My First Justice League

In the inaugural post of my new blog over at Marvel.com, I talked about being initially exposed as a comics reader (not as a video game player, toy buyer or general consumer of pop culture knowledge) to the X-Men in the backdoor manner of discovering them via the Kings of Pain crossover because I was buying New Warriors, and thus having the first roster I ever encountered consist of Legion, Madrox, Polaris and the rest of the Muir Island misfits who filled in while the real team was momentarily disbanded. I mused on how particularly as a kid the first impression you get of a comic book team is an odd thing and sticks with you even if you first “met” a short-lived and unremembered line-up, which certainly happened a lot in the 90’s.

Take the Justice League.

My actual first experience with the Justice League was as a very young kid when I would go to visit my friend Josiah and he had a big chest in his basement of probably around a hundred old comics he’d gotten from some older relative. They ran the gamut, but were mostly from the later Silver Age with a lot of DC’s, particularly lengthy runs of the Satellite Era Justice League of America. One of my first vivid comic book memories is reading the issue where the JLA fights Jonah Hex and a bunch of other time-displaced heroes who are being manipulated by The Lord of Time.

(Fun fact: It was also at Josiah’s house that I concocted my infamous homemade Flash costume which my mother took a picture of that she later blew up to a poster when I was 18 and has since made its way online if you look hard enough)

I didn’t become a serious comic book fan until the 90’s though, starting with Marvel, primarily New Warriors and the X-Men books. It was the Death of Superman that first got me curious about DC and it was via that storyline that I first came across a contemporary Justice League.

And they got their asses kicked in the first issue of their book I purchased.

Shortly before Superman got killed off, the guy who committed the deed—not Doomsday—writer/artist Dan Jurgens had just taken over Justice League America (“of” was not very 90’s, hence why Legion of Super-Heroes never saw the success it did in the prior decade). He brought Supes in as team leader—a big deal since in that post-Crisis On Infinite Earths/pre-Infinite Crisis period Superman had never been part of the League, his Silver Age stints retroactively wiped out—to a group that included then-mainstays Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Fire and Ice, as well as reformed villain Maxima and supposedly all-new character Bloodwynd (spoiler alert: it was Martian Manhunter with amnesia and the most 90’s name this side of X-Treme).

A comic book neophyte, I had no exposure to the glory days of Justice League International and thus no clue why Guy, Booster, Beetle, Fire and Ice were on the team. I had no idea who Maxima and Bloodwynd were. Having read those old 70’s issues and just knowing the big DC heroes via cartoons and lunchboxes and whatnot, Superman was the only guy on the team who made any sense to me, yet he was treated like an odd fit and about to die anyhow.

As I mentioned, this team was not long for the DC Universe. They were served up as cannon fodder to Doomsday in order to demonstrate how badass he was (which as you might imagine didn’t work for me as I was totally unfamiliar with the characters and thus unimpressed that he whooped a guy in bug goggles and girl with green hair). Before all was said and done, Beetle was in a coma, Booster’s power-providing gear was shredded, Fire burned out her abilities and Ice got traumatized into retirement.

Just as soon as I had been introduced to the Justice League, they were shuffled off. The next issue, a new team debuted, led by Wonder Woman—who, remember, like Superman had never technically been in the League before, so this was a big deal—retaining Guy, Maxima and Bloodwynd, then adding Agent Liberty, Black Condor and The Ray. This configuration was also short-lived, with Liberty and Condor taking off after an arc and being replaced by the returning Beetle/Booster/Fire/Ice quartet as well as Captain Atom. As Zero Hour drew near, the Judgment Day crossover came and went, paving the way for consolidation of the various Leagues—there was a Justice League Europe/International as well plus a Task Force led by Martian Manhunter after the Bloodwynd thing ended—for the Gerard Jones era I wasn’t too high on and ended up jumping off of.

The funny thing is it didn’t drop my jaw when the first X-Men I saw was a guy with a Mohawk instead of Wolverine. Likewise it didn’t seem unusual that “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” as far as Marvel was concerned were The Black Knight and Sersi when I started reading comics. I was aware of Marvel, sure, and that’s where I started as a fan, but I had residual sense of how things were “supposed to be” gleaned from cultural osmosis. If the comic I was reading told me that Scott Lang was Ant-Man and also kind of in the Fantastic Four, then I took that at face value, because it was all I knew.

It was different with DC. Whether it was the Batman TV show from the 60’s or Super Friends or coloring books or actions figures or just the old comics from Josiah’s basement, I had a pre-formed opinion of how the DC Universe was supposed to be, and when those Justice League stories didn’t deliver what I was expecting, I felt oddly betrayed. Not by the creators or company, but by the characters themselves. How dare Batman not have time to spend away from Gotham? What the heck were The Flash and Green Lantern doing hanging out in Europe? Did Aquaman seriously have conversations to hold with fish that were more important than fighting Despero?

When I returned to reading comics around 2000, Grant Morrison had brought the Big Seven back to the JLA and all seemed right with the world. Likewise, thanks to Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s work, I now understood that being an Avenger was a bigger deal than Crystal and Deathcry would have had me believe.

It’s somewhat ironic that the current Justice League line-up is closer to the one I grew up reading than the Satellite/Morrison team—and the New Avengers at least aren’t far off from the Bob Harras-penned team I followed in my youth in terms of relative A-listers—but now it seems far more like these quirky teams exist when a creator sees potential, not simply because the characters they really want are preoccupied.

In other words, Aquaman may have snubbed the Justice League 20 years ago because he was playing with his hook hand, but now James Robinson won’t return his calls! Eat it, Sea King!

Underrated/Overlooked: Fatal Attractions

The thing most people remember about the 1993 X-Men semi-crossover Fatal Attractions is, frankly, the holograms.

Fatal Attractions spread the long-awaited return of X-Men uber villain Magneto (he’d only been “dead” for a couple years, but there were so many X-Books with so much happening every week at the time that a couple years felt like decades) over six chapters. What made it somewhat unique on the heels of stuff like Inferno, X-Tinction Agenda and my beloved X-Cutioner’s Song and the reason I call it a “semi-crossover” was that unlike those events, where each chapter bled into the next and readers had to adjust to shifting creative teams trying their best to tell a seamless story, each installment of Fatal Attractions more or less stood alone as pieces of a larger puzzle that could still be savored individually and gave every writer and artist their own chance to shine without having to worry about any baton.

But back to the holograms for a moment.

Gimmick covers were of course all the rage in 1993. The gimmick du jour for Fatal Attractions was that the front of each cardstock cover had a hologram of one of the book’s stars as designed by the series artist in the upper right hand corner under the logo. I’ve heard from the walls that can talk at Marvel HQ that these babies were not exactly the easiest things to pull together—and to the best of my knowledge we haven’t seen them since—but they sure did look sweet, particularly as you could really see each guy’s design sense in the one he created (Joe Quesada did Havok for X-Factor, Greg Capullo did Cable for X-Force, John Romita Jr. did Magneto for Uncanny X-Men, Andy Kubert did Gambit for X-Men, Adam Kubert did Wolverine for…well…Wolverine and I’m not sure who did Nightcrawler for Excalibur, maybe Joe Madureira, but it looked nice—and I’m sorry if I just got any credits wrong).

However, this was one case where the 90’s sizzle on the outside has perhaps caused folks to forget that the work in between the covers brought the steak in spades. Like I said, each chapter really did work on its own, so let me touch quickly on what I dug about each.

The story kicks off in X-Factor #92 by Peter David and Joe Quesada, although more than any other part of Fatal Attractions, this one ties in more thematically than anything else and serves truly as the prologue. Magneto’s groupies, the Acolytes, led by the guy who “killed” him, Fabian Cortez—they don’t know that—attack a government Sentinel-building factory really as a way to draw Quicksilver, X-Factor member and son of Magneto, into the fray. The main event of the issue is Cortez attempting to sway Quicksilver to become his ally and take his place as Magneto’s heir, which does a nice job filling any new readers in on what Mags’ deal is and why he’s such a nasty piece of work. While this is going on though, you also get a pretty killer X-Factor vs Acolytes throwdown—with a literally killer Jamie Madrox moment—gorgeous formative Quesada art, the balance of wit and morality that PAD always brings to the table, and a pretty powerful ending where the team confronts their government liaison and supposed friend Val Cooper about the whole Sentinel thing. There’s also a cameo from Exodus, who becomes more important down the line.

X-Force #25 by Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo has its own big time non-Magneto comeback, as Cable, who had been “dead” for an even shorter amount of time, returns to the team he founded to discover maybe they don’t need him anymore. I’ve said before how much I absolutely loved this era of X-Force and the Cable-less issues in particular, but this remains a personal favorite because it highlights how much Cannonball and company had grown over such a short time and forces Cable to have to prove his worth to his old charges, a neat 180 from the first year or so of the series where he was the gruff and mysterious drill sergeant they were all eager to please; you also get the beginnings of Cable as far more of a fully realized character as opposed to a 90’s cliché, with him relaxing a bit and demonstrating that he cares about and appreciates this kids just as much as his pouches and guns. But if that wasn’t enough to entice you, Exodus makes his first extended appearance to beat the crap out of X-Force and attempt to invite Cannonball and Sunspot to join his “master,” a cloaked guy in a space station who they tip toe around naming until the very end where he dons the full Magneto regalia as awesomely depicted by Capullo. It’s definitely the “warm-up” issue for the main event X-Men one-two, but it’s again a great story on its own that once more effectively shows a side of Magneto—in this case the teacher who wants his students back—as well as bringing Cable back in style and elevating X-Force since each guy wants to guide them (and Cable’s awesome “I don’t want them to follow my path—I want to follow theirs!” speech coupled with Magneto’s brutal disassembling of his machine side makes for a fantastic close).

So then we come to Uncanny X-Men #304, the first round of the true prize fight by Scott Lobdell and John Romita Jr., and you’ve got a lot going on. First off, Colossus’ kid sister Illyana, at one time Magik of the New Mutants, had died of the Legacy Virus, and it is in many ways the death of innocence in the X-Men’s world. Lobdell does some really nuanced character work covering the reactions, from Colossus’ refusal to show his feelings (or his non-metal form), to Professor X’s guilt, to Kitty Pryde’s gamut of emotions (she’s us, remember); there’s also a great bit where Bishop tries to pull his whole cryptic warnings of a doomed future routine with Banshee and Banshee deadpans “And what if I just go toss myself in front a bus? What happens then?” Interwoven with the grieving and the X-Teams coming together, there are pages written by Lobdell with powerful art by Jae Lee revealing pieces of Magneto’s earliest days in a Nazi concentration camp, some of which had been covered, but never with such raw detail (I believe this is the first time he’s called Erik and it’s not a stretch to say the great opening to the first X-Men movie borrowed heavily from here, intentionally or not). The two worlds come crashing together as Magneto, flanked by his Acolytes—Exodus revealed Cortez’ treachery to them and crushed him earlier in the issue—has the audacity to make his showy official return in the midst of the funeral and earmark this failure on the X-Men’s part to protect the most innocent among them as proof positive that Xavier’s dream has failed. Over the course of several Romita Jr. pages packed with characters and details, the more-powerful-than-ever Magneto dominates his heroic adversaries while also engaging with the usual philosophical battle of wills with his old friend Xavier, maybe making better points for why he’s right than ever before. It all builds to the heartbreaking moment where X-Men stalwart Colossus can stand no more tragedy and does the unthinkable, choosing to side with Magneto and become an Acolyte, breaking Professor X’s heart in the process and perhaps shattering his dream as well. The final page, where Xavier is dropped from the sky by Magneto, caught gently by Archangel and then assures his X-Men he knows he can count on all of them is extremely poignant; it’s an impressive pairing of action and pathos in that unique way only super hero comics can do it.

There’s less talk and more action in X-Men #25, as Nicieza comes back for his second go around, this time with Andy Kubert on art. Magneto fries most of the world’s electrical grid with an electromagnetic pulse mostly to show he can, so Professor X decides enough is enough and he’s taking a small strike force of X-Men—Jean Grey, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit and Quicksilver, on loan from X-Factor—to finish this once and for all; he also dons a sweet Shi’Ar exoskeleton that allows him to walk so he can be front and center, despite the protests of many of his students. When Xavier essentially tells Cyclops he needs him to stay behind to carry on in case they don’t come back, you believe it. The strike force storms Avalon and teleports the Acolytes off the base so it’s straight up X-Men vs Magneto with the good guys being more ruthless than ever at Xavier’s insistence. Quicksilver and Rogue both play up their personal connections to Mags while assaulting him simultaneously; Professor X and a reluctant Jean barrage him with a psychic slew of bad memories, including Cypher’s death while he was in charge of the New Mutants; Wolverine goes full berserker; I’m not quite sure why Gambit was there other than to justify being in the cover hologram, but maybe he picked some locks or something. Despite it all, Magneto just keeps coming and neither side looks to give an inch. Then, out of nowhere, Wolverine makes a vicious swipe at his opponent’s guts—and Magneto responds by tearing the adamantium clear off Wolvie’s bones and out of his pores!

This is of course nearly 20 years in the rearview at this point, but you have to understand, as a fan reading at the time, the splash page image of the most popular and untouchable X-Man screaming in agony and quite possibly meeting his end in visually grisly fashion was beyond shocking. An enraged Xavier responds to that knockout with a ruthless uppercut of his own, full-on mind blasting Magneto like he never has before and wiping the dude’s brain clean, leaving him catatonic (we wouldn’t see him operational again for another six years, so really Fatal Attractions was more a blip on the radar than a full return, but what a blip). The postscript has Wolverine and an exhausted Xavier both in critical condition as Colossus shows up to help his former teammates get out before the other Acolytes return and then silently cradle Magneto’s limp body in a powerful closing panel.

To demonstrate just how standalone these books were, I have never actually read Wolverine #75! I know it’s by Larry Hama and Adam Kubert and that it deals with Wolverine ultimately recovering then electing to leave the X-Men, but I’ve never cracked the cover; it’s one of my white whales.

Everything wraps up in Excalibur #71, written by Lobdell with an assortment of artists helping him out, but this is really an “It’s all over but the crying” situation, as the big action was out of the way and now it was just a matter of dealing with the fallout; it’s a nice bookend to X-Factor in that it’s a true epilogue you don’t always get to see when you’re running from one big story to the next. Professor X, Cyclops and Jean Grey come to Muir Island, where the remaining members of Excalibur—Nightcrawler, Shadowcat and Phoenix—have stopped in to help Moira MacTaggert with some business. After some serious persuasion—and some nice “Professor Xavier is a jerk” thematic callback—the X-Men persuade Kitty to lure Colossus to the island, as apparently he has an outstanding head injury and they fear it may have influenced his recent decisions. Colossus shows up, feels the sting of his one-time love’s betrayal, but gets the help he needs while Cyclops and Nightcrawler beat up the Acolytes cannon fodder—including CKT favorite Katu!—and Rachel Summers has a somewhat random but sweet meeting with her alternate reality half-brother (neither knows yet, but the readers kinda did) Cable. In the end, Colossus forgives Kitty and offers thanks to the X-Men, but still chooses to remain an Acolyte, putting a bow on Fatal Attractions and what it was really trying to say as a whole: There are no absolutes in the X-Men Universe and neither Professor X nor his dream may be quite as infallible as we thought. Also, Excalibur decides to stay on Muir Island with Moira, but that’s another story.

It’s come to be a mantra from me here and elsewhere, but the 90’s get a bad rap. The X-Men in the 90’s get a particularly bad rap. A story like Fatal Attractions, remembered more for its posters, gimmicks and splashy returns was actually a deft ballet of awesome action and harrowing emotional betrayal, with healthy doses of humor and character growth mixed in plus pretty consistently great art throughout. It’s a true example not to judge a book by its cover.

Regardless of if the cover has a sweet hologram.

The important X-Men stories

As Kiel mentioned in Linko!, I had the privilege and pleasure of speaking with Kieron Gillen over on Marvel.com earlier this week about his upcoming tenure as writer of Uncanny X-Men among other things.

I’ve met Kieron a couple times now and spoken to him a few more; he’s a swell dude as well as a talented writer, and what’s more, a sharp fellow with some keen insights into comics that go beyond your average fanboy. In particular, both when we talked at New York Comic Con and during our interview, Kieron expounded on the importance of the X-Men being relevant not just as a top-line comic book, but as a reflection of societal trends, from race relations and prejudice to fanaticism and the obsession with celebrity.

It got me thinking how many things the X-Men franchise has been over the years; it’s been both a tremendous commercial success that has at times represented the excess of the comics industry, but also a franchise that holds up a mirror to the real world and tells important stories about those who have been outcast or disenfranchised, with mutants serving as stand-ins for racial minorities, homosexuals, etc., and it’s often been both things at once.

However, not every good X-Men story is necessarily an important one as far as that second half of the equation is concerned. In other words, an X-Men story does not necessarily need to have a deeper social meaning in order to be of high quality, but there’s no denying many of the best ones do.

But while the Dark Phoenix Saga is considered one of the best X-Men stories of all-time and has tremendous emotional resonance, the tale of a space deity taking over Cyclops’ girlfriend and becoming a star-eating menace before making the ultimate sacrifice doesn’t really carry with it a profound commentary on the issues of the day. Similarly, I love stuff like X-Cutioner’s Song or Messiah Complex, but those are really just fun action epics with lots of super-powered heroes and villains running around fighting, not allegories of any type.

That X-Men can do both types of stories well is a big reason it has had such sustained success.

Talking to Kieron did get me thinking about which X-Men tales really did speak to the social issues of their time, so I took a look back and came up with a few standouts I think speak to the power of both the franchise and the medium (I’m certainly not saying this is it as far as what should make this list, but that’s what the comments section is for).

AMONG US STALK…THE SENTINELS!
X-Men started out really as just another teen super hero book, with the slight caveat that all members of the team came about their powers naturally, as did most of their foes. Having not read all the early issues, I’m not sure exactly when the ideas of mutants representing minorities or Professor X and Magneto being the Martin Luther King and Malcolm X of the piece came about, but I’d say the original Sentinel trilogy from X-Men v1 #14-16 is a safe enough bet. Here you got the introduction of Bolivar Trask, the first in a long line of human bigots who would menace the X-Men over the years, as well as the Sentinels, the ominous killer robots who would come to symbolize the “final solution” to the mutant “problem.”

DEADLY GENESIS
Of course Giant-Size X-Men #1 is most noteworthy for the first appearances of Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus, the introduction of Wolverine into the X-Men, and the formation of what would become the team’s most popular incarnation, but it’s also quite remarkable when you break down what Len Wein and Dave Cockrum were doing. The all-new, all-different X-Men were the first comic book group I’m aware of where the cast boasted a lone Caucasian American male (Cyclops) surrounded by a virtual United Nations of heroes, including an African female and representatives from Russia, Germany, Japan, Ireland and Canada as well as a Native American. While the Legion of Super-Heroes may have had a crew made up of representatives from various fictional planets (where most people were still white), the X-Men struck a huge blow for diversity in comics in 1975.

GOD LOVES, MAN KILLS
The fifth volume in the Marvel Graphic Novel series features Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson’s markedly mature and edgy take on the lethal and terrifying combination of zealotry and racial prejudice. The very first sequence has two mutant children executed by the religiously-motivated Purifiers and found by a vengeance-swearing Magneto. Reverend William Stryker’s persecution of mutants and insistence that they are an abomination and blight on humanity definitely strikes a harsh but all-too-real chord when you think about all the wars and horror that have come about because of those who insist on twisting faith to their own sick ends. However, while the story is full of cringe-inducing moments, it is also uplifting in its way, with many humans refusing to indulge Stryker’s bigotry, their acceptance of Nightcrawler as a true hero, and Cyclops’ affirmation of Professor Xavier’s dream for peaceful coexistence between all races; even with the religious aspect stripped out, the framework of this story still made for a powerful and awesome movie with X2: X-Men United.

FATAL ATTRACTIONS
In the midst of this massive 90’s crossover, a momentous event occurred; I’m not talking about the return of Magneto or the temporary loss of Wolverine’s adamantium, but rather the defection of Colossus. After several years enduring numerous tragedies that left his entire family dead, the popular and peaceful X-Man lost faith in Xavier’s dream and opted to give Magneto’s more aggressive approach a try as a member of the Acolytes. It was the first time a noteworthy X-Men stalwart had openly decried the doctrine they followed, but reflected the very real world circumstances that often see civil rights activists embrace a harsher outlook out of frustration.

THE LEGACY VIRUS
Paralleling the AIDS epidemic, in the 90’s the writers of the X-Men titles concocted the Legacy Virus, a brutal disease that struck randomly at mutants and decimated several characters without regard for their being good or evil, beloved or obscure. Just as many heterosexuals decried AIDS (or GRID) as being a “homosexual disease” in its early stages when it seemed to afflict only that population, humanity in the Marvel Universe lashed out even more fiercely against mutants out of fear the Legacy Virus would spread to their ranks, which it eventually did when longtime supporting character Moira MacTaggert became afflicted. The story of the Legacy Virus stretched over several years and ended only when Colossus, back in the X-Men fold, seemingly sacrificed his life to activate the cure in a particularly poignant tale.

E IS FOR EXTINCTION
When Grant Morrison came on New X-Men in 2001, a clear line in the sand was drawn between what had become a storytelling structure even a diehard like me can admit was somewhat bloated by the end of the 90’s and a return to the relevant, hard-hitting stuff that first gained the franchise notoriety. I hated New X-Men at the time it was coming out, but have since been able to go back and really appreciate it both as a fan and somebody who appreciates the craft. Morrison’s very first storyline with Frank Quitely tossed in the game changer that the human race was going extinct and would be replaced by mutants entirely within a few generations. This very much drove home the point that mutants were the “other,” regarded by normal humanity with both fear and awe, now heightened by the idea they truly were the next step in evolution and possible their replacements; this certainly echoes the new century anxiety of white America that immigrants will take our jobs and neighborhoods, among other hot button topics. The remainder of Morrison’s run would continue to address ideas about how “normal” folks view those separate from them, exploring not only fear, but envy and reverence.

GIFTED
A lot happened in Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s opening salvo on Astonishing X-Men, from the introduction of Ord to the return of Colossus (man, that guy is in every big story), but perhaps lost among the loud stuff was Kavita Rao’s discovery a “cure” for mutants that would make them into normal humans. The agonizing of some Xavier Institute students and Beast in particular made for some of the story’s most heartfelt moment and certainly paralleled the struggle I’m sure many people young and old who may be in a racial or sexual minority feel at wondering what it would be like not to be different weighed against staying true to who they know themselves to be; a tricky but important debate that Whedon handled admirably.

'Force Works' Was Ahead Of Its Time

Admission: I can't stop reading Force Works comics.


Super serial.

For anyone who doesn't know, Force Works was a Marvel team book published between 1994 and 1996 that was ostensibly a continuation of the publisher's slowly dying Avengers West Coast title with a '90s coat of paint. I'm sure even the most ardent fans don't consider the series much beyond a a footnote in Iron Man history, but the book is kind of notable for being one of the first major American efforts by reigning superhero sci-fi scribes Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (AKA "DnA").

I don't have a tremendous amount of fanboy nostalgia for the book, though I did initially come to the series as a seventh grader. That Halloween, I went trick or treating at a buddy's neighborhood, and one of the houses there was owned by someone who must've had a comic shop because instead of Snickers or candy corn, they were passing out comics. Once the night ended, a bunch of the kids there passed their comics to me because...well, because I was that kid. So I ended up walking home with a few random things like Malibu's Deep Space Nine series and the first issues of Marvels "Marvel Action Hour" tie-ins, which were 22-page adaptations of the Iron Man and Fantastic Four cartoons in syndication – the former of which inexplicably featured Force Works prominently.

Over the rest of middle school, I watched that TV series (even though it ran at 8:00 AM on Saturday in front of a Canadian "Saved By The Bell" ripoff called "Boogie's Diner") start to finish because...well, because I was that kid too. In the meantime, I picked up a few more issues of the Iron Man Marvel Action Hour comic series – attractive to me as someone who'd never found a jumping on point to Iron Man, plus I liked the art by Anthony Williams – as well as a few scattered issues of Force Works (most memorably the series finale which I got mostly because Andrew Wildman drew it). After that, the team remained largely forgotten.

Earlier this summer, that DisneyXD cable channel started re-airing episodes of the '90s Iron Man 'toon in a little bit of inter-company cross-promotion for "Iron Man 2's" imminent arrival in theaters. When I'm up late transcribing (or writing CKT posts, even!) I end up flipping to DisneyXD's late night superhero marathons whenever MSNBC becomes too depressing, and this was no exception. Combine that confluence of events with a string of conventions this summer where the majority of my brief shopping time was spent diving in dollar bins, and I ended up nabbing a handful of the 22-issue Force Works run on a lark.

I caught up reading those books over the past week, and I'll be damned if DnA didn't turn out a story that while not an awe-inspiring game changer for the superhero genre was strangely prescient considering the trends I see in today's superhero team books. Let me show you what I mean.


1. Force Works Was A High-Concept IP Reinvention

Like I said above, when you get down to brass tacks, the Force Works monthly was a simple rebranding of the failing Avengers West Coast series. The big A franchise was hardly in the shape it is now back in '94 (I'm pretty sure the main title was in the throws of Ben's favorite "bomber jacket" era then), and so it's no surprise that the West Coast title was on its way out after a nice run of 102 issues. What is a bit different for the time was that said team would get a high-concept facelift so soon after its demise, and Force Works was the West Coast Avengers team in everything but its name. It featured most of the same characters (Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, U.S. Agent and, to start, Wonder Man) except that they got a new name, a few costume redesigns and a kitschy new tech-powered HQ.

More importantly, the big hook for the Force Works monthly was that this team wasn't just going to sit there on their laurels and wait for supervillains to attack. They were going to be proactive heroes! Or, as the tagline stated, Force Works was "The Best Defense In An Offensive World." If that hook sounds at all familiar to you, it's because the same essential idea is at the heart of a ton of current or recent hero books including Cry For Justice, JSA All-Stars, Uncanny X-Force, Outsiders and probably a half dozen other books I'm forgetting.

These days, almost every new title launched at either Marvel or DC is a tweak or twist on series or concepts from years past, generally pulled out of the back issue bin either to play on nostalgia for a former success or to polish up a good core idea with a modern allegorical twist. Force Works was both as it spent its first year showcasing how much more bad ass the West Coast cast could be in action by telling stories that allowed its heroes to get fake comic book political by taking on everything from rogue super general in former Soviet block countries to corporate raider revisions of old villains. In that respect, the book feels a lot less '90s than it probably should.


2. The Series Launched With The Death Of A Fan-Favorite Character

If you bought the first issue of that best-selling Busiek/Perez Avengers reboot and thought, "Oh hey, Wonder Man is back as an Ionic energy hero...wait! Wonder Man was dead?!?!?" (and I know some of you thought that), know that Force Works was the final resting place of former Hollywood hero hunk Simon Williams. In fact, our boy bought it straight out in the very first issue after the proactive superteam was (ironically?) caught off-guard by a rogue Kree battle ship that appeared in the skies above earth. To keep said ship from crashing into our planet and taking possibly dozens of people with it, Wonder Man flew it into the stratosphere and E-X-P-L-O-D-E-D.

Do I even need to point out how common this is these days? From ongoing series reboots like the recent killing of Ryan Choi in Titans to the death of Banshee in X-Men: Deadly Genesis and from the big events that kick off with shocking murders including Blue Beetle in Countdown To Infinite Crisis and Bullseye in Shadowland, killing an expendable but known character at the start of a story is now the go-to way to ramp up fan reactions to the book. And just as it went with Wonder Man in Force Works, the message being sent by C-list slaughter is clear: "This shit is fucking SERIOUS, you guys. You HAVE to buy our new book because EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW HAS CHANGED."

And in honesty, I'm going to give an edge to DnA and Force Works on this one too. While I know death has never been permanent in superhero comics, it still feels (to me at least) that death had a bit more gravitas attached to it back in the '90s than it did for most of the '00s. Back in the halcyon days of shoulder pads and ammo pouches, when a character like Wonder Man got killed, you had to accept that the creators who pulled the trigger weren't going to go back on that – unlike today when death and resurrection for a hero are planned from page one. In other words, back then you had to wait and see IF Marvel would bring back your fav character fro the grave. Today, you just wait to see WHEN it'll happen.


3. The Support Heroes Mattered Way More Than The Marquee Guys

All right, I know that it's been common knowledge that team books have been able to get more done with B-listers pretty much since Stan Lee introduced "Cap's Kooky Quartet" into Avengers. But even though the best team books hold the honor of kind of making the Hawkeyes and Martian Manhunters of the world feel like they might one day carry a long-running solo series, both Force Works and a number of modern team comics place extra importance on the lives of their marginal cast. And the real reason for this is that writers can fuck up the lives of said cast members.

Over their 22 issues, DnA bolstered the status of perpetual also rans like U.S. Agent and the Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman (who besides juggling an in-headquarters stalker and being a single mom ended up dating a mysterious boyfriend no one remembered appearing late in the series...though that last part was on purpose). But the most important thread in the series revolved around the alien warrior made up of 100 alien warriors' minds Century. The cosmic axe-wielding hero created by the writers specifically to work in the team got a TON of love for a complete unknown including several guest spots in Marvel Comics Presents and his own one-shot, and if I'm reading between the lines right, DnA had plans for Century to not just romance team leader the Scarlet Witch but to have a crazy space battler with her darker half on down the line.

Backstory building like this became more and more relevant as the book went along in a way that reminds me a lot of how Brian Michael Bendis essentially used New Avengers as a backdoor Luke Cage solo series here and there or how Dwayne McDuffie's entire Justice League run where seldom seen minority characters like Vixen, Bronze Tiger and Doctor Light earned more page time and development than anyone even when Superman and Batman were still on the team. In fact, the only time Iron Man – the supposed draw of the book – had a major impact on Force Works was when he was threatening to pull funding like a dad killing your garage band's practice or in one of two crossovers he anchored at the time whose plot threads were resolved in other, more important titles. Which brings me to my final comparison...


4. Ultimately, The Book's Big Plan Got Scuttled Thanks To An Event

Probably the biggest reason why Force Works left so little an impact on the Marvel Universe even for die-hard fans is because the series end dovetailed into an event called "The Crossing." If you've never heard of this story, the basic premise is that Tony Stark is driven insane by Kang (or Immortus? I honestly can't tell the fucking difference) and forced to kill a nanny who lives at Avengers mansion or some shit. In an effort to save the day, the other Avengers pull an alternate reality teen Tony from out of the past to kill the original Iron Man, and that was that. The story was so poorly received it helped convince Marvel to hire two of their biggest competitors to take over the entire Avengers franchise from scratch. So yeah...not good.

"The Crossing" pulled Iron Man out of his own team book for the better part of its second year, meaning that the "proactive heroes" high concept was largely scuttled AND that there was no big name character to help keep fan interest in the title much longer. DnA wrapped the run in the middle of a number of subplots with a story that both tied up threads from "The Crossing" probably no one wanted to have wrapped up and pulled a pretty solid "resurrection of Wonder Man" fakeout (I have no proof, but I'd like to think they did that last one just to stick it to the crybabies).

Once again, it may just be me, but this is a pattern I see repeated a lot in this era of Mobius Strip event comics which leap frog one off the back of the other again and again. From the reality TV reboot of New Warriors made cannon fodder for Civil War to half a dozen (surprisingly successful) attempts to tie Agents of Atlas to Marvel U shakeups via new #1 issues to that other New Warriors book that went from some kind of street-level teen rebellion thing to a mashup of leftover Generation X characters to a part of the Initiative and ultimately to a quiet death, the modern event era is littered with high-concept relaunches of old properties whose shelf life is somewhere between 12 months and whenever the next red sky shows up.

Ultimately, I don't think all these trends hold a lot of baring on whether or not any individual comic series is any good or not. The best creators can find ways to make cool core concepts sing no matter what the circumstances surrounding them. But I do wonder some days how many people are starting to see the reboots, redesigns and retcons of books like Force Works more as clichés rather than as creative realignment. Hell, I'm wondering if I myself can really tell the difference anymore.

Can you believe they're mutants?

I love talking to Sean T. Collins about many things, but one subject in particular I enjoy chatting with him about is 90’s super hero comics, because they are so far out of his wheel house and yet as he works to wrap his head around them, he inevitably makes some pretty canny observations.

Two things he’s always quick to bring up when we talk 90’s X-Men are that everybody was dressed in the same two colors (which are slipping my mind at the moment, but I want to say brown and purple, and interestingly enough not blue and gold) and that any new character had “ill-defined energy powers.” The latter point is quite true as I believe there came a point in comics history where it became far more important to get characters into an X-book via their being a mutant than determining exactly what their mutant cross to bear was.

On the one hand, it’s understandable that after awhile all the good powers are taken, but on the other, Cyclops being unable to open his eyes without “punching a hole in the side of a mountain” and Rogue’s inability to make human contact certainly made for more compelling stories than yet another guy with “bio-electric energy absorption” powers (short version: you shoot something at him, he fires energy blasts back; Bishop was the first and most prominent member of this fraternity, but hardly the last).

These were the guys who populated henchmen groups like the Acolytes, Mutant Liberation Front, Dark Riders and Nasty Boys. I’m talking about mutant-come-lately types such as Katu, who could absorb electromagnetic fields and release them as energy blasts; or Dragoness, who can utilize stored bodily energy and release it as energy blasts; or Lifeforce, who drained others of their life energy to enhance her own strength and release it as energy blasts; you get the idea.

But thinking about it the last couple weeks, while there were plenty of background guys with generic powers, the more interesting thing to me was how there were several headliner mutants whose powers we never really knew or even thought about.

I think it all really started with Cable. It didn’t take long for Cable to become a pretty popular character following his 1990 introduction, but we were just told he was a mutant and that was enough; there wasn’t really an Internet back then, so I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think too many people were racking their brains to figure out what the guy’s powers were, and if they did take a guess I’d assume they figured it had something to do with his robot arm, glowing eye or big guns.

It would be a good two years or so before we’d learn that Cable was actually telekinetic and while later still before he revealed telepathy. His powers would be incorporated into the character in a major way as time went on, but if you had said he was a super-fast typer or something, it wouldn’t have changed his first two dozen appearances.

Cable’s X-Force protégé Shatterstar is another great example of a 90’s mutants where his powers were more or less an afterthought. Since his primary mode of offense was using his swords and crazy martial arts, I just figured he had the usual enhanced agility and speed potpourri. However, I remember the moment—if not the issue—where we learned that in fact Shatty could focus those ever-popular “bio-electric blasts” through one of his swords if he focused hard enough. I think he’s used that power maybe five or six times since 1991, although Peter David is currently adding some more abilities to the mix in the pages of X-Factor as he continues to expand Shatterstar’s character on the base established almost two decades ago (wow).

I was talking to Marvel assistant editor “Double A” Alejandro Arbona the other day about Maverick—alternately known as Agent Zero—and he swore he had some sort of deal where he could touch an object and know said object’s history, but I’m pretty sure that’s actually Longshot. I looked up Maverick, who I always thought had a cool mask and neat body armor to go with his array of guns, and he’s got the following laundry list of mutant powers: kinetic energy absorption and blasts (of course), an accelerated healing factor, an anti-healing factor corrosive and—my personal favorite—inodorosity (meaning he has no discernible scent).

We totally need more characters with inodorosity!

Anyways, I’m not trying to pick on the 90’s—I’m the guy who prefers his Superboy with a leather jacket and Nova rocking the grunge mullet, people—but you have to admit stuff like this was pretty funny, and makes you feel a bit sorry for the creators tasked with coming up with a dozen new mutants a year to make quota.

And hey, my boy Adam-X the X-Treme gets a bad rap sometimes, but Fabian Nicieza made sure straight up that you knew he had the very unique mutant power to oxygenate other people’s blood via hematokinesis and cause them immense pain as a result.

Maybe the moral of the story is that next time you kids complain that X-23 has the same powers as Wolverine, be grateful you at least know what her powers are; I still have no idea what Exodus’ deal was.

Coulda Beens

Writing the other day about Terry Kavanagh and Alex Saviuk’s various attempts to inject new blood into the Marvel Universe during their Web of Spider-Man run got me to thinking about the other various characters to debut in the 90’s (and earlier) heralded as “the next big thing” who either promptly went nowhere or settled comfortably into a role as the occasional guest star or reserve team member.

Comics is of course littered with literally thousands of concepts that never achieved the success their creators intended and you could probably sustain a blog for years on those alone (I’m sure somebody out there does). I can think of a few in particular though that I thought had squandered potential or came along either at the wrong time or wrong place to go all the way (and I’m not just talking about X-Treme); some of these characters have enjoyed a modicum of success, but certainly nowhere near what could have been.

BRONZE TIGER
I’ve spoken of my affection for Richard Dragon before, which runs alongside my thing before Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, and both mostly amount to this: there are guys out there in the DC and Marvel Universes who aren’t particularly well-known or “A-list” but who are better in hand-to-hand combat than their more well-known contemporaries. Same deal goes for Bronze Tiger, but he’s also got the added benefit of a far more interesting and conflicted back story as a former compatriot of Dragon who was captured and brainwashed by Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Assassins, forced to become a killer, actually beat Batman, then broke free and sought redemption as a member of the Suicide Squad. Now there’s enough there for a solo series to run at least a couple arcs in my opinion, but if not, why would “guy who beat Batman” not be enough to at least get the Justice League to read your resume? Yeah, there’s the whole “former assassin” thing, but that just adds to the potential drama.

THUNDERSTRIKE
Once he shed his persona as a substitute Thor and gained his own heroic identity, Eric Masterson had the misfortune of receiving a horribly dated 90’s costume complete with sleeveless leather jacket, pierced ear and pony tail—and I’m convinced this had far more to do with his lack of longevity than anything else. Because when you look at the idea behind Thunderstrike—a “street level” Thor who has the power of a god but walks among mortals and deals with legitimate issues—it’s a solid one that I think could have been made to work given more of a chance. Masterson was also already a pretty well-liked character during his time headlining the main Thor title, so he had something of a built-in fanbase; again, it was just bad timing. Thunderstrike came along at a time when the market was barely supporting one Thor title, let alone ready to propel another to success, and again, little things like the visuals just didn’t earmark the character for long-term success. Nowadays, with the Thor franchise more viable, I think Eric Masterson or Thunderstrike could fill a nice niche role bridging Asgard and Earth.

X-O MANOWAR
I never really followed any Valiant title too religiously, but if I had, I think it would have been X-O Manowar (or Harbinger, but probably X-O Manowar). When you take just a cursory glimpse at the character, he’s Iron Man but with the ultra cool twist of the dude in the armor being a freaking caveman who went into suspended animation for centuries and woke up in our time to become a businessman and super hero with his alien battle armor; he’s Captain America and Iron Man plus elements of Venom and Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer all mixed together! The guy also just looked rad, so if his IP is lying around out there somewhere, somebody with some cash and motivation should give it a look.

SPIDER-WOMAN II
While original Spider-Woman Jessica Drew has been the recipient of a tremendous popularity resurgence in recent years, I always thought her successor, Julia Carpenter, had as much if not more going for her and it’s too bad she’s more or less in limbo now. During a period in Avengers lore when most of the female team members got short shrift in the 90’s, Julia was portrayed as professional and confident and I always felt it was a nice moment when the main team shut down the West Coast branch yet invited her to stay on (and then she turned them down). Her being a single mom who was committed to raising her daughter not fully divorced from her costumed career also made her unique in those halcyon days. She’s also got neat psychic web powers plus a dynamite costume, so surely there’s a place for her somewhere outside of Canada?

THE RAY
For years, the second character known as The Ray has coasted on the fact that Joe Quesada originally designed him with an awesome look both powered-up and just in costume to remain at least on the periphery of the DC Universe whether as part of the Justice League, Young Justice or the Freedom Fighters. However, those who followed Ray’s somewhat surprisingly long-lived solo series in the 90’s probably had higher hopes for him to become a breakout star on his own, much as I did. In addition to the great visuals Quesada gave him, Ray also had a nice stretch of character development by Christopher Priest that included major daddy issues with his Golden Age heroic father, a childhood that saw him raised in virtual isolation, and a doomed love life that somehow included a fling with Black Canary. Ray has that nice balance of legacy and uniqueness that I feel like should translate to another shot in the spotlight, or at least a prominent role in one of the two Justice Society books.

STRYFE
Now it may seem somewhat unfair to place Stryfe on this list due to the fact that he was a primary villain in a semi-major X-Men crossover less than a year ago, but nonetheless, the guy was a big-time personal favorite of mine—and many other—as a kid, and I think we all had bigger things mapped out for the Chaos Bringer in our heads. He made such a blockbuster debut in X-Cutioner’s Song (ok, technically he had been around a few years at that point, but just as an ancillary X-Force villain, not a real deal X-Men baddies) that I think we were all pretty sure we had the next Magneto or Apocalypse on our hands. Yeah, his name was a bit corny and he lacked the big picture motivation of the other villains I just mentioned, but Stryfe was a step above the generic schemers populating the X-books at the time based on his deeply personal connections to characters like Cyclops and Jean Grey and the motivation he derived from therein. He was hugely powerful, spoke like an over-the-top lost work of Shakespeare and when rendered right his thousand-angled costume looked bad ass. However, after his big crossover tour de force, he settled back into being just Cable’s personal nemesis, and then died a couple times without much fanfare before fading from collective memory. His return in Messiah War was much-welcomed from where I sat and he was handled perfectly by Duane Swierczynski, Chris Yost and Craig Kyle, but I hope there are more plans for him beyond sitting in an apocalyptic future somewhere, since even if his full potential may never be realized, Stryfe is too good a bad guy to let rot on the vine.

Web of Warrant

For those who thought this post would be about the 80’s glam metal band, I apologize. It’s more tangentially about this guy.

I had certainly not thought about short-lived Spider-Man sorta-villain Warrant since I first encountered him back in 1994, but Jim Beard’s Marvel.com Archrivals feature on the shared history of Spidey and The Lizard last week brought him back into my life somehow. I’m astonished to learn from Comic Vine that the guy actually made five more appearances outside of the ones I own (some in Handbooks and stuff, but still), but we’ll circle back around to him in a bit.

As I’ve covered in part here before, my comic book buying habits back around the time I was 12-13 were pretty haphazard for lack of a better term. I had my perennial favorites like the X-Men titles, New Warriors, Superboy and the like, but aside from that, I was prone to sampling any super hero stuff that jumped out at me, typically in staggered chunks. What I mean by that is I’d buy Thor for a few months because a cover caught my eye, then when I saw a logical jumping off point, I’d ditch that and replace it with something else I wasn’t reading like Green Lantern.

There were some books I’d stay pretty consistent with just because as a still relatively new fan they felt like stuff I needed to be reading; I’d always have at least one Superman book on my “pull list” (I didn’t actually use a pull list, but let’s imagine), one Avengers, one Justice League and so on (oddly enough I never remember collecting any Batman titles on the regular, just ancillary stuff like Robin and Catwoman).

Amazing Spider-Man was my token Spidey book. I’d never been that into the character (though in finally reading the original Stan Lee-Steve Ditko run for the very first time over the past couple weeks, I’ve starting to develop a genuine appreciation—a topic for another day), but felt he was integral enough to comics and the Marvel Universe that I should at least follow his flagship title. Also, I loved (and still do love) Mark Bagley’s art.

However, one comic I was onboard with was Infinity Crusade, Jim Starlin’s annual Marvel cosmic crossover, so I ended up picking up a lot of random titles I wouldn’t normally give a glance (hello, Darkhawk) on the basis that they tied in. Spidey’s Infinity Crusade crossovers took place in Web of Spider-Man, so I grabbed those issues; and strangely enough, I ended up sticking around for more than a year on the tertiary (maybe) title of a character I was pretty meh on to begin with.

When Web of Spider-Man kicked off in 1985—replacing Marvel Team-Up as the third monthly Spidey title alongside Amazing and Spectacular Spider-Man—it carved something of a niche for itself by featuring stories of a slightly darker and more psychological bent written by guys like Peter David and James Owsley (the future Christopher Priest). This direction didn’t last more than a year or two before it just became another Spider-Man book during a time when those happened to sell well (one of the earliest comics I ever remember owning is Web of Spider-Man #39, featuring Spidey against The Looter by Fabian Nicieza and Alex Saviuk).

By 1993, Web took a backseat not only to Amazing and Spectacular with their longer pedigrees, but also the simply-titled Spider-Man which had been launched amidst much fanfare by Todd McFarlane and the new quarterly book Spider-Man Unlimited. It was then that I encountered the series in the midst of the Infinity Crusade, written by Terry Kavanagh and still being penciled by the venerable and talented Mr. Saviuk.

I give credit to the creative team, the editors, or whoever was responsible at the time, but they sure as heck convinced me to hang with Web even after the trippy Infinity Crusade tie-ins (which featured Spidey hallucinating on another planet that he is battling oddly-costumed versions of his supporting cast who are in reality an odd potpourri of characters like Sasquatch, Moon Knight, Quicksilver and Archangel—long story). They did this by promoting the heck out of each subsequent story arc, planting seeds the way a good episodic ongoing series should and then hyping the hell out of stuff in the letters pages, in Marvel Age, and son on.

And the thing is it was stuff that should not have mattered to me in the least! I’m not really a Spider-Man guy, what do I care what’s going on with The Sandman or The Lizard? Yet these folks were good at what they did, because when it made all the sense in the world for me to kick my $1.50 to She-Hulk or Detective Comics, I ended up staying with Web of Spider-Man far longer than intended.

Perhaps equally noteworthy to what a solid hype job the people running Web of Spider-Man did monthly was how despite some generally decent stories and well thought-out origins, the new characters they were cranking out on the whole really went nowhere beyond their introductory arc.

First up after Infinity Crusade was the introduction of the new villain Sandstorm, a sort of next generation Sandman who also incorporated the powers of Thor (?) adversary Quicksand to be three times as sandy or whatever. It was a noble attempt at creating something new out of the well-worn ashes of the old, but I pretty quickly forgot about Sandstorm (as did the rest of comicdom as I’m fairly certain he never appeared again), recalling more how Web’s new inker, Stephen Baskerville, added a dimension to Saviuk’s pencils I’d never seen somebody in his position do before, giving me a whole new appreciation of that particular craft.

Again, another good chance to jump off with Sandstorm having come and gone, but the build was already in overtime for “The Savaging,” a story that promised to “change The Lizard forever.” I don’t think I had even ever read a story with The Lizard at that point in my life, but for whatever reason, I was hooked once more.

I actually quite enjoyed the lead-in prologue to “The Savaging,” where Lizard killed Calypso in the back-up story, but the main had Spidey and a personal favorite of mine, Night Thrasher of the New Warriors, having their only team-up I can recall against The Shocker, another villain I knew zilch about but he’s got a rad costume.

“The Savaging” proved a bit of a let-down for me (which shouldn’t have been terribly surprising given my aforementioned apathy for all fictional parties involved), made memorable by some really good art and the introduction of the guy who kicked off this trip down memory lane, Warrant, an oddly-designed stock mercenary character who nonetheless remains burned into my memory to this day.

I skipped Web of Spider-Man #112, which was part of the “Pursuit” crossover with the other three Spider books and a sign of things to come both in terms of structure and tone (Spidey had just lost the robots he thought were his resurrected parents and was headed down a dark path—another long story). However, #114 had not only Gambit and The Black Cat in the first part of a new story called “Live and Let Die,” but also a silver foil cover! It was 1994 and you didn’t say no to stuff like that.

Gambit bolted Web after that first chapter, but “Live and Let Die” was actually a neat little mystery featuring another new villain, the armored Façade, who was teased as being any of several candidates thrown out through the arc. Frustratingly, Façade’s identity was not revealed by story’s end and in fact I know I’m not the only one who still thinks about it to this day as one of the Handbook-style specials (I believe the Dark Reign one) featured an in-joke about Façade on the intro page though he, again, has not appeared since.

I quit Web of Spider-Man with the conclusion of “Live and Let Die” in issue #116, which also happened to be Alex Saviuk’s swansong as series artist after like six years. I was gradually phasing into buying less at the time and the Spider-Man titles were also adopting the mid-90’s Superman structure of telling stories spread over the course of all four monthly books as opposed to each having their own direction, so I wasn’t really into that (it was also the start of the Clone Saga, though that wasn’t really a factor for me).

Random though it was, I look back on my year-long run as a reader of Web of Spider-Man kinda fondly. It was an odd little book that didn’t really have a place by the mid-90’s, but guys like Terry Kavanagh and Alex Saviuk did their damndest to carve one out anyways. Sure, Sandstorm, Warrant and Façade never became household names, but credit for trying to add something new into a mythos as rich as Spider-Man’s and give something back to the Marvel Universe.

Now to track down Terry Kavanagh and find out who the heck Façade is once and for all…

Art Attack: July 2010's coolest covers

July is a pretty huge month as we celebrate the birthdays of both America and one of her greatest heroes, Rickey Purdin.

Looking at the comics upcoming this summer, it's gonna be a good one, and there are 25 covers that have me particularly psyched for July.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #639 by Paolo Rivera

AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE #1 by Jim Cheung

BATMAN: ODYSSEY #1 by Neal Adams

BATMAN: THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #4 by Andy Kubert

BATMAN: THE WIDENING GYRE #6 by Bill Sienkiewicz

BOOSTER GOLD #34 by Kevin Maguire

BRIGHTEST DAY: THE ATOM SPECIAL #1 by Gary Frank

DEADPOOL CORPS #4 by Rob Liefeld

DETECTIVE COMICS #867 by Peter Nguyen

DOCTOR SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM #1 by Dennis Calero

GORILLA MAN #1 by Dave Johnson

MADAME XANADU #25 by Mark Buckingham

THE MURDER OF KING TUT #2 by Darwyn Cooke

SCARLET #1 by Alex Maleev

SECRET AVENGERS #3 by Marko Djurdjevic

SHADOWLAND #1 by John Cassaday

STRANGE SCIENCE FANTASY #1 by Scott Morse

SUPERMAN #701 by John Cassaday

THE THANOS SOURCEBOOK by Alex Garner

UNCANNY X-MEN #526 by Terry Dodson

USAGI YOJIMBO #130 by Stan Sakai

VENGEANCE OF THE MOON KNIGHT #10 by Francesco Mattina

WOLVERINE: WEAPON X #15 by Ron Garney

X-MEN: LEGACY #238 by Leinil Francis Yu

YOUNG ALLIES #2 by David Lafuente

Deadpool, Rob Liefeld and the cover to Guns N Roses' Appetite for Destruction all together again--for the very first time?! 90's-tastic!