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.

Omitted material: Wolverine '95

Left out of Essential Wolverine volume 5 is Wolverine '95, which was the awkwardly named annual from that year. It seems the numbering caught Marvel out rather than problems with rights. The main story is written by Larry Hama and drawn by J.H. Williams III and a back up is written by Christopher Golden and drawn by Ben Herrera.

If anyone knows for certain the reason why this was left out then please do speak up in the comments. There are no obvious licensed characters present in either story and in any case that should not have prevented publication of the other. One of the stories has more recently been printed in a Deadpool collection and the whole annual is available digitally so it certainly can be published. Story quality has never been a threshold for inclusion so it seems most likely this was a mistake. The legal information in the issue suggests that it was registered as a one-shot due to Marvel ditching the numbering of annuals around this time, and the issue came out the same month as the regular series #93 so the numbers may have confused someone. Hopefully future reprint runs will reinstate it.

As for the issue itself, the lead story is a team-up with Nightcrawler who has come back to the States in concern about Wolverine's degeneration. Meanwhile the N'Garai race that resemble the creature from Alien are once again trying to break through to invade Earth and Wolverine and Nightcrawler go through to battle them, with Logan's killing rage worrying Kurt. The back-up story sees various veterans of the Weapon X project being kidnapped and experimented on to try to find a cure for the Legacy Virus. Wolverine and Maverick team up to rescue Deadpool and hopefully find a cure.

All in all this annual is focused on action but comes with strong contemporary continuity. The lead story benefits from having the regular series writer on it and fits right into the saga of Wolverine's degeneration. The back-up is a little more broad as it ties into the wider plotline of the Legacy Virus that ran across the X-Men titles for several years but is making its first significant appearance in this series. This annual isn't the most significant but does feel very much a part of the contemporary series in a way a lot of annuals in this era don't.

Essential Wolverine volume 5

Essential Wolverine volume 5 contains issues #91 to #110 plus "Wolverine '96" which was the unnumbered annual for 1996 and also the crossover issue Uncanny X-Men #332. Notably absent is "Wolverine '95", the annual for the previous year. The writing on the regular series is all by Larry Hama bar the final issue by Tom DeFalco. The stories in the annual are by Jeph Loeb, Ralph Macchio and Joe Kelly and the Uncanny X-Men issue is by Scott Lobdell. The regular series art is by a mix of Adam Kubert, Val Semeiks and Anthony Winn with other issues by Chris Alexander, Ramon Bernado and Joe Bennet whilst the annual is by Ed McGuinness and Tommy Lee Edwards and the Uncanny X-Men issue by Joe Madureira. With a lot of creators, inevitably there's a separate labels post.

The last volume ended with reality shattering as the universe was temporally altered but after a four month interruption and the "Age of Apocalypse" crossover the series and normal service resumed. The substitute title "Weapon X" is not included in this volume but its absence is not felt in the slightest (which, together with it not actually being part of the series, is why it won't be covered in an "Omitted material" post), showing how in consequential some giant crossovers can be. The one mega crossover that is represented here is "Onslaught", a massive crossover from the summer of 1996 that engulfed nearly every single title in the Marvel line and led to radical changes in some of the "Heroes" titles. Its impact on Wolverine's adventures was rather less and the two issues we get here are somewhat periphery to the main storyline. Issue #104 sees Wolverine and Elektra investigating the origin of Onslaught but it doesn't add anything to what had already been revealed. In #105 Wolverine decides that his powers and abilities are more use in the clean-up operation than the actual battle with the Sentinels and so works with fire fighters to save people from burning buildings. During one rescue mission he encounters the mysterious Stick, Elektra's mentor. A visit by the Human Torch at the end to round up heroes for the final battle is the main connection to the wider crossover but otherwise this series continues its practice of avoiding too much entanglement in wider events and instead concentrates on telling its own story.

The main theme of this volume is Wolverine's further degeneration as he discovers that his adamantium skeleton had actually disrupted his mutation and healing factor but now the metal bones are gone his body and mind and getting ever more feral, taking to living in the wilderness. The situation is even more accelerated midway through the volume when Genesis tries and fails to reintroduce adamantium to Wolverine's body with the result that his degeneration continues even further. Much of the focus is upon Wolverine's attempts to claw his way back and regain control but it's not the easiest task for someone who has always been fairly wild. His fellow X-Men try to help but it's not the easiest of tasks as the healing factor is also greatly accelerated.

The pattern for much of the volume sees Wolverine teamed up with various characters, old friends and new, as he struggles to suppress his feral nature in favour of his human side. There's an early encounter with Generation X, the latest incarnation of young mutants in training, which both provides the cover for the volume and allows another encounter with Jubilee who has been apart from Logan for some time now. Guardian and Vindicator, Wolverine's old friends from Alpha Flight, both monitor and try to reasons with him as he roams the city, but it's complicated by the mutant Dark Nap who absorbs victims and takes on their forms - until he tries to absorb Wolverine, accelerated healing power and all. The young X-Man Cannonball falls into the traditional sidekick role, making for some humour when he tries to tackle the Juggernaut whilst drunk and then again when a camping trip is attacked by a grizzly bear. Throughout much of this there's a meandering story involving the cross-dimensional agency Landau, Luckman and Lake that doesn't seem to really get anywhere except a battle in their offices with the mysterious Chimera. Otherwise the involvement of the agency's Zoe Culloden seems mainly to serve the purpose of getting Wolverine to various locations for his adventures.

Midway through the volume comes issue #100 in which Genesis, the time-travelling son of Cable, and his minions the Dark Riders seek to resurrect Apocalypse and make Wolverine the new Horseman Death, using adamantium from the killed Cyber in order to restore the skeleton. It's a dramatic story that sees Wolverine's feral nature inadvertently accelerated which will be a key factor in issues to come, but for all the talk from Culloden about Wolverine's destiny it just doesn't feel like a natural Wolverine story worthy of the anniversary issue and instead comes across as a more generic X-Men adventure as neither Genesis nor Apocalypse have been significant factors in the series outside this storyline. When originally released the issue had one of the fancy covers that were just still all the rage in this era; on this occasion being a special hologram on the cover that should have switched between an image of a costume Wolverine in pain to one of his skeleton depending upon which angle one viewed it from. However the hologram effects often didn't work well and the scan of the skeleton version of the cover is especially dark and difficult to follow. Fortunately there was also a non-hologram edition of the issue with the costumed cover and this is used to lead into the reprint here.

The issue is immediately followed up by a quick crossover with Uncanny X-Men as the ever more feral Wolverine encounters the ancient Egyptian Ozymandias who has carved visions of the future since being imprisoned by Apocalypse. This leads to a battle with the carvings, but there seems little reason why the story needed to be told over both titles unless it was to hurriedly get things out of the way in time to line things up for "Onslaught". The build-up continues as Wolverine encounters Elektra, who seeks to get him back onto his path as a warrior and retrain him. Together they learn the secret of Onslaught and then Elektra's mentor Stick pops up with his own lessons. Then in actions of joint cleansing they visit first Wolverine's old cabin in Alberta and then Elektra's family home in Greece, where unknown to her the last of her father's assassins has been captured by her family servants. There's also the revelation that Wolverine was a Canadian corporal who aided the gardener when he was in the Greek resistance during the Second World War, though as the gardener can't read he doesn't spot the names are the same. By this stage Wolverine's past is becoming less of an intriguing mystery and more of a patchwork of chaos with endless revelations that he was involved in one past action or another.

Some of the stories seek to tie up old threads with a return visit to Madripoor seeing the death of Prince Baran as well as encounters with Tiger Tyger and General Coy. The annual that is included here is more connected to the regular series than is standard for such fare, even though it does incorporate guest appearances. Set in Japan, the lead story sees a reconciliation with the Silver Samurai as he and Wolverine set out to rescue Sunfire who has been incarcerated after his powers got out of control. Meanwhile the mysterious Bastion has activated the Red Ronin robot, this time without a human operator. The annual has a back-up strip in which Amiko, Wolverine's adoptive daughter, runs away in search of a hero and a mythical place, only to find what she seeks is not what she has been dreaming off. It's a nice little character piece that also serves to reintroduce Amiko in advance of a key storyline in the main series.

The storyline sees Wolverine still in Japan as he battles a succession of agents of the Hand who kidnap Yukio and Amiko, hoping to brainwash the latter into turning against her adoptive father and it's not clear how far they've succeeded. This leads to a succession of battles with ninjas and cyber-ninjas that shows Wolverine is getting back to his normal self but there's none of the charm of Wolverine's past adventures in Japan and this instead feels like too many action sequences for the sake of it. The volume ends on a fill-in issue as Wolverine teams with Shaman, another ex-member of Alpha Flight, to track a grizzly bear possessed by a demon in the Canadian wilderness and also deal with two petty criminals on the run. It's a so-so piece but not a great issue to end a volume on, particularly given the previous issue ended on ambiguity about Amiko.

The issues in this run are reproduced with the original colour burnt in which can make the images very dark at times but it's usually clear just what is going on. What does impede readability is the continued use of double-paged spreads that have dialogue almost buried in the binding and the resort to sideways on artwork that requires the book to be rotated in order to be read at all. Fortunately the latter problem largely fades away as the volume progresses, suggesting that somebody realised people actually want to be able to read these stories easily, but the double-paged spreads continue to pop up throughout the run.

On effect of this is that the volume feels rather light with some issues being not much more than a protracted conversation and a battle to underscore the moral of the story. Also there's a lot of lengthy subplot building towards adventures that don't really pay off for the wait. The result is a volume that feels slight and over focused on inconsequential action even though it does seek to deconstruct and then rebuild Wolverine's character. It's an odd volume but not Wolverine at his best or most substantial.

Essential Wolverine volume 4

Essential Wolverine volume 4 contains issues #70 to #90. As a bonus there's a one page feature on Albert and Elsie-Dee which appears to be from one of the various "Something Files" one-shots that were all the rage in this era. Everything is written by Larry Hama. The art is a mix with the largest number of issues by Adam Kubert and others by Dwayne Turner, Jim Fern, Tom Coker, Ian Churchill, John Nadeau, Ron Wagner, Ron Garney and Fabio Laguna.

The issues in this volume come from 1993 to 1995, a period that many look back on as an era of comics that often neglected organic story in favour of flashy art, gimmick covers, rampant crossovers and dramatic changes to characters that were often soon reversed. The volume reflect some of this but not all, whether through the series not going that way at the time, reprint editorial choice or the luck of the format. Without knowing what "X-Men Deluxe" means on the covers of the last few issues it's easy to miss that this was a period when a number of Marvel titles were published in two formats - at a higher price on deluxe, glossy paper with "full bleed" artwork printed right up to the edge of the pages, and at the standard price on traditional newsprint with standard white borders. (It sounds great that readers could chose their preferred format and sales at the time were strong enough to support two versions. But annoyingly the standard format came out two weeks later and so most comic shops assumed readers wouldn't want to wait to read their series and so prioritised ordering the deluxe format. Unsurprisingly the standard format was soon phased out, to further annoyance of other readers when their titles were subsequently switched to the deluxe format without any chance of a say so. By mid 1996 the deluxe paper was largely abandoned.) Issue #75 had a deluxe cover with a small hologram image on it, and no non-deluxe alternative. Here the cover is reproduced with the hologram represented by a vague image. It's as though the volume has been assembled by scanning original issues directly; this explains why everything has the colour burned in as greyscale and also why the last few issues seemingly alternate between the standard and deluxe formats. Where the volume does suffer especially is that there is a heavy liking for double page spreads that leave dialogue too close to the binding to be easily read. Worse still some of the double page spreads are sideways on, requiring the volume (or the head) to be rotated 90 degrees in order to be able to read it; a particular problem if reading in public. Adam Kubert is the main but not the sole offender

More fortunately for the narrative flow this volume only includes the Wolverine issues from two of what were by now annual X-Men family crossovers. Issue #85 is part of the "Phalanx Covenant" from the summer of 1994 which served to introduce a new team title, Generation X, though none of the team appear here. The issue is part of the "Final Sanction" phase of the crossover along with an issue of Cable but rather present all of this section of the storyline let alone the entire crossover we instead get a one page text summary of the entire event. It's an inelegant solution but it saves the latter part of the volume from being overloaded with a crossover that doesn't feature that much of Wolverine. The single issue here sees him reunited with Cyclops, Jean Grey and Cable as they battle the Phalanx, described in the summary as "a race of techno-organic beings with a collective intelligence bent on the conquest of all other sentient races". Well at least they don't look too much like the Borg. The issue isn't particularly memorable for Wolverine beyond a reunion with Scott and Jean that gets cut short by the action and the arrival of Cable, whose family ties and history are becoming better known.

"Fatal Attractions" has an importance of a completely different order. Issue #75 was part of the X-Men's thirtieth anniversary crossover that ran across special large issues of each of the six main X-Men titles, complete with hologram covers. This series's contribution comes towards the end and follows up on a major battle with Magneto in which the Master of Magnetism uses his powers to rip out Wolverine's adamantium skeleton. It's a bold change for the character, and unlike some other big alterations for comic characters in 1992-1993 it's not reversed within a year or so. It has long running consequences as Wolverine's healing factor is impaired after saving his life and he embarks upon a journey to both discover his new limits and see old friends for possibly the last time. But astoundingly this change doesn't happen in Wolverine's own title; compounding this the Essential volume doesn't include X-Men (volume 2 or the one launched in 1991) #25 in which the incident happens. Instead we jump from the last few traditional adventures of Wolverine and Jubilee as his sidekick to the aftermath of the battle as the other X-Men struggle to keep him alive whilst flying him to Muir Island aboard a damaged Blackbird. From the perspective of Wolverine's solo series alone this feels like a mistake, though it may seem differently from the perspective of the X-Men titles. Major changes for characters with ongoing solo series should ultimately take place in that character's own title, especially if, as here, the title hasn't taken part in the overall crossover until after the big change has happened. In general this series has not relied on other titles to tell its stories and so it's been possible to read in isolation despite originally being published in an era when many series were so tightly tied together that it became almost impossible to follow them in isolation. But here by far the biggest change to the character, and one that heavily drives the story for at least the rest of the volume, happens off stage from the series and from the volume. It may have been possible to include X-Men #25 here on its own to at least rectify the error in collected form though it would have impacted on the space available to reach the natural ending point.

Before the change comes we get a couple of classic style Wolverine adventures including the resolution of volume 3's cliffhanger after a gap of only eight years. The battle with Sauron and the Savage Land Mutates is wrapped up fairly quickly and then there's a battle with a rogue Sentinel that now seeks to eliminate all life on Earth, complete with a time travel that allows Jubilee to discover the circumstances behind her parents' death. This leads to Wolverine taking her to confront the mobsters responsible and teaching her lessons about revenge and killing, showing her strengths and innocence. All in all these stories aren't bad but compared to what comes next they now feel like marking time.

Losing the adamantium has a dramatic impact that allows the series to go its own way, taking Wolverine out of the X-Men for the time being as he sets out on a journey on self-discovery. (And in the interests of reciprocity I'll note that it must have been equally irritating for readers of X-Men but not Wolverine to not see a significant change in the team's membership.) The journey takes him to a number of old stomping grounds including the Canadian wilderness, Edinburgh, Muir Island and Tokyo. Old foes cross his path, either in the belief that he still has the adamantium or to take advantage of his weakened state, starting with Lady Deathstrike and continuing with Cylla, Bloodscream, Cyber and the Hand, whilst there's also a clash with the Hunter in Darkness and its offspring. There are old friends too including Alpha Flight members Puck and both Guardians/Vindicators, Heather and James Hudson, then Shadowcat, Nightcrawler and Moira MacTaggart, followed by Yukio to whom he entrusts raising his adopted daughter Amiko. With James Hudson agreeing to serve as Wolverine's executor it becomes clear that Logan is now contemplating the end, no longer as powerful an invulnerable as he once was. But this vulnerability also gives him a new edge as he is more at risk but more determined in his battles.

Wolverine is also not without weapons. A revelation comes when he suddenly grows bone claws. This may have been an attempt to limit the effects of the loss of the adamantium and keep him recognisable but it also signifies a slow descent towards a more feral form, accompanied by periods of delusion and madness. His journey is partially interrupted by the "Phalanx Covenant" bringing a reunion with his old X-Men comrades and then there's an odd tale with Albert and Elsie-Dee having travelled through time and battled the Adversary and the savage Man-Killer Wolf with help from future versions of Wolverine and Forge. Then we continue the journey of past acquaintances as Wolverine and Gambit team up to battle the Hand, encountering Maverick, another of the Weapon X programme agents who is now dying from the Legacy Virus. Then there's an encounter with another from the programme, Deadpool, in which it becomes clear that Wolverine's healing factor is returning to its previous levels. A team-up with the second Ghost Rider pitches Wolverine against his old mentor Ogun once more, before the final issue sees Wolverine back in the mansion for a showdown with Sabretooth.

The crossover interruption aside this storyline has been a good extended piece that allows the series to explore its lead character under significantly weaker circumstances, making the impact of Magneto's attack more than just switching adamantium claws for bone ones. It also fits neatly into a single volume rather than once again ending mid storyline, though thankfully the wait for the next volume was nowhere near as long as the eight years it took for this one to arrive. There is a cliffhanger here as reality shatters but it's part of the wider "Age of Apocalypse" storyline that otherwise has no impact on this volume. Instead we're once again looking at a strongly focused solo series. Although it's clear that straying too far from the concept of the edgy man with claws and a healing factor would take the series too far, the book nevertheless seizes the opportunity to both build on the foundations of Wolverine's past and take the series forward.

This may come from an era of comics with a bad reputation but this volume is actually quite good. With one big exception the crossovers aren't that intrusive, the character changes are handled organically and the fancy covers and paper don't have much impact on a black and white reprint. The main irritations are the large number of two page spreads with difficult to read dialogue at the binding and the widespread use of artwork that can only be read by turning the volume on it's side. Otherwise this is a series that manages to keep to its core goals of telling strong ongoing stories about the character that require little external reading to enjoy them.

Essential Wolverine volume 3

Essential Wolverine volume 3 contains issues #48-69. Nearly all the issues are written by Larry Hama bar a couple by D.G. Chichester and another by Fabian Nicieza. The early art is mainly by Marc Silvestri and the later by Mark Texeira. Other issues are drawn by Andy Kubert, Darick Robertson, Dave Hoover, Mark Pacella and Dwayne Turner. Bonus material nestling at the back of at least the first edition consists of a two-page pin-up and a one-page gag strip by Chris Giarrusso.

Curiously the second cover for the volume reuses the art originally used for the first cover of volume 2. It's a surprising choice, even though Wolverine does briefly reuse his brown costume in this volume, as by this stage it was more common to reuse the cover of one of the issues in a given volume. Although a lot of the issues have over specific covers that may not have been suitable, either issue #64 or #67 would have done the job, both depicting sufficiently generic scenes.

One of the slightly irritating features is that, in the first edition at least, the covers sometimes appear at the end of an issues instead of at the start. The cause is the widespread use of double page splashes that was a popular trend in the early 1990s, even though printing was often prone to misaligning the pages so the two halves didn't always sync up and/or dialogue could get lost at the page fold. (Fortunately the double page spreads here manage to keep the dialogue in places where it can be read.) The approach here may be a necessity to avoid blank pages and squeeze one further issue in, although as discussed below there would have been good reasons to leave #69 out. But one consequence is that it is sometimes easy to miss the change between issues (and the title page isn't always the first one) and it's also harder to locate an individual one. Another, minor, problem of the era was the tendency to occasionally use colour for some words in speech bubbles; the early editions simply display a few blank spaces as a consequence.

This volume builds heavily upon the revelations in the "Weapon X" storyline in Marvel Comics Presents to the point that I feel that that should have been included in the run (and may well have been if the Essentials hadn't got to Wolverine until about a decade later but then they needed the most popular series to establish themselves with). However even without direct experience of the storyline or characters such as "the Professor" or Carol Hines, both of whom reappear here, it's fairly easy to follow the flow of events. Almost all of this volume covers a period in which Wolverine is struggling with implants in his mind that have created false memories. His searches bring him to the sets on which these memories were acted out and he's left wondering just what, if anything, actually did happen with his relationship with Silver Fox by far the most uncertain and painful of the memories. Several other Weapon X participants - Sabretooth, Maverick, Silver Fox, Mastodon, and Kestrel/John Wraith - appear throughout the run and they've all had similar implants, which are ultimately traced to Psi-Borg. At one stage an attempt to undo the blocks leads to Wolverine believing it's 1968 and going to a former Soviet republic in order to carry out a mission once more and it's hard to tell when it's the present day and when it's 1968 until he puts on his costume. Although the implants are ultimately removed from Wolverine's mind, a major consequence is that a lot of the small revelations about his past are now suspect, thus restoring mystery to the character.

This brings up the basic problem with keeping characters enigmatic in the long run. Either their past is kept an overall mystery forever, resulting in confusion and contradiction as little pieces slip through without due regard for one another, or else big revelations have to be undone to throw the past back into the melting pot. Whilst the basics of how he acquired the adamantium and claws or his work for the CIA are retained, enough question marks are opened up to make most of his previous specific memories now questionable. And it's not just Wolverine alone who is put through this - Sabretooth also has his past challenged and so now it's even more open to question whether or not he is Wolverine's father. Silver Fox also finds some of her memories have been constructed and it adds to the tension as we slowly discover just how much of her and Wolverine's remembered past actually happened.

The Weapon X project and his time as a government agent aren't the only parts of Wolverine's past to be touched on. We get a return visit to Japan which brings conflict with both the Hand ninjas and Cylla, one of the Reavers' cyborgs, as well as old friends such as Yukio and Mariko. There's a moving end to the story of Mariko as she agrees to a deal to end the illegal operations of the Yashida clan but one of the terms is that she cut off one of her fingers. She agrees only to discover the knife is poisoned and in order to avoid a painful death she begs Wolverine to use his claws to kill her quickly. Silver Fox also comes to a nasty end as Psi-Borg makes Sabretooth recreate the murder Logan remembers, only this time it is for real. On a more general X-Men level there's an encounter with Mojo who is once again trying to exploit events to generate profitable entertainment, this time trying to tamper with the Big Crunch at the end of the universe. The last issue begins a storyline in the Savage Land where Sauron has taken the leadership of the Mutates but the volume ends after only the first issue.

The volume introduces a number of new foes, some of whom offer greater staying power than others. Shiva is a robot controlled by a computer program and sent to dispose of Wolverine and other products of the Weapon X project. Every time the robot is destroyed a new one is dispatched with knowledge of past defeats. The robots the program is limited but we don't see a definite ending to the supply. Also coming from the project is Psi-Borg aka Aldo Ferro, the crime boss who invested in the Weapon X project in the hope of prolonging his life and who has the power to manipulate minds and memories. From Wolverine's past missions comes Epsilon Red, a Soviet super soldier very similar in appearance to Omega Red (the main difference is in their colouring which is lost here) who was meant to be the first man on the moon but the project was abandoned and he was left unable to fulfil his dreams of the stars. Some more mundane foes have been lifted from contemporary trends, such as the Vidkids, a gang of youths who are murdering the Morlocks merely for kicks, or the Nature Defense League, a team of radical eco-terrorists. The most significant member is their leader Monkeywrench with his explosive spikes; curiously he debuts in an issue by D.G. Chichester when the reuse of a name from G.I. Joe suggests Larry Hama's hand in his creation.

This may be one of the most recent runs to have appeared in the Essentials but there are still moments when it shows its age. In issue #50 Logan obtains a file on him from the National Security Agency which Professor X estimates to have over 50,000 pages of words and just as many visual pages. It has had to be stored on no less than two shoeboxes worth of floppy disks. Even by the time the volume was first printed in 1998 this was almost ancient computing history as larger memory formats such as writeable CDs and Zip disks were already around, although neither drive was standard issue with computers available on the high street (though you could usually read a writeable CD on a standard CD-ROM drive) and there was a bit of a format battle amongst industry and niche users. What's even more amazing is that this file has been sent over a modem, which makes me suspect that Larry Hama was not terribly familiar with either the terminology or the contemporary capacity as Logan has the full file by the next day but in reality this would have taken a bit longer. Elsewhere Wolverine's 1968 mission revisited takes him to the country of "Kazakh" - I'm not sure if this was a thin attempt to disguise a real country or an alternate name proposed for Kazakhstan in the early post-Communist years that never caught on.

On a more general level the volume shows the era's predilection for long running storylines in which individual issues can be read quite quickly instead of intense one-off storylines. And often the comics are exceptionally art heavy, most obviously seen with the heavy use of double-page spreads, stemming from an obsession with art over plot that infected part of the comics industry in the period. This makes for a fast read in collected form but originally these issues came out over a space of nineteen months (with a couple of periods when the series went semi-monthly) and it must have been maddening to readers to have such a detailed storyline drag out for so long, made worse by the occasional fill-in issues.

I don't normally comment on pin-ups included in these volumes but the one here is an awful example of how comics in this era sometimes let the art take priority over basic reading. In order to appreciate it one has to turn the book on its side for an excessive two pages when the same could have been achieved in one. Luckily none of the issues in this volume fell for this reader unfriendly practice. The gag strip is an early example of the Mini Marvels feature (though it's branded only as "An Untold Tale of Wolverine") that rips into the "Patch" disguise of just an eyepatch, especially compared to other such paper thin disguises. It's okay for what it is but the target of the joke is dated as Wolverine hasn't used the "Patch" identity since midway through the previous volume.

Issue #69 is the first issue of a multi-part storyline and the result is that this volume ends on a cliffhanger. It took only eight years before volume 4 came out, a rather longer wait than that for the same numbered Spider-Man and X-Men volumes which also deployed this approach (at least in the first editions). Thankfully the Essentials subsequently adopted more flexible lengths to ensure the volumes end at neater points (though it's also a relief that they didn't start putting out new editions of the Wolverine volumes with the contents shifted about).

Overall this collected edition has been to the issues' benefit. Individually the main storyline may have run on for rather too long and also suffered from a perceived need to spotlight the art above all else, but when brought together the whole thing makes for a strong coherent read. It's almost a pity that issue #69 was included, not just because of the cliffhanger but also because issues #48 to #68 make for a broadly complete package with only a few side-shows and interventions (issues #58 & #59 not only feel like fill-ins but explicitly interrupt the ongoing narrative and say so) and this would have been one of the rare times when an Essential volume maps exactly to a major epic storyline.

Essential Man-Thing volume 2 - creator labels

Yet 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 Wolverine volume 2

Essential Wolverine volume 2 consists of issues #24-47. The writing sees the end of Peter David's run plus a later fill-in issue, a brief run by (Mary) Jo Duffy and the start of Larry Hama's long run. The art includes a long stretch by Marc Silvestri, plus individual issues by Gene Colan, John Buscema, Klaus Janson, Barry Kitson, Bill Jaaska, Larry Stroman and Gerald DeCaire.

Coming from the early years of the Essentials, it's unsurprising that this volume restricts itself solely to Wolverine's main series and does not include his strips from Marvel Comics Presents, with the most notable storyline, "Weapon X", running during the same period. Understandably there's too much Marvel Comics Presents material for later editions to even try to correct the omission, but nor has the series been touched by the Essentials and given its own volume, so once again key Wolverine material has to be sought elsewhere, including a major part of his origin. Fortunately there are no overt references to the Marvel Comics Presents strip, and Wolverine's mysterious past often allows for introductions out of the blue so return appearances by characters introduced in the strip don't stick out, so on a raw reading it's possible to not even realise there were other adventures published that are not included here. But once that awareness is there the lost opportunity stands out all too well.

For those reading just the issues collected here, Wolverine's background remains mysterious to the readers and, at times, to the man himself, not helped by different writers seemingly taking separate approaches to just how much he appears to remember about it. In issue #25 we get offered a possible glimpse at part of his origin. Whilst guarding and babysitting the son of a crimelord, he tells a bedtime story about a Canadian boy who was cast out into the wilderness for being small and weak, but grew up with wolverines and learned to fight when trappers came. It's clear from the pictures just who the boy is intended to be, but is the story meant to be imaginary or is it in fact a true account of Wolverine's past? Later in issue #34 Wolverine thinks to himself that he can't remember a lot of his past and doesn't know how he came to be wandering around the Canadian wilderness. However an old Mountie slowly realises that Wolverine is both a ferocious corporal he served under in the parachute divisions during the D-Day landings and also a stranger he long ago shot at in the wilderness, mistaking him for the beast known as the "Hunter in the Darkness". Subsequently we discover Wolverine is familiar to some participants in the Spanish Civil War but he can't quite remember it until he and Puck get thrown back in time to it (with the complication that Wolverine starts partaking in events and photographs that Puck can't recall him being originally there for). Then Sabretooth claims to be Wolverine's father though a blood test soon disproves it, yet according to Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. the claim is based upon a genuine belief, though he won't elaborate on this. Elsewhere issue #26 sees him relive part of his days in Japan and track down the murderer of an old friend. The whole result is a character who remains an enigma but it's not too clear if there's an actual overall plan that the writers are working to, or if they're just tossing out random ideas that will ultimately not all match up.

Peter David's two issues both have the aura of fillers, rather than any substantial conclusion to his run or latter-day revisitation. The first is a piece of macabre humour as an assassin called the "Snow Queen" finds her plans disrupted when a child steals her briefcase, leading to a chase through the back streets of Madripoor and a grim discovery at the end. The second is at the far end of the volume and sees Logan tackling a drug crazed mad man in suburbia who needs to be neutralised, whilst remembering how he and Silver Fox had a dog which caught rabies and had to be put down but he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Jo Duffy's work also starts in filler mode, even though it drops in pieces about Wolverine's past in both Japan and the Canadian wilderness, but then switches into another feature common to the era - the multi-part "biweekly" saga when a book's frequency was briefly increased to twice a month (perhaps that's why there's no annual here). "The Lazarus Project" winds up serving as the winding down of the title's "Madripoor era", throwing in a guest appearance by Karma of the New Mutants and the writing out of Jessica Drew and Lindsay McCabe. The story sees Wolverine briefly lose his memory though in the process he experiences the atrocity of a village being wiped out for an utterly insignificant McGuffin.

The arrival of Larry Hama for what would be quite a long run sees a bold shift in the title's focus, with the Madripoor setting and the various supporting characters rapidly abandoned, albeit with a final brief storyline that also takes in a trip to Japan. Taking their place are adventures set mainly back in North America with an increased use of guest stars. Fortunately there aren't any crossovers within this volume, but it feels like the series is being dragged into being a mere offshoot of the main X-Men titles (the last issue in the volume is from about the time when a second X-Men series was launched) rather than continuing to carve out its own distinctive niche. It's a pity, but perhaps Hama didn't have enough confidence in the Madripoor set-up to make it continue to work. Or maybe reader demand wanted Wolverine on more traditional territory. Equally Hama may have been wary of repeating himself. By this time he had about eight years of the G.I. Joe books under his belt and he may have been conscious of having already depicted a man with ninja connections and a mysterious past so there was a risk of turning Wolverine into another Snake-Eyes. Instead Hama's run, or at least the early part reproduced here, takes the series back into the superhero mainstream.

That's not to say there aren't some occasional detours, such as "Blood and Claws" which sees Wolverine, Lady Deathstrike and Puck (from Alpha Flight) temporarily thrown back in time to the Spanish Civil War, with the complications that they are reliving at least Puck's past. Lady Deathstrike remains a constant theme back in the present day, with her Reavers preparing a trap with two robots, one a duplicate of Wolverine dubbed "Albert" and the other a five year old girl called "Elsie Dee" who is largely comprised of explosives. This leads into a lengthy story as the two robots gain increasing intelligence and start to think for themselves, with Elsie Dee coming to admire Wolverine even though she is programmed to get close to him and then automatically detonate the explosives within her. Both Albert and Elsie survive seeming destruction to keep coming back. Just to add to the complications are the return of Sabretooth and the appearance of Cable which is not at all a sales chaser at a time when he was one of the hottest X-Men characters and giving Wolverine a run for his money as the pre-eminent man with a mysterious past. The whole thing is interspersed with encounters with the Morlocks as well as with various one off killers. There's a mad man who enjoys torturing animals until Logan sets a real wolverine on him, and another who murders several pregnant women having discovered one of them will give birth to a baby who will grow up to be something special. On a different level is Molly Doolin, the vengeance seeking daughter of the Canadian Mountie who died pursuing the "Hunter in the Darkness".

Puck, Storm, Forge and Jubilee all make recurring appearances throughout these issues, but there's no real indigenous supporting cast introduced and developed to replace those from the Madripoor days. We're left with just Wolverine himself, a man with a limited past that generates some interest but which can also limit the opportunity for actual development since the past isn't being properly explored here (or the origin of his adamantium being explored elsewhere referenced here). Instead the main focus is on multi-part adventures with lots of action rather than a great deal of development. It was an early sign of the decompression movement that would see comics drawn out without a great deal actually happening in them. This volume also comes from an era when artists were becoming ever more prominent and at times comics slowed stories down just to emphasise the art. It's hard to resist feeling this was the forerunner of the Image style when Marc Silvestri would be one of that company's seven founders.

These issues were originally published in the early 1990s, which was the time when I first discovered Marvel superhero comics - perhaps a slightly later arrival than many but I plead the mitigating circumstances that Marvel UK had largely dropped out of superheroes for four years, focusing instead on licensed toy and TV tie-ins and that Marvel US titles had no distribution that I knew of in my home town (my local newsagent didn't stock any comics at all). I should in theory take to this volume with all the instinctive loyalty that most people have to their personal "Golden Age" in just about anything, with it being the time when they first got drawn in. But instead I find this volume rather washes me over. Perhaps it was because the comics market was simply so large at the time and Wolverine is a distinct niche appeal that didn't draw me in then and so these issues evoke no nostalgia whatsoever now.

It's a pity because whilst there are some good moments and issues within this volume - my favourite is issue #34 with the hunt in the Canadian wilderness - the overall volume sees the series dump its unique setting and tone in favour of a rather generic style. The result is a rather generic and less than spectacular run. Still it does get bonus points for being a series from the era that doesn't get sucked in to endless crossovers.

Essential Iron Fist volume 1

Essential Iron Fist volume 1 contains the character's initial strip in the tryout series Marvel Premiere #15-25, then the complete run of his original solo title, Iron Fist #1-15. Following the ending of the series the storylines were wrapped up in Marvel Team-Up #63-64, and then the character was next seen in Power Man #48-49 before issue #50 saw the two fused together as Power Man and Iron Fist. In addition it includes Iron Fist's entry from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The first Marvel Premiere issue is written by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane. Subsequent writers include Len Wein, Doug Moench and Tony Isabella, whilst other artists include Larry Hama, Neal Adams, Arvell Jones and Pat Broderick. The final issue of the Marvel Premiere run is the first ever work by the team of writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, even before their run on Marvel Team-Up let alone their work together on the X-Men, and they produce every subsequent issue in the volume.

Marvel Premiere was one of the many try-out series; other issues would carry variously a revived Doctor Strange, Warlock and a whole variety of other characters. (In its last issues the series brought Doctor Who to Marvel US, and there was even one issue starring Alice Cooper.) Marvel have long created series to ride the latest bandwagon and in the mid-1970s the big thing was martial arts, especially kung fu, and the exotic cultures surrounding them. So it's unsurprising to see Marvel made multiple attempts to cash in on the wave. Shang-Chi the Master of Kung Fu was perhaps the most obvious, though his series was somewhat surprisingly combined with elements of the Fu Manchu novels (which means that copyright problems now make it difficult to produce an Essential Master of Kung Fu) but Iron Fist proved to have lasting power. His own strip only lasted three years, including an extended run in a try-out title, but as the end of this volume shows it's always possible to keep a good character going beyond a fad if some effort and imagination are applied.

The strip kicks off with the origin upfront and it's pretty dark but also leaves open multiple possibilities for future stories. We see Wendell Rand searching in the Himalayas for a lost civilisation called K'un-Lun, accompanied by his wife Heather, their son Daniel and Wendell's business partner Harold Meachum. Suddenly there's an accident and Meachum takes advantage to send Wendell to his death. Heather spurns the offer of help and flees with Daniel. They flee and find K'un-Lun but are attacked by wolves as they reach the bridge; Heather sacrifices herself to allow Daniel to get across. He is brought up within K'un-Lun, learning martial arts. Eventually he is skilled enough to receive the power to channel his concentration and make his fist as strong as iron.

K'un-Lun is another of a well-worn type - the lost advanced civilisation located in the Himalayas. It comes with a twist that it can only be accessed from the outside world at certain fixed intervals, like Brigadoon, coming into phase once every ten years. With this in mind I note that the series seems to take place over a much longer scale than most short-lived Marvels, with references to many months passing during or between incidents. Was this perhaps an attempt to get to the next ten year point soon and so allow for a return to K'un-Lun? It would have been incredible advance planning - and yes the writer is Chris Claremont who went on to do a long of this long haul stuff in his decade and a half run on the X-Men but this is contemporary to his earliest years and I'd be very surprised if he had such long term plans lined up at this stage. In any case the series ended about seven years too early to bring back K'un-Lun on the regular schedule in publication time. Iron Fist leaves K'un-Lun in search of vengeance but there are various flashbacks to his time there which establish additional features and conflicts, such as Wendell being originally from the civilisation and indeed the next ruler by heredity, but his brother Yü-Ti now rules and is silent when accused of knowing that Wendell's family was coming that day but acted slowly with the result that Heather died needlessly. However there's no return to K'un-Lun within these pages.

The first eight issues see Iron Fist head out into the real world to seek vengeance on Harold Meachum. Meachum has bee waiting in fear and puts out a bounty that is followed up on by Scythe, a mercenary armed with his namesake tool, and then when Iron Fist reaches the Meachum building he encounters Triple-Iron, a fighter in an exo-suit who has been trapped in a room for many years by Meachum. Iron Fist eventually realises how meaningless it would be to kill a fearful, broken and disabled man and leaves, but then Meachum is slain by a mysterious ninja. The saga then gets drawn out as it takes in a struggle to secure a magical book with disputed contents, the Cult of Kara-Kai and their leaders, the living Goddesses, Meachum's vengeance seeking brother Ward, Batroc the Leaper, Professor Lee Wing, his daughter Colleen and her detective partner Misty Knight. It's a rollercoaster of a saga, made even more convoluted by having no less than four different writers, but the result is easy to follow, if a little overcomplicated.

Once Claremont takes over the writing the villains become more mixed. First off Iron Fist clashes with Warhawk, a superpowered Vietnam veteran who thinks he's still fighting the war on the streets of New York. Later on there's Scimitar, another mercenary named after the weapon he uses. In another realm and flashback are the H'ylthri, a race of moving plant people who were driven from their original home when K'un-Lun was originally settled, whilst one of the longer running storylines involves the sorcerer Master Khan and the various henchmen he deploys in the process such as the swordsman Khumbala Bey. Back on the streets of New York there's yet another attempt by a crimelord to seize control of the underworld, this one is Chaka Khan, head of the Golden Tigers. Elsewhere there's a clash with elements of the IRA, seeking to punish ex-bomber Alan Cavenaugh for deserting the cause. And the penultimate issue introduces by far the best known foe, Sabretooth. Yes, Wolverine's archenemy debuted in the pages of Iron Fist. Meanwhile the series makes use of some foes from other series as well. From an old Marvel Team-Up comes the Monstroid, whilst from Marvel Two-in-One comes Radion the Atomic Man, initially posing under the identity of "Ravager". Out of the pages of Daredevil steps Angar the Screamer. Amongst the more familiar are the Wrecking Crew - the Wrecker, Thunderball, Piledriver and Bulldozer - who I discover actually mostly debuted in the Defenders rather than Thor. From the Hulk's strip in Tales to Astonish comes the Boomerang, now hired by the IRA.

The last few issues also set up a couple of plotlines with villains that would ultimately have to be resolved in other series; fortunately those issues are included here. One of them involves Davos the Steel Serpent, son of Lei-Kung the Thunderer who trained Daniel and others in K'un-Lun. Davos expected to one day secure the power of the iron fist himself but was beaten by Wendell Rand and then expelled from the city after a partially successful attempt to obtain the dragon's power anyway. He now seeks to take the iron fist from Daniel. This storyline is mostly covered in the pages of Marvel Team-Up. Meanwhile the Bushmaster, a crimelord Misty Knight has been working undercover to bring down, is seeking to be transformed the same way as Luke Cage, Power Man and he turns up in the latter's title where he forces Power Man into a kidnap attempt on Misty. However the tables are turned. The story also features two of Power Man's old foes Shades and Comanche; the final issue in the volume is the first of Power Man and Iron Fist and sees a party attacked by two more, Stiletto and Discus.

Being a part of the Marvel universe it's inevitable that there are various guest appearances by other heroes, but amazingly they don't start until Iron Fist gets his own headlined title after eleven issues of Marvel Premiere. The visits start with Iron Man and later on Iron Fist fights then teams up with Captain America. Misty Knight is sharing an apartment with none other than Jean Grey and so this leads to a clash over a misunderstanding with the X-Men in the final issue. This X-Men appearance is the first time John Byrne drew them, three months before he joined Claremont over on their own title - was this a test piece to see how he handled them? Wolverine is wearing the costume he temporarily took off Fang of the Starjammers over in the X-Men, yet there it was just a temporary replacement after his regular costume was destroyed, not a permanent new appearance. Was the latter at on stage the plan? Once his own series was cancelled Iron Fist ended up on the guest appearance circuit but fortunately his storylines were wrapped up without too many extra characters; just Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up and Power Man in his own title.

In the meantime he also has a surprisingly well developed supporting cast. At its core is the detective agency Nightwing Restorations, Ltd, consisting of Colleen Wing and Misty Knight. Later in Marvel Team-Up #64 they are billed as the "Daughters of the Dragon" but in the meantime they provide a strong mixture of physical support, potential romantic interest and differences of opinion to round out Iron Fist's world. The two are an odd mix - Colleen is the daughter of a professor of Oriental Studies and has been trained in the arts of the samurai whilst Misty is an ex-police officer who lost her right arm when dealing with a terrorist's bomb and now has a superstrong bionic replacement - but they work well both together and with Iron Fist. The pair also have elements that suggest the later partnership between Iron Fist and Power Man - indeed it's here, rather than in the pages of Essential Luke Cage, Power Man, that one can find the natural build-up to that pairing. At first it seems Colleen will fall into the girlfriend role, especially as one storyline sees her captured and later engage in a mind meld with Iron Fist, but later on it seems clear that he and Misty have strong feelings for each other. It was a bold move for the era but it's an encouraging one. Their relationship isn't without its problems such as when they fall out over whether or not to help ex-IRA bomber Alan Cavenaugh when he's pursued by his old comrades seeking to punish his desertion. Further strain is added when Misty is absent for quite a while as she infiltrates the Bushmaster's world. However Iron Fist and Misty eventually realise what they mean to each other and reconcile. The other supporting cast members are less developed but still offer plenty of story potential; they include Joy Meachum, daughter of Harold and now Danny's co-owner of the business, Rafael Scarfe, Misty's former police partner still working for the force, and lawyer Jeryn Hogarth. With such a good mixture there is plenty of material that could allow the series to carry on even though the martial arts craze was dying down by the later 1970s.

The writing on the series is quite good, with the rotation of writers at the start failing to inflict lasting damage and instead the series manages to grow organically, with Claremont taking the elements and successfully building upon them. However one thing I did find irritating was the heavy use of the second person in narration as though the writer - and they are all guilty of this - is directly addressing Iron Fist. It's a technique that never really works for me. Otherwise there's a wise limited use of actual martial arts terms - a few individual scenes may namecheck the moves being used but it is used sparingly so the series doesn't turn into a manual of moves. The art is also quite good, especially when Byrne arrives and gives long-term visual continuity.

The last few issues in this volume see Iron Fist team up with Power Man to the point that they become joint stars in a single title. When reading Essential Luke Cage, Power Man volume 2 I didn't spot a clear sign of the direction things would take from issue #50 onwards. However here it's easier to see the teaming as more natural - it's foreshadowed by Misty and Colleen's pairing and also the adventure that brings them together is a continuation of plotlines begun in Iron Fist, even if it does also bring closure to Power Man's criminal status. Issue #50 sees the team take a step further as the two battle attackers at a party and then Power Man agrees to take up a job offer, bolding well for the future.

Overall this is a surprising gem. It may have been created just to capitalise on a culture trend at the time but then the same could be said of many other series. Here a strong multi-faceted character was created with a backstory containing multiple potentials for further tales and when combined with good talent the results are wonders. It's amazing to realise that this was the first ever collaboration between Chris Claremont and John Byrne but the two of them take to each other like a duck to water and produce a strong dynamic that sustains the series and carries it forward. It's a pity that it didn't last but as this volume shows the character could continue even if the series couldn't.