ESSENTIAL KILLRAVEN VOL.1
Written and Drawn by Various

KILLRAVEN has long been one of those “holy grail” sci-fi comics, a book pointed to as being an underrated and under-appreciated icon of the 70s. Upon reading this collection, I can officially say “NO” to that.

Yes, the concept was terrific: branching out from H.G. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS, a second Martian invasion took place in 2001 that left the earth in ruins. As the series begins, it is 2018, and Killraven and his fellow rebels are on the run and making attacks against their evil Martian masters. Okee doke. There are plenty of cool, nasty creatures and mutants to fight, likeable characters in Killraven’s band, and exciting adventures.

But, my God… the writing. The horror. The horror!

KILLRAVEN was blessed to have some of the greatest artists ever work on his stories. P. Craig Russell draws the bulk of this book! Plus, you get efforts from Neal Adams, Gene Colon, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema, and Howard Chaykin! It is no lie to say that there is some truly brilliant artwork in these pages. But the writing ruins most of it, and you just have to shake your head, disgusted.

“But Marc!” you say. “Whatever could be so awful as to make those men’s work suffer?” And I give you two words: Don McGregor. Don “I never met a panel I couldn’t overcrowd with pointlessly turgid prose” McGregor. That would also be Don “I make Bill Mantlo read like he’s terse” McGregor. Which gets proved here, by the way, because Mantlo does a couple of the issues in this book, and they do read as terse compared to McGregor’s stuff! I’m telling you, it’s horrible. Tons of extraneous text that takes away panel space from the page. Long expository captions that crowd out the action. Dialogue that not only repeats the expository captions, but that also makes George Lucas sound like Mamet. Plus, some of the stories jump around so much that you can’t find the narrative line once it’s been dropped. One character seemingly dies or is injured horrifically during an attack that kills two others, and you don’t find out until two issues later that he survived, and he isn’t even injured at that point. It’s headache inducing.

So as pretty as this might be, there is no conceivable way in the world that I could ever recommend this. Too many flaws, and not enough payoff, makes my Christmas gift to you all the savings of the $17 you might have spent on this book.

ESSENTIAL X-FACTOR VOL.1
Written by Bob Layton and Louise Simonson and Drawn by Various

Few books in the 80s launched with as much hype and then turned into as big of a clusterfuck than X-FACTOR. Aside from the idea of resurrecting Jean Grey and re-teaming together the original X-Men, the book was a conceptual disaster.

The spark was that the team would pose as human mutant hunters in order to track down mutants who needed help and training. I remember going to a signing at Comic Carnival in Broadripple, Indiana, where the book’s writer, Bob Layton was present. I had loved (and still do) his HERCULES material, so I was pretty stoked for this new book. And he told me that he and artist Butch Guice had ideas for up to a hundred issues of their new sales smash. But then something happened.

It sucked. And it sucked hard.

Not only were Layton’s stories overly melodramatic and uninteresting, but also the concept began to implode upon itself, which the book had to begin to deal with. The mutants were creating anti-mutant hysteria with their own campaign, and it was tough to believe that these characters could actually be this stupid. Five issues in, Layton was gone, replaced by the terrific Louise Simonson, who had an enormous mess to clean up. One more issue from Guice (after an awful fill-in from Keith Pollard), and he was off the book as well. 95 issues short of the goal. Whoops. Great job, fellas.

It took Simonson a couple of issues to start making the book into something readable, but she came through with some of her best work. Plus, the art chores began to rotate amongst her hubby, the great Walt Simonson, and a young and still in control of himself Marc Silvestri. Even the amazing David Mazzucchelli stepped in to handle an issue. In less than a year, Marvel’s worst book on the stands turned it around to become the most vital and alive of all the mutant titles being published.

Layton’s one creation that stuck it out and became useful was Apocalypse, though Simonson and other writers made far better and far more creative use of the seeds he planted than you wind up believing would have happened otherwise. Beyond that, this was the Louise show, and while POWER PACK became the book she was best known for, it was X-FACTOR that showed she could handle writing mature comics that would appeal to the older set, and that she could escape from the shadow of having edited Chris Claremont for so long.

ESSENTIAL X-FACTOR is basically two books in the end; half of it is as bad as Marvel Comics got in the mid-80s, and the other half is just about as good as it got. I don’t know if I can recommend buying it, but I can surely recommend you check it out from your local library.

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE VOL.1
Written and Drawn by Various

Growing up, I was a Marvel kid.

No two ways around it. DC’s oeuvre just didn’t really appeal to me, not until I hit my mid-teens. It was the Marvel characters that captured my imagination and made me love the medium. I adored Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers. I read ROM. I have a full set of DAZZLER. That was a universe that had a hold of me and wouldn’t let me go.

As of late, though, my interest in, and enjoyment of, comics has been on the wane a bit. Comics have gotten sort of dull as a whole; yes, there are some really great ones that I look forward to with anticipation, but for the most part… snooze city. I’ve needed something, anything, to remind me of what it was that made me fall in love with comics. And finally, I found it.

First, let me be brutally honest: out of the twenty-nine comics reprinted in this volume, I’d only be able to tell you that maybe one or two were actually anything resembling “good.” MTIO, which featured The Thing and a guest star paring up each issue, as MARVEL TEAM-UP did with Spider-Man, was primarily a breeding ground for fill-in issues. The book didn’t have anything resembling a “creative team” for the most part, instead relying on two or three issues at a time by certain creators before they returned their focus to other projects. But even without brilliant stories, so much of what is here is a total treat.

How about Gil Kane art? A crossover between the FF and MTIO annuals drawn by the Buscemas and scripted by Roy Thomas, which was set during World War Two? Work by Jim Starlin that had bearing on his first great Thanos saga? I read this stuff treasuring it, transported to a time when comics were far simpler in their aims and achievements.

Take issues four and five, for instance. The Thing, Captain America, and Sharon Carter travel to a far-flung future to save the Earth from the Badoon. In the process, they meet the Guardians Of The Galaxy. And in the span of forty-four pages, they have a huge fight and liberate the planet. Can you even imagine what that would be like in today’s comics world? Give that plot to Bendis or Millar and it’d not only take twelve issues to play out, but also probably have at least another dozen crossovers in other books.

The guest stars range from Cap and Spidey to low-enders like The Golem and The Scarecrow, which makes you believe that the powers that were at the time were hoping to see if they could fish for the next big character to get their own book if they proved popular enough. Of course, that didn’t exactly happen. So much for the best-laid plans. Still, even through the worst issues the collection has to offer, the book comes through with exactly what the creators intended: a few minutes of good, clean, fun entertainment. I know it sounds old-fashioned, and the trend towards making “fun” comics is lurking around the edges of the zeitgeist right now, but occasionally I like to smile. So sue me. Books like this are not only a reminder of a simpler era, but that there’s more to life than glowering.

Doesn’t it suck that we need that reminder?

ESSENTIAL SPIDER-WOMAN VOL.1
Written and Drawn by Various

There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about this character as of late, with Bendis raising her profile in NEW AVENGERS and her new limited series just getting underway. But this volume returns us to the true beginning for the character, and while some of her earliest tales are clunky at best, you are able to glimpse a bit of what would eventually make the character interesting.

Jessica Drew’s first appearances were as a misunderstood villain working for the evil organization Hydra, and then later on, she would find her role as a hero during a nice run of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE (the issues of which are not printed in the volume I reviewed above). However, unlike many Marvel characters to get their start in the 70s, there was an unusual stability to SPIDER-WOMAN. Writer Marv Wolfman wrote those five issues of MTIO and then penned the first eight of her regular series. The much-missed Mark Gruenwald then took over the regular title and wrote the next twelve installments. So what you get from this volume is a sense of how well those two men were able to plan their story arcs at length and tell stories that had some surprising resonance.

The first nineteen issues of the regular title were illustrated by the great Carmine Infantino, so again, there was a strong consistency to the goings on with the character that is almost completely foreign to today’s comics.

Where these stories suffer is that no one seems to be able to give Jessica a truly feminine “voice,” but in an interesting way, the writers dealt with that by building in a pheromone oddity that made her off-putting to other women. The character’s lack of a solid background and socialization amongst people also tends to lead her into stupid decisions that make her unsympathetic.

She isn’t the ultra-fantastic character that the serial masturbators writing and drawing at Marvel these days seem to believe she is, but for the most part, this isn’t bad.

ESSENTIAL PETER PARKER THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN VOL.1
Written and Drawn by Various

For years, Superman and Batman had been appearing in multiple titles for DC. Now, Spider-Man was also appearing in MARVEL TEAM-UP, and The Thing in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, but as far as solo efforts go, Marvel seemed unwilling to pull the trigger and play DC’s game. Until PETER PARKER rolled out in the mid-70s, that is.

Given a second title, Marvel’s flagship character had more room to grow, and more ability to bring in revenue. Of course, there really was at least the resemblance of an idea at play with this book; the title was meant to guide the creative team in what kind of stories to tell. PP told stories that were a bit more focused on the hero’s civilian identity and his life away from the suit, and how putting on the suit affected his surroundings. Many of these issues take place surrounding Peter’s university life and the urban area around the campus. And they also deal with some more mature themes, such as local racial issues and Flash Thompson’s post-Vietnam re-assimilation back into society.

Artistically, this stuff is dynamite. The legendary Sal Buscema drew the bulk of these issues, with guys like Jim Mooney, Mike Zeck, and Frank Miller pitching in as well. The writers may have changed like the seasons, but the book looked consistently fine.

SPECTACULAR had a healthy run that lasted for over twenty years (with a name change or two along the way). Issue three is one of the first comics I can ever remember buying off a rack as a kid. It was nice to revisit it with this volume.

ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS VOL.1
Written and Drawn by Various

The origins of the “non-team” team are displayed here, and while some of these stories are pretty decent, you honestly have to wonder how the book survived long enough to actually get good.

At its core, the idea of putting together Dr. Strange, Namor, Hulk, and the Silver Surfer has some merit; they’re all extremely powerful loners who are meant to fight different battles than the Avengers or Fantastic Four. The problem is that it takes some sort of conceit to bring them together each time, and that gimmick wears thin.

For instance, Namor must say at least six times in this volume that he is pissed at Strange for dragging him away from Atlantis, and that he’ll kick his ass for interrupting his life again. Yet time after time, the sorcerer intrudes on the watery kingdom, Namor reluctantly agrees to help, blah blah blah. Frankly, I was ready for Namor to slap the shit out of Strange or just admit he was a gutless pussy. Your mileage may vary.

The book gains some life and energy when Hawkeye takes a brief dip into the ranks of the team, and the addition of the Valkyrie and Nighthawk start the genesis of what the book would eventually become down the road, but that’s a long way away. The stories in this book entertain, and are competently produced, but when you lay the book down, you feel under-nourished. This is a definite mixed-bag.

ESSENTIAL GHOST RIDER VOL.1
Written by Gary Friedrich and Tony Isabella and Drawn by Various

Finally, we reach the first edition of Johnny Blaze and his flaming alter ego’s adventures. Blaze, proving that he’s been riding without a helmet for far too long, sells his soul to Satan in return for saving his mentor and father figure from cancer. Of course, the mentor dies in a crash instead, leaving Blaze linked to a demon from hell whose skull stays on fire. Not exactly the work of genius by the character, or frankly, the character’s creator, Friedrich.

When creating a character meant to be your protagonist, you not only want to make the character sympathetic and relatable, you must also put them in a situation that is believable. Peter Parker didn’t stop the burglar because he got selfish and full of himself. The Fantastic Four were trying to beat the enemy in the space race. Johnny Blaze… well, Blaze is just stupid. Now, plenty of comics readers are stupid and can identify with that, but this is stretching it just a bit. No one sits there and thinks to themselves, “I know everyone else has taken it on the chin when dealing with Satan, but surely I, with my IQ of 37, can get the drop on him.” Not even a comics fan. Not even someone whose bought a comic that features Mr. T as a character.

So, left with that, you have a character who was a bit of a whiner because he got screwed over by the Devil, and a reader reaction that’s basically a yawn, because the idiot deserved to burn in Hell for his inability to think past the concept of “Need food, sleep.”

Unfortunately, I’d like to tell you how well Friedrich would recover from this opening creative blunder, but it doesn’t happen. Tony Isabella does a bit better when he takes over, dropping away a good chunk of the whining and moving the character into a different milieu, with a different supporting cast, but there’s only so much he can do with a turkey premise. The character was another one who took years of work before real focus and direction was achieved (by Roger Stern and J.M. DeMatteis), but those stories are a long way down the road.

See you in seven.

Review materials may be sent to: Marc Mason, P.O. Box 26732, Tempe, AZ 85285. You can also find me at Happy Nonsense and The Comics Waiting Room

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