Essential Fantastic Four volume 7 - creator labels

Once again we have a volume with lots of creators so here's an extra post to carry the labels for some of them.

Essential Fantastic Four volume 6

Essential Fantastic Four volume 6 contains issues #111 to #137. Bonus material includes the cover of the reprint Marvel Treasury Edition #21 and early versions of the covers for issue #130 & #131. The writing starts off with the tail end of Stan Lee's run with a brief interregnum by Archie Goodwin before runs by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway. Most of the art is by John Buscema with individual issues by Ross Andru and Ramona Fradon.

This volume sees the final regular work on the series by Stan Lee but it's a somewhat stunted exit. His continuous run ends at issue #114 midway through the Over-Mind story with issue #115 being scripted over a Lee plot. Then after a very brief run by Archie Goodwin there's an issue by Roy Thomas that seems to be the start of his run, only for Lee to return for another six issues to produce sequels to one of the best known stories and one of the least known. It's all rather tame for the ending of the last of the Four's creators. This volume shows the series in the early years of the 1970s when the onus was on the book to find a way forward in the new decade rather than simply rehashing old glories. It also had to demonstrate it could survive without either of the creators though there's an element of the original run remaining in the form of inker Joe Sinnott.

What is particularly noticeable throughout the volume is an increase in the soap opera element of the series with concerted attempts to not just retell the same old stories but to also move forward. Ben and Alicia may still remain an item throughout, but Reed and Sue's marriage reaches such strains from his overprotective attitude that midway through she leaves him, taking Franklin with her. Later she's inadvertently reunited with the others due to Dragon Man kidnapping her and Franklin on the orders of Gregory Gideon, but Reed is knocked unconscious and Sue refuses to stay around until he recovers, lest it causes more problems. The word "divorce" may not appear but it's a pretty bold for the series to take two people who at this time are not just the leading couple of the Fantastic Four but the first couple of the whole Marvel universe and risk breaking them up for good. It's clear that Sue and Reed still mean a huge amount to each other, with Sue shown thoughtful and pensive in every glimpse of her during her time away whilst Reed takes the loss badly and is almost permanently saddened by it all. But it's also a move that exposes the risks of having too much soap opera in a title that is still nominally aimed at children, even though a good chunk of the readership was now growing up with the title. Here comes the clash of realism and escapism. Relationships fail. Marriages don't always last. Parents do split up. Some children have never known their parents to be together (Franklin looks young enough to fit this). All these are clearly true and a part of modern day life. But does that make it wise to explore them in escapist literature? It's easy to see why some readers were alienated at the time - future FF writer Mark Waid has spoken of how close to home this hit. I'm lucky in that I've never experienced this myself but within this volume at least it feels like a souring of the fairy tale of Reed and Sue. The volume ends with them still apart so there's no great triumph of hope or attempt to show there is light for children in the same position as Franklin.

Also broken up in this volume, though it's not as advanced, is the relationship between Johnny and Crystal. She has been back amongst the Inhumans for some time now due to her lack of immunities, but is briefly reunited with the others when Diablo uses her to pose as a goddess to conquer a Latin American country, Terra Verde, but it's only a brief reunion as she must soon return home. When Johnny eventually tracks her down to the Great Refuge he discovers that she has since met Quicksilver and fallen for him. Johnny's initial reaction is anger and fury but after he and Quicksilver have been forced to work together to save Crystal's life he takes her final decision calmly in a strong scene that shows how he has matured from his days as a young hot head. Also underlining how things are moving on is a scene where he tracks down his old girlfriend Dorrie Evans in the hope of resuming things, only to discover that she is now married and has two children. It's all a reminder of how life marches on and people are not like toys who can simply be put down and picked up from the same spot years later.

Ben starts the volume having stormed out in anger having seemingly had his personality altered by the latest attempt to restore him to human form. For a time he can change back and forth at will, but after the process is reversed by Reed with the intention of getting it right this time, Ben instead smashes the machinery and stays in his monster form, perhaps having decided he prefers this form as it is accepted by Alicia. A brief visit to a parallel universe reinforces the situation for him as he sees a world where it was Reed and not him who became the Thing and is even lonelier. The Four gain a new member for the time being in the form of Medusa, who takes Sue's place on the team and quickly slots in with her power to manipulate her hair proving a more visually noticeable power than invisibility. There's clearly a period of unseen time in which she trains with the others so that they're often able to co-ordinate with one another at critical moments.

On a more mundane level is the ongoing conflict with Walter Collins, the owner of the Baxter Building who is getting ever more angry with the Four's activities and the dangers and damage that they attract. He keeps threatening eviction but the Four repeatedly evade his attempts to serve notice on them, often with humorous results.

As for the adventuring, there's some revisiting of old themes but time and again they feel like diminished remixes of former glories. Early on we get another fight between the Thing and the Hulk but it isn't as spectacular as before. Stan Lee's great final epic is another Galactus story which this time features his new herald, the angel-like android Gabriel the Air-Walker. The Silver Surfer is also involved in what feels like an attempt to have the final word on Galactus but when the main battle comes in an amusement park it's all too clear how far the ambitions of the series have fallen. Lee's final story sees the return of the mysterious Monster from the Lost Lagoon but again it's a morality tale about not judging by appearances. It feels a very strange ending for his writing.

The first issue after the very final Lee one sees a retelling of the Four's origin, leading into another confrontation with the Mole Man who has now subdued and enslaved his rival Tyrannus. It's a rare attempt to give the Mole Man a more humane side with a partner, Kala, but she turns out to have her own plans. The Frightful Four return with a new fourth member in the form of the warrior woman Thundra, who twice proves a match for the Thing. Another Inhumans storyline seems to be breaking beyond tradition and offering a new menace in the form of an uprising by the Alpha Primitives of the Great Refuge, with their guilt powering the android Omega, but the whole thing falls down with the revelation that Omega was created by Maximus. Is it not possible to tell another type of Inhumans story? One of the more surprising returns is the businessman Gregory Gideon who is now dying of radiation poisoning and seeking a radical cure for both him and his son, utilising the android Dragon Man to capture the Four. A more curious tale comes in the aftermath as one of Gideon's subordinates is empowered by first an energy wave and then by the Shaper of Worlds from the Incredible Hulk. Slugger Johnson's imagination feeds the Shaper who transforms the world into a bizarre version of 1950s culture and politics with the Four split up amongst the various factions in this strange new world.

The big new foe of the volume is the Overmind, whose mental powers steadily take control of many figures of authority in order to undermine the Fantastic Four and conquer first the planet and then the whole universe. At one point even Reed succumbs to the control of the Overmind and the rest of the Four are left searching for another brilliant mind to fight him with. They find it in the form of Doctor Doom, making for a memorable extra sized issue which also supplies this volume's cover.

One of the more politicised stories comes in issue #119 as Ben and Johnny go to the fictional African country of Rudyarda to rescue T'Challa, who has briefly adopted the name of "Black Leopard" due to the political connotations of the name "Black Panther". Rudyarda itself is a thinly disguised blend of South Africa and Rhodesia - fictional parodies from this era often did not stop to separate out the two countries - where they clash with Klaw. But the real villain is not the master of sound but the country's racial segregation, shown starkly. The story ends with a message of hope as the three face the separate exits to the prison and Ben simply tears down the wall so all three can walk over the signs together, in a moment that seems to have impacted on the prison guards. It's certainly a bold story for its era but it shies away from explaining just why the Four aren't stopping to overthrow the entire system of apartheid.

Overall this volume shows some signs of promise but not many. There's too much willingness to wallow in concepts from the Lee-Kirby run with both Lee himself and other writers at times presenting almost reruns of old stories instead of trying to take them forward. On the other hand there's a real conscious effort to move the characters forward even though the decision to push Reed and Sue's marriage into separation is somewhat questionable given both their status as Marvel's first couple and the traditional target audience in this era. Still the volume shows the series trying to haul its way forward into a new era and for that it must be commended.

Essential Iron Man volume 4

Essential Iron Man volume 4 consists of issues #39 to #61 including a back-up in issue #44 featuring Ant-Man. The writing sees runs by Gerry Conway and Mike Friedrich plus other issues by Robert Kanigher, Gary Friedrich, Roy Thomas, Jim Starlin and Steve Gerber. Most of the art is by George Tuska with other contributions by Herb Trimpe, Barry Windsor-Smith and Jim Starlin. The Ant-Man tale is written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Ross Andru.

This volume comes from the early 1970s and sees a slow attempt to update the character at a time when real life events had made arms manufacturers not particularly popular in the States. At the same time it also tries to modernise the portrayal of some of the characters and roles, with the most notable success being Pepper Hogan who returns to her old job position but is now much more a strong executive assistant rather than the simple typist, telephone answerer and diary keeper she had been in earlier years. On multiple occasions the factory is surrounded by protestors, whether students protesting the manufacturing of weapons or the workers out on strike due to devious propaganda, and eventually this leads Tony to start diversifying the output. However it takes a while to assert full control.

The early issues see Tony facing a challenge in the boardroom as Simon Gilbert, the chairperson of the board of Stark Industries, tries to have Tony removed as president of the company, only to be threatened with his own removal as chairperson by Tony. The problem with this kind of corporate drama is that it relies on the reader having a clear knowledge of the basics of corporate governance in order to understand how such power is wielded when Tony holds the majority of shares. Boardroom drama can be exciting when the threat is obvious and the resolution dramatic but here it descends into two men in suits each trying to remove the other through the exercise of some undefined power or other. Eventually Tony succeeds in the boardroom leading to Gilbert hiring the Firebrand to blow up a munitions plant, only to die in the explosion himself. The Firebrand is revealed to be Gilbert's son, adding a new level to his enmity with Iron Man.

There's a protracted storyline involving Tony's engineer and friend Kevin O'Brien who adopts the Guardsman armour to protect Stark Industries but inexperience and paranoia overwhelm him, not helped by his jealousy of Tony over Marianne Rodgers. Partially egged on by Gilbert and other board members, Kevin winds up facing a group of students protesting over arms manufacturing and deploys his repulsors on them, apparently killing four of them. (We're subsequently told they were only injured but as it comes solely via dialogue and captions it feels like emergency editing to tone down the storyline.) This leads to a confrontation between Iron Man and the Guardsman over their respective methods and ends in tragedy when Kevin is caught in a tank explosion. The funeral leads to soul-searching on Tony's part and triggers an issue mainly devoted to recounting the origin, which also supplies the cover, used for the volume as a whole.

Marianne Rodgers is probably the best woman that Tony's yet been involved with. She has a degree of Extra Sensory Perception that leads her to heightened concern for Tony, and also leads her to realise that he and Iron Man are one and the same, but contrary to his long standing fears she doesn't reject them. Instead they grow ever closer, to Kevin's disappointment, and soon get engaged. However her ESP leads her to visions of Iron Man's doom if she stays with him and after a battle with the Super-Adaptoid that leaves Tony desperate for help in recharging his power, Marianne instead deserts him. When the final confrontation comes with the Adaptoid in its new form of the Cyborg Sinister, rebuilt by Tyrr and Jarr from a microworld called Bast, Iron Man ultimately defeats the prophecy by overwhelming it with acid and then destroying it but trust has broken down between Tony and Marianne, leading them to call off the engagement. Marianne goes off to work but finds her ESP wreaks havoc in the workplace and she is subsequently hospitalised. Meanwhile Pepper Hogan returns to Tony's life when she accepts once more the job of his personal secretary but amidst the jet setting it becomes clear Tony still has feelings for her even though she is now married. Meanwhile Happy Hogan is getting more and more jealous of the situation, especially when the newspapers start assuming Tony and Pepper are an item, and soon announces he is leaving by means of a telegram.

The early part of the volume sees a string of incredibly forgettable foes, whether introduced here or reused from another series. Those in the former category include the White Dragon, a Chinese scientist and inventor with troops who feels all too like a Mandarin knock off, the Slasher and Demitrius, a pair in silly costumes, Mikas the Soulfather, an android with ESP powers who believes himself to be an all powerful mutant, a robot copy of the Night Phantom, Raga, the "Son of Fire", a cult leader with the ability to control flames, and his teacher, the Black Lama. There's also an encounter with Princess Python, temporarily solo from the Circus of Crime, and her pet snake Precious. All in all it's a very dull set, made worse by several being agents of the mysterious "Mr Kline", who also appears in the contemporary Daredevil. Unfortunately that seems to be the main place for explaining and dealing with him, with the result that in this volume he's just a shadowy figure responsible for some events but ultimately left unexplained.

Towards the end we get two issues that have the biggest impact on long term Marvel continuity although their impact on Iron Man is rather less. Issue #54 sees the introduction of the space travelling Madame MacEvil, later better known as Moondragon, who takes control of Iron Man's armour remotely and pits him against Sub-Mariner as part of scientific investigations into human hybrids. She's the kind of character who appears to have a large unrevealed backstory that explains her actions but all we get here is an amoral scientist who swears vengeance when her plans come to nothing. The following issue is much better known as it sees the introduction of both Thanos and Drax the Destroyer. And also of the Blood Brothers but they don't get talked about so much. The issue debuts a powerful alien conqueror foe with a strong backstory and a pre-existing nemesis, making for a memorable confrontation and it's hard to deny the significance of this issue given that Thanos has been incredibly successful for Marvel in the long run. The tale as a single piece is quite strong and leaves the reader wanting more. But, as is often the case with big cosmic events and particular those involving Thanos, the host title can wind up feeling a rather odd place for the event. Iron Man does not generally get caught up in interplanetary conflict and this story would probably be more at home in Fantastic Four or Thor or Avengers. And when read with the issues around it, it feels like part of a general ream of randomness near the end of this volume as the writers struggle to find a new direction and purpose for the title.

As they search we get an odd confrontation with the "menace" of Rasputin, a magician with poor powers who brings a statue to life. Then we get a strange tale that starts off with the Mandarin in disguise fomenting unrest amongst the Stark Industries workforce but which diverts into a tale of a search for new power rings and sees the Mandarin and Unicorn temporarily swap bodies. There's a return by a vengeance seeking Firebrand and then finally a clash with Daredevil's old foe the Masked Marauder. None of these tales feels in any way spectacular and the result is just a drudge through the end of the volume.

There are some signs of further developments for Tony with the situation of him crawling away from a successful fight in search of a power recharge now starting to get tired (though read in an era of fast draining smartphones it feels even more familiar now than over forty years ago), and towards the end there are signs that he is increasingly able to survive for periods without a functioning chest plate pacemaker, suggesting that his transplanted heart is finally being accepted by his body. I have no idea how scientifically plausible this scenario is, but the signs are encouraging that Tony is finally conquering his main physical weakness and showing hope for the future in spite of the stunted series around him.

One possibility for diversifying things up a bit would have been to introduce a back-up strip featuring a second hero, as happened in a number of other comics at this time, though mainly over at DC. Issues #43 & #44 contain first an Ant-Man reprint and then an original tale respectively at a time when Marvel expanded the size and cost of the comics, only to contract them back after a couple of months. The original tale is included here but it's a rather forgettable piece of a sweet shop owner attempting an insurance scam through arson whilst Hank Pym encounters the intelligent Scarlet Beetle once more, with his foe coming to an extremely undignified end. It doesn't leave the reader desperate for a regular series of Ant-Man back-ups and suggests the subsequent reversion to normal sized issues was wise and Marvel heroes don't generally prosper when hiding in the back of others' titles.

In general this is a rather slight and disappointing volume. In spite of the ongoing threads involving Marianne Rodgers, Simon Gilbert, Kevin O'Brien or Mr Kline, overall the whole thing feels slow and disjointed. The first half or so of the volume does make an effort to find a direction and stick with it even though it's not the most exciting thing, but the latter half shows a series just floundering about and trying all manner of situations and foes in the hope that something will eventually stick. This is not the series at its best.

Essential Werewolf by Night volume 1 - creator labels

Once more we come across a volume with many creators, so here is the usual separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

Showcase Presents The Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups volume 1

For a special Christmas post I have decided to take a look at things over at the Distinguished Competition.

DC was initially sceptical about the Essential format but eventually in 2005 they decided to launch their own series of black & white sequential reprints on cheap paper under the title "Showcase Presents", recalling one of their classic series. The volumes are much the same as the Essentials albeit with a different cover design which seems to have influenced Marvel for its third cover format. Also Showcase Presents volumes have page numbers. But most significantly they're willing to jump about a bit more and collect material related to characters in a way few Essentials do (Essential Punisher volume 1 is a rare Marvel exception). DC have rapidly produced a very diverse set of volumes covering material from the Silver Age to the Modern Age.

Showcase Presents The Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups volume 1 pretty much does what it says on the tin. The Brave and the Bold had been first an anthology series and then a try-out book, which launched many characters and series including the Suicide Squad, the Justice League of America, the Silver Age Hawkman, the Teen Titans and Metamorpho. From issue #50 it became a team-up book, and then Batman gradually dominated until he was a permanent fixture from issue #74 onwards. This volume contains the Batman team-ups from issues #59, #64, #67-71 & #74-87. Everything is credited as written by Bob Haney apart from #87 by Mike Sekowsky. The art is by a mixture of Sekowsky, Neal Adams, Ross Andru, Win Mortimer and single issues by Ramona Fradon, Carmine Infantino, Johnny Craig, George Papp and Bob Brown. At least that's what the contents page says - this was an era when DC did not routinely credit its creators and so for many issues the credits have had to be constructed from incomplete records and guesswork.

The book was bimonthly and this volume covers the years from 1965 through to 1970, matching the rise and fall of Batmania thanks to the Batman TV series. In turn the three Showcase Presents volumes of the series so far saw print in the two years leading up to the launch of the cartoon Batman: The Brave and the Bold which drew its concept from here.

Who are the actual guest stars? Here's the list. Where relevant the characters are the Silver Age/Earth 1 versions (ignoring continuity issues that I'll discuss later).

59. Green Lantern
64. Eclipso
67. Flash
68. Metamorpho
69. Green Lantern
70. Hawkman
71. Green Arrow
74. Metal Men
75. Spectre
76. Plastic Man
77. Atom
78. Wonder Woman plus Batgirl
79. Deadman
80. Creeper
81. Flash
82. Aquaman
83. Teen Titans (consisting of Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl and Speedy)
84. Sgt. Rock
85. Green Arrow
86. Deadman
87. Wonder Woman

We have a broadly equal mix between the big name heroes of the day and the less well known. The biggest name missing is Superman, but that's because he and Batman had their own ongoing "buddy book" World's Finest. Otherwise amongst the Justice League's biggest names the only obvious absentee is the Martian Manhunter.

Note that although the concept of multiple Earths with different heroes of different origins had been established by this time, none of the stories invokes it. Consequently the Spectre and Plastic Man seen here must be either the best known versions from other Earths visiting Earth 1 without mentioning it or else they're little-known Earth 1 identical counterparts of those versions. (Or there's a more convoluted explanation to be found in later issues and/or guides.) The limited attention to continuity is on display in almost the first panel when Bruce Wayne thinks about how he's alone because Dick is on a school trip (later on there's regular reference to his being off with the Teen Titans as a way to keep him out of the stories) and Alfred is on vacation. Except that this issue came out at a time when Alfred had been seemingly killed off (he was subsequently revived, thanks to his inclusion in the television series) and also now living in the mansion was Dick's Aunt Harriet (who is quite famous from the television series but her somewhat different comic incarnation is one of the most forgotten of all Batman supporting characters). In itself this is a tiny thing but it shows a lax approach to continuity that would deliver some otherwise difficult to realise tales, but which would also cause no end of headscratching amongst fans. (On some other features it could be worse - the inclusion of Wonder Girl in the Teen Titans resulted in multiple retcons that tried to tidy up the problems this caused.) It's harder to spot continuity errors amongst the guest heroes, though the Metal Men's appearance in issue #74 has the oddity that Bob Haney's script only namechecks the traditional six members, and even gives that number in on panel, yet Ross Andru draws seven, including the little remembered "Nameless". Issue #84 makes perhaps the biggest assault on continuity through flashbacks to Bruce Wayne's work during the Second World War, showing him using the Batman identity twenty-five years earlier. Even in 1969 this made Batman much older than he is normally portrayed as (and I'm hard pressed to think of any actor who's played Batman in at least his mid forties bar Adam West returning to the role many years later in Legends of the Superheroes) and it I believe it had already been established he began his career much later, and it proves unnecessary as Sgt. Rock is shown alive and well in the present day, still serving in the US army, so there was no real need for a flashback to a wartime team-up. Especially as Rock and his Easy Company are rather incidental to the plot.

Covering a period of five years the series shows Batman in a period when he went from the height of the Campy Crusader of the mid-1960s to the re-emergence of the more serious Dark Knight at the end of the decade, though overall there's less variation in the character than one might expect. He may be the solid, serious know-it-all hero who can explain even the most obscure of information (such as what a hellgrammite is) similar to Adam West's portrayal but he doesn't veer off into self-parody or excessive silliness, with the exception of issue #68 when he's temporarily mutated into the "Bat-Hulk". Later on there are hints of the return towards the Dark Knight portrayal but the steps aren't too great. The arrival of Neal Adams on issue #79 sees the look of the series take a decisively darker edgier turn. By this point the Batman television series had been cancelled and Batman was now up for redefinition, though his main changes for the 1970s wouldn't come until Adams joined Denny O'Neil on the main series. In addition this volume also shows snapshots of other heroes going through major changes in this period. The first team-up with Deadman comes as the ghost hunts for his killer; the second comes after his killer has been found and killed and now the ghost continues his existence without clear purpose. Wonder Woman's first appearance is with her traditional appearance, powers and role, but the second is from the "New Wonder Woman" era when she had become a non-powered trouser-suited martial artist adventurer. Meanwhile Green Arrow's second appearance brings with it a revised look, toughened up for the hard edge adventures he would go on to have with Green Lantern.

Throughout these issues it's surprising just how often Batman's secret identity (and sometimes the guest hero's as well) is discovered, and the steps taken to undo this. In the very first adventure the Time Commander uses his powers to discover it and subsequently tells Green Lantern, but the latter then uses his ring to purge the information from both their minds, referencing an agreement amongst the Justice League. However later on Batman and Hawkman are completely familiar with each other's identities, and work together to fool the Collector, millionaire Balthazar T. Balthazar, who has used a computer to discover Batman is Bruce Wayne and reinforced the evidence with x-rays. But in the process of disabusing him of the notion, the Collector stumbles across Hawkman's own identity as Carter Hall. After double layers of confusion the Collector is left believing Hawkman is in fact an alien called Krog from the planet Mynos, whilst Batman is an ex-criminal who changed his name. Although not explicitly covered here, it would seem that at some stage the Justice League have agreed to share their identities since midway through the volume it becomes standard for Batman and his co-star to know who each other is. However this doesn't apply with some of the more detached characters such as the Creeper or for that matter Wonder Woman in her depowered days. In general Batman is already familiar with most of the characters he encounters, bar the really hard to interact with such as Deadman. An orphan boy living at stately Wayne Manor stumbles across the Batcave and immediately deduces its meaning. Orm the Ocean Master appears to know it when he sees Bruce Wayne apparently die and is subsequently surprised to see Batman is still alive. Later both Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen calmly tell mutual friend Edmond Cathcart their identities, rationalising that as a psychiatrist his professional oath will keep their secrets safe, and not anticipating the prospect that he might get captured, which he soon is. Fortunately they rescue him and the end of the issue sees him embark upon self-hypnosis to wipe the knowledge from his mind. I've no idea how reliable that is or just what the contemporary ethical opinion was.

The Justice League connection is the most common link that brings the guest stars into the story. Most adventures start off in Gotham City and on several occasions Batman calls in one of his fellow team members to provide specialised help. In general these are partnerships of equals with perhaps a little extra weight given to Batman as he's on his home turf, but there's no elevation of him to superstar status amongst the superhero community or grand clashes of egos. Rather the adventures take place on a more reasonable level.

The bulk of the foes seen in these adventures are unfamiliar to me. Most have been specifically created for these tales, and only a few would go on to appear elsewhere, though there are a handful who are drawn from the heroes' adventures. New foes include the likes of the Time Commander, Cosmo, the Queen Bee, the criminal organisation Cyclops, the Speed Boys, Balthazar T. Balthazar aka the Collector, ruthless businessman Tom Tallwolf, Dr. Daedalus, Shahn-Zi, the Molder and his Plastoids, the Cannoneer, Copperhead, the crimelord known as the King, the Hellgrammite, Carl Bork, oil thief Grantland Stark, Nazi war criminal Colonel Von Stauffen, businessman and crimelord  Miklos Minotaur and ruthless racing driver Willi Van Dort. There's also Lance Bruner, an orphan who Bruce Wayne's father agreed would be taken in at the manor in such circumstances but who turns out to have a criminal past. However when he sees Robin risk his life to save Batman, Lance has a change of heart and sacrifices his life to do the same. We're not shown how Bruce Wayne explained all this to the social worker. We get a few pre-existing foes such as Aquaman's enemy and brother, the Ocean Master, or Deadman's foes the Society of Assassins including their leader "Sensei". And we get a team of three of the best known of Batman's foes, the Riddler, the Penguin and the Joker.

In some places these tales do show their age. Issue #64 has an incredibly dated moment when Batman rescues a playgirl from risking her life needlessly and gives her a spanking for her actions. Despite this they become a brief item - yet another sign of a fast and loose approach to continuity, though this depiction of Batman is a far cry from the grim loner. Later on issue #78 sees Wonder Woman and Batgirl competing for Batman's affections and although it's only a ruse at first, the fact that such a contest could fool others says a lot about the way even two of DC's premiere female heroes are presented. And this only gets confirmed later in the story when they each briefly fall for Batman for real. However the portrayal of Native Americans in issue #71 is surprisingly more sophisticated than the norm, with little of the traditional broken English and a focus on a contest for the leadership of the tribe between two claimants who have both let the reservation and gone into white collar work. Elsewhere there are little nods to DC's main rivals - "Here's one I did before anybody, including a certain web-spinning Peter-come-lately!" declares Batman in issue #74 as he swings around a flagpole to hurl himself forward, taking a swipe at his rival in the process. It's a nice little aside that keeps the rivalry between companies playful.

Despite the apparent age of some of these stories, even more so than many contemporary Marvels, this is a petty good volume. Team-up titles are rarely the place to look for extensive character development but they offer a good chance to see two heroes working together on fairly equal terms and give an extensive tour of the many heroes of the DC universe. Batman may be reasonably restrained but he's nowhere near the grim brooding loner of later years and so it feels perfectly natural for him to be working with so many other heroes. This is the earliest team-up series featuring one regular character and a rotating second that I'm aware of, so here is the beginning of the path later followed by the likes of Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One and DC Comics Presents, let alone the fun animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

As for the Showcase Presents series in general, it's good to see the DC adopted the format and have run with it. Since Marvel began the Essentials nine years earlier it's unsurprising that by the time DC came along the basics had already been thrashed out such as using covers from the original comics, getting all the material in order, including annuals, and using a stirdy paper stock. The main areas where I think DC have done things sooner or better than Marvel is in using a cover design that leaves more space for the original artwork (although the yellow flash "Over 500 pages of comics" is annoying; fortunately that was later dropped) and in having individual page numbers which makes it easier to find a particular story; this is especially helpful when a volume is focused more on a character than on presenting a single series in sequential order. The Essentials have since adopted a similar cover design that shows more of the original artwork but not yet page numbers. We can only hope they one day do that as well.

Essential Classic X-Men volume 2

Although I'm mostly looking at the first volumes of various series at the moment, when the posts on a particular series prove especially popular I'll take a look at the next one in the series. It's no surprise which one is the most popular so far...

The X-Men's 1960s adventures continue in this second volume, which altered the title used for this particular Essential series but I detailed that last time. Essential Classic X-Men volume 2 contains X-Men #25 to #53, plus Avengers #53 which was the second half of a crossover. Bonus material includes a few unused covers - issue #33 went through a number of attempts before the final version, which is also used for the volume's cover.

Most of the writing, including the Avengers issue, is by Roy Thomas. Gary Friedrich scripts a couple of issues and Arnold Drake writes the last six. The art is more mixed, starting with Werner Roth and then a succession of others including Ross Andru, Don Heck and George Tuska, plus single issue jobs by Jack Sparling, Dan Adkins and Jim Steranko. Some issues are drawn in combinations of two or even three. The Avengers issue is drawn by John Buscema.

This volume covers nearly half the original run of the X-Men. And reading it through it soon becomes clear why the series was getting into dire straits sales wise. Much of the run seems to tread water, there's an early example of subplots that run on and on and don't deliver particularly great conclusions, there are twists to the status quo introduced and then ignored, there's a split in the later issues to carry a back-up detailing the origins of the various X-Men and even that can't get things in order, and there's a general sense of a lack of direction even when a major status quo changer comes in the middle. This volume shows a somewhat tired series that doesn't really know what it's doing or where it's going.

Part of this is rooted in the stability of the line-up. Despite being a school with a mission to find and train mutants to use their powers to help others, there are no permanent additions to the team at this stage. One of the only two significant changes in this run of issues comes at the end of issue #39 when the team adopt new, individualistic costumes with Cyclops adopted the predominantly blue affair he's best known for. The issue's cover is used as the artwork on the volume's back cover (at least on the first edition) but recoloured and it gives the impression the Angel has a bare torso, bar braces; however it turns out this is an error on the new colourist's part and in fact his top is yellow. There is a brief recruitment drive when membership is offered to Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch and even Spider-Man, but each declines for their own reasons. The one new member added is the Mimic but his arrogance is all too clear and he demands the deputy leadership of the X-Men as a condition for joining. He never really gels with the others and his powers are limited to copying others', but after a few issues he gets a good send out that actually makes use of his unique abilities when in a fight with the Super Adaptoid their powers cancel each other out. Earlier he almost succumbs to the Adaptoid's offer to enhance his powers, but he realises that this will mean slavery and he quickly turns. He leaves with his powers seemingly negated by the encounter but retires from the team on favourable terms.

Otherwise there are a couple of future members of the X-Men introduced here in the form of fist the Banshee and later Lorna Dane (who doesn't take on a codename at this stage) but neither actually joins the team within this volume. However we do get a major shake-up in issue #42 when Professor X sacrifices his life to save the world, having been suffering from a terminal disease and rushing to get the team's training complete in time. This creates a new dynamic with Cyclops now in full command of the team, but it isn't explored too deeply at this point due to two multi-part tales involving Magneto and the temporary disbandment of the team on the orders of Fred Duncan, a federal agent Professor X had worked with, on the basis that they'll be more effective and less vulnerable if scattered across the country. This leads to a brief run of couple adventures but the format is soon abandoned in favour of having the whole team back together.

There are a few new villains introduced but they've rarely made much long-term impact. Amongst them are El Tigre, a hunter who is possessed by the Mayan god Kukulcán, the Cobalt Man, a scientist who is trying to copy Iron Man's armour and sell it to the military, Mekano, the neglected son of a philanthropist taking his revenge out on his father's donations, or the Frankenstein Monster, who here is portrayed as an alien who inspired the novel, but it's my understanding the later Monster of Frankenstein series used a different character closer to the original. There's Grotesk, an alien who wants to destroy the Earth, and finally Mesmero, a mesmeriser, and his minions the Demi-Men. The big foe across a dozen issues is the shadowy organisation "Factor Three". New characters introduced as part of the storyline include the Banshee, who turns good by the end of the storyline, the Ogre, who would later pop up in Thunderbolts, the shape-shifting Changeling, who would later become the basis of Morph in the 1990s X-Men cartoon, and the organisation's leader, the Mutant Master who turns out to be an alien.

That's not to say there aren't return appearances by old foes, with both the Juggernaut and Magneto popping up twice, with the latter having reassembled several of his followers in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants including the Toad, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Factor Three contains a number of old foes in the form of the Blob, the Vanisher, Mastermind and Unus the Untouchable. Foes from other series include the Puppet Master, following on from an encounter in Fantastic Four and the Super Adaptoid from Captain America's strip in Tales of Suspense, complete with the powers of Avengers Captain America, the Wasp, Goliath and Hawkeye. Another story brings an encounter with the underworld rulers the Mole Man, originally from Fantastic Four, and Tyrannus, from the Incredible Hulk, as they continue their conflict first shown in the Hulk's strip in Tales to Astonish. Yet another visitor from Fantastic Four is the living computer Quasimodo, working through the device Computo and using robots called "Cybertrons" (possibly the first use of that term by Marvel, nearly a decade before they created the backstory for the Transformers). An even further visitor from Fantastic Four is Blastaar, a deposed monarch from the Negative Zone. Then there's the Warlock, who had previously appeared under the name "Merlin" in Thor's strip in Journey into Mystery. Making his first Silver Age appearance is the Red Raven from the Golden Age Marvel series of the same name who has now become embittered against the human race.

Throughout these issues there are a lot of threads that get abandoned. At the start of the volume Jean Grey has been transferred to a normal university, but often comes back for weekends and her visits coincide with virtually all the adventures. However it's soon forgotten that she's been moved out and eventually she's just back at Xavier's school like all the others. Another thread involves her fellow university student Ted Rogers who seems to have worked out her identity, but he disappears along with her university days. Later the team disbands by order of federal agent Fred Duncan but after a few issues everyone's back to working together without any mention of the order. The origin stories also experience a slapdash approach when the Beast's story is given before the Angel's despite the internal chronology establishing the latter as having been recruited first (and the end of Iceman's story promised the Angel would be next). Even in the stories themselves captions notice the discrepancy and promise we'll get the Angel's story though we'll have to wait until volume 3 to see if that promise is met.

The origins back-up strip starts in issue #38 and shows in succession how Professor Xavier was spurred into action and steadily recruited the individual X-Men one by one, rescuing them from foes ranging from the Living Diamond to general hate mobs. The start of the series hadn't felt the need to cover this ground in detail, having contented itself with showing Marvel Girl as a new arrival to set the general scene, but now we get the background on Cyclops, Iceman and the Beast as we see how they handled the emergence of their powers and the reactions of those around them. The series also includes one part profile pieces for each of these X-Men, exploring their powers and abilities and answering details such as how Cyclops operates his visor without touching it or how Iceman produces so much ice.

Overall this run of the series feels rather flat, probably because what are meant to be the big dramatic moments often come off somewhat flat. Factor Three is the first example of an X-Men subplot that feels like it lasts forever and the ultimate pay-off isn't terribly interesting. Had the storyline appeared as a standalone then it would have been just about okay but here we get a lengthy build-up and the plot running in the background during other encounters, with Professor X kidnapped in the process and Spider-Man encountering one of the organisation's robots. When the storyline finally kicks into higher gear with a plot to start a nuclear war thought it soon becomes clear the Mutant Master's plan is not just to destroy human civilisation and allow mutants to take over the planet but instead to wipe out all life completely. Oddly despite being the big storyline built up to over so many months, this isn't the point at which Professor X is killed off. Instead he meets his end in a shorter story just three issues later which also sees a new foe trying to destroy the world. It just feels highly repetitive for the sake of it. The crossover with the Avengers also feels rather less than such a moment should be, especially considering how rare crossovers were back in the 1960s. It is at least based around the common link of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants once containing Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch before they became Avengers, with the siblings having now returned to Magneto in the hope of haling the Scarlet Witch's wounds and escaping from all human contact whilst Magneto plans new conquests. However it tries to do too much and is particularly let down by the middle X-Men issue detouring to introduce the Red Raven into the Silver Age. Roy Thomas's enthusiasm for the Golden and Atlas Ages heroes is well known and at times his work to reincorporate them into modern continuity has produced wonders. Here though it just provides a needless distraction as the Angel flies across the Atlantic to fetch help and ultimately as the story ends with the Raven going back into suspended animation it's a tale that just didn't need to be told at this point.

There's a bit of character development with Warren finally giving up on his attraction to Jean and subsequently being reunited with childhood friend Candy Southern, whilst Hank and Bobby face the recurring problem of their double dates with Vera and Zelda being interrupted by events that cause them to rush off and switch into costume. Towards the end of the volume Vera and Zelda disappear amidst the confusion of changing writers and the temporary disbandment of the team and by the end Bobby seems set to become an eventual item with Lorna Dane. Meanwhile Scott often seems to be getting closer to Jean but at times seems to muck it up by not always displaying enough outward concern for her. Still these are at least some steps forward.

However overall this is still a rather turgid run on the series and it's easy to see why the alarm bells were ringing by the end of it. Few of the individual stories really excite and it's also succumbing to a mess of new writers ignoring some of the subplots and developments set up by their predecessors. There are references to the overall problems mutants face in the world, particularly in the back-up origin stories, but very little is actually done with the theme beyond some villains expressing a general superiority viewpoint. Otherwise we're left with a team of heroes staggering on from one general threat to another and not really charting out any particularly new or exciting territory. This one is for completists.

Essential Defenders volume 1

The Defenders were very different from the teams that came before them. They weren't a formal gathering of heroes drawn together into a regulated organisation like the Avengers or the All-Winners Squad. They weren't a family of adventurers like the Fantastic Four. And they weren't an outgrowth of a school for training the powered like the X-Men. Instead they were a "non-team", a disparate group of individuals with no real organisation and no clear definition of membership, working together as needs be.

The original Defenders ran from 1971 until 1985, almost exactly matching the traditional dates for the Bronze Age of Comics. In a further twist the set-up stories included here cover the years 1969-1971 where the beginning of the Bronze Age is unclear, whilst at the other end of the run the last twenty-seven issues, running in 1983-1985 when the Bronze Age was winding down, saw the team heavily transformed into the "New Defenders". Few titles so perfectly match the period and show the various trends that ran through it.

Essential Defenders volume 1 reprints Defenders #1-14, plus Doctor Strange #183, Sub-Mariner #22 & #34-35, the Incredible Hulk #126, Marvel Feature #1-3 and Avengers #116-118 plus an extract from issue #115. The Doctor Strange, Sub-Mariner and Incredible Hulk issues feature first a crossover and then a team-up between different combinations of the three title characters and the Silver Surfer before they were made a regular team which was tested in the pages of Marvel Feature, one of Marvel's many try-out titles (later in its run it carried Ant-Man and then team-ups involving the Thing before the latter spun off into Marvel Two-in-One), before being given its own series. Early on in the run the Defenders clashed with the Avengers in what was at the time a lengthy crossover, and the issues from both series are included here.

The Marvel Feature issues are written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Ross Andru, then the Defenders issues are written first by Steve Englehart and then by Len Wein, and all drawn by Sal Buscema. The Doctor Strange issue is written by Thomas and drawn by Gene Colan, the Incredible Hulk issue is written by Thomas and drawn by Herb Trimpe, the Sub-Mariner issues are all written by Thomas and drawn by Marie Severin or Buscema, and the Avengers issues are all written by Englehart and drawn by Bob Brown.

So what precisely is a "non-team"? The Defenders differ strongly from most Marvel teams in that there is no real formal organisation. There's no home or base for the members, no formal rules of incorporation, no regular meetings replete with rigid meeting protocol, no clear definition of membership or criteria for who actually is and isn't a "member" and so forth. At this stage it's just a group of heroes drawn together when needed, who work with others they encounter in the course of such gatherings. But even here there's also the start of disagreements over just how organised the Defenders should be, with Namor being very firm until the end that there are no members whilst the Valkyrie wishes to join. Doctor Strange may see himself as the "leader" of the Defenders, but he commands far less authority over the others than the likes of Mr. Fantastic or Professor X over their respective teams.

Despite the protests of Namor and the traditional "non-team" status of the Defenders, it is possible to identify some clear members. At this stage the members are all amongst the heroes most commonly associated with the team. A popular image has built up of the Defenders having four founders, Doctor Strange, Namor the Sub-Mariner, the Incredible Hulk and the Silver Surfer. But this volume is a revelation of how that isn't quite the case as the four don't all appear together until Defenders #2, which is the fifth issue to go out under that title (Marvel Feature also included the individual strip's logo on the cover) and the tenth in the volume overall. It's questionable as to how far the Titans Three teaming of all bar Doctor Strange counts as a proto-Defenders story - they don't use the team name and, as we'll see, the good doctor is the initial keystone of the team. The initial Undying Ones crossover with Strange, Namor and the Hulk is on firmer ground here as it is revisited early on in the series. So the Surfer is really an add on, even if he has subsequently been included in many a founders' reunion, even within the original Defenders run itself (but that comes in much later volumes). The cover to this volume reuses that of Marvel Feature #1 and so we get just the other three heroes, thus doing a little bit to correct latter day revisionism. It's significant that all four heroes are strong loners, with Namor, the Hulk and the Surfer traditionally hostile to being pulled in to help others, a hostility that recurs throughout these issues making for some tense situations when the heroes are drawn together once more, with Namor in particular angry with the way he's drawn in. However over time Doctor Strange steadily works on developing a friendship with the Hulk to the point where at the end the Green Goliath is becoming more trusting and willing to stay around and work with the others. In contrast Namor is increasingly losing the battle against the Defenders becoming an ongoing team and being summoned against his will to help on missions, and so he withdraws altogether for the time being.

Several other heroes fight alongside the Defenders in these issues. The Valkyrie is a sort-of new character, the result of a fusion of an alter ego previously used by the Enchantress with a mad human woman. There's some initial discomfort amongst the others about this arrangement but the ethical side and any attempt to undo the spell are quickly forgotten and the Valkyrie becomes the first real committed recruit to the team who actually wants to be there. At the end of the volume Nighthawk works with the team and joins on the very last page, taking the place of Namor and showing the first signs of the Defenders becoming a slightly more coherent team. Namorita pops up but only for a single issue when her cousin is transported away and she helps find him. Hawkeye works with the Defenders for several issues, but his own comments at first place him clearly as a guest star rather than a "member" and when he departs he comments on having only stayed around for a specific job rather than anything permanent. That job involves the Black Knight who is even more firmly in the guest star category, encountering the Defenders on an adventure where he gets turned to stone. Later his spirit is sent back in time and the team go after him, but he opts to stay in the past and so never really becomes a Defender in any way. The volume also contains a couple of encounters with the Avengers, but the two groups are clearly delineated throughout.

The Defenders-Avengers conflict kicks off in earnest in Avengers #116, which starts with a note that it's the tenth anniversary of the start of the Avengers. It's an odd way to celebrate what is admittedly only a small milestone. The storyline itself was groundbreaking in being about the longest crossover to date in terms of both the number of issues and the publication time. Alongside the Undying Ones crossover that first brought Doctor Strange together with the other two founders, it was a sign of the way the comics industry would steadily develop to the stage where more and more storylines would require readers to buy additional issues from series they didn't normally read in order to get the whole story. It's great for providing extra material to fill collected editions decades later, but at the time it could lock out readers who for one reason or another didn't have access to the other title(s) on their local newsstands, and I don't know if subscribers got advance warning or special offers to receive the other issues as well. The storyline itself is relatively simple with one villain tricking the Defenders into a quest for a powerful item and another villain tricking the Avengers into fighting them, with each team assuming the others have impure motives. A significant chunk of the adventure is then taken up with fights between individual members of the team in different locations around the world before they realise they've been duped and team up to confront the villains and save the world. When summarised it does feel a bit like a standard Justice League of America plot. The emphasis is very much on the characters, with opportunities to see some clashes that hadn't been done for a while, such as Hawkeye against Iron Man or Namor against Captain America.

The Defenders face many villains in the course of these adventures. The Undying Ones debuted in Doctor Strange but in the final issue #183, which starts this volume off. The Nameless One and the Nightcrawler each debut in Sub-Mariner #22 and Incredible Hulk #126 respectively but these issues were tying up Doctor Strange's story after his own title was cancelled. The Titans Three story sees the trio fight first El General, the (oh what a surprise) military dictator of a Latin American country (also later on during the Defenders/Avengers clash there's a visit to an ex-Nazi's castle in a Latin American country) and then a clash with the Avengers in order to prevent a new device from inadvertently destroying the Earth. Once the Defenders proper get going, they fight a mixture of new and pre-existing foes. The New foes include Omegatron, a magical computer with a doomsday nuclear weapon attached, Necrodamus, a dark sorcerer, Calizuma, the leader of a group of warrior wizards, Cyrus Black, another evil sorcerer with a longstanding grudge against Doctor Strange, Chandu, a twelfth century mystic, and Nebulon the Celestial Man. Note just how many of these foes could easily have debuted in Doctor Strange had it still been running. Foes from other series include Yandroth and then Dormammu, both from the Doctor Strange strip in Strange Tales, Xemnu, who first appeared in Journey into Mystery in the pre-superhero era, the Giant Squids and later Casiolena, both having debuted in Avengers, the Enchantress, the Executioner and later Loki, all of whom are originally from the Thor strip in Journey into Mystery, Attuma and the Red Ghost, both from Fantastic Four, Mordred, from the 1950s Black Knight, and the Squadron Sinister, also from Avengers. The latter are evil copies of the Squadron Supreme and both are a deliberate erm... "homage" to DC's Justice League of America, allowing for substitutes for inter-company crossovers before they actually happened. The Squadron members shown here are Hyperion (based on Superman), Doctor Spectrum (based on Green Lantern) and the Whizzer (based on the Flash) plus renegade turned good Nighthawk (based on Batman). Overall there are rather fewer pre-existing Doctor Strange foes in this volume than I'd come to expect, but many of the new creations could have been cut from his series's cloth. Invariably with the Defenders initially consisting of two physically very powerful heroes and one of the most powerful magicians, the threats they face have to be similarly strong and this doesn't really change with the addition of extra members and guest stars. Instead, the team continues facing predominantly magical and mythical foes, with a smattering of other fantastical and cosmic types.

The threats the team face are a mixture of the small and personal as well as the grand scale to the Earth or even the entire dimension. At the end of the team's first story in Marvel Feature #1 Doctor Strange suggests the name "Defenders" - "A fitting name for such a grouping as we -- if we've need to meet again." The name is convincing, especially as it is initially picked for a team assembled just in emergencies. And the team may increasingly congeal as the series proceeds but there is still a lot of defending going on. On the smaller scale the members do look out for each other somewhat, with an ongoing plotline as Doctor Strange tries to find a cure for the Black Knight's stone form. This leads to a small personalised adventure in issue #11 as everyone is transported to the twelfth century Middle East during a Crusade. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to have been a great deal of research with both "King Richard the Lion Hearted" and Prince John out there, fighting the "Mohammedeans" or occasionally called "Arabs" - not the most sensitive terms to use. It's not the more nuanced and sensitive view of the Crusades that was emerging at the time.

As mentioned above, Defenders ran for the duration of the Bronze Age. Looking at just the early issues here there are some signs of the changes but others would come later. The team itself is structurally very different from the more grand and formalised teams established in the Silver Age. The crossover with Avengers began a trend that would grow over times. And there's a brief sign of some of the growing trend towards more socially aware comics, primarily in the form of the Valkyrie's feminism. But whilst she demonstrates her worth as a member of the team holding her own when she destroys the Omegatron early on, she's not the best representative of liberated women as after all she's one persona occupying another's body and was created by an Asgardian goddess (although that would get retconned later on) and so lacks actual experience of the human world. Otherwise much of the emphasis of the series is on fantastical adventures rather than on more down to earth affairs.

This is a volume that encompasses the team going through three different writers as one sets up the series, a second then has a year and a half long run (albeit only eleven issues as the series was initially bimonthly) before a third takes over for the last few issues. It surprising how the changing writers aren't particularly noticeable with the series maintaining its themes and not veering off in a new direction and having everything changed under a new regime. Consequently momentum is maintained and there's a good clear sense of what the Defenders are, even if there isn't a precise definition of membership, and how they carry out their objectives. The team contains quite a diverse set of individuals but manages to hold together and they're a believable force. The team was very different to much of what had come before, but that works to its advantage and it wasn't just another variation of already tried themes. It had a good strong start.

Omitted material: What If? Classic volume 3

It's time for a further look at some of the Spider-Man related issues from the original What If? series.

#15: "What If Nova had been Four Other People?", written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by John Buscema, Walt Simonson, Carmine Infantino, Ross Andru and George Pérez, reprinted in What If? Classic volume 3

This was the same basic idea as issue #7, only this time with Marvel's then-newest star rather than it's biggest and also using different artists for each segment. However Peter Parker was the only one of the four people who was familiar to readers.

The origin of Nova is relatively easy to adapt to the What If? set-up - a dying alien transmits his power and costume by energy beam and it accidentally hits a human, giving them the Nova powers. Each story sees it hit someone else. In the first it hits Helen Taylor, an angry widow who has vowed to find the mugger who killed her husband. She launches a violent war on crime to find the mugger, killing many criminals in the process including the Kingpin. Eventually the Fantastic Four intervene and capture her, then are forced to exile her to the Negative Zone. Meanwhile a car is pulled out of the river where it has been for months, and inside is the drowned mugger. The second story is set in a world that has hitherto lacked heroes and so when the beam hits a homeless black man he doesn't immediately realise to use them. One snowy night he is given shelter at an orphanage but then a Skrull invasion force arrives and detects his power. To save the children and Earth he becomes Nova and lets himself get captured so the children can be saved. On board the Skrull flagship he attacks and destroys the ship's equipment, causing it to go nova and saving the Earth. In the final story the beam has hit a criminal who uses the centurion's spaceship as a base from which he assembles Dr Doom, the Red Skull and the Sphinx and the four steadily eliminate all of Earth's humans. However rivalries amongst the villains result in them turning on each other until the Sphinx is the only one left standing. He desires death and sets out to search every human's mind to find one with the knowledge he needs, not realising that the criminal Nova he atomised was the one.

But it's the third story that generates the strongest interest. We get an altered version of the start of Spider-Man's origin as here the spider absorbed far more radiation and so instead of gaining powers Peter succumbs to radiation poisoning. He recovers, though not before Aunt May succumbs to stereotype and has a fatal heart attack at the first sign of bad news. Peter is now unable to walk and descends into bitterness, believing himself to be cursed. He sends Betty away (in this reality she seems to have already been his girlfriend) and throws himself into science, hoping to find a cure. One night he's alone in the school lab when the beam hits him. Discovering he can walk and more, he flies off to tell Uncle Ben, only to arrive as a burglar breaks into the house. In the living room Peter Nova flies in and a bullet bounces off his skin, killing the burglar. Despite both Uncle Ben and a police officer telling him it was accidental self-defence, Peter vows never to use his powers again and walks off embittered.

With most of the alternative Novas entirely new characters it's interesting to see different takes on some traditional comic moments and show how the power could bring out the best and worst in people. Peter Parker's story may have an all too cliched approach to Aunt May's heart but otherwise shows how a complete run of bad luck and no realisation of responsibility could have made him a very different person.

#17: "What If Ghost Rider, Spider-Woman, and Captain Marvel Had Remained Villains?", written by Steven Grant and drawn by Carmine Infantino, reprinted in What If? Classic volume 3

Once again we get multiple takes on a single idea, told in separate chapters. The first chapter sees an alternate take on Ghost Rider whereby his adoptive father Crash Simpson survives both cancer and a record breaking motorcycle stunt, resulting in the Devil taking Johnny Blaze's soul without interruption. He accidentally causes Crash's death and then later Roxanne Simpson tracks him down, only to die in the confrontation. Finally Daimon Hellstrom the Son of Satan confronts Ghost Rider and exorcises him. The Spider-Woman chapter is an alternate take on her debut in Marvel Spotlight #32 where on this occasion she doesn't discover Hydra's treachery and instead kills Nick Fury. The rest of the story which is largely the story of her fleeing to Hydra's base then getting captured in a S.H.I.E.L.D. raid then escaping at her trial. He primary motivation is to find out the truth of her past and the epilogue sees her as a wanderer, searching the world with S.H.I.E.L.D. in pursuit. Frankly there's not much meat to this and it doesn't give us much insight into Spider-Woman or any other characters. The Captain Marvel story is pretty much all set-up as it presents an alternate take on Marvel's earliest adventures with his rival Yon-Rogg exposed and eventually dying, with Captain Marvel remaining as a loyal Kree commander. This one doesn't show us very much at all. This is a general problem with telling multiple stories in a single issue, especially when the unifying concept is so abstract forcing each tale to spend more time telling the story (whereas the earlier ones with someone else getting Spider-Man or Nova's powers each share an introduction). The Ghost Rider chapter is the strongest by default with the other two tales not really offering that much of an alternate take on the characters. A pity that once again Spider-Woman is lumbered with such poor material.

#19: "What If Spider-Man had Never Become a Crime Fighter?", written by Peter Gillis and drawn by Pat Broderick, reprinted in What If? Classic volume 3

Or "What If Spider-Man has stopped the Burglar who killed his uncle?" This is probably the most obvious Spider-Man What If?, with its closest contender coming in issue #24 (reprinted in the next volume). Here Spider-Man heeds the call for help and catches the burglar - but not out of altruistic responsibility. No he's spotted the potential for some good publicity. As a result his public standing soars and Peter becomes ever more swollen headed. He reveals his identity to Aunt May and Uncle Ben, but this leads to an argument about his pursuit of entertainment over science and he deserts them. He guest hosts the Johnny Carson show (now what would be the equivalent of that role in the UK?), stars in a blockbuster movie and then becomes a film producer, signing up many other heroes with the offer of favourable publicity. Meanwhile J. Jonah Jameson's world starts crashing around him. His son dies when his space capsule crashes, and Jonah becomes ever more embittered about the attention celebrity "heroes" get compared to what he sees as "real heroes" - policemen, firemen, astronauts and the like. This leads to him taking on Spider-Man by getting Ned Leeds to work out his identity. In retaliation Spider-Man shows up in Jonah's office with several gun toting men, but turns the tables by pretending to be a stunt to give Jonah an award for journalism. When the Daily Bugle attacks Spider-Man for signing the vigilante Daredevil, Spidey retaliates by discovering and exposing the Bugle's crime reporter Frederic Foswell as the crimelord the Big Man. Here the resultant negative publicity results in Jonah being asked by his board to take a step back from running the paper and he instead resigns. Having lost everything he succumbs to temptation when the jailed Foswell asks him to be his outside man to run the mobs in exchange for using the organisation for revenge on Spider-Man. An initial attempt to have Kraven the Hunter scratch Peter with poison claws fails due to the intervention of Daredevil. Then Peter and Daredevil meet with their writers - only to discover it's a trap and the writers are really several super-villains in disguise. Daredevil dies in battle and Peter realises he must use his powers for real, overpowering the remain foes. He pulls off the ringleader's hood to discover an insane Jonah, ranting about how his life has been destroyed and how Spider-Man is a villain. A remorseful Peter realises how his failure to use his powers for good has caused all this.

Pretty much everyone is in character and this is a particularly good character study of Jonah that really digs into just why he harbours such hatred of Spider-Man and other superheroes. It's a far cry from the caricature he sometimes descends to. As for Spider-Man himself, we have a good continuation of the swell-headed teenager from Amazing Fantasy #15 but also an insight into his imagination. It's quite possible he may have performed some good, particularly by signing the X-Men to give mutants good publicity, just as many real world actors and producers have helped good causes. But his arrogance and selfishness brings destruction in its wake - and he's not always the worst to suffer for it.

The other tales in the third volume are:

• #14: "What If Sgt. Fury Had Fought World War Two In Outer Space?"
• #18: "What If Dr. Strange Were a Disciple of Dormammu?"
• #20: "What If the Avengers Fought the Kree-Skrull War Without Rick Jones?"

Issue #14 was one of the more outrageous concepts yet seen, but as the cover acknowledged it was riding a wave at the time launched by Star Wars.

You will have noticed that two issues are missing. These are:

• #13: "What If Conan the Barbarian Walked the Earth Today?"
• #16: "What If Shang-Chi Master of Kung Fu Fought on the Side of Fu Manchu?"

Marvel no longer holds the rights to either Conan or Fu Manchu and so can't reprint their appearances. Shang-Chi is a Marvel originated character but with a setting a supporting cast drawn from the Fu Manchu stories it's only possible to reprint some of his appearances.

Essential Nova volume 1

Essential Nova (the title given in the copyright information, and also on the spine) volume 1 contains The Man called Nova #1-25 plus Amazing Spider-Man #171, which contained half of a crossover with the series, and Marvel Two-in-One Annual #3, which saw Nova guesting in the Thing’s team-up book. In addition it also contains Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for Nova and the Sphinx.

All the Nova issues plus the Marvel Two-in-One Annual are written by Marv Wolfman, whilst the Amazing Spider-Man issue is by Len Wein. The regular series art is by John Buscema, Sal Buscema (who also does the Marvel Two-in-One Annual), Carmine Infantino and Bob McLeod, with the Amazing Spider-Man issue by Ross Andru. Writing wise that’s one of the most consistent credits I’ve seen for a title launched in this era.

The series is often described as an intentional homage to Spider-Man and an unintentional homage to (the Silver Age) Green Lantern but just how true are either of these? The Spider-Man homage seems clear and openly acknowledged, with the first issue’s cover carrying the banner “In the Marvelous tradition of Spider-Man!” We get the story of a high school student with an alliterative name who lives on Long Island who is bullied at school but unexpectedly gains special powers. There are some differences – Richard Rider lives in the city of Hempstead rather than the New York suburb of Queen’s, he lives with his parents, he has a younger brother, he’s a poor performer at school with both his brother and the school bully significantly outperforming him, but he has some well-established friendships. There’s no significant tragedy in Richard’s life that drives his superhero career and although his family experiences financial problems he never resorts to getting a job that would bring an additional aspect to the series. But there are sufficient elements from the Spider-Man stories to recognise the influence even though many a story of a high school pupil would have them. The absence of an equivalent to the great moral lesson Spider-Man learnt does stand out – the nearest we get are a couple of panels in the first issue where Nova reflects on how he could use his powers to get his own back, but then reflects that he was given them for a reason and must use them responsibly to help others. And throughout the series Richard/Nova faces some of the everyday personal problems Peter Parker/Spider-Man did in his early days, but with the exception of his poor grades and the prospect of repeating a year they don’t seem to be as significant.

The Green Lantern influence is more mixed than it initially seems. It’s true that we get the story of a dying alien member of some alien force choosing a human to be its successor. However the Nova Corps isn’t really presented as an intergalactic police force at this stage and it’s only in the last couple of issues that Xandar becomes relevant, though the series was cancelled before the storyline could get there. The impression given is that the previous Nova Prime was the last survivor of Xandar’s forces. Once the threat of Zorr has been defeated, Nova is pretty much a solo agent for the series’ run, with no alien higher authority or a legion of similarly powered warriors who occasionally help him or drag him off on missions. Nova doesn’t adhere to any grand code beyond the standard superhero ethic, and there’s no conflict of authority and morality. And looking at the basics, getting powers from an alien who dies soon after (thus leaving a superpowered human without a guiding force) is a formula that has been used elsewhere, such as Power Pack. It’s possible later stories added layers to the mythology that provided some more direct comparisons between Nova and Green Lantern, but on the evidence of the issues contained in this volume the influence is less than sometimes claimed.

Reading through this volume it’s surprising to see just how fast paced the stories are. Marvel comics from this era are generally only seventeen pages long which can be a limitation but Wolfman’s writing keeps things going at a fast pace. Nova is put through a variety of situations ranging from the comic, particularly the visit to Marvel Comics in issue #5, complete with appearance by Wolfman, Sal Buscema, Stan Lee and several other Marvel staffers of the era, to the tragic such as the murder of his uncle in issue #12. The latter incident might seem like another homage to Spider-Man, especially as the wallcrawler has a crossover here, but it’s entirely a murder mystery rather than a deep character building moment.

Nova does get some character development but it’s a constant throughout these issues that he’s still learning things, a point made by Nick Fury when Nova assumes that the Yellow Claw has perished when his ship was destroyed by Fury knows better. Like many a hero, Nova/Richard experiences problems balancing the demands of heroing and his civilian life, with the inevitable consequences for the latter as he appears uncommitted and is frequently absent without convincing explanations. However unlike many he does take some steps towards reconciling the two. Throughout the first twenty issues a repeated theme is about whether or not he should tell his family, with the subplot of his younger brother Robert starting to investigate Richard’s disappearances, soon aided by his own creation “Sherly”, a robot designed to mimic Sherlock Holmes. However Richard opts to take the-then unusual step of revealing his identity to his family in issue #21 and this does a lot to resolve tensions as they find pride in him, though it opens up the question of whether or not his family will accept his continuing in the role. Unfortunately the series ends before this question is really resolved. Richard’s family are a mixture of the good and the bad. His father is a principal (not of Richard’s school though) who is eventually suspended in disagreements about discipline policy – it’s not explicitly spelled out but it seems to be the clash between teachers determined to maintain order through necessary methods against parents who oppose those methods and refuse to accept there are problems in the classroom. (Charles is also quite critical of Richard’s conduct at school both academic and pastoral.) The suspension pushes Charles to the edge as he faces financial problems that eventually put him under the influence of loan sharks called the Inner Circle, headed by the Corruptor, but Charles turns on them and gives evidence, even at risk to himself. Gloria is less well sketched out but is shown as a part-time working mother operating as a police dispatcher (which sometimes distracts Nova when his helmet picks up her radio messages) who is more openly sympathetic than her husband and keeps the family together. Unfortunately younger brother Robert fits an archetype that science fiction fans know all too well and cower from – the boy genius. An extremely intelligent fifteen year old, and a show-off to boot, Robert serves to enhance his brother’s inferiority complex and seemingly offer scientific solutions to problems, but after the early issues this latter aspect fades away in place of his curiosity as to what his elder brother is up to. It’s revealed later on that “Sherly” was in fact given artificial intelligence by Doctor Sun and it’s curious that Robert never stops to realise that as clever as he is, he’s not the next Reed Richards. Doctor Sun is also one of a number of characters to discover Nova’s identity, though most do so either through their powers or access to information. Nick Fury of SHIELD discovers it by tracking down the reports of the boy who exhibited strange energy powers around the same time in the same place that Nova first appeared, but takes steps to cover up the coincidence. It’s another step towards realism as in the real world it’s doubtful anyone could maintain a superhero secret identity, and certainly not a high school pupil.

It’s at high school that some of the clearest Spider-Man influences stand out, most obviously in the character of Mike Burley, “Big Man On Campus”, a school sports star and the regular bully of Richard. The Flash Thompson parallel simply leaps out and is reinforced by the presence of Donna-Lee Dover, Mike’s girlfriend who is more friendly towards Richard in a manner a bit reminiscent of Liz Allan. However Mike is not a pure Flash Thompson knock-off. In a major role reversal it’s Mike who regularly gets the top grades and Richard who just scrapes through academically, and this position adds to Mike’s arrogance. He’s inadvertently responsible for Richard gaining his powers by pushing him into the position where he was hit by the Nova Force. As the series progresses layers are added to Mike, suggesting that he has become the way he is due to massive family pressure to succeed, implying that he’s what Richard might have become had things gone differently. Mike is also shown as loyal to his family, to the point of being blackmailed into crime to save his brother’s life but because of this no charges are pressed. In another deviation from the early Spider-Man days, Richard has several established friendships at the school, including Bernie Dillon and Roger “Caps” Cooper, the latter of whom has to face the wrath of his uncle who has become Megaman and blames his nephew for it. There’s also Ginger Jaye, and as in many such real life cases the line between close female friend and girlfriend are blurred. She provides support to Richard at times, but even she gets badly treated by him at one stage, though later he apologises and is forgiven. In general the cast is devised well but with the limited page count they don’t get quite as much attention as they might otherwise have done.

Being a Marvel series it was inevitable that there’d be guest appearances by other heroes along the way. As well as the aforementioned Spider-Man, Nick Fury and SHIELD plus the to Marvel Two-in-One team-up with the Thing, there’s also an early appearance by Thor. Issue #15 appears to contain appearances by the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America and a returning Spider-Man, but they turn out to be Life Model Decoys aka robots operated by SHIELD to test Nova. There are also two original heroes introduced – the Crimebuster, a crimefighter with no powers but skills and gadgets, and the Comet, a superhero retroactively placed in the 1950s who is restored from a drunken limbo. The Comet’s story of how his family were killed (by one of his foes seeking revenge) is a reminder of the dangers all superheroes place those around them under, but there is a happy ending to the story with the revelation that his son survived and is the Crimebuster. Both become allies of Nova at the end of the series.

The series demonstrates a high level of originality when it comes to villains. In the course of these twenty-five issues we get the first appearances of Zorr, Condor, Powerhouse, Diamondhead, the Corruptor, the Sphinx, Megaman, Firefly, Photon, Blackout and Doctor Sun. Additionally the Marvel Two-in-One annual introduces the Monitors. But once again I suspect there’s a dash to the search engines to find out just who some of these characters are. Blackout seems to have been used the most in the wider Marvel universe, but is very much a third or fourth tier villain. Otherwise I think the Sphinx has had the most impact but at times his very obscurity has been played on. The villains are a mixture of one-offs who serve a single story, most obviously Zorr and Photon, and those with recurring potential such as Condor, Diamondhead and the Sphinx. With the series being cut so short it’s hard to say which others would have survived for the long run and it’s perhaps inevitable that many have not been used much since which in a way helps the reprint volume as it keeps them fresh. There are also a handful of appearances by pre-existing Marvel villains but not too many. The Sandman is probably the most prominent, and the only one with a strong Spider-Man connection, whilst Tyrannus is from the Hulk’s series. But even more surprising is the choice of mastermind supervillain for the series’s longest storyline, the Yellow Claw. A Fu Manchu knock-off from a brief-lived mid-1950s Marvel/Atlas series, the Claw has been used a few times since, but there’s no shortage of Evil Oriental Masterminds in the Marvel universe, most notably the Mandarin and also, in this era, Fu Manchu (though Marvel no longer hold the rights for him). The Claw on this occasion is accompanied by his second-in-command, Karl von Horstbadden, an ex-Nazi who in keeping with the 1950s stereotypes worked for whoever was now the enemy of the United States, regardless of whether this was ideological consistencies. (In the same decade the Red Skull joined the Communists! Only later was it established that this was a different Red Skull.) Overall the villains provide a series of credible threats to Nova and help to build up his credentials as a fighter. The Sphinx is gradually established as Nova’s primary threat but his motivation is inconsistent. At first he wants to rule the world, but later he seeks to free himself of the curse of immortality and believes the relevant knowledge is held by either Nova himself or the Xandarians. It’s a revision that makes the character more credible but the change itself is somewhat abrupt, even if we accept the claim that he has spent a year trapped on a moon between appearances.

Unfortunately, the original series ends somewhat abruptly at issue #25 with Nova, the Sphinx, Comet, Crimebuster, Diamondback, Doctor Sun and Powerhouse all aboard the Xandarian spaceship heading for Xandar as part of the Sphinx’s plans. The series stopped at that point but the storyline continued for an extended run in the Fantastic Four. Sadly even six years after Essential Nova was first published, Essential Fantastic Four has yet to reach that storyline. Worse still the final fate of Nova for the 1980s appeared in ROM, a title character Marvel no longer holds the rights for (and by some accounts the current rights holder is unclear and/or unaware of it). Given the length of the Fantastic Four storyline and the fact Nova himself only appears in a few issues, it’s perhaps understandable that it wasn’t included here, but it does mean the storyline ends somewhat anti-climactically with the two Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe serving as a summary of what happens next. It’s unfortunate but understandable. Hopefully one day in the not-too-distant future Essential Fantastic Four will have carried the Xandarian storyline and later editions of Essential Nova can direct readers there. As for ROM it’s less likely but never say never...

Despite the abrupt ending, this is a good volume in general. However I am surprised that at the time Marvel genuinely believed they had another Spider-Man on their hands and promoted Nova as such. The series doesn’t quite reach those levels but it is of good quality and deserved to last longer as a monthly, instead of being dropped to bimonthly and then cancelled when a major storyline was beginning. This may not have been entirely down to contemporary perceptions of quality as the comics industry was facing wider problems in the late 1970s with Nova’s switch to bimonthly and then cancellation happening approximately equidistance from the “DC Implosion” when DC cancelled a large chunk of their line in one day due to weak sales figures, not helped by atrocious blizzards that almost literally dampened sales. Nova deserved a better chance than it got. It holds up quite well to this day.

Essential Punisher volume 1

As a little side step I'll now turn to Essential Punisher volume 1. This is one of the most unusual of all the Essential volumes as it is made up of many of the Punisher's appearances across multiple Marvel titles prior to getting his own ongoing series. Since over half the issues in this volume come from the various Spider-Man titles I've decided to include it in this series as another special. For what it's worth the volume originally came out before any of the issues in it had been reached by the other Essentials (and whilst all the Spider-Man issues have now been caught up with, at the time of writing the Captain America and Daredevil issues are still later than the most recent Essential volumes).

The issues contained here are:

• Amazing Spider-Man #129, #134-135, written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Ross Andru
• Giant-Size Spider-Man #4, written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Ross Andru
• Marvel Preview #2, written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Tony Dezuniga
• Marvel Super-Action #1, written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Tony Dezuniga
• Amazing Spider-Man #161-162, #174-175, written by Len Wein and drawn by Ross Andru
• Captain America #241, written by Mike W. Barr and drawn by Frank Springer
• Amazing Spider-Man #201-202, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Keith Pollard, & Annual #15, written by Denny O'Neil and drawn by Frank Miller
• Daredevil #182 (part) & 183-184, written by Frank Miller & Roger McKenzie, drawn by Frank Miller
• Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #81-82, written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Al Milgrom, and #83, written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Greg LaRocque
• The Punisher (limited series) #1-4, written by Steven Grant and drawn by Mike Zeck, & #5, plotted by Steven Grant, written by Jo Duffy and drawn by Mike Vosburg

Also included is the Punisher's entry from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. This appears to be from the Deluxe Edition. Because there are so many creators, some of the labels have been placed in a separate post.

This is a very different approach from the standard Essentials. Whereas most of the other volumes focus on a particular series and present an absolutely sequential run, only including issues from other series if they constitute the build up for the series or carry a crossover, this one is closer to a more conventional tradepaperback drawing together appearances from multiple titles, and also willing to present only the pages relevant to a character or storyline from a particular issue. It's a style that doesn't seem to have been repeated, probably because it steps a bit too far from the normal Essential approach. Nevertheless it's an interesting one-off, showing the Punisher over the years before he got his own ongoing series. (By all accounts for a long time a lot in Marvel had severe reservations about an ongoing series featuring a gun wielding protagonist who kills his opponents, despite having printed many Western comics in earlier years. But then that was a different age.)

In terms of continuity, reading this on its own can be a little confusing as it jumps through some ten years worth of Spider-Man developments. Some of them are mentioned in passing, such as taking a leave of absence from graduate school, or Jonah's breakdown, or twice we see people about to become the Green Goblin, but without the wider context it may confuse at first. Similarly the Daredevil issues overlap on Matt Murdock proposing to Heather Glenn whilst there are dark developments in her company, and the Captain America issue comes from a now forgotten period with Steve Rogers was working as a commercial artist. But this is par the course for crossovers and it's to the volume's credit that it (generally) didn't follow the pattern of early trade paperbacks that sought to cut out subplots and even rearrange the artwork in order to focus just on the reason for being collected. Instead it's nice to see the whole issues altogether, which better suits the collector that the Essential line appeals to. There is an exception with Daredevil #182 which only has the eight pages featuring the Punisher. This may have been part of a bigger Daredevil storyline but on their own the pages stand out. Still they are necessary for explaining the Punisher's escape after his previous capture.

But what about the Punisher himself? Well reading through these issues altogether it's clear that he was at times a victim of the Comics Code Authority rules, forcing Marvel to present a rather tamer version of the character than he could be, seen most notably with his use of "mercy bullets" that merely stun. The contrast is starkest between his 1970s appearances in the Spider-Man titles, printed with CCA approval, and those in Marvel Preview & Marvel Super-Action, both of which were part of Marvel's non-CCA approved magazine line aimed at somewhat older readers. Going into the 1980s issues, which start with Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15 there are signs that suggest the CCA rules were relaxed with the Punisher becoming harsher in his appearances, culminating in his first limited series where the character is more brutal and the violence more graphic than in anything previously seen with the CCA symbol on it.

This is also a sign of changing values in comics. The earliest superhero comics, and indeed the pulps that preceded them, emerged during a simpler era. Authority was good. Corrupt politicians, police officers and the like were rogues, not part of wider systemic failings. Heroes caught criminals but it was down to the system to deal with them. And the system invariably did, with many a villain's return mentioning either they had been released or they had escaped. Although it took a few years, heroes usually had a clear relationship with the law-enforcement community that gave their actions a stamp of legitimacy. And above all heroes were noble crusaders for the "right" values. Sometimes they even led the way - the first issue of Captain America had a cover showing him punching Hitler, months before the US entered the Second World War. The Silver Age broadly stuck to these conventions - Spider-Man might have been an outsider with a poor relationship with authority but there was never any doubt that he was on the side of right.

And then came the shocks of the late 1960s. American public opinion turned against the war in Vietnam. At home social changes and a backlash against them were causing ever more confrontation. And corruption was exposed at the very top of the system. Many of the old certainties fell away and the world was now a confused places. What was "right" now?

It was in this environment that both the Punisher, and his near contemporary Wolverine, were created. Both characters had an approach that was very different from the older generation of noble crusading heroes. Both took a much more dubious approach. Both characters enjoyed an early surge in popularity but also presented Marvel with a challenge given their nature. Consequently neither received an ongoing title until the late 1980s. But whereas Wolverine was in constant use due to his membership of the X-Men, the Punisher was used more sparingly.

Fundamentally the Punisher is a vigilante who serves as judge, jury and executioner. A soldier gone rogue, he perhaps reflected the 1970s belief that not all soldiers were noble crusaders and instead the military had produced monstrous killers who chose for themselves who would live and who would die. The Punisher might commit his atrocities on the streets of America rather than in the jungles of Vietnam, but he is a brutal killer never the less. His methods are such that at one stage he is shooting at any breach of the law no matter how minor - in one scene he shoots at a man merely for throwing aside a newspaper and missing a bin, and then when a taxi driver panics and jumps the lights he too is shot at. This particular storyline (Spectacular Spider-Man #81-83) focuses on the Punisher being apparently mad and ends with him being ruled insane. Later in the limited series it's revealed that he was in fact reacting to drugs he'd been unknowingly doped with, and once his system flushes them he reverts to normal - well for him that is.

Or perhaps not. The Punisher is an agent of justice, attacking only those who break the law. The law itself is not infallible - in the Daredevil issues we see Matt Murdock successfully get a man off a murder charge, only for his client to then calmly confess to the crime (Matt hadn't detected the lying because a pacemaker prevented a leap in the man's heart beat). As shown in his origin, the gangsters who killed the Punisher's family for witnessing an execution were able to evade prosecution by producing alibis, but weren't able to evade him. In such an environment the Punisher is a latter day cowboy, enforcing the law in places where the authorities fail and bringing justice to those who would otherwise be denied it. His victims have only themselves to blame for their fates and he is bringing those fats about efficiently. He is willing to work with other heroes and adapt to their values by using mercy bullets, and fundamentally is on their side.

Such are the two interpretations of the character. There are many wider issues flying around relating to the death penalty, to whether or not the police should be armed, to the efficiency of the legal system, to what rights law-breakers are still entitled, to the nature of a civilised society and so forth. Most of those questions are beyond the scope of this post but they do show how difficult the character can be to handle, especially when guest-starring in other titles. He can be a difficult ally of the lead hero or he can come into direct conflict over their values or somewhere in between. The conflict side is best shown in his encounter with Daredevil, whilst his alliance with Spider-Man is at its strongest in Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 when they work together to take down an arms dealer. With Captain America there's a curious reaction on each side. The Punisher admires Cap and finds he cannot bring himself to let Cap die, even if it means not blowing up a meeting of top mobsters. However Captain America is true to the traditional noble values including that even criminals have rights and is firmly opposed to the Punisher's methods, though stopping other criminals prevents him from taking the Punisher down. In many ways I think Cap and Daredevil make for the best characters to interact with the Punisher because they bring such a clash of outlooks and force it to the forefront.

That's not to say that Spider-Man has flawed values, far from it. But whereas Cap and Daredevil are both ultimately wedded to the system of enforcing both order and law, Spider-Man is wedded more to the responsibility to protect people and has always had a tense relationship with that system. He may never have resorted to the Punisher's methods, but he doesn't really serve as the best advocate for the system in this debate of contrasts. And so instead his encounters with the Punisher tend to downplay some of the harsher aspects of the latter, particularly with the widespread use of mercy bullets, and instead focus more on the adventures. In their early encounters the Punisher is willing to believe the word of criminals about Spider-Man's activities, but slowly he comes to accept the wallcrawler is seeking the same ends, if not quite the same means, and the two become reluctant allies in most of their 1970s stories. But two things change with the 1980s - there's both an increase in the bloodiness of the Punisher and also Spider-Man is now far condemning of his methods. A further contrast comes in the Spectacular issues which also involve Cloak and Dagger and contrast between their focused targeting of the drug scene and the Punisher's broad ranging approach to all crime.

When the Punisher gets his own solo slots the focus is invariably different. Curiously there's no attempt made to develop a supporting cast even though this could have helped to ground the character further. Perhaps all involved doubted there'd ever be an ongoing Punisher series (let alone the period when he had three!) and so didn't want to take up time building up things that would have no payoff. At the end of the Marvel Preview issue an FBI agent called Dave Hamilton does publicly declare a determination to bring down the Punisher but it's not followed up on in later appearances. The magazines do bring a personal edge to the Punisher, with the first one seeing him tracking down those responsible for turning ex-Marines into assassins and destroying them, whilst the second has a showdown with the gangsters who murdered his family. Whilst there's no clear chronology, the delay in the showdown is justified by the gangsters being inaccessible until they're moved, supposedly for protection from internal revenge killings for spawning the Punisher. Once that story is told the Punisher feels he hasn't had enough revenge as he didn't kill them all, so his mission continues.

The first solo series was a limited series in 1985-1986. On the face of it, it displays signs of changes midflow. Issues #1, 3 & 4 proclaim on the cover they are "in a four issue limited series", but #2 & 5 state "five issue". And the last issue has a change of creative team plus a caption on the first page thanking the new writer, artist and inker. Many wondered if this was a sign of a late in the day change of plans. However in researching this post it was apparently a combination of the printing department messing up, assuming the series would be the standard four issue length and requests for corrections were implemented then forgotten, and good old fashioned deadline problems. (Comic Book Resource: Comic Book Legends Revealed #196)

The story starts off with the Punisher (now given a name - Frank Castle - for the first time) escaping from jail and being offered help from a shadowy organisation known as "the Trust" which seeks to brainwash criminals into vigilantes modelled on the Punisher, even using his uniform. The Punisher initially goes solo but finds his plans spiralling out of control when he attempts to cause a gang war to make criminals wipe each other out. Eventually the Trust manipulate him into coming to them, in the hope of brainwashing him into their ultimate killer, but the Punisher manages to avoid the techniques and get Alaric, the leader in charge of the operation to leak all the information about the organisation. The ending is a surprise as the Punisher declines to kill Alaric, knowing that he's destroyed the organisation anyway, and sometimes it's best to walk away without killing. Then when he confronts Alaric's girlfriend, who had been using and manipulating him, and her car goes over the edge of a bridge the Punisher decides once again to walk away and do nothing. He also confronts the son of one his past kills who has been urged to take revenge and talks him out of it. It's an interesting ending suggesting that the Punisher is refining and reconsidering his methods beyond simply killing all criminals in sight, perhaps setting up the character to be a little more acceptable for an ongoing series. The limited series also brings back Jigsaw, the villain from Amazing Spider-Man #161-162 as the Punisher's first recurring adversary. Jigsaw survives largely because the Punisher has bigger fish to fry in each encounter, but does offer prospects of an ongoing conflict.

Overall the issues collected in this volume don't have a clear coherent direction, with multiple writers each doing their own thing with the character and some trying to undo previous developments. I doubt the Punisher was expected to be so popular when he was introduced - indeed I've read that co-creator Gerry Conway has said when he was writing Amazing Spider-Man he doubted the comics industry would last even a few more years - so there was never really a grand plan from the outset. As a result the character can oscillate between positions, pushed more by the Comics Code Authority rules than almost any other, but the limited series makes a good effort to find a happy medium between the extreme positions and make the character viable for further solo stories.

The decision to do the volume this way was a curious one, as it would have been far more conventional to lump together the two magazines, the limited series and the early issues of the ongoing series and not bother too much with the guest appearances. But instead an experiment was done in showing the development of the character, and it makes for an intriguing volume. I doubt they could have repeated this format too many times as it would lead to too many issues appearing multiple times, when many people buy multiple Essential volumes to build up an overall collection of classic Marvel runs and wouldn't react too favourably to being asked to keep buying the same material in new combinations. But as a one-off it's a nice approach.

Given this blog's primary focus it's fair to say that this volume's usefulness for the Spider-Man stories has rather diminished over time. When it came out it was the first time any of these issues had been Essentialised and so it offered an opportunity to get an advanced glimpse at them. Whilst this still applies for the Captain America and Daredevil issues, the volume now serves as a general sample of Spider-Man across ten years. The stories are generally good but the lack of the wider context to the many changes over the course of the decade means they can be confusing if one isn't familiar with the wider runs. However as an addition to those runs it serves as a good dip in and out.