Avengers 300 - Inferno

Kang manipulates the Avengers into reforming.

Avengers #300

First story: Inferno²
Writing: Walter Simonson
Layouting: John Buscema
Finishing: Tom Palmer
Lettering: Bill Oakley
Coloring: Becton & Siry
Editing: Mark Gruenwald
Editing in Chief: Tom DeFalco

Kang of Earth 123488.23497 is caught on a time bubble and sees the demonic invasion which he realises will alter the timelines and cause him to cease to exist. Thus he sees the importance of bringing the Avengers together again to deal with the demons and then in the future enter the time bubble as is their destiny. He timejumps into New York in the present day and starts fading out of existence. Meanwhile Mr Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, Captain America and the Forgotten One manage to free Franklin from the hold of Nanny by threatening her other helper, Orphan Maker. Nanny escapes and the Forgotten One adopts the name "Gilgamesh" that he was known by during one of his many long adventures wandering the Earth. Franklin is still trapped in the armour Nanny put him in when one of N'astirh's demons identifies him as a source of power and his master realises the boy could be useful. N'astirh captures the boy and takes him to his lair. The four heroes pursue but cannot easily trace him so as Kang finally fades away he activates the Growing Man to bring the heroes together to reform the Avengers. The heroes discover Thor returning to New York and then a disguised Growing Man gets them to pursue him to N'astirh's lair at the World Trade Center. There they fight off the demons and rescue Franklin when the portal closes up. They then see off the Growing Man, with Reed managing to reverse his power so he shrinks every time he is hit. With the demons gone the five heroes take Franklin home to the Richards' house where they agree to reform the Avengers.

And there came a day unlike any other, when Earth's mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat. On that day, they became The Avengers!

So runs the traditional introduction to the series. For a 25th anniversary 300th issue spectacular in the midst of Marvel's biggest crossover event to that time what could be more appropriate than the re-formation of the team to battle the menace? The arrangement is so obvious and all the pieces are in place but there's a flaw. Inferno is ultimately an X-Men event. It originated in that family of titles and will ultimately be resolved there. Other series tackle events on the periphery and the impact of the changes on their own world of characters but they aren't able to take on and defeat the main demons. At most they can deal with a back-up plan if that. So there's a clear limit here and awkward ways to resolve it.

Adding to the complications is the amount of time the events of Inferno take. When read all together the impression given is that this issue takes place over an inordinate amount of time from before N'astirh absorbed the techno organic transmode virus through to the end of the demonic invasion. That suggests the new Avengers took forever in rescuing Franklin and by the time they did so the wider threat had been averted. This was a way of explaining why they didn't make it to the main action but it also makes their rescue efforts looking exceedingly slow.

As a result it's a very small scale affair that brings them together - the kidnapping of a single child. Even more astoundingly the protection of Franklin is not the reason why Reed and Sue agree to join the team even though spending more time with their son was the reason they left the Fantastic Four. Thus rather than coming together to deal with some great emergency the Avengers are re-formed from such a small affair.

To add to the disappointment there had already been a great world-threatening emergency that a team of Avengers had formed to defeat. Avengers Annual #17 had featured a team of reservists and associates pulled together to save the world. Might that not have worked better as the story of the Avengers' re-formation? It also has a more interesting line-up. Although it's clear that the Hulk and the Beast would not have been available for the long term because of other series, the other five Avengers provide a wide mix of powers, skills and history with the team that would have made for a good ongoing line-up. Here the new team presents its own problems.

Captain America is fine. He's the quintessential Avenger and with Steve about to formally reclaim the role having him at the forefront of the team would only enhance the character. But the rest all pose problems, not least because of duplication. There are two traditional leaders. There are two mythological strong men. Duplication and conflict is built in without obvious resolution. To be blunt it feels ridiculous that half the traditional line-up of the Fantastic Four would become regular members of another superhero team. It undermines their reasons for leaving their own team and Mr Fantastic especially is just not an easily transferable hero or someone who can easily take orders from another. It's also awkward to have two strong men from mythology on the team at the same time. In general Hercules's regular membership of the team has been in periods when Thor is absent so there isn't the precedent that one might expect. It also brings up the complication that whereas Thor is presented as the character from mythology straight, the Eternals are presented as different beings who inspired the stories told about them (a point that it's not too clear the script understands when the Forgotten One recalls his friendship with Enkidu or knowing the flying horse Pegasus) which is part of the wider problem of the Eternals never really being meant to be part of the mainstream Marvel continuity. Overall this is a team that cannot really work for the long-term.

Or indeed the short-term. The letters page announces Simonson's departure from the title which he since said was in part because of editorial orders to return Mr Fantastic and the Invisible Woman to Fantastic Four. So we get an awkward team put together by a writer who won't be around the direct it. Looking back it's now clear that Avengers was now into a rut that lasted for nearly sixty issues between the departure of Roger Stern and the full-time arrival of Bob Harras with a lot of writer turnover and fill-ins combined with a massively unstable membership as new writers and/or editors kept inheriting a line-up they weren't happy with and making more changes. Simonson's whole run has been one massive deconstruction and reassembling of the team so it's a pity it all came to very little.

As a result this is a disappointing main story. It's trying to do something spectacular but constrained by the circumstances of the wider crossover and ultimately presents a small scale adventure that brings together an unworkable version of the team. The Avengers really needed their own crossover to star in but that would come another time.

(P.S. The appearance by Kang here is its own source of confusion so here's an attempt to sort it all out. Back in Avengers #267-269 Kang had encountered a small council of his counterparts from across alternate timelines and also his future incarnation Immortus. At the end of the story he appeared to be the sole surviving Kang. Issue #291 onwards featured what appeared to be the same Kang who was stated as being from the timeline designated "Earth 123488.23497" which it transpired was the regular Marvel Universe - this was before all that "Earth 616" stuff had taken off. This Kang, who took the unique name "Fred", joined the Council of Cross-Time Kangs made up of far more counterparts and others who had bested them and taken on their identity and discovered a plot by a female Kang called Nebula who was portrayed very differently from the existing Avengers villain Nebula. "Fred" Kang and two other Kangs set off to prevent Nebula's plans which tore the Avengers to pieces but in the process the three Kangs fell onto a time bubble.

The implication in the Fall of the Avengers is that "Fred" Kang is the regular Kang and there's nothing here to contradict this. However over in Fantastic Four #323 the Kang there explicitly declares that the one in Avengers is not him and it seems the real Kang has stood apart from the Council. And to add to the complications an earlier Fantastic Four story had established Kang as coming from a parallel universe that had been visited by a dimension hopping Nathaniel Richards (Reed's father) who became Kang's ancestor which makes it hard for there to be a Kang from the regular Marvel timeline. The result is a confusing mess with two different Kangs who both have a claim to be the "real" one. I lose track of just how many times Handbooks, history sagas and flashback issues have tried to untangle this one, often with different answers. But it doesn't actually affect Avengers #300 itself.)


Second story: The Coming of the Accursed Avengers!
Storytellers: Ralph Macchio and Walt Simonson
Letters: John E. Workman Jr
Colors: Gregory Wright
Editor: Mark Gruenwald
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

Loki makes his annual pilgrimage to the Isle of Silence and recounts how he inadvertently created the Avengers as part of a plan to get revenge on Thor by framing the Hulk and arranging for the thunder god to receive a call for help, only for other heroes to receive it as well. Thor came to the island and subdued his brother then took him to Earth where Iron Man, the Wasp and Ant Man had found the Hulk. Loki was defeated and the five formed the Avengers. Ever since this has horrified Loki.

This is a retelling of the team's origin with the unusual perspective of the villain who caused it all to happen. It's fast paced and by focusing on Loki it manages to avoid some of the odder moments such as the Hulk disguising himself as a robotic clown in a circus. But it can't disguise the sheer awkwardness of his original plan to lure Thor to the Isle. Why did he need to go through an elaborate charade to frame the Hulk when he could have simply sent an illusion to pester Thor in his Donald Blake form and lure him in that way?

As is now known Avengers was a rush commission when the first issue of Daredevil was delayed and part of the way to get a replacement book together in a hurry was to use existing characters including the villain who would not need to be designed anew. Unfortunately the plot was also rushed and it showed. But was there anything that could be done after the event? Marvel has gone through phases of different attitudes to its continuity. There have been times when they've done major revamps with retellings of the early years that change a lot (and cause fans to scratch their heads about subsequent stories that are effectively negated with nobody seeming to notice). At other times they've held firm with the original material adhered to and relied on convoluted retcons navigating around some of the early oddness. In 1988 the existing continuity was a clear selling point at a time when DC had recently pressed a big reset switch and a back-up story in a double anniversary issue (especially one edited by Mark Gruenwald) was not the place to tell a new version of the origin that made more sense.

So this stands as a straightforward revisiting the origin for the benefit of (primarily) newer readers with the twist of viewing it through the perspective of one of the characters involved. It's an interesting perspective to take and it helps confirm Loki continues to harbour anger about the team's existence but ultimately it isn't able to sort out the mess. But that was a mess made in 1963 not 1988.

Bonus material includes some Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe style entries. There's a two page entry on Edwin Jarvis that doesn't hide his unfortunate moments though it makes him seem far weaker than he appeared in issue #298.

There's a listing of all the members of the Avengers over time and the issues they appear in but it's a bit confused. The first problem comes with the long-standing argument about whether the Avengers are a single whole divided into East Coast and West Coast teams or if the West Coast is a franchise spin-off of an operation based on the East Coast. Whilst the various members who've only joined in West Coast Avengers are shown on the chart of faces, the accompanying text list ignores all issues of the series. It also can't make up its mind if it's listing appearances as team members or almost any appearance in the title and notably ignores listing any appearances by anyone who was a member of the West Coast team at the time. In addition there are some other mistakes such as mixing up appearances by the original Iron Man and his mid 1980s replacement or skipping a substantial chunk of appearances by the Wasp when she was the team's leader. There are some characters whose precise membership status has always been a bit unclear and much debated amongst fans and this shows on the chart with Hellcat listed as "Applied Avengers #144", Jocasta has no issue number shown at all and others are displayed as "Active" whilst the list skips around. Notably Nebula is not listed at all, doubtless because of the nature of how she joined through mind control and was lost only a few pages later.

Also included is a chart of support staff with a paragraph noting Captain America is expanding the team's administration. Not everyone shown here would necessarily make it into an Avengers issue but all are pre-existing characters with their first appearances noted. There's also a page devoted to Avengers Park, the site of the original mansion with a map of the open space replacing it and the statue of the early Avengers at the centre. The Avengers annual that year was notably short on features so it's good to see the anniversary issue providing some that feel stronger as information pieces rather than humorous side tales that can be very hit or miss.

Overall this issue is trying to present a strong anniversary package with a landmark story but ultimately a crossover centred on another family of titles is not the best place to relaunch the team. It would have been better for Avengers to have left the crossover an issue earlier and done its reassembling in its own story.

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 X-Factor volume 4 - creator labels

Once again, we have a volume with a large number of creators so here is a separate post for some of the labels.

Essential Doctor Strange volume 4

Essential Doctor Strange volume 4 is made up of issues #30-56 plus Man-Thing (volume 2) #4 and a story from Chamber of Chills #4. The writing is mainly by Roger Stern and Chris Claremont with contributions by Don McGregor, Ralph Macchio, Bill Kunkel, David Michelinie and J.M DeMatteis. The art is mostly by Tom Sutton, Gene Colan and Marshall Rogers with contributions by Ricardo Villamonte, Alan Kupperberg, Kerry Gammill, Paul Smith, Brent Anderson and Michael Golden. The Man-Thing issue is written by Claremont and drawn by Don Perlin whilst the Chamber of Chills story is written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Howard Chaykin. And yes, a separate post is needed for some of the labels. A bonus is a 1981 house ad for the series announcing the creative team as Roger Stern and Frank Miller but the latter doesn't seem to have made it to the title.

As always this is a difficult series to write and generate excitement about. There have been periods in the character's history when a creator has successfully grasped Doctor Strange and managed to make the elements work in such a way to produce a grand tapestry that has a real buzz to it. And there are other periods when the title wanders from writer to writer in a search for something to do. Unfortunately this volume exclusively covers the latter period. Both Roger Stern and Chris Claremont are highly successful writers with much acclaim for their work elsewhere, yet here they join the long list of creators who have tried and failed with the character. It's a wonder that this series lasted so long, especially considering it was bimonthly for the entire of the period covered here (and would stay so for the rest of the title's run, lasting long enough to generate the contents for a fifth volume). Some of the art is quite spectacular, and the reproduction is especially sharp, particularly in reproducing nuanced greys that help to distinguish astral forms from the solid. But the overall narrative is dull and so consequently this is the weakest of all the Doctor Strange Essentials if not one of the dullest in the whole Essential series.

That's not to say there aren't attempts to build something big, starting with a protracted saga involving the Dweller in Darkness that brings in some new lesser villains such as the mystic Alaric and the Dream Weaver, as well as pre-existing foes such as Ningal and D'Spayre. There's also a team-up with Namor the Sub-Mariner and another with the adventurer Murdoch Adams, whose sole previous appearance in Chamber of Chills is reprinted here in order to establish both him and his longstanding foe, the demon Ludi. The ending is awkward with the Dweller declaring victory as he has succeeded in making Doctor Strange doubt his abilities. It might have been followed up on but the arrival of a new writer immediately takes the series in a different direction.

One storyline sees Baron Mordo return as he seeks to destroy the Earth by opening Chaos Gates near the Nexus of All Realities located in the Florida swamps. En route he turns Stephen's old colleague Julian Phyffe into Azrael, a demon with the power to rapidly age people and things to death. The story leads to a crossover with Man-Thing, who sacrifices his chance of being restored by Mordo to human form to save the day and not even Stephen's magic can deliver the deserved reward. Meanwhile Clea and Wong have been captured and taken to another dimension populated by barbarians and wizards where Wong's ancestor's actions have led to the state of this world, including the transformation of the Princess Shialmar into the Shadowqueen. It's a tale of longstanding vengeance that helps to add to Wong's character but it's also a trip into the realm of sword and sorcery long after the fad had passed.

There are some lighter tales as well, including one in which Doctor Strange has to handle a nosy journalist who soon learns the importance of Stephen's work or an encounter with a demon at a highly traditionalist North Carolina university founded by the man who captured a bell that could summon the demon. The result sees a shattering of the traditionalist policies as the students start challenging them. Doctor Strange also teams up with Brother Voodoo to free the latter's brother's spirit from Damballah; the adventure also serves to underline the differences between the two heroes.

The volume sees Clea go through a cycle of uncertainty and doubt to advancement and optimism about her position with Stephen. Their relationship is developing strongly but she is unsure about her effectiveness as a disciple, often needing to be rescued by him. And her doubts are not helped by the return of various women from his past including Victoria Bentley and the previously unseen Madeleine St. Germaine, who under different circumstances might have ended up marrying Stephen years before. More troubling for her is Morganna Blessing, a writer in whom Clea detects great romantic feelings for Stephen. A pair of epics with Baron Mordo, Dormammu and Nightmare establishes that Morganna has been reincarnated multiple times throughout history. Stephen encounters several of Morganna's previous incarnations first as he pursues his foes through time to wartime Britain where Mordo has been manipulated by his grandfather and Dormammu as part of a scheme to bring the latter to Earth in the past. In battling this and encountering Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos, Stephen discovers that Morganna is a reincarnation of nurse Lady Pamela Hawley, Nick Fury's wartime girlfriend. Later as Stephen travels back through time in pursuit of a portion of Morganna's soul that has become detached and threatens human history and the realm of Nightmare. In the course of this he encounters further incarnations of Morganna and thus by predestination he creates the bond between them.

Doctor Strange's quest finally ends in Ancient Egypt as he finds himself caught up in the events of the Fantastic Four's visit to the kingdom of Rama-Tut way back in the earliest days of their title. There is no direct interaction between them and Stephen, whose body is captured and so has to spend most of the issue in his invisible astral form, with the result that early Marvel history isn't altered in any way. However Stephen's actions in focusing the sun upon the Thing are now the reason for the latter suddenly reverting to his human form at the oar of a galley, a moment of plot convenience in the original story that could have been simply dismissed as just a typical piece of Silver Age logic. But since neither Ancient Egypt nor Rama-Tut (better known as Kang and Immortus) have been significant forces in Doctor Strange's adventures, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this setting was chosen simply for the opportunity to retcon away Ben's reversion and reduce the perceived silliness of the Silver Age. There is frankly no need to constantly revisit the Silver Age and tinker with the stories in order to explain away the odder plot elements, and it's certainly not a priority for Doctor Strange to be running around clearing up incidents from the Fantastic Four.

Eventually Clea decides that as a being from another dimension she is unsuited to be the disciple of the Sorcerer Supreme and that she should not stand in the way of another's feelings and so opts to return to the Dark Dimension to lead a band of rebels. This throws Stephen into a prolonged despair, moping around his house for a while including time to work off a standby fill-in issue featuring the couple that would otherwise no longer be useable in an emergency. (At seventeen pages it's also now too short as the series, and regular Marvel titles in general, had recently increased to twenty-two story pages, but this allows space for a longer framing sequence than usual.) He is then subject to an attack by D'Spayre that throws him into a succession of ever more bizarre realms in which first he died in the car crash and then he is just a fictional character in comics created by "Ted Tevoski" and "Les Tane". It's a crisis that also serves as an opportunity for Stephen to come to terms with his place in the universe and begin to move on. The final issue in the volume sees him back on form as he faces down three of Mordo's former demons who seek to invade the Sanctum Sanctorum under the guise of being a film crew for an interview conducted by Morganna. We get a recapping of the origin and also the potential starting of something as he and Morganna agree to start as friends and see how things develop.

There are a few other developments to the supporting cast with Wong given an ancestor in the form of Kan, a warrior monk whose actions in defeating the Wizard Kings have led to each successive generation of the family seeking to atone through serving mystics. The household staff is expanded with the introduction of neighbour Sara Wolfe who finds herself stuck in the house for a protracted period and ends up sorting out Stephen's bills, leading to her accepting the job of Business Manager and Social Secretary. She is the great-granddaughter of a Cheyenne shaman but her role in the series is limited to providing personal and business support, with the occasional humorous moment such as her attempts to declares items like Eye of Newt as a tax deductible expense. There is, however, a hint that something could develop between her and Wong in the long run.

Just occasionally there are unusual experiments in storytelling, with issue #53's summation of previous events being delivered by Gnit, an annoying beast that is literally the nightmare of Nightmare, who thus cannot dispose of it whilst his realm is threatened. It's a change from the usual dwelling upon a key character's thoughts and makes for a bit of comedy at an otherwise deeply serious time.

Beyond the inexplicable detour into the events of an old issue of Fantastic Four there are no individual issues in this volume that stand out as real stinkers. But as a whole it's just slow and stilted, showing how difficult it is to make this series exciting. It may avoid overusing the same villains again and again and it's not really retreading old ground but at the same time it all feels like it's going through the motions. All creators have their weaker moments and this is most definitely some of those.

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 Marvel Two-in-One volume 3

Essential Marvel Two-in-One volume 3 carries issues #53-77 and annuals #4-5. Most of the issues are written jointly by Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio with a few by one or the other solo; the last few are by Tom DeFalco with one of his plots scripted by David Michelinie. One annual is plotted by Allyn Brodsky and scripted by Michelinie, the other is both written and drawn by Alan Kupperberg. The other annual is drawn by Jim Craig and Bob Budiansky whilst the regular series art is mainly by a mixture of John Byrne, George Pérez, Chic Stone, Jerry Bingham and Ron Wilson, with individual issues by Michael Nasser, Frank Springer and Alan Kupperberg. And yes, a separate post is needed to carry some of the labels. Bonus material consists of a diagram of the Project Pegasus complex that originally appeared in issue #53 but is placed at the very end of the volume here.

Per the usual for team-up titles, here's the rundown on the titled guest stars in each issue:

53. Quasar
54. Deathlok
55. Giant-Man [formerly Black Goliath]
56. Thundra
57. Wundarr
58. Aquarian
Annual 4. Black Bolt
59. The Human Torch
60. Impossible Man
61. Starhawk
62. Moondragon
63. Warlock
64. Stingray
65. Triton
66. Scarlet Witch
67. Hyperion
68. Angel
69. Guardians of the Galaxy
70. ?
71. Mr. Fantastic
72. The Inhumans
73. Quasar
74. Puppet Master
Annual 5. Hulk
75. Avengers
76. Iceman
77. Man-Thing

This is very much a list drawn from the obscure end of the Marvel universe, even if there are some big name exceptions including Marvel's then biggest TV star on a tour of guest appearances. But ever more so the series is a Thing solo title with guest stars rather than a genuine series with two heroes in one book. Indeed such is the dominance that issue #70 doesn't actually have a guest star, with a question mark on the cover and the nearest to fulfilling the role being the Yancy Street Gang who only show up for a few pages at the end.

Storywise we have a mixture of one-off issues with a guest star of the month and longer multi-part sagas that bring together a variety of heroes and even villains in rotation. One such example comes in the first six issues which comprise "The Pegasus Project" saga. This story sees Ben going to join the security service at the energy research facility and getting caught up in a multi-facetted plot undertaken by Dr Thomas Lightner, the younger half of Blacksun. Also working at the centre are Quasar and Black Goliath, the latter of whom is persuaded to change his name to "Giant-Man". (It takes Ben to point out that "Goliath" was a bad man and, more obviously, that it's clear he's black so there's no need to say it, in a subtle mini-backlash at the 1970s trend for giving numerous black heroes and villains the prefix "Black" in their name to the point that even the pre-existing Aquaman foe Black Manta was revealed as black.) The storyline manages to juggle in extra co-stars through a combination of occasionally giving the villain second billing and by building up the character of Wundarr to the point where he's transformed into the powerful, but about a decade out of date, hippie Aquarian. In general the individual chapters in the saga manage to bring enough diversity to keep them interesting but overall the story seems a little loose because Wundarr/Aquarian is rather detached from the rest of the events until the climax whilst the overall plot to sabotage and destroy the facility is somewhat pedestrian in its execution, even though it's at the behest of Roxxon, the regular Dastardly Evil Corporation, who want to maintain an energy monopoly. At the time the story was originally published the oil crisis was at its height so the story may have had more impact at the time, but nowadays the public focus in energy research is more on cutting emissions than replacing oil and so some of the impact is lost.

Another mini-epic sees the Thing and Starhawk first fight and then ally with "Her", formerly Paragon, and Moondragon as Her is on a quest to find the body of Adam Warlock. The story even resurrects Warlock's body, though not his soul, and also wraps up several loose ends from Warlock's adventures such as the real reason why he had expanded in size to the point where the Earth was smaller than his fingernail, how he soon shrank down, why the Soul Gem only began stealing souls when it did (and, implicitly, just why only one of the six Soul Gems had been seen to work on souls; however in the 1990s the point was solved by renaming them the Infinity Gems), the fate of Counter-Earth and the final encounter between Warlock and the High Evolutionary which was only predicted and never previously shown. The story also introduces an alien race headed by Sphinxor who are moving planets on behalf of the unseen powerful entities known as "the Beyonders" - that name being used four years before Secret Wars. Fortunately all the revelations are confined to a single issue but I wonder what Marvel Two-in-One readers who had never followed Warlock's adventures made of such a continuity heavy issue. The earlier issues are, fortunately, structured in such a way that readers less familiar with Her or Starhawk or Moondragon can share Ben's discovery whilst those who had read their past adventures can enjoy the story on a different level as it tidies up continuity. This tale was left out of Essential Warlock volume 1 and earlier reprintings of Warlock's saga, perhaps because of space, perhaps because only the third issue is directly relevant, but it doesn't feel a great loss and in any case the original publication was about three or four years after that series had ended.

Lurking in the story is Starhawk of the Guardians of the Galaxy, alongside his wife Aleta who has been merged with him, but there isn't too much more revealed about them. The whole team of Guardians appears in a later issue as Major Vance Astro tracks down his younger self, in the hope of convincing him to not become an astronaut and thus get trapped in space for a millennium. As we saw in the last volume, Ben is all too aware of how futile this can be, but the Major wants to at least spare one incarnation and succeeds, albeit at the cost of triggering his younger counterpart's mutant telekinetic powers. In later years the younger Vance would go on to be variously the Thing's sidekick, a founder member of the New Warriors and an Avenger but there's only a slight hint of all at that here.

The other epic in the volume is "The Serpent Crown Affair" in which the president of Roxxon seeks to acquire two parallel universe versions of the Serpent Crown and take over the country. It's a relatively tame story that only comes together in the third and final part and is also interrupted by other plot threads such featuring the likes of Thundra and Hyperion or the plight of the Hydro-Men, humans mutated into amphibians. Consequently this team-up with Stingray, Triton and, later on, the Scarlet Witch, feels rather slight and inconsequential even though it once more plays a role in tying up past continuity. Sub-plots in these issues later blossom out as Thundra finds herself teamed with Hyperion (of the Squadron Sinister) and steals an "Nth-Projector" in the hope of travelling to an alternate version of her world which has survived. Meanwhile the plight of the Hydro-Men is followed up in a later two-parter where Mr. Fantastic undertakes the research to produce a cure whilst Ben, some of the Inhumans and Stingray play games and get caught in a plot by the mysterious Maelstrom to steal the chemical that will reverse the effects of the Inhumans' Terrigan Mists that grant them their powers. Another issue follows up on the "Nth-Projector" and Roxxon as the Thing and Quasar travel to a world where dinosaurs and cavemen exist side by side and where the corporation is tapping a new supply of oil.

This attention to detail with plots and ideas flowing from one issue to another helps to make the bulk of these issues a strong coherent whole and it's easy to see why many consider this to be the golden age of the series. However there are still low points, particularly with the two annuals that are equally forgettable. One of them is a mundane team-up with Black Bolt of the Inhumans to take on a power enhanced Graviton. The other sees the Stranger bring together the Thing and the Hulk, the latter at the height of his fame due to the television series, in order to save the universe from the Greek god Pluto. (Surely he should be called "Hades"? All the other Greek gods are depicted with their Greek not Roman names.) Neither are good examples of the series as a whole, just random team-ups.

The regular issues have a mixture of returning and new foes, with first appearances by a number of them starting with the Grapplers, a group of female wrestlers. Consisting of Titania (a name used by a number of different characters over the years), Letha, Poundcakes and Screaming Mimi, now best known as Songbird. Then there are the Serpent Squad, initially consisting of Sidewinder, Anaconda, Black Mamba and Death Adder. Or there's  Maelstrom's and his minions Gronk, Helio, Phobius and, seemingly more powerful than any of the others, Deathurge. Making their first appearances here after featuring in other series are a number of foes. Naturally a good number were originally seen in Fantastic Four, such as Klaw, the Terrible Trio, consisting of Bull Brogin, "Handsome" Harry Phillips and Yogi Dakor, or the ex-minions of the Pyscho-Man Shellshock and Live Wire. A trip into the Negative Zone brings the first encounter between Blastaar and Annihilus. Coming from other series are Nuklo, previously seen in Avengers, Solarr, who first appeared in Captain America, the Toad, hailing from X-Men, and the Super-Adaptoid who debuted in Captain America's strip in Tales to Astonish. And it seems no Marvel series would be complete without the Circus of Crime, first seen in this incarnation in the early days of the Incredible Hulk but they've since been retconned as the successors to a group first seen in the 1940s Captain America Comics. Indeed it may be their appearance here that first makes that connection. Not all issues have a clear foe with some instead presenting a problem, such as the one where the Thing and the Human Torch have to mop up after a man determined to live out all his childhood goals before he turns 30. Elsewhere a test flight goes wrong and Ben crashes in the Man-Thing's swamp where he dreams of working with Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos during the Second World War - a surprising reference for 1981 as it would make Ben considerably older than he's normally portrayed as.

Also developed well is Ben's relationship with Alicia as he gets more concerned about the danger to her, resulting in a temporary break-up and then after reconciliation she agrees to move into the safer confines of the Baxter Building. Issue #74 is a Christmas special in which her stepfather the Puppet Master is released from prison and manipulates Ben and Alicia into taking him to a new supply of radioactive clay to make his puppets from; however after an encounter with Modred, whose mind has regressed to childhood, the Puppet Master sees the error of his ways and seeks to reform.

By now this series is firing on all pistons though at times the guest stars are either interchangeable or simply superfluous, leaving the book as very much the Thing's show. There are no issues where he's temporarily replaced by another big name hero, which is more than can be said for Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up, and instead we get a strong string of adventures that flow well from one to the next. There's a clear desire to tidy continuity in some of Mark Gruenwald's co-authored stories but apart from the Warlock issue it never feels as though the series has been hijacked just to address obscure points. Instead we get a solid run of one good Thing after another.

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 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.

Essential Marvel Team-Up volume 3

Now we come now to the third volume of Essential Marvel Team-Up, containing issues #52-73 & #75, plus Annual #1. Note that issue #74 is omitted due to the guest-stars being the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players from Saturday Night Live, and Marvel presumably no longer has the rights to publish them. As bonus material we get Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for the Black Widow, Captain Britain, Havok, the Living Monolith, the Silver Samurai and the Stranger, plus a gallery of covers from Marvel Tales #193-199, #201-207, #235-236, #255 & #262-263, all of which reprinted stories contained in this volume (some with new covers, some with the originals) plus Giant-Size Spider-Man #1, presumably because the cover states “...in the tradition of our smash-hit Marvel Team-Up mag!” The entries and covers are interesting to see but I suspect they’re only here because the volume was initially prepared to include issue #74 and by the time it was discovered unavailable the page count had already been committed to, requiring filler material.

This run includes the last few issues of Bill Mantlo’s run on the book, though he returns even here for a fill-in, and then the bulk of the volume is written by Chris Claremont. Whereas Mantlo, Gerry Conway and Len Wein have all had notable runs on other Spider-Man titles this is Claremont’s only significant work with Spider-Man. In addition we get a few fill-in issues by both familiar hands like Mantlo and Conway, and new writers Gary Friedrich (his only credit on a core Spider-Man title) and Bill Kunkel (one of only two credits, the other’s a later issue of Team-Up), plus Ralph Macchio scripting one of Claremont’s plots, clocking up a rare writers’ credit (though in the late 1990s he edited the core titles) and the annual is plotted by Claremont and his then-wife Bonnie Wilford, and scripted by Mantlo. The art is mainly by Sal Buscema and John Byrne, the latter doing his very first work on the character, with three fill-in issues by Dave Wenzel, Jim Mooney and Kerry Gammill.

Here’s the by now familiar run down of the stars of each issue.

52. Spider-Man and Captain America
Annual 1. Spider-Man and the X-Men
53. Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (and Woodgod)
54. Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (and Woodgod)
55. Spider-Man and Warlock
56. Spider-Man and Daredevil
57. Spider-Man and the Black Widow
58. Spider-Man and Ghost Rider
59. Spider-Man and Yellowjacket and the Wasp
60. Spider-Man and the Wasp
61. Spider-Man and the Human Torch
62. Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel
63. Spider-Man and Iron Fist
64. Spider-Man and the Daughters of the Dragon
65. Spider-Man and Captain Britain
66. Spider-Man and Captain Britain
67. Spider-Man and Tigra
68. Spider-Man and the Man-Thing
69. Spider-Man and Havok
70. Spider-Man and Thor
71. Spider-Man and Falcon
72. Spider-Man and Iron Man
73. Spider-Man and Daredevil
75. Spider-Man and Power Man

Note also that unlike the previous Essential volumes there are no issues without Spider-Man. Giant-Size Spider-Man was long over and, as I discussed in my review of Essential Spider-Man 8, this was a period when earlier restraints on using the character were being eased, with a third regular series launched plus new stories in the annuals, crossovers with other titles and so forth (and also a live-action TV series). Spider-Man was becoming ever more a phenomenon, but with that could come the risk of over-exposure and stilted development due to separate writers. However at this stage there doesn’t seem to be much impact on Team-Up, perhaps because the general format left it mostly immune.

However there are several multiple part stories, including a mini-epic as Spider-Man is transported first to the Nevada desert, then to New Mexico and finally to the Moon in a succession of tales as he joins with the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, the mysterious Woodgod and finally Adam Warlock. Woodgod is almost the only one of the characters in this run whom I didn’t recognise, either from the earlier Team-Up issues or from being big name Marvel stars (or usually both). The only other ones are the Daughters of the Dragon (apparently their appearance here was the first time they were billed under that title; more normally they are part of Iron Fist’s supporting cast). Woodgod is especially confusing as I don’t really understand what “Scream” is or know his origin to get the various references to it. Also a little confusing is the team-up with Captain America which is an epilogue to a storyline in his own title that saw Cap and the Falcon battle monsters in another dimension, and now return home. It’s at once both a fill-in issue and an intrusion from another title (and curiously the author, Gerry Conway, wasn’t writing Captain America at the time – it was Jack Kirby’s last run on the series).

The other multi-parters demonstrate another formulaic feature whereby the banner guest star in the first issue is usually incapacitated for the bulk of the second issue, sometimes with their fate as a driving element of the plot either to motivate characters to save them (as with Havok or Iron First) or to motivate other characters to act out of revenge (as with Yellowjacket’s seeming death spurring on the Wasp). A notable exception is the two-parter with Captain Britain. Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe had created the character for Marvel UK the previous year and with this story they unleashed him onto the American stage. I assume Marvel UK didn’t have much Stateside distribution back then as the first part is an extended scene setter that devotes no less than four of the seventeen pages available to telling his origin. Unfortunately the actual threat in the story just doesn’t seem an appropriate vehicle for introducing such a character as we get a second part in which Spidey and Captain Britain fight their way through new villain Arcade’s giant fun house.

The Captain Britain two-parter also brings up one of the bigger clichés of comics that is a bugbear of mine whereby heroes and their alternative identities both show up in strange cities and countries without everyone deducing their alter egos. True on this occasion Spider-Man does rapidly realise that Captain Britain is Peter Parker’s temporary roommate Brian Braddock, but others don’t, despite the fact that the Maggia have Braddock on their long list of fifty suspects and hire Arcade to kill him just in case, who instead goes for the real thing. Just to add to the risk, Brian/Captain Britain’s girlfriend Courtney Ross has been captured and brought to the United States without the connection leaping out to her or others. Now it’s true this is a limitation of the medium as readers want to see the familiar heroes in action in their usual costumes, which probably rules out the otherwise obvious solution of having an “away” identity with a different costume and different emphasis on the powers to limit the risk, but within the narrative it’s never really properly addressed one way or another.

There are, however, occasional exceptions such as Spider-Man and the X-Men’s adventure in Nevada in the Annual, where at the end Professor X uses his powers to block the memories of the civilians and thus preserve everyone’s identities. It does, however, see a little clanger where Spider-Man talks too freely in front of the X-Men about his problems explaining his sudden absences to Mary Jane Watson. Okay Professor X himself is a powerful telepath and probably already knows Spider-Man’s identity (and just about everything else) by default, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s shared the information with the other X-Men and I would expect Spidey to be more careful than to give his girlfriend’s name away. However what slips on the one part is made up in another as we get what I think is the first ever explicit confirmation that Daredevil is able to identity Spider-Man out of costume by recognising his heartbeat, even if on this occasion he has to rush out before discovering Spidey’s civilian name. It’s a point that later writers would return to.

Another point I found familiar in a different sense was the large number of times Spider-Man explicitly remembers the death of Gwen Stacy once Chris Claremont takes over the writing. Readers of Claremont’s later X-Men work (and/or John Byrne’s latter day criticisms of Claremont – see for instance Byrne Robotics : FAQ : What’s the story behind the return of Jean Grey?) will be aware that after Jean Grey/Phoenix was killed off she was repeatedly referenced and remembered by the characters, to the point where it went beyond natural grief. In general up to now the Spider-Man comics had avoided excessive references to Gwen, other than when the story specifically called for it (for instance the Clone Saga or the various returns of the Green Goblin) so the sudden increase in casual references really stand out as an exceptional turn. Chris Claremont is probably the Team-Up writer with the longest run who has never worked regularly on the other Spider-Man titles and so one can only but speculate as to what he might have done had he had the chance to write one of them, especially given how successful the X-Men became on his watch. Would he have turned in an equally memorable run? Or would it have been another example of an-otherwise comics legend coming unstuck and turning in a run that everybody just couldn’t wait to finish? Or would it have been somewhere in between, perhaps limited by the strains of multiple titles, multiple authors and not always sympathetic editors? We’ll probably never know.

However we have had the opportunity of seeing both Sal Buscema and John Byrne draw Spider-Man many more times over the years and can compare their work. Buscema may have been limited here by being a fill-in king with all the problems that rush jobs can bring but it’s certainly competent and more than holds its own. John Byrne’s contributions are all in the regular assignment category and we’re looking at work very early in his career, before he became a bankable name on first the X-Men and then the Fantastic Four. Here he contributes both a dynamism and a quick handling on the rotating guest-stars and this makes the action stand out.

Overall this third volume of Marvel Team-Up shows a title that by this stage had settled down into a stable format. As ever it wasn’t the place for major advancements in Spider-Man’s life, though some of the guest stars do have their own developments such as Adam Warlock reversing the curse of his body having grown so much due to the universe expanding at different rates that he dwarfed the Earth, or the Man-Thing being restored to freedom after the events at the end of his first series. We also get a few further developments of other characters, such as Jean DeWolff, who is at this stage probably the nearest thing the series has to a specific supporting cast. But, as ever, the purpose of Marvel Team-Up was to showcase Spider-Man with other heroes and take him to places he would or could never go to in his regular titles. Indeed considering the many intense events in those books during this period (the issues here are parallel to Amazing #163-186 and Spectacular #1-24) Team-Up offers a welcome respite, a chance to enjoy a different style of adventure and a tour round very diverse parts of the Marvel Universe. It meets those aims extremely well.