elsewhere the Black Spectre explicitly models himself on Moon Knight but his failed venture into politics somewhat restrains his potential for reuse. Elsewhere the foes are one-offs - various mobster types and terrorists but also corrupt police officers and those who seek to purge the force of them as well as a man driven mad by childhood abuse seeking vengeance on his just deceased father.

The longest story in the volume is an epic adventure that pits Moon Knight, Marlene and Frenchie against a group of terrorists hell-bent on the destruction of the west. The Third World Army is a coalition of terrorist groups from across the political spectrum, headed by the anarchist Nimrod Strange. Privately disavowing their public political goals, they are fanatics who will take aid from right and left wing dictatorships only to play them off against one another to bring the world to its knees. Few take them seriously but the Mossad has realised their true threat. When Benjamin Abramov, Marc's oldest friend, is gunned down in the mansion by the organisations top assassin the Master Sniper, it begins a journey that takes Moon Knight to Switzerland, Israel, Lebanon, the Indian Ocean and finally back to New York. Along the way Moon Knight, Marlene and Frenchie have to infiltrate the organisation, with Marlene becoming one of Strange's elite female bodyguards and harem. Strange himself adopts armour to become Arsenal and almost kills Moon Knight before departing to hijack multiple oil tankers and use them to destroy Manhattan, in a plan lifted directly from US anti-terrorism planning. The pace of the story is relentless and it doesn't pull its punches either with a number of atrocities depicted including the gunning down of a congregation at a synagogue. Arsenal becomes another foe whose long term potential is sacrificed on the altar of a dramatic resolution to the story but it works. It's a tough storyline that combines the global threat with the personal element as Moon Knight seeks to complete Ben's work as well as repay Arsenal for his slights. At a guess this storyline (in issues #17 to #20) was the first to be prepared for the direct market and it shows a willingness to stretch beyond the confines of the Comics Code authority without being gratuitous simply for its own sake. It's a good example of how the series adapts to changed conditions and sets out to offer something truly unique.

In general this is a series that does well to rise to the challenges set, continuing to offer a hero with a very unusual identity situation whilst also adapting well to its changed market position and experimenting within the format and outlet. There are some themes handled here that are more adult than those found in the Comics Code Authority books on the newsstand, but never once does it feel like its being puerile or gratuitous just to show off its freedom. Instead it continues to build a solid and distinctive series, using the expanded page count to explore multiple stories and features and allow other creators onto the characters without feeling like quick fill-ins. Sienkiewicz's art looks amazing in black and white and Moench's scripts remain strong, producing quite a solid volume.

Essential Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man 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.