Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 4

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 4 is a change from the norm, containing material in narrative rather than publication order from Tomb of Dracula Magazine #2 to #6, Dracula Lives! #1 to #13 and Frankenstein Monster #7 to #9. Bonus material includes some pin-ups from the magazines and also from a calendar, unused pencilled artwork from the multi-part story planned for Tomb of Dracula #70 to #72 before it was condensed into a single giant-size issue, and finally a couple of one-page stories. The Dracula stories are written by a wide range of writers including Marv Wolfman, Roger McKenzie, Peter Gillis, Gerry Conway, Doug Moench, Gardner Fox, Roy Thomas, Tony Isabella, Mike Friedrich, Jim Shooter, Steve Gerber, Len Wein and Rick Margopolous. The art is by Gene Colan, John Buscema, Neal Adams, Vicente Alcazar, Frank Robbins, Steve Gan, Sonny Trinidad, Yong Montano, Dick Ayers, Alan Weiss, Frank Springer, George Evans, Tony Dezuniga, Paul Gulacy, Rich Buckler, Jim Starlin, Alfonso Font, Mike Ploog, Frank Robbins, Alfredo Alcala, George Tuska, Val Mayerik and Ernie Chua. The Frankenstein Monster issues are all written by Mike Friedrich and drawn by John Buscema. With such a large number of creators there are not one but two separate labels posts.

One of the less often commented features about reprints is that they aren't always exactly the same as the original publication. Cutting pages or even individual panels to fit a smaller page count or different size format and modifying footnotes to reference other reprints are the best known but there's also a long history of amending dialogue and visuals to suit different sensibilities. Just to add to the confusion the state of the archives isn't always the best so the material available or ordered up is sometimes identical to the original printing, sometimes a modified version from a later reprint and occasionally an earlier prepublication one that was modified before it first went to the printers but with the unaltered version hanging around in the files. The Essentials have had a mixed record on source material over the years, with the earlier volumes often relying on other reprints whilst the later ones developed better techniques for going straight back to the source material. But even then some things were still changed. Usually these changes aren't too well documented but this volume, released almost at the mid point of the Essentials, has had some changes made to the artwork to cover up nudity, especially on the first story with Lilith.

Were this not known about it wouldn't affect readability at all - the changes focus on hiding nudity, mainly by extending existing clothing. (There are some comparisons between the original and modified panels at The Groovy Age of Horror: Censored Essentials? - be warned the nudity is clear.) Marvel of course has every legal right to do this (the US doesn't have the concept of creators' moral rights to object to tampering with the work) and whether this was the company's own decision or a response to the modern standards of distributors and booksellers is unknown, but the alternative may have been no reprint at all. But it's a pity that it was deemed necessary to make the modifications as it does ultimately mean this isn't quite an exact reprint (and that means even more when most of the material was in black and white to start with). And the market for reprints of old Dracula stories shouldn't have a problem with it. Certainly there's other material with pretty adult themes such as pirates attacking a village, including rape (the word is actually used) and their female captain is shown using sex to beguile and control her crew, with one crewmember shown being rewarded and later others promised "Hellyn's reward will be given to all who score with a thrust!" when facing Dracula. Yet despite this the story finds itself unable to say "bastard" and has to use the euphemism "fatherless dog".

As for what's actually been printed here, this is very much a mishmash collection of material. It starts off with a couple of tales from Tomb of Dracula Magazine, continuing where the last volume left off, before running through a whole set of historical adventures from the various magazines and another character's comic, then finishes off with the present day tales from Dracula Lives! magazine that ran parallel to the early issues of the Tomb of Dracula comic. The result of all this is that the volume jumps around. Reading between the lines it becomes clear that Marvel didn't really know what to do with the ongoing adventures of Dracula now that the 1970s horror fad had passed and Marv Wolfman had left the character (and was in the process of leaving the company altogether). Consequently it's unsurprising that the magazine ended after just six issues and there's nothing in the early stories that suggests any real direction with the most significant development being an ending of sorts as Lilith is separated from the body of Angel O'Hara and then finds she is unable to kill her father. The other early tale is a more typical piece of what is to come, with Dracula preying on an innocent woman, here a ballerina, and transforming her. She eventually commits suicide and is not the only female victim to do so in these pages.

The historic adventures of Dracula show no development at all, being just a succession of tales in different historic periods. Reordering them chronologically helps to disguise the lack of direction but it also exposes some inconsistencies in the basic vampire mythology, most notably as to whether a transformed victim needs to wait three nights or not before rising again, whether Dracula needs to spend the day in a coffin full of Transylvanian earth or not, and whether he needs to be invited in before he can enter a public dwelling. Each of these rules is both adhered to and broken throughout the course of these tales, with Dracula's precise vulnerability to crosses also fluctuating somewhat. This just reinforces the mess these tales are.

By and large the historic adventures either fill in the core history of Dracula, although the adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel is conspicuously absent, or else place the vampire in a particular period setting as he wanders across Europe and occasionally beyond, but always ultimately returning home. There's a variety of stock characters and situations including hordes of Turkish warriors, witches, pirates, court nobles, American Civil War soldiers, cowboys, gangsters and wartime Germans. And there are attempts to do more with the formula than simply preying on women and evading their menfolk. But something just doesn't feel right about these stories. Dracula is ultimately a late Victorian Gothic creation, even if he was named after a historical figure from the fifteenth century and has since had that historical character fused into the fictional one. Seeing him placed in other historical settings just doesn't feel right and few of the tales are able to really rise above the limitations. As a result the only historic stories of any real significance are the early ones which tell how Vlad the Impaler became a vampire in the first place and also how the centuries long war between Dracula and the Van Helsings began. There's also a particularly dark tale as Dracula encounters and brings down the notorious real life serial killer Countess Elizabeth Bathory, here depicted with all the gruesomeness of bathing in the blood of virgins to restore and maintain her youth. It's a particularly dark tale that shows Dracula up against a woman who is immune to his bite, forcing him to resort to more devious methods to bring her down, making for a good homage to what is believed to have been one of the influences upon Stoker. Otherwise these tales are really just back-up filler that don't work when collected together in their own right. Early on a text piece entitled "Bloodline: A Probable Outline Of The Career Of Count Vlad Dracula" summarises all the adventures and material from various flashbacks and that contains probably everything that could be needed to cover his historic career.

The three Frankenstein Monster issues are set in 1898 and appear to be Dracula's first appearance after the Stoker novel, which is given a very brief one page summary here. The issues show Frankenstein's monster on a search for the last of his creator's family and encountering a travelling gypsy circus on the way but one of the gypsies has ulterior motives. It leads to a rather dull conflict between two of the greatest horror creations who each deserved so much more. As is so often the case with these tales we get Dracula preying on innocent women in an isolated settlement and clashing with the local men, with some suspicious townsfolk thrown in who bring a gruesome fate to the gypsies. We also get what is becoming an increasingly routine occurrence whereby Dracula ends the story seemingly slain but his killer lacks either the knowledge or time to perform the necessary actions to destroy the corpse before the vampire can be brought back to life. Though we sometimes see Dracula resurrected, such as here when an old gypsy woman tricks the monster into unsealing a tomb, the succession of deaths and unexplained resurrections work to undermine the overall impact of the stories by disrupting the narrative flow and removing the impact of danger and destruction to Dracula.

The final part of the volume is only slightly more coherent, being taken up with the present day adventures from Dracula Lives! and so at least publication and chronological orders coincide. But apart from a vague narrative as Dracula comes to the States in an unsuccessful search for his old foe Cagliostro before heading back to Europe, this is much the same as before. Dracula wanders through a succession of scenarios, ranging from becoming addicted to drugs after biting a junkie to a battle with an eighteenth century man who has been transformed into a stone gargoyle that only comes to life at night. A visit to New Orleans sees the Zombie passing by but there's no interaction between the two horror characters and instead the focus is on an encounter with Marie Le Vau, the "Voodoo Queen of New Orleans". Elsewhere in Hollywood Dracula challenges a has-been actor who has been portraying him and suffering delusions that make him believe he is the actual vampire. Dracula's nastiest streak comes to the fore at times as he sets traps, especially when he bites a terrorist and sets him up to be exposed to sunlight without realising what will happen. A particularly favourite trick is to set a foe up by biting an expected acquaintance in advance who in turn becomes a vampire in time to attack. A number of women are drawn to Dracula over the course of these stories and he will sometimes be drawn to them in return but ultimately will never settle with any of them, leaving them lonely and, in one case, suicidal. The biggest addition to the mythology is the Montesi Formula, a spell that can destroy vampires permanently which leads Dracula to risk invading the Vatican in order to dispose of both Cardinal Montesi and the formula before it can be used permanently. Otherwise these tales are just more of the same.

This volume primarily serves as a companion piece to the three earlier ones, collecting together material from the supporting series and guest appearances that never fully fitted alongside the ongoing narrative in the monthly comic. And this patchwork shows even without being reordered into a chronological framework. There's no development or recurring cast beyond Dracula, whilst a lot of the situations bear a strong similarity to one another. All in all this volume is pretty inessential.

What If... Essential Champions volume 1?

Another look at a series as if it had been collected in an Essential volume, including all the additional issues included in other collections. This one is otherwise found in Champions Classic volumes 1 and 2.

Essential Champions volume 1 would contain all seventeen issues of the 1970s series plus the crossover issue Super-Villain Team-Up #14, the guest appearances in Iron Man annual #4 and Avengers #163, and also the epilogue in Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man #17 to #18. (This is also the combination of the forthcoming Masterworks edition.) That would be a slim volume but there are some Essentials this thin. Bonus material, if it were needed, could include some unused covers - the Classics include one for issue #7 that had only minor changes - and also entries from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The writing on the main series is initially by creator Tony Isabella who is succeeded by Bill Mantlo with one issue by Chris Claremont. The art on the main series is by Don Heck, George Tuska, Bob Hall and John Byrne with most making at least one return during the run. The Iron Man annual is written by Mantlo and drawn by Tuska, the Avengers issue is written by Jim Shooter and drawn by Tuska, the Super-Villain Team-Up one is written by Mantlo and drawn by Hall, and the Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man issues are written by Mantlo and drawn by Sal Buscema.

1975 was a big year for team titles at Marvel. As well as the ongoing exploits of the Avengers, Defenders and Fantastic Four it also saw the launch of the All New All Different X-Men, the debut of the Invaders and the start of the Champions. But whereas all the other titles would last for several years, Champions would limp along for just over two years, confined to the odd eight-issues-a-year format that would make multi-part stories take ages to resolve and never really breaking out into a big hit. In the years since there has been little in the way of revivals bar a one-off reunion to work with X-Force in one of the 1998 team-up annuals. Otherwise the team has been mostly forgotten and treated as a joke when remembered, with Iceman once bemoaning "Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a major super-villain in Los Angeles?" (We'll find out in this review.) The nadir must surely have been when the right to use the name was won in a poker game by the team usually known as the Great Lakes Avengers but even they didn't make much of a mark with it before finding yet another name. And so the Champions have languished in obscurity.

Part of the problem may be the sheer difficulty of getting the original team back together under the title "Champions" - after the original series ended a different comic company adapted a role playing game property by the same name and at least twice Marvel has been rebuffed in attempts to reobtain the trademark. (The X-Force/Champions '98 annual was probably part of one of these attempts.) But also the team members are a pretty disparate bunch normally found spread across very distinctive parts of the Marvel universe and it can't be the easiest task to obtain the whole set for even a one-off reunion.

The team itself is initially comprised of five heroes, with another joining midway through. Leading the group is the Black Widow, who has recently left Daredevil and is developing ever more into a strong independent character in her own right. She's also one of the first women leaders of a Marvel team and also brings to the team both her adoptive father Ivan Petrovich and demons from their past in the Soviet Union. Bankrolling the team is the Angel, fresh out of the X-Men, now that newer members have taken over, heavily enriched through inheritance and ditching his secret identity in favour of being open and free with the world. Also recently having left the X-Men, but maintaining his secret identity for now, is Iceman. The youngest team member, he initially feels he wants to get on with his life and plans on dropping aside as soon as the team is fully established, but finds himself staying around to the point that this plan gets forgotten, especially under a new writer. The team's muscle is provided by Hercules, who proves to be the catalyst around which the group is initially drawn together, and he stays around for the adventure. The most distant is all the five is the Ghost Rider, seen here in the early years of his career when Johnny Blaze had full control over his flaming alter ego, who often feels distrusted and out of place amongst his teammates. Midway through the run the team is joined by Darkstar, a new hero from the Soviet Union with dark energy powers and a mysterious past. The main supporting cast member is Richard Feinster, a recently sacked lecture agent at UCLA who becomes the team's business manager.

The Champions are based in Los Angeles and have as their aims to help the "common man" with more down to earth problems, in contrast to the more global and intergalactic threats faced by other teams. It's a worthy aim, as is setting the series away from the New York norm of the Marvel universe. But in practice the team wind up facing quite a number of established larger than life super-villains and take on global and even universal threats. It looks harder to escape the conventions than it seems.

With very little pre-existing ties to bring the team together the series starts by creating a set of coincidences to get all of them to the campus of UCLA in order to get caught up in the same menace. Iceman is starting studies there and is visited by the Angel whilst Hercules has been appointed a visiting lecturer on the reality behind Greek myths. The Black Widow is applying for a post as a Russian language teacher and the Ghost Rider's alter-ego of Johnny Blaze happens to be motorcycling through the campus. The initial menace is the arrival of Pluto the Greek god of death who seeks to force Hercules and Greek god turned little remembering Atlas era hero turned new lecturer in humanities Venus to marry his allies, Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, and Ares, god of war, so that they will be unable to battle against Pluto's planned take-over of Olympus. The opening adventure takes up the first three issues with a journey to Olympus itself thrown in and results in the five working together and realising how well they mesh as a team. It's hard to disguise that most superhero teams have had awkward origins precisely because they rely on cautious loner heroes suddenly discovering how well they work together, but the Champions seem especially forced given the ongoing distrust of Ghost Rider and the initial reluctance of Iceman. It's as though they were thrown together by dictat rather than emerging as a natural combination.

The team takes a few more issues before it's fully constituted, complete with its own transport in the form of the Champscraft and a headquarters in a Los Angeles skyscraper. However both get assembled by dodgy contractors and a minor recurring theme are the problems with equipment failure though it doesn't come to the forefront until the epilogue in Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man. The team's public relations are also a bit of a mess, with their official launch coinciding with an adventure such that only the Angel and Hercules are available for the press conference which gets attacked by the Crimson Dynamo, the Griffin, and the Titanium Man, whilst a photoshoot of the dissolution of the team is an equal damp squib with only the Angel still around when Peter Parker arrives.

When one looks at the foes encountered by the Champions it rapidly becomes clear just how easy it is to find supervillains in Los Angeles including some quite major ones. As well as the initial clash with Pluto there are encounters with a group of Soviet foes including the Titanium Man, a new Crimson Dynamo whose real identity is a shocker for the Black Widow and Ivan, and the Griffin. This group also includes the first appearance of Darkstar but she soon defects. Then there's an encounter with Warlord Kaa of the shadow-people with guest appearances by Hawkeye and the time-displaced Two-Gun Kid. The team's most wide-ranging adventure initially seems to be up against the Stranger but he is in fact looking to save Earth and the real threat comes from Kamo Tharnn (later better known as the Possessor) who seeks to recapture the Runestaff that can save the day. The Avengers appearance sees conflict with the Greek Titan Typhon who forces battle between the two whilst the Iron Man annual brings them up against Modok and AIM. The crossover with Super-Villain Team-Up involves a strange contest between Doctor Doom and Magneto in which the latter must find a way to stop the ruler of Latveria from taking over the world with a special neurogas, forcing the Master of Magnetism to seek out allies, finding them in the form of first the Beast and then the Champions. The final issue sees an attack by the Vanisher, utilising both the Sentinels and the mutants the Blob, Lorelei and Unus the Untouchable. The biggest new foe introduced here is Swarm, a collective sentient hive of bees with the mind and skeleton core of a Nazi scientist. There are a few lesser foes such as new ones like Dr Edward Lansing, a scientist abusing a care home in order to perform experiments, or Rampage, an inventor hurt by the economic downturn who dons an exo-skeleton to initially rob banks. Rampage is the most recurring of the team's foes, being used by the Soviet foes in an action that leaves him paralysed and then coming back for an act of revenge at the very end. There's also an encounter with Stilt-Man that's so forgettable he's left in the hands of the guest-starring Black Goliath whilst the Champions deal with the Stranger's problem.

The series ultimately lasted only seventeen issues and ends on a mini-cliffhanger as the Champions wonder about Darkstar's true nature. But this goes unresolved and the team is unceremoniously disbanded in a flashback in the pages of Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man which otherwise serves as a straightforward team-up with the Angel (in fact it's a surprise this story wasn't told in the pages of Marvel-Team-Up) as they face down against the Champions' old foes Rampage and the shoddily constructed building. And that was the end of the Champions' story, bar one very brief reunion many years later.

So is Champions a title that should have had an Essential collected edition? The existence of the Classic reprints is the most obvious argument against but there are certainly other titles in the Essentials that have been collected elsewhere in colour. And the bar for inclusion in the Essentials was not actually that high - several short-lived 1970s series such as Godzilla, Ms. Marvel and Super-Villain Team-Up all qualified for a single Essential volume so not lasting long was clearly no barrier. Nor is the series anywhere near as mediocre as some material included in the Essentials. It may not be the most memorable of titles and the team suffers from feeling like it was assembled to fit arbitrary criteria, but there's a sense of trying and purpose to these tales that hold together reasonably well. A single collected edition would be thin without much obvious extra stuff to include - very maybe the X-Force/Champions '98 annual but that would be a much later pick and otherwise that's pretty much it as a contemporary appearance in Godzilla would be a monster of a rights issue. But there's just about enough already. This is a series that certainly does deserve reappraising as whilst it's not the greatest team title ever it's certainly a lot more credible than the dismissive comments and jokes of later years would suggest. I don't know how the trademark situation would have been an issue, though it clearly didn't stop the Classics doing two volumes. All in all the Champions is a good little series that would certainly have earned a place amongst the Essentials.

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 Moon Knight volume 3

Essential Moon Knight volume 3 contains issues #31 to #38 of his original series, all six issues of the brief series Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu plus material from Marvel Fanfare #30, #38 & #39, Solo Avengers #3 and Marvel Super-Heroes #1. Most of these series are self-explanatory but Solo Avengers (later retitled Avengers Spotlight) was an anthology highlighting individual team members past and present with Hawkeye holding a regular slot in most issues. The writing on the original series is by Doug Moench, Tony Isabella and Alan Zelenetz with one back-up by Steve Ringgenberg. The art is a mixture of Kevin Nowlan, Bo Hampton, Mike Hernandez, Marc Silvestri, Richard Howell, Bob McLeod and Bill Sienkiewicz. The Fist of Khonshu series is written by Alan Zelenetz, Mary Jo Duffy and Jim Owsley and mainly drawn by Chris Warner with the final issue by Mark Beachum. The Marvel Fanfare stories are written by Ann Nocenti, Mary Jo Duffy and Mike Carlin and drawn by Brent Anderson, Judith Hunt and Bill Reinhold. The Solo Avengers tale is written by Roger Stern and drawn by Bob Hall. The Marvel Super-Heroes tale is written by Robert M. Ingersoll and drawn by Mike Gustovich. The separate labels post is here.

This volume covers seven years of the character's solo stories from the last days of his original series until just before the launch of his third series. Complicating things further it's not clear if the stories from Marvel Fanfare and Marvel Super-Heroes were one-off pieces commissioned for those books or else material prepared earlier and rescued from the inventory pile with perhaps some additional work to complete them. The Solo Avengers story appears to have been an original commission as much of that series was but the Marvel Super-Heroes story may have also been commissioned for Solo Avengers and not used for whatever reason. The Marvel Fanfare issues are the most confusing because they appear to be set during the original series's run, whether as a consequence of being inventory material or a deliberate decision to tell a story set retroactively, but are here placed after the second series and so add to the confusion about the status quo.

Part of the mess seems to stem from publishing decisions rather than creative ones. Unusually the original series including single page editorials by Denny O'Neil (apart from issue #35 where it's by Linda Grant as part of Assistant Editors' Month) and equally unusually these have been included in this volume. Consequently the modern reader is informed that the series was normally only available in the direct market comics shops and that from issue #32 onwards the series and indeed all direct market only books would now be published bimonthly as a result of a decision from somewhere higher up in Marvel (O'Neil humorously identifies the decision maker sending down this decree as "The-Computer-Which-Dares-Not-Speak-Its-Name", and makes clear that he doesn't like this new rule). Issue #35 is double-sized and was made available on the newsstands, presumably as a test to see if there was still an audience on the newsstands that hadn't been able to migrate to comic shops though I don't know if Marvel's other direct market only titles also undertook such experiments. Finally with issue #38 the book was cancelled to be replaced by a new series that would be available both on the newsstands and also in the direct market, with O'Neil promising it would appear "within a couple of months". Around the same time Micronauts, another bimonthly direct market only book was similarly cancelled and replaced with the monthly, available everywhere Micronauts: The New Voyages after just a couple of months, though Ka-Zar the Savage was cancelled outright, as though Marvel was now backtracking on the direct market only option (at least for the time being) and indeed O'Neil's comments in the editorial in issue #37 admit to second thoughts on the matter. But for whatever reason it took rather longer for the new Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu series to appear, eventually showing up eleven months after the old one ended. And then it ended after just six months.

One result of this is a high turnover of creative staff. The only thing approaching an extended run is Alan Zelenetz writing the last three issues of the original series and then the first four of the Fist of Khonshu but the eleven month gap makes it hard to consider the two as a single seven issue run. Chris Warner draws the first five issues of Fist of Khonshu but otherwise no artist draws more than three issues consecutively. So even before the volume reaches the wilderness years at the end the whole thing is exceptionally bitty, with successive creators all pulling in their own different directions and some very different takes on the character being offered.

The end of the original series largely focuses upon the urban crime fighter aspect of the character with a succession of tales that primarily focus upon the characters subject to the environment. There's a tale of a rundown street where a pawnbroker tries to stand up to the gangs demanding protection money and reaches out to one young recruit, only for tragedy to erupt. There's an encounter with insane environmentalists who want to use a new gas to wipe out the human race and allow the planet to begin anew. There's a tale of a man dying of cancer with an uncaring doctor more interested in his coffee and the man's brother resorts to bringing a gun into the hospital. A reporter seeking to explode urban myths shows up a man as just a local thug and he responds by trying to explode the myth in a different way. A gang hangs out at a warehouse storing a nasty chemical substance that unleashes primal violence, causing Moon Knight to flashback to a previous encounter with the substance and Gena of the diner to become a fearful recluse in her own business.

There's a brief backup story in issue #34 narrated by Moon Knight's confidante Crawley that speedily reintroduces all the supporting cast, presumably an attempt by incoming regular writer Tony Isabella to show his grasp of the series but as he only does one more issue this leaves "The Vault of Knight" as a mere curiosity. It might have better to run it in the following issue as this was an attempt to build a wider audience on the newsstands and an introduction/reminder piece would have been a good way to help build readership. The tale is a mini-epic as Moon Knight gets crippled with a fight with the Fly, normally one of the lamer recurring Spider-Man villains, and he has to recover his movement in time to stop Bora, a frustrated over-tall would-be ballet dancer who now uses her mutant psionic powers for revenge. The story includes guest appearances by both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four but they mainly perform crowd control in a showdown at a ballet performance.

Alan Zelenetz's arrival sees a shift in the series's focus away from the urban crime fighter and more into magical territory. His first issue sees a team-up with Doctor Strange when Marlene is possessed by the spirit of Amutef, an Ancient Egyptian sorcerer, with a sceptical Moon Knight slowly coming to accept the forces around him. The final two issues of the original series tell of the death of Moon Knight's estranged Rabbi father amidst a wave of anti-Semitic violence and the body is stolen by the magician Zohar who is seeking to obtain occult powers. It's one of the only stories to really use Moon Knight's history to develop the character rather than just to provide a source of previous encounters.

And then comes the big interruption and the gutting of the character's world.

When the character returns in Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu, massive changes have been made. The character has ditched the Steven Grant and Jake Lockley identities and is now living openly as Marc Spector albeit in the mansion and lifestyle associated with Grant. Supporting characters like Gena and Crawley have vanished, with Frenchie reduced to a cameo. Marc is trying to ditch the Moon Knight identity as well and auctions off the statue of Khonshu. However agents of Khonshu's rival Anubis obtain the statue and so the spirits of priests of Khonshu force Marc to retrieve it. In the process he defeats Anubis and returns to the Moon Knight identity in a modified costume, although as most of the changes involve colour the main change seen here is the replacement of the moon's crescent with an ankh. Marlene is angry with Marc's return to the role and walks out on him. Marc continues in the role and finds his strength is now enhanced at night but now the priests regularly invading his thoughts and forcing him to carry out tasks in spite of his own concerns as he is ever more the "Fist of Khonshu".

The first issue may introduce the character for a new and returning audience but otherwise it's a disastrous opening that ditches much of the best parts of the set-up in favour of Egyptian mysticism and pulp adventure. Subsequent issues slowly try to return to the more successful arrangements but it's too little and too late. In the meantime the more fantastical adventures include a visit to Mexico where a mad scientist is recreating Nazi experiments in a base inside a pyramid, the return of the sleepless man Morpheus, and two brothers who kill children to prolong their lives but now face a trio of Indian assassins. On a smaller scale is the man who has taken on the identity of Bluebeard and kidnapped multiple women using neuron rays to make them obey him, and drug pushing cannibal cult on an island in the south Caribbean. It is little surprise this series bombed so quickly. Moon Knight works best as an urban gritty crime fighter and not as a globe trotting adventurer. The absence of most of his supporting cast with no real replacements also hinders the series and attempts to develop a subplot of Marlene returning to her ex-husband, who is now in a wheelchair, just don't go anywhere.

Nestling at the end of the volume are five further stories from various anthologies but it's unclear just when most of them were originally written or are meant to be set, though Moon Knight is sporting a crescent in all of them. The first is a full length tale as Steven and Marlene (together without comment) visit a small town where nearby a film is being shot and killing deer in the process. This brings forth a vengeful spirit of nature. Next up is a tale that sees Frenchie fully back but the priests still pestering Marc as he investigates the connection between a talentless boy band and the sudden appearance of old people claiming they have suddenly aged. Following that we get a tale of Jake picking up a man disguised in an Arab keffiyeh in his cab who goes on to terrorise the United Nations. At the story's end Jake succumbs to casual racism and refuses to pick up another Arab in a keffiyeh. Each of these stories feels like they were written for one of the ongoing series but never got used, and it might have been better to have placed them here in the originally intended locations.

The Solo Avengers story is clearly original and brings Moon Knight into conflict with the Shroud, Master of Darkness. Both characters have strong elements of Batman about them and it's surprising that it took so long to bring the two together, even if it is for only half an issue. The final story, from Marvel Super-Heroes #1, feels like it was also prepared for Solo Avengers but not used in favour of a new Moon Knight series. It sees Moon Knight battle the Raptor, a forgettable one-off villain like so many in Solo Avengers, and also visit Gena, now managing a restaurant in Houston. It does its best in the pages available to provide a coda to the original supporting cast as well as establishing that Marc and Marlene are back together, thus undoing as much of the Fist of Khonshu damage as possible in the limited space available.

All in all this volume shows a once great character and series crashing into the mess of rapidly changing creative teams and a badly fumbled relaunch that steers in completely the wrong direction. There a few especially memorable stories with the villains mainly one-offs and much of the good and unique elements are needlessly jettisoned. This volume also suffers from presenting the inventory stories when they were published when it might have been better to follow the lead of other volumes and insert them into the original run at approximately the point they would have originally been used. In total this volume is best forgotten.

Essential Marvel Horror volume 2 - creator labels 1

We have a volume with a huge number of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

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.

Essential Man-Thing volume 1 - creator labels

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

Essential Defenders volume 2 - creator labels

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

Essential Hulk volume 5

Essential Hulk volume 5 contains the Incredible Hulk #171-200 & Annual #5. The first eight issues are written by a mixture of Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and Tony Isabella, before Len Wein begins a lengthy run, also plotting the annual with Chris Claremont scripting. The art covers the end of Herb Trimpe's long run and the start of Sal Buscema's, with the latter drawing the annual. Bonus materal includes the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entry for Hammer and Anvil, and an early version of issue #174's cover.

The series has by now settled into a clear pattern for the long run with a string of generally rather flat adventures as the Hulk wanders from location to location, with occasional exceptions either because of a particularly strong situation or antagonist, or else because of a good ongoing storyline, usually involving Thunderbolt Ross and/or Betty. This volume features some spectacular highs but also some more turgid moments. It also shows an ever greater use of the wider Marvel universe.

There are quite a number of guest appearances by both heroes and foes from other series, as well as some big developments for a few of them. Early on, the Hulk briefly teams up with the Juggernaut and crosses path with Professor X, Cyclops and Marvel Girl as they search for the missing X-Men. Then in an story actually entitled "Anybody Out There Remember... The Cobalt Man?" a long forgotten X-Men foe reappears before the series moves on to another encounter with the Inhumans. Following that, issues #176-178 are the conclusion to the first Warlock saga, another example of using the Hulk's series to resolve storylines from cancelled titles, but one consequence is that the Hulk himself feels like a guest star in his own series, a situation not really changed by a few pages showing the continuation of one of his subplots or by issue #175 setting up his return trip to Counter-Earth. However, it does contain a surprising moment when, in a storyline culminating in an issue cover dated August 1974, two intrepid individuals investigate corruption in the White House. At the end an unassuming man finds himself President, an office he did not seek and having to both prove himself and bring hope to the nation. Soon life imitated art. Meanwhile the Hulk returns to our Earth and soon has probably the best known encounter in this volume.

Issues #180-181 see the Hulk in the Canadian wilderness, once more fighting the Wendigo at a time when it had not yet become a cliché that this is all that ever seems to happen in the Canadian wilderness. But then at the end of issue #180 comes a new combatant, Canada's first superhero - Wolverine. Reading his appearance here I'm amazed that he went on to such fame as there's not much sign of the character traits that would make him so popular. Rather he's just a plucky little fighter who holds his own with his skills and agility against two giant forces of nature.

The Hulk goes on to encounter some of the foes from Marvel's pre-Silver Age "Atlas" monster era, beginning with Kaa, a warlord from a parallel dimension previously seen in Strange Tales who now briefly possesses the Hulk's shadow. Later on the annual sees duplicates of Diablo (from Tales of Suspense), an alien made of smoke, Taboo (from Strange Tales), a monster made of muck and mud, Groot (from Tales to Astonish), a being comprised of living wood, Goom (also from Tales of Suspense), a renegade alien from Planet X, and Blip (also from Tales to Astonish), a being comprised of electricity. Also present is the real Xemnu, first seen in Journey into Mystery. Between the regular series and the annual we get one of the first clear incorporations of the Atlas monster era into the regular Marvel canon. Meanwhile S.H.I.E.L.D. make increasingly frequent appearances in the series, culminating in the assignment of Agent Clay Quartermain as a permanent liaison to the Hulkbuster Base. Elsewhere the Hulk encounters the angelic Glorian from the Fantastic Four, the Locust, another forgotten foe from the early days of the X-Men, then meets both the old Avengers foe the Collector and the Man-Thing.

New foes are slighter on the ground but include Hammer and Anvil, two escaped convicts bound together by an alien, with the added tension that one is a racist white and the other a black man. Then there's the Devastator, a Soviet agent of the renegade Gremlin, but he gets killed off in his first full appearance. The Gremlin has a less human agent in the form of Droog, his pet monster. On a smaller scale is Jaimie Macawber, a Scottish laird trying to protect a beast in the local loch because of the tourist income it brings, but in the end both he and the monster are turned to stone and continue to generate the income.

Issues #184 to #186 are partially familiar to me from an aborted reprint run in Marvel UK's The Incredible Hulk Presents back in 1989. This weekly series was a courageous attempt at an anthology and combined 1970s Hulk stories (as well as these, #133 & #134 were also reprinted) with an adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade then Indy's Marvel US series, Action Force/G.I. Joe the Action Force reprints from G.I. Joe Special Missions, and brand new adventures of Doctor Who. I guess the series must have made sense to someone at the time but looking back it was a very odd combination of strips, coming out as Doctor Who was about to go off the air for an extended period (and rather than trying to lure in the Doctor Who Magazine readership, the plan was instead to reprint the Hulk adventures there until the DWM editor vetoed this as he felt the stories were the wrong tone and would interfere with attempts to give the DWM strip its own direction), whilst Marvel UK seemed to run Action Force in so many different places it was as if they'd were stuck with a licence that was either so over-expensive that they needed every chance to recoup their money or else on that mandated a quantity of toy promoting appearances that the market just couldn't support. The adaptation of a hit adventure movie should have been a strong selling point for the series but it was given rather less publicity than one might expect, leaving the title with a rather limited appeal and poor publicity drive. It only lasted twelve issues, ending partway through the reprint of #186. Consequently readers were left with a cliffhanger of the Devastator about to go into action, and it took over two decades to see the resolution.

The main storyline the issues show part of is rather long winded, starting back in the previous volume and not being fully resolved until the final issue in this one. Major Glenn Talbot had been lost in the Soviet Union when on a mission to rescue Thunderbolt Ross, but subsequently escapes and makes it back to the States. Everything seems fine except Colonel Armbruster thinks something is wrong and eventually discovers the truth - Talbot is a living bomb sent to assassinate the visiting President. Armbruster dies and Hulkbuster Base is subsequently destroyed by the Devastator, but then it's discovered that Talbot's body was an impostor with a mind transfer. The real Talbot is recovered in a further mission into the Soviet Union but has the mind of the Soviet agent whose body was used for the aborted assassination. The Gremlin destroy the mind and so Talbot returns home catatonic, his mind seemingly lost forever. Eventually it's restored by probing his brain to destroy a mental block in one of the silliest issues of all in the volume.

Issue #200 starts with the encephalo-helmet, which is one of the biggest plot conveniences imaginable. It simply appears in the series as a way for Bruce's mind to control the Hulk, with no prior mention. As it gets destroyed midway through its first appearance it cannot disguise its purpose as a narrative shortcut rather than an actual plot development that will allow for Bruce to control the Hulk. The issue is a very weak ending to the volume as the Hulk is sent into Glenn Talbot's brain to remove a mental block and restore his mind. By this point the saga of Talbot has well and truly worn out its welcome and it's a relief just to see it finally resolved in any way at all, but the ideas involved seem ludicrous. The mental block is manifested as a physical creature inside Talbot's brain, with antibodies forming themselves as copies of various past foes and tense allies. Being both the 200th issue (even though it's in number only) and the fourteenth anniversary of the Hulk's debut, there's an attempted celebration of the whole run, also shown by the cover which is used for this volume as a whole. But the pseudo-appearances are so fleeting that they become little more than name checks. This issue came out a couple of years before Marvel began the practice of increasing the size of anniversary and/or special issues, and so there are just eighteen pages to accommodate everything. Perhaps it was simply too ambitious in trying to pack so much into such a small amount of space, but the result is deeply unsatisfactory.

Despite the dragged out and poor ending, the main parts of the storyline are amongst the best issues in the volume, showing how to do the Hulk well and they were a worthy choice for The Incredible Hulk Presents all those years later, regardless of that title's wider problems. Elsewhere there are less successful showcases for the series. The annual comes from 1976, a year that saw Marvel restore both the format and original material after some years of reprints and/or Giant-Size quarterlies. Unfortunately it shows all too well why many are critical of them. The story is completely inconsequential and forgettable, simply pitching the Hulk against a succession of five duplicates of Atlas era monsters before a showdown with the real Xemnu, also from the Atlas era but previously revived in the pages of Defenders. We get not much more than a series of fights in which each monster's weakness is quickly exposed. Both plotter Len Wein and scripter Chris Claremont have produced some fantastic material in their time but here is evidence that every great creator has some off days. Even Sal Buscema's art feels under par, despite normally producing magic no matter how pressing the deadline; this is perhaps a consequence of Jack Abel inking rather than the regular series's Joe Staton.

The Hulk himself has slightly evolved by this volume, retaining his classic childlike persona but showing a greater degree of innocence and willing to help those who have never threatened him. Throughout these issues he is shown to befriend and help a number of non-threatening individuals, either when he stumbles across them or else because they actively ask his help. This shows some signs of the character developing but at the same time he is restricted by his poor memory, having problems remembering in detail his past encounters with foes such as Xemnu or the Abomination. At the same time there's a sight softening of Thunderbolt Ross's attitude to the Hulk, realising that the monster has at times been of help and yet the military are still hostile to him, particularly Armbruster. However this only goes so far and Ross often finds himself in situations where there is no option but to take action.

All in all this is yet another middling volume, with occasional flashes of greatness amidst a more general continued run. I've said so many times what I think the core problem is so I won't repeat it, but it does show itself once more here. The main excitement comes in the middle of the volume and coincides with the early part of Len Wein's run, but the volume sinks back as that run continues, suggesting all the good ideas were used at once. The result is a rather average Hulk run.

Essential Captain America volume 5

Essential Captain America volume 5 comprises Captain America and the Falcon #187-205 plus Annual #3 and the Marvel Treasury Edition special Captain America's Bicentennial Battles. The early issues see writing by John Warner, Tony Isabella, Frank Robbins, Bill Mantlo and Marv Wolfman, and art by Frank Robbins and Sal Buscema. Then from issue #193 onwards everything, including the annual and special, is written and drawn by Cap's co-creator Jack Kirby in his mid 1970s return to Marvel. Bonus material includes Kirby's original pencils for the covers of issues #197, #198 & #199.

The first six issues show the book in a state of extreme creative mess. Frank Robbins's artwork is poor and at times veers into caricature, whilst the high turnover of writers results in no clear direction. Just to add to the mess the issues are trying to mop up after the ridiculous revelations about the Falcon at the end of the last volume that showed him to have been a gangster transformed by the Red Skull into the ultimate sleeper agent. Following a rather unusual form of shock therapy the result is that he remembers both his gangster and hero days but he feels as though he is two persons in a single body. The exact ramifications of this are not explored as well as they should be, so it's unclear just whether he now has a split personality or else the two personas have somehow merged or if one has triumphed over the other but retained both sets of memories. The result is an awkward and unsatisfactory arrangement that's at risk of falling into a mess with future writers unfamiliar with what's planned or just how Sam has reconciled the two sets of memories. His criminal status is addressed more head on with a trial that gives him a suspended sentence with Nick Fury serving as his parole officer. Given the turnover of writers it's hard to identify just who took the wrong decisions but even the option of dismissing the Red Skull's claims as false is dangled yet rather than take such a natural way out of this mess the series instead decides to go with them. But the result is deeply unsatisfactory and shows the dangers of changing writers too quickly at a critical point for the series.

The foes in these issues aren't too memorable either. There's the Druid, previously seen in the S.H.I.E.L.D. strip in Strange Tales, who has Cap whisked away to an arena for no particular reason but it helps to mark time. Back at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters acting director Jeff Cochren forces Cap to take pat in a weird fight designed to snap the Falcon out of his comatose state; it turns out to be a plot by Nightshade to take control of S.H.I.E.L.D. and conquer the world. Subsequently the Falcon's trial is interrupted by an assassination contract undertaken by old Daredevil foe Stilt-Man. Then in a fill-in issue Dr. Faustus plots to steal millions from New York City; the issue is notable as the first ever appearance of Karla Sofen, the future Moonstone, but here she's little more than a gangster's mole. It is possible that John Warner thought he had been assigned the series for the long run rather than the fill-ins he wound up doing, and Tony Isabella seems to have fallen into the same trap whilst Marv Wolfman's issue has all the signs of a one-off fill-in and there's also artist Frank Robbins contributing to the writing plus Bill Mantlo scripting the last of Isabella's plots, but this really is a classic example of how too many cooks really can spoil the broth.

"King Kirby is BACK -- and greater than ever!" proclaims the cover of issue #193, though the effect is somewhat lost here because both the annual and the Treasury edition are placed before it. This was the start of Kirby's return to Marvel after an absence of about five years. Or perhaps a partial return. Over the next few years Kirby would produce a number of titles including The Eternals, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur, Black Panther and this one, but only the last two were pre-existing series (and even then Black Panther was renumbered with "Jungle Action" dropped from the title). And there was very little interaction with either the wider Marvel universe or what had come before. Indeed The Eternals was even intended to be in its own continuity, years before such standalone projects became widespread. As I've noted before, Kirby's Black Panther feels somewhat like a 1970s version of Heroes Reborn, such is the disconnect from what had come before. With Captain America and the Falcon the jump is less jarring but it still feels like a big side step.

Part of this comes from the very limited use of pre-existing supporting characters and villains. Captain America and the Falcon may have worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. a lot, but it was a generic S.H.I.E.L.D. shorn of all its most familiar agents. Sharon is only seen twice in this run of issues, but seems to have been reduced to a generic superhero girlfriend who knows her boyfriend's identity but is tired him always going off on missions. This doesn't feel like the ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who not only knows the score from her own experience but has often been the absent one herself. Other than the two leads, the only pre-existing character to make any significant appearance is the Falcon's girlfriend Leila, and she's a pale shadow of her former self with little of her fire and determination on display. Beyond that Captain America's Bicentennial Battles features brief appearances by Bucky and the Red Skull, plus some historical figures, but that's about it. Was Kirby, whether consciously or unconsciously, trying to cut out as much of the influence of Stan Lee as possible? Or was he just aiming for as much creative control over the series as possible? And using as few characters originated by others as possible was one way of doing this.

One of the most obvious practical consequences is a total failure to sort out the mess with the Falcon's personality and memories. Instead the whole plot point is completely ignored at the precise moment it needed tidying and the character is presented somewhat generically. Now I'd be perfectly happy to get to a situation where the whole mess is never mentioned ever again, but it's not helpful in the long term to be continuously wondering about the character and/or successive writers taking different approaches to how his past is presented. It needs a straightforward resolution that clearly establishes just who the Falcon now is and so he can easily go forward with the whole mess forgotten. Instead it's bypassed, just adding to the sense of reboot. Oddly, given the Heroes Reborn comparisons flying around, the situation feels rather like that of Iron Man who, just before the reboot, was revealed to be a long term sleeper agent of an old foe and whose resultant new status quo and background was never fully addressed before Onslaught and Heroes Reborn, and indeed for some years afterwards a traditional take on the character was presented without covering his two different pasts.

Also noticeable by its absence is any particular sense of political influence on the series. Henry Kissinger pops up at the end of issue #193 (although in accordance with a semi-observed Marvel tradition of not explicitly identifying politicians he's not actually named on panel bar telling the duo they can call him "Henny") to brief the duo but he could be any senior government figure to emphasise the severity of the situation - indeed it's more of a surprise that it's the Secretary of State rather than the President. The 200th anniversary of American independence was marked by both the Treasury Edition Captain America's Bicentennial Battles and the regular series in a storyline conveniently culminating in issue #200, but without wading into contemporary debate about just what the United States stands for or the country's role in the world; questions that were much debated in that post Vietnam era. It seems clear that, unlike Steve Engelhart or some of the series's later writers, Jack Kirby had no particular desire to use Captain America to explore contemporary questions about patriotism and politics, let alone take an actual side in such debates, but rather presented him as a figure who served all of his country, a unifying figure on a par with Uncle Sam. Indeed the final page of the Treasury Special depicts Captain America shaking hands with Uncle Sam in front of a birthday cake.

Captain America's Bicentennial Battles is itself rather inconsequential, but as the equivalent of a graphic novel that's for the best. It introduces the dubiously named "Mister Buda", a sorcerer who has since been renamed "the Contemplator", one of the various Elders of the Universe. Mister Buda sends Cap on a trip throughout American history, including the future, so as to see what America is all about. Cap sees a succession of incidents both at home and abroad, but grasps the fundamental underlying point that all are striving no matter the odds. As he explains to a group of children at the end:

That's America! A place of stubborn confidence -- where both young and old can hope and dream, and wade through disappointment, despair and the crunch of events -- with the chance of making life meaningful!

It may seem twee but then most attempts to sum up a country's civic national identity often wide up producing such general concepts that can frankly be found to work in many other countries (just think of the various attempts to bottle and distil "Britishness" that get tied in knots on this). But it's a good way to take Cap on a tour of American history as part of the general celebrations. At the Treasury Edition size the artwork must really look amazing but even in reduced form it shows Kirby's talent immensely.

Whilst the special is about celebrating what makes America, the regular series shows Cap protecting it. The Madbomb storyline is frankly a few chapters too long and somewhat unfocused. I don't actually find Kirby's dialogue as clunky as many others do, but it often seems more routine than spectacular and can dull the effect of an extended storyline. The tale takes Cap and the Falcon on an extended trip, including a visit to the hidden world of the Elite, a group of aristocrats seeking to overturn the American Revolution and install themselves in power. The climax comes as the Elite's leader, William Taurey, aims to detonate a giant "madbomb" to send the country into chaos, but there's also a personal element that he's smarting over his ancestor's defeat in a duel with an ancestor of Steve Rogers. The ideas are good but the execution isn't the best, making the showdown less amazing than it might otherwise have been.

The other adventures in this volume are also a little underwhelming. The annual is placed as the first Kirby created issue but is a total one-off tale of Cap getting caught up with two groups of aliens as an escaped prisoner is pursued and crashes on Earth; it has the revelation that Cap has backed the wrong side but is a little too black and white for the era rather than a more nuanced presentation that shows both sides with shades of grey. Meanwhile in the last few regular issues the Falcon and Leila get captured and brainwashed by the Night People, the inmates who have taken over an asylum in another dimension. Once back on Earth Cap manages to cure the Falcon through battling a corpse animated by a being from the future, though by the volume's end there's no sign of Leila having been cured.

All in all these adventures feel rather generic and awkward. Apart from the bicentennial celebrations they could frankly feature any superheroes for all the difference it makes. Captain America may have been under the full control of one of his co-creators but the result just doesn't feel as special as it was made out to be. This was one of the first times Marvel trumpeted the presence of an individual creator and so invariably expectations rise in such circumstances. But the result feels as though the baby was thrown out with the bath water, cutting out nearly all the pre-existing elements beyond the title characters, and the result is almost its own universe of rather generic characters and villains. The issues immediately before Kirby's return showed what a mess the title had already descended into so he was actually an improvement and brought stability but the result is less than exciting and not the series at its best.

Essential Captain America volume 4

Essential Captain America volume 4 consists of Captain America and the Falcon #157-186. The writing covers most of Steve Englehart's run and just touches on the start of John Warner's brief one with scattered contributions by Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, Tony Isabella and Mike Friedrich. The art covers the bulk of Sal Buscema's run, the start of Frank Robbins's and individual issues by Alan Weiss and Herb Trimpe.

This volume sees the series go on an uptick, having finally found a strong writer for the long run who directly tackles a number of problems and criticisms related to the character. A common jibe is that Captain America is physically not the most powerful of heroes; an early issue here sees him gain super strength when the Super Soldier Serum in his blood reacts with the venom of the original Viper. The result is an incredibly powerful Cap, though as time passes the strength is shown and referenced less and less. His gaining enhanced strength puts another strain on his partnership with the Falcon, who feels an inferior costumed athlete as a result. This leads to some soul searching, during which he finally gets together with Leila albeit in his costumed identity (though he seems to have revealed his identity to her, albeit it's not explicitly clear that she knows until much later), and a search for enhanced abilities that leads him to Wakanda where the Black Panther gives him his wings. Meanwhile Cap goes through some major soul searching in this volume as he faces a series of events that force him to reconsider some of his world views. Early on comes the revelation that a police officer is crooked, a sign of how corruption can be found even in places not traditionally expected, but worse is to come.

The highlight of the volume comes in the middle section with the Secret Empire storyline. In this Cap faces challenges on many fronts, starting when he's depicted as a dangerous vigilante by a hostile advertising campaign run by the Viper and Quentin Hardeman of the Committee to Regain America's Principles. Next he's framed for the murder of the Tumbler and faces being replaced by new hero Moonstone (later Nefarius), actually an agent of the Committee. Cap is arrested and seems all alone, with the Falcon away in Africa getting his wings and taking on the mobster Stoneface. However help comes in the form of "America's Sanitation Unit" of high tech vigilantes who break into his cell. This forces Cap to decide whether to break the law or turn down the only chance to clear his name, though the decision gets made or him when he's overwhelmed by the Unit's gas and taken away. Discovering that they too are agents of the conspiracy against him. With the Falcon now returned to the States and branded an accomplice, he and Cap are forced to go on the run in search of the clues to clear their names, and get attacked by the Banshee, still a foe rather than an ally of the X-Men. This brings another reversal of fortunes as they wind up allying with the handful of the X-Men who haven't been captured by the conspiracy. (This appearance came a year before the X-Men's relaunch and seems to have been designed to wrap up loose plot threads from the Beast's solo series in Amazing Adventures.) The group clashes with S.H.I.E.L.D., before learning the true foe is the shadowy organisation called the Secret Empire. Once more Steve and Sam are forced to take action they wouldn't normally do by stealing a device in order to gain the confidence of the Secret Empire in their civilian guises. This brings them to the heat of the operation where the organisation is planning to conquer America, using the ever growing popularity of Moonstone as a way to convince the people to surrender when the Secret Empire's flying saucer, powered by the brainwaves of captured mutants(!) , lands in Washington. However in the climax Cap and the others manage to escape execution thanks to the inside help of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Gabriel Jones and Peggy Carter, and they destroy the equipment then take down Moonstone who confesses to the whole conspiracy. All the living members of the conspiracy are soon arrested, though Number One flees and commits suicide.

At a distance of some decades it's not always easy to spot the targets of some of the more overt political satire. To some the Committee to Regain America's Principles is merely a shock that Marvel would print such a name or a source of hilarity for the acronym "CRAP". But the name was clearly based on the Committee to RE-Elect the President; similarly Quentin Hardeman's name is evocative of Nixon's first Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman. This tale of a secret conspiracy to take over the country by destroying confidence in existing institutions and systems and replacing them with the creations of political propaganda was reflective of the turbulent times the story was written in, but it also makes Cap face a changing world.

More so than any previous storyline, the Secret Empire tale forces Captain America to face up to the conflict between his ideals and loyalties. As he finds his reputation damaged and his actions bringing conflict with the police, he's left with little choice but to go beyond the law, even if this vindicates the attack campaign that portrays him as a vigilante. Up until now, Captain America has always been a hero of the establishment, acting for authority that was assumed inherently benign and having no doubt about what "serving my country" means. But now he finds himself in a much greyer world, where established symbols, positions and systems can't always be trusted, where venerated figures can turn out to be crooks, where public opinion can quickly turn against a dedicated symbol and where sometimes the only way to achieve results is to go outside the law. 1974 was the year in which both the Punisher and Wolverine debuted and, whilst neither may have been intended to go on to become major stars at the time, they both symbolised the way in which the presentation of morality in superhero comics was changing away from the simplicity of the Golden and Silver Ages. It was inevitable that Captain America would have to face the blast of change. And it comes in one of the most dramatic, and potentially libellous, ways imaginable. On the final page of issue #175 Captain America pursues Number One into the White House and unmasks him in the Oval Office, recognising the face beneath. We're not shown the face but dialogue states he holds "high political office" but "my power was still too constrained by legalities!" Could there be any doubt who it was meant to be? Perhaps this famous South Park dialogue could have been applied:

I knew it was you all along, Richard Nixon!

So Marvel in the summer of 1974 all but named the President of the United States as a crook. Who would have thought that Richard Nixon could be anything but squeaky-clean? I'm amazed that something so daringly libellous could have been put out and got away with. Today there would no doubt have been an outrage.

However, this may not have always been the plan. In the preceding issue Number One mentions "the fortuitous Watergate scandal! Ah, if only we'd known that was coming! How much simpler it has made our work." True it could be a red herring but it also might indicate how last minute the revelation was decided upon. It's not the only revelation that doesn't quite fit with what's come before, with Sergeant Muldoon turning out to be the Cowled Commander, trying to whip up public opinion to reform the police force on tougher lines. This sits uneasily with his actions after suspension in which he investigated Steve and seemed to believe the rookie cop was the Commander. It's not the only sudden revelation that comes out of nowhere in this volume.

But regardless of how far in advance the shock ending was planned, it leads to a dramatic follow-up as for a whole issue Cap fights no foes but reflects upon how he came to be, how the world has changed since the Second World War and how he can no longer serve an America that is much changed and where the government has been shown to be self-serving. His friends and allies try to dissuade him, but he decides to abandon the costume. And he doesn't quickly resume it.

For the next seven issues we have a world in which Steve Rogers is no longer Captain America. At first this pushes the Falcon into centre stage, but it becomes increasingly clear that Steve can't stay out of the action, much to both the Falcon and Sharon's annoyance, and Hawkeye forces the point by posing as the Golden Archer and attacking him, so Steve eventually adopts a new costumed identity as Nomad - the Man without a Country. Meanwhile a succession of other men decide they have what it takes to be the next Captain America, but each soon learns they don't. Eventually one is killed by the Red Skull and this brings a catharsis as Steve realises the things he fights for are not out of date. He fights not for a government but for the "American Dream" and against all threats to it, whether from without or within. As a result he resumes the costume. It's amazing that he was kept out of it for so long but by the end it's become clear - Captain America is not just a costume that anyone can put on; he is far, far more. He is not an agent of the US government but a servant of the whole country, dedicated to a set of ideals. It's a powerful storyline and statement that gets to the heart of the character and defines him for the long run.

Elsewhere this run finally resolves the loose ends relating to Cap's wartime sweetheart whose name he hasn't even known until now. Having lived in shock for three decades, Peggy Carter is a more personal reminder of how much the world has grown and changed since the Second World War, being now a middle aged woman who has suffered amnesia and been kept in isolation until the intervention of Dr Faustus causes her to relive events and come to her senses. I wonder just how much research into psychiatric issues was actually undertaken for this storyline. The reunion is touching, but Steve and Sharon deliberately try to avoid telling Peggy that the man she has waited so long for is now with her sister, resulting in some awkward dancing round the point. Although it's not addressed directly here, this does raise a question about Sharon's ethics and conduct in keeping Peggy and Cap in the dark about each other whilst taking up with the latter. Over time Peggy comes to realise what she and Cap had is long gone and instead she and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Gabriel Jones are drawn to each other. One irritation I find with Peggy's return is the inability to decide if her hair is light or dark, with it changing across issues.

Outside of the Secret Empire and Nomad sagas, the villains in the volume are somewhat limited, with the original Viper fairly prominent in the early run, at first working for the Cowled Commander both solo and in combination with other foes as the group "Crime Wave" which also contains the Porcupine, the Eel, the Scarecrow and Plantman. The Viper and the Eel then form the Serpent Squad with the Cobra; later on they are joined by both Princess Python and Madame Hydra, with the latter killing the Viper and taking his name before putting the group into an alliance with the Atlantean warlord Krang. Elsewhere there are return appearances by Dr Faustus and the Harlem crimelord Morgan and from the X-Men comes Lucifer. The Yellow Claw also clashes with Cap and the Falcon for the first time, allied with new foe, the female scientist Nightshade. Unfortunately her impact is somewhat diminished when her serum temporarily turns the Falcon into a were-wolf. Equally weak is Solarr, who has the power to absorb and discharge solar energy. Another new foe who initially seems to be a mere one-off is the Phoenix, the vengeance seeking son of Baron Zemo. Coming in an outlandish costume and falling into a vat of corrosive chemicals, not to mention being in a fill-in issue with a different writing team, it's surprising that anyone would or could bring him back, but he's gone on to do many things as Baron Zemo II.

The very end of the volume sees the quality take a sudden nosedive thanks to three separate developments. Frank Robbins takes over on the art but his style feels completely wrong for the series and just looks awful. The Red Skull returns but there is a shift in his aims away from seeking to conquer the world and more towards spreading fear and destruction. Unfortunately this turns him into a Joker clone and at times he's practically chewing the scenery. And there's a very awkward retcon about the Falcon, changing his past completely to make him a crook and pimp who had crashed on the island where Cap first met him. The Red Skull had used the Cosmic Cube to completely change his personality, memories and the world around him in order to provide the perfect partner for Cap, then eventually use the Falcon as a sleeper agent in reserve in case other plans failed. For this he has enhanced Sam with mental powers to communicate with the falcon Redwing (resulting in the brief assumption that the Falcon is a mutant, a point that would curiously dog the character for many years to come) and also made him completely responsive to the Skull's orders, no matter how humiliating the command. The whole thing appears to be motivated by a desire to paper over the previous backstory of ex-Axis agents hiding on a seemingly deserted island advertising for a falconer who arrived by regular freighter, but rather than just shrugging off a bit of Silver Age silliness the Falcon is instead twisted into becoming a cliché, as though no black in America can be allowed to be free of crime. It's also absurd long-term planning by the Skull - and at this point in 1975 the series was still setting events in real time so Cap had been revived in 1964 and known the Falcon for six years - and a very bizarre use for the Cosmic Cube. All in all this feels like a 1970s version of the Avengers saga "The Crossing".

It's unfortunate that the volume should end on such a mess when so much of it has been so bold and memorable. By taking on the main problems both the series and the main character have had, not to mention the changing attitudes to "America" and patriotism, the result is a bold uptick that makes this a strong and decisive volume. There are some odd moments but overall a lot of development has been done. Although the Falcon has taken steps both forwards and back, Captain America is much the stronger character as a result.

Essential Tales of the Zombie volume 1 - creator labels 2

This volume has by far the largest number of creator credits so the labels need three extra posts. Links to post 1 & post 3.

Essential Daredevil volume 6 - creator labels

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

Essential Warlock volume 1 - creator labels

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

Essential Super-Villain Team-Up volume 1 - creator labels

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

Essential Marvel Horror volume 1 - writer creator labels

We have a volume with a huge number of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for the writers.

Essential Iron Fist volume 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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