Review: Robocop vs. the Terminator hardcover (Dark Horse Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

My favorite announcement from SDCC 2014 was the upcoming Star Trek/Planet of the Apes crossover from IDW and Boom! Studios. Much like Devil’s Due, Boom! has done well for itself despite losing a major licensee (Disney in their case), doing so by absorbing fellow small company Archaia and by grabbing great tie-in licenses. Their gamble with getting the license for Robocop paid off as the remade film did well; it also allowed them to republish some classic comics kept in limbo as the rights shifted between almost half a dozen publishers. As a result, they were able to team up with Dark Horse, the original publisher, and finally put out a long-awaited trade of the classic Robocop vs. Terminator mini-series, collected for the first time since 1992.

The trade dress for Robocop vs. Terminator sells the comic not only on the franchises but also on the merits of the creative team of Frank Miller and Walter Simonson. The very early 1990s was an interesting time for all parties involved: Miller had just split off from the Big 2 and was about to launch Sin City, and Simonson had just finished his run on Fantastic Four. While the Robocop franchise was on the downslide after its second film, Terminator 2 had come out in 1991 to massive acclaim. Dark Horse was still a rising power and their success with high-quality licensed comics was still seen as a bit of a fluke. But the Aliens vs. Predator comics had proven a great success ... could such a crossover work again?

Well, let’s just say that I really want the next film in both franchises to adapt this crossover, as it combines Robocop and Terminator perfectly. It helps that both creators were able to bring previous experience into the mix since Miller had written drafts for the second and third Robocop films. Meanwhile, Simonson had done a complex time-travel caper in Fantastic Four and was the artist on the Uncanny X-Men/New Teen Titans crossover, one of the best Marvel/DC crossovers of all time. They used the presence of time travel as a central part of Terminator to their advantage and there’s a new timeline in nearly every issue. But this isn’t like Deathmate where conflicting details might cause alternate universes; it’s because of changes made to the timeline by the actions of Robocop, future humans, or Skynet’s Terminators.

Robocop is the main character, but the Connors, the T-800 (Schwarzenegger) Terminators, and T-1000s aren’t involved in Robocop vs. Terminator. I’m not sure if this was personal preference by Miller, studio involvement, or just the comic being written too late to use the Terminator 2 concepts, but it feels a little weird nearly twenty years later. The main female protagonist, Flo, goes unnamed throughout most of the comic; I ended up calling her “Moe” for a while because of her bowl haircut. Like everyone in the 1980s and '90s, Simonson presumed that people in the future would wear giant shoulderpads. Despite some goofiness in her appearance, though, her characterization works as a war-torn, tired but hopeful assassin sent to take out Robocop so that his mind will never be used to create Skynet.

The central conceit of having Robocop be responsible for the horrible future actually works in the context of both this comic and the films. We see him abused verbally by those he’s been created to trust and worn down by the grimness of New Detroit. Hook a depressed brain up to a powerful network and you’ve got a recipe for the homicidal Skynet. Some of the details about the brain link-up were from Frank Miller’s Robocop 2 draft, so I’m almost glad they didn’t make it into the film so that they could be used here instead. Time travel using both the actual time machine and the copy of Alex Murphy’s brain in Skynet’s system allows Robocop to pull off some impressive schemes against Skynet throughout the timeline iterations. The comic also has one of the greatest final pages in comic book history, which I’m not spoiling because you need to see the sheer audacity of what happens.

Simonson’s artwork was recolored for the hardcover by Steve Oliff, who also remastered his The Mighty Thor omnibus and the recent paperback releases of that run. I didn’t like the reworking for Thor since I had already read it with the original coloring in the Marvel Visionaries trades. Since Robocop vs. Terminator is a new read, the enhanced colors don’t bother me quite as much, especially if they were done under Simonson’s instructions. No matter how they color it, his art is still glorious here. Robocop is a little burlier than I’m used to seeing but that happens in a lot of Robocop comics. I think it’s done because it’s harder to get the heaviness of the character across without the extra bulk.

Of course, one of the biggest advantages of a tie-in comic is that there’s far fewer budget restrictions, meaning that Miller and Simonson can go all-out on the action. Remember how silly the flying scene looked in Robocop 3? Take that concept, multiply it one hundred times, come up with better flight rigs, and pit the Robocop army against thousands of Terminator endoskeletons, and you’ve got the incredible climax of Robocop vs. Terminator. One Terminator takes the form of a young child, a risk I don’t think the films would take, especially in 1992 after the seriousness of Terminator 2. Skynet takes to the stars in one possible negative future ... doing so in spaceships bearing massive, creepily smiling endoskeleton faces. This would look ridiculous from another penciller, but Simonson made it work.

Not only is Robocop vs. Terminator an excellent crossover, but it’s a neat little time capsule of what comics were like back in the very early 1990s. Miller’s Sin City-era noir narration can grate at times, but it’s worth getting through for the art and the story itself.

Next week: I am Groot!

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Review: Weapon Brown trade paperback (Death Ray Graphics)

[Doug Glassman ('80s Marvel Rocks!) celebrates "Indie-pendence Month" with his July reviews ...]

Sometimes you’re just led to certain comics by fate. After writing the Grimm Fairy Tales: Inferno review, I went to the same store where I picked up Wasteland: Cities in Dust last year. On the same shelf and in almost the exact same slot was Weapon Brown. I had heard of Jason Yungbluth’s twisted homage to Peanuts, but only vaguely, mostly due to the Kickstarter which enabled its small print run through Death Ray Graphics. I’m actually glad I missed out on its initial webcomic debut at Deep Fried because I know how I read webcomics: would have started reading Weapon Brown and then forgotten about it.

This trade also helps me assuage the guilt of “selling out” for Indie-Pendence Month this year; three books were media tie-ins! Conversely, Weapon Brown is much closer to the books I reviewed this time last year, with black-and-white artwork, subversive sensibilities, and the distinct difficulty a reader has in finding physical copies. There’s also a direct correlation with one of last year’s reviews. Much like R. Sikoryak’s Masterpiece Comics, Yungbluth mashes up comic strips with darker and more diverse literature. The key difference is that it’s all to set up a dystopian universe. I’ve mentioned my disdain for post-apocalyptic stories before, but spoof always overrides anything else in the genre department as far as I’m concerned.

The prologue sets the mood; as he explains it, Yungbluth is a fan of the Peanuts animated specials and of many newspaper comics. It’s a sign that this is a project created out of love . . . mostly. He still gets in some good digs now and then and pretty much every comic strip character you grew up with has been warped in this horrible future, but a lot of thought has been put into the world of Weapon Brown. It’s also not presented as some sort of “real” story behind the comics or even implied that this is the ultimate future of the funny pages. You can still enjoy Calvin and Hobbes and Beetle Bailey after reading Weapon Brown, although you might end up snickering when you remember how they were under Yungbluth’s pen. While there’s quite a bit of nudity, it mostly works with the tone, and the characters who appear naked often aren’t the ones you want to see naked.

The Weapon Brown trade is split between two main stories, beginning with “A Peanut Scorned,” the original tale. This takes up the first third and is comprised of just about every single Peanuts joke you can think of. From the kite-eating tree to Linus’ blanket, from the Little Red-Haired Girl to Shermie, from Snoopy’s dancing to “blockhead” (here used as a trigger word), there’s a deeply disturbing but hilarious gag for it all. Chuck, the titular weapon, has a cyborg arm and a bad attitude, his only friend being the one-eyed dog Snoop. How they met up isn’t revealed until the very end in an original story composed for the trade. A list of helpful annotations in the back of the trade explains some of the jokes and points out hidden references  the reader might have missed; it also provides some insight into Yungbluth’s creative process. As he explains, he really did use every Peanuts joke he could think of, necessitating a wider scope in the sequel, “Blockhead’s War.”

Note: everything I write about below really happens in this book. It’s that kind of crazy awesome.

On the surface, “Blockhead’s War” is the basic plot of every 1980s post-apocalyptic movie: a moody drifter flees a repressive government and throws in his lot with a resistance group only to leave at the end. It’s really the special touch of the comic strip characters that makes the entire read worthwhile. For instance, the powerful female warrior role often portrayed by Sybil Danning in those 1980s movies is, in Weapon Brown, filled by Little Orphan Annie, now all grown up and blind thanks to a childhood tragedy. (You will never hear the phrase “leapin’ lizards” again without laughing out loud after reading this.) An even more physically mutated Popeye is the resident strongman; Broom-Hilda is an incomprehensible sorceress. More modern comics aren’t excluded either, with Huey Freeman from The Boondocks as a key ally in Anne’s rebellion.

I wish the villains received a little more attention. Mostly it’s because one of the main villains is the Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert at his slimy best, leading a council with allies like Uncle Duke from Doonesbury and Mary Worth. There’s even a tiny cameo by Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light, as a prison overseer! Said prison is part of a very long gag turning The Wizard of Id into the television show Oz, but it doesn’t quite pay off due to some timing issues. This comes down to it being a webcomic collection; it’s understandable that the pacing doesn’t always work out when you’re doing a few pages at a time. Making up for this is the primary villain, Cal, and his shapeshifting tiger. There’s a “Calvin peeing” joke shortly after his introduction in case you were concerned.

I enjoy the twisted brilliance in how certain strips are combined to enhance the setting, such as characters from B.C. and Alley-Oop all appearing as futuristic cavemen. The evil military mashes up Beetle Bailey and Crock; I had never heard of the latter, but it’s one of Yungbluth’s favorite strips. The artwork helps by providing a hint of a character’s original style while amping up the horror factor. This is best demonstrated with the sandworm-like Garf, who looks just enough like Garfield to establish the joke but modified to reference Dune and Tremors. I only had to turn to the annotations to get some of the really obscure references, like the various dogs led by Snoop.

While you can read Weapon Brown for free online, I would highly recommend financially supporting Yungbluth’s endeavors; a PDF version is only $10. It’s effectively the comic strip equivalent of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

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Review: Grimm Fairy Tales: Inferno trade paperback (Zenescope)

[Doug Glassman ('80s Marvel Rocks!) celebrates "Indie-pendence Month" with his July reviews ...]

I typically give the story behind the books and companies I cover during "Indie-pendence Month" and where the specific trade fits into their universe. This time, I honestly don’t care because I have no intention of ever picking up anything from Zenescope Entertainment again. I admit that I may have gone into Grimm Fairy Tales: Inferno with too high of hopes. The trade name and characters implied that there was some influence from the Divine Comedy and it sounded more interesting than any of their other books. There had to be some reason why Zenescope is so popular other than “Look! Boobs!”

I was so very, very wrong. Perhaps if you don’t know anything about Dante Alighieri and the Comedy you’ll enjoy this book more ... but between the clunky dialogue, awful characters, bizarre art choices, and numerous grammar errors, I doubt that will be the case.

The trade opens with a full page of black text in yellow boxes on top of a washed-out yellow drawing of “heroine” Mercy Dante. I glazed over most of this for two reasons: the font was rather hard to read and it summarizes stories collected in the trade itself. Also, the first line of the summary has a grammatical error, which last year made me close the digital trade file, go out to the store, and pick up Wasteland: Cities in Dust instead. However, there’s actually a good reason for the redundancy: if you actually read those two issues of the Grimm Fairy Tales series, you wouldn’t want to go ahead and read Inferno.

Mercy Dante is an awful protagonist, the kind of anti-hero where the writer misunderstands how to blur the lines of morality. Here’s a hint: killing a child in cold blood and then undoing it through time travel and suicide doesn’t improve your character. I haven’t been so disgusted with a protagonist since Deathstroke killed his team at the end of the first issue of his New 52 series; the prologue stories felt a lot like that story. Suicide (which is a trigger for me) plays a large part in the story, which also slowed down any desire to actually finish Inferno. I don’t even like reading good comics involving suicide, such as Locke and Key, so imagine how fun it was slogging through this book.

This is where any relationship the book has to the actual Divine Comedy starts to break down. I will give writer Ralph Tedesco credit for doing some sort of research on Dante’s portrayal of Hell; the seventh circle, where those who killed themselves are turned into thorny trees and attacked by harpies, is accurately represented. But most of the "Inferno" is skipped entirely. Given the opportunity to display some of the most inventive scenes of horror in classic literature, like the tornado filled with adulterers, the walled demonic city of Dis, and the flaming tombs of the heretics, we get ... an unfunny “comedic” scene in which Mercy offers her gun instead of a coin so Charon will cross the River Styx. It’s a boring choice of denizens of Hell, not made any better by it being the wrong river; Charon ferried Virgil and Dante across Acheron, not Styx.

Virgil does appear in Inferno. It’s a grand total of five pages, he doesn’t leave the first chambers of Hell, and he gives Mercy a watch that has some bearing on the climax that I can’t figure out. He’s also blind ... an attribute of Homer, not Virgil. There are few supporting characters at all; the closest is Sela Mathers, who starts out as an old woman before turning into the Baroness in the middle of turning a page. Much of the story is Mercy on her own searching for a lost soul who may be from a previous Grimm Fairy Tales story, but it’s never established. They also get that character’s name wrong at one point. The stories in the rear involve another running Grimm character, Belinda, who may be Sexy Satan (see below); she’s never brought up in Inferno.

Mercy’s entire journey through the Inferno is predicated on the idea that she’s in Limbo because she killed herself in place of a little girl she killed in an alternate timeline. I can’t even ... I’ll explain it in the comments section because it’s complicated, but basically, Tedesco has his parts of Hell confused and Alighieri’s morality doesn’t work that way. Not even the ending can save Inferno since it depicts the lowest levels of Hell as a burning city. The Hell of Dante is cold at its lowest levels. It’s one of his most intriguing and unique concepts; I was expecting the reveal that Satan is a sexy fallen angel in this book, but the absolute adaptational failure was just a disappointment. Everything concludes with Mercy agreeing to sell her soul to Sexy Satan in exchange for her sister’s soul, an ending I pretty much guessed from the start.

The artwork of Grimm Fairy Tales: Inferno like a gallery of Eschergirls submissions. Along with an abundance of “boobs and butt” poses, some of the faces made during dramatic scenes are downright goofy since Gabriel Rearte is clearly more concerned with creating cleavage than faces. All of the demons are similar-looking zombies. There are parts where it looks like they forgot to erase excess pencil lines or added shading in the wrong place. When there are comics with actual nudity along with good writing, from the funny (like XXXenophile) to the childhood-destroying (like Lost Girls), what’s the point of having poorly-written softcore? The only edgy thing here is the self-aggrandizing afterword in which Mercy Dante is proclaimed as the next great female anti-hero. Give me Gail Simone’s Red Sonja, Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Ghost, or Edmondson and Noto’s Black Widow any day.

Next week, I’m looking at a comic by one man with a tenth of Zenescope’s resources and ten times their collective talent. See you then, "blockheads" (hint, hint).

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Review: A Game of Thrones: The Graphic Novel Vol. 1 hardcover (Bantam/Dynamite Entertainment)

[Doug Glassman ('80s Marvel Rocks!) celebrates "Indie-pendence Month" with his July reviews ...]

As I indicated last week, the world of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire isn’t something I normally follow. This isn’t the fault of any of the material; instead, it’s because A Game of Thrones, its fellow novels, and the various adaptations of them fall into one of my least-favorite genres: dystopian literature. It might be weird to think of a medieval fantasy doubling as a post-apocalyptic tale, but it’s a detail which emerges once you find out more and more of the backstory of how the various houses rose, fell, and went to war. I’m a student of epic literature; the story I want to read is the one of the younger Ned Stark, Robert Baratheon, and Tywin Lannister going to rescue Lyanna Stark, the kidnapped sister of Ned and girlfriend of Robert. That world is gone, replaced with political infighting and far fewer dragons.

Bantam Books and Dynamite Entertainment launched the adaptation of the novel A Game of Thrones just as the Game of Thrones television series went into production. It’s interesting to note that while Dynamite publishes the individual issues, there’s not a single mention of them on the slipcover; it’s instead presented as coming from Bantam. Also note the lack of an article in the name of the television series in case you thought that the graphic novels might be a way to catch up on the massive books. (Don’t worry, I thought that too.) The graphic novels published so far adapt the first novel, A Game of Thrones (emphasis on the "a") and the opening episodes of season one of the show; it will take years to adapt the entire series if they choose to do so.

According to the excellent extras in the back of the book, there’s one comic book page per every page of the novel. This works out for two reasons: the art means that many pages of narration can be trimmed down, and A Game of Thrones is “only” 864 pages long compared to the 1100+ pages of the later books. I can’t quite compare how the plot beats are laid out between the novel, television show, and comic book, but the last issue of this collection contains elements in the third and fourth episodes of the first season. This might seem like the book moves slowly -- and it does on occasion -- but it’s really just incredibly dense. There are subplots within subplots and probably a dozen new characters introduced in every issue; we don’t even get to see the world-famous Hodor until the last few pages!

Most of the characters resemble their television counterparts, a reflection on how good the casting department is on the show along with the research skills of writer Daniel Abraham. There are a few cases where I think artist Tommy Patterson knew or could guess which actors would play certain characters; his rendition of Tyrion looks almost exactly like Peter Dinklage. The only major deviances come in the form of Catelyn Stark, who looks much younger here, and Jon Snow, who looks like his half-brothers and, weirdly, like Catelyn. (This will end up being hilarious if the theories of Snow being the secret heir to the kingdom prove to be true.) Notable character Sandor “The Hound” Clegane is far uglier here, but that’s because it would take a lot of restrictive prostheses to produce the novel’s look. I’m excluding age when it comes to accuracy, since many characters were aged up for the television production due to child labor laws and, of course, nudity.

Speaking of nudity, if you’re thinking that the A Game of Thrones comic book is a sanitized version for a wider range of ages, you’d be very wrong. It follows the path of its predecessors in using sex to keep the reader involved while explaining plot elements. Tommy Patterson has also done work for Zenescope and I think he enjoyed being able to actually draw naked women versus just scantily-clad ones. I have a lot of complaints about Zenescope, but at least Patterson proves here that he can draw all kinds of figures and anatomy. The colors do have a weird sheen which I can’t quite explain but which I’ve seen on books by Zenescope and other publishers who haven’t quite mastered the newest computer coloring systems.

While I understand why people enjoy the series in its various forms, it’s just not for me. It dawned on me while reading the backstory that Ned Stark, the best friend of an extravagant king in a nation ruled from an overseas kingdom, is basically Wilfrid of Ivanhoe (and I’m not the only one who has noticed this). At that point, I just wanted to go re-read Ivanhoe and other classics like Orlando Furioso and Amadis of Gaul. I’ve recently come to a point where I don’t really enjoy pessimistic works, and it doesn’t get much more pessimistic than A Song of Ice and Fire. But don’t take that as a knock against this graphic novel. I do think that A Game of Thrones could attract new readers in this format. If a reader is interested in the franchise from the show or its reputation, it’s a serviceable way to get started, especially since the show didn’t diverge heavily from the novels until the more recent seasons.

Next week, speaking of Zenescope and epic fiction, it’s time to review a book I was going to do for Indie-Pendence Month last year but skipped in favor of Wasteland. History might end up repeating itself on that front. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

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Review: Sonic/Mega Man: Worlds Collide Vol. 2: Into the Warzone and Vol. 3: Chaos Clash trade paperbacks (Archie Comics)

[Doug Glassman ('80s Marvel Rocks!) celebrates "Indie-pendence Month" with his July reviews ...]

The remainder of Sonic/Mega Man: Worlds Collide, the crossover between Archie Comics’ Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Universe, and Mega Man titles, fulfills the strong promise of the first volume, Kindred Spirits. It’s a book that had to work on multiple levels: as its own all-ages narrative, as an anniversary celebration, as a tribute for the fans, and eventually as a continuity reboot for the Sonic books due to a falling out with a former creator. That it succeeds on all of these levels is quite impressive. Much of the success can be attributed to a creative team made primarily of huge fans, especially Ian Flynn, who started plotting out the book three years earlier when Archie grabbed the Mega Man license.

The plotting isn’t all that complex. Most of the second volume, Into the Warzone, follows Sonic, Mega Man, Proto Man and Tails as they try to cure their now-evil friends. The third volume, Chaos Clash, is the grand final battle against literally every Robot Master ever created (aside from the original eight, who changed sides long ago, a fact I learned from reading this book). However, since there are so many characters involved and the books are technically aimed at children, I understand why they went a more simplistic route with the storyline. There’s a lot of good character work with both the heroic and villainous leads. Mega Man and Dr. Wily both come off as more “orderly” than the smug-but-likeable Sonic and the off-kilter Dr. Eggman, the latter of whom also shows just how evil he is by nearly killing Dr. Light.

As far as character selection goes, the books hew closer to the video games than they do to the various comics and animated series. Thus characters like Rotor the Walrus and Bunny Rabbot are ignored in favor of the newer Silver the Hedgehog and Blaze the Cat. Knuckles is unfortunately underutilized, but this is partly due to that aforementioned falling-out with Ken Penders, who created much of Knuckles’ supporting cast. When the Sonic the Hedgehog continuity was rebooted at the end, the resulting universe seen in later comics was designed to focus more on the games while Knuckles’ new status quo is being ironed out. This reboot was worked rather cleverly into the plot: since Wiley and Eggman’s scheme to merge their universes had to be undone somehow, why not have the inevitable reset go awry? It does mean that Chaos Clash ends on a sad note as Sonic realizes that something has gone terribly wrong.

Before that point, however, Worlds Collide spends quite a lot of time paying tribute to older comics and games. In one great wordless sequence, Mega Man is foiled by a Sonic-style obstacle to Sonic’s amusement moments before the hedgehog steps into a Mega Man obstacle. Another wordless sequence comes near the end as the two heroes power up into their super modes. This would normally be a huge, dramatic (and page-consuming) moment, but it’s so expected that it’s even on the cover of the third trade. Instead, Flynn chooses to focus on the unraveling Eggman/Wily relationship while Sonic and Mega Man transform in the background.

There are game-based jokes such as Sonic’s infamous inability to swim and Dr. Wily believing that Sonic must be dangerous due to being covered with spikes -- some of the most dangerous obstacles in his home universe. There’s a great system in play to keep the story flowing as Mega Man constantly shifts which power he’s using. Not only does his armor’s coloration switch, but a caption pops up to show what he’s firing, and, often, who he defeated to get it.

Artistically, Tracy Yardley and Ben Bates keep to the house style while still providing their own flourishes. Yardley tends to draw more close-ups on faces while Bates has some more adventurous panel designs. Each trade contains back matter with page layouts, cover designs and notes from Flynn, the artists, and cover artist Patrick Spaziante. The Into the Warzone trade corrects an oversight from Kindred Spirits by including the “Off Panel” and “Short Circuits” comic strips which were left out. These ran on the last pages of the original issues as gag strips making light of weird bits of continuity and breaking the fourth wall. Of these, the best is Sonic’s reaction to hearing about the “Genesis Unit” -- a group of Mega Man villains -- and flashing back to the '90s Console Wars.

That flashback is more than a bit ironic since you can now play as Sonic and Mega Man in Super Smash Brothers. It’s fitting that the two franchises have come together both on the comic book page and on the video game loading screen. Perhaps someday, Sega and Capcom could be convinced to adapt Worlds Collide into a game of its own. The comics themselves typically adapt individual games as story arcs; various Sonic and Mega Man games are cited throughout Chaos Clash. Whether in the individual trades or in the upcoming complete hardcover, Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide remains a great buy. I don’t think an inter-continuity crossover has worked out this well since JLA/Avengers.

Next week, I’ll go from the world of video games to the world of novels with the first volume of Bantam and Dynamite’s adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones. To paraphrase the television series: “You know nothing [about this universe other than what you’ve read on TV Tropes], Doug Glassman.”

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Review: GI Joe: Declassified trade paperback (Devil's Due Publishing)

[Doug Glassman ('80s Marvel Rocks!) celebrates "Indie-pendence Month" with his July reviews ...]

I’m impressed that Devil’s Due Publishing is still around despite losing the GI Joe license to IDW; a lot of that can be credited to having excellent in-house properties such as Hack/Slash. It helps that they weren’t owned by a crook like Dreamwave’s Pat Lee. Devil's Due can also be credited with getting Larry Hama back into writing for GI Joe titles when he returned to pen GI Joe: Declassified in 2003. While Brandon Jerwa’s Snake-Eyes: Declassified simply arranged the myriad retcons about Snake-Eyes’ past into a readable form, Hama told the long-awaited story of the GI Joe team’s origins. They had appeared fully-formed in their first Marvel issue ... which, as Declassified reveals, possessed a few secrets of its own.

There’s been a bit of continuity confusion over whether Declassified should “count." Initially, Devil’s Due’s GI Joe books were the sequel to the Marvel run. They have since been supplanted by Hama’s ongoing A Real American Hero series from IDW, though Devil's Due’s books are still in trade form from IDW under the Disavowed banner. Since Hama wrote Declassified and hasn’t done anything to invalidate its events within the pages of A Real American Hero, I don’t see a reason why it shouldn’t be considered canon.

The main reason behind this confusion has to do with the character of “Shooter," who has an important subplot throughout the book. Hama positions Declassified as taking place shortly before and during the first Marvel issue with numerous flashbacks to the recruitment of almost every character. Shooter’s origins trace back to an Easter egg in that issue; the Joes’ computer lists a member named “Shooter," a gag about how Marvel EIC Jim Shooter’s last name sounded like it could be a GI Joe code name. It turns out that Shooter was, in fact, a secret Joe used only for back-up and on secret missions. She was the team’s very first sniper -- a position the Joes notably lacked for years until Low-Light debuted in 1986. After Declassified, she was never seen or used again, but that doesn’t mean she should be forgotten.

With Snake-Eyes having his own mini-series and Scarlett getting a one-shot of her own, the series has more than enough room to explore the stories behind the original members. Some of these characters, such as Zap, Flash, and especially Short-Fuze, have been barely used since the first year of the franchise. The latter gets one of the most impressive origins of any Joe, resisting mental torture for weeks at a time as part of his training. Hama reveals that Colonel Hawk has to deal with soldiers under his command torturing a criminal for information; Stalker is put into a similar situation later on. This was written during the Abu Ghraib controversy and it’s clear that Hama, a veteran, was conflicted in his response to what was done and what should have been done. Some read Declassified as an apologia for soldiers torturing prisoners; to me, it’s Hama noting that in his experience, war can bring out the worst in people and sometimes the best people are the ones stuck with resolving it.

Even though the Original 13 are the focus of Declassified, many major Joes also appear ... just not as Joes. Wild Bill and Ace cameo as pilots dropping Shooter off on their assignments. Chuckles is their CIA contact, “Mr. Ha-Ha." Fred Broca appears at one point long before the Crimson Guards were introduced. I actually missed Duke and Roadblock’s appearance the first time around! Pages of notes at the end of the book point out who all these people are and, even better, tell what happened to them. Some fates were later reversed since most deaths in Devil's Due's run were negated for A Real American Hero, but it does remind the reader that a few of the Declassified characters are dead men walking if they passed in the Marvel run. (Poor Breaker.)

Perhaps the one downside to the focus on the Joes’ origins is that the bad guys get very little panel time. Cobra Commander, the Baroness, and Major Bludd all appear, but they do almost nothing apart from act as the behind-the-scenes commanders of the Sierra Gordo forces. Weirdly, this is one of the few times that Bludd’s henchmen, Damon and Pythias, have any major focus, mostly because Bludd was pushed aside once Destro was introduced. I kind of wish Hama had added Destro into the proceedings, perhaps as selling armaments to the government. On the other hand, that would just make the GI Joe continuity even more confusing; we didn’t need another “the Baroness thinks Snake-Eyes killed her brother” moment.

Unfortunately, GI Joe: Declassified is currently out of print, and the trade can be hard to find. There is hope: IDW’s republishing of the Devil’s Due GI Joe catalog is still ongoing, and the success of their A Real American Hero title means that interest in Declassified should be there. I wouldn’t be surprised if an omnibus collecting this, the Dreadnoks Declassified mini-series, and the aforementioned Scarlett and Snake-Eyes books was solicited soon.

This comic works a little better if you’ve read the original “Operation: Lady Doomsday!” so you can see what happened between the panels, but it’s perfectly readable without it. There’s a nice little undercurrent of the team’s need to change from difficult-to-distinguish green army men to a group of distinct and slightly quirky specialists. At this point in the franchise, Short-Fuze stands out simply because he looks so normal.

Next week, it’s time to return to the collided worlds of Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man and finish up one of my favorite inter-continuity crossovers.

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Review: X-Men: Age of X hardcover/paperback (Marvel Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

Dystopian timelines are a staple of the X-books. Partly it's because the original "Days of Future Past" story was so well-received, but these stories also fit thematically. If there's any group of characters where Murphy's Law will kick them in their collective rears, it's the X-Men. Some work better than others; for instance, Age of Apocalypse succeeded on an epic scale, while Bishop's future was so generic that it never really got its own timeline name. The X-Men: Age of X event, while smaller in scale than Apocalypse, is definitely in the win column, thanks to both Mike Carey's world-building and a mystery leading up to a clever twist. That it's only six issues long, plus three tie-ins, is a show of restraint; Apocalypse is long enough to fill two omnibuses.

Big spoilers lie ahead; if you don't want the twist ruined, click away now.

The story begins with Age of X: Alpha, an anthology following four major mutants: Cyclops, Cannonball, Wolverine, and Magneto. This is actually a bit of misdirection; only the last story is really key to the plot. That's not to say that Alpha is a waste of time: Cyclops gets a terrifying new origin as the Basilisk while Wolverine sacrifices his healing factor to stop the creation of the mutant cure. Only the Cannonball and Husk story seems extraneous; it's mainly there because the two titles crossing over were X-Men Legacy and New Mutants and at least one New Mutant needed to be in the lead-in. Magneto's story ends with a scene similar to the climax of the "Days of Future Past" film but in a larger scale as he abducts New York skyscrapers to build a fortress of refuge for mutantkind.

We pick up three years later as humans and mutants are at a stalemate: the humans attack Fortress X, and the mutants defend it with overlapping psychic and physical shields. Magneto is growing impatient, Legion is a constantly-shirtless hero, Rogue has become the memory-absorbing "Legacy" and the Fortress' most feared fighters are what we would call the New Mutants. The appearance of Kitty Pryde and a camera full of hazy pictures of the outside world bring chaos into an already untenable situation. Legacy's investigation into the mystery puts her at odds with "X," the mysterious force that controls the Fortress, until she finally finds a man in the brig whom she doesn't recognize: Charles Xavier.

One reason why Age of X is so enjoyable is because it keeps a brisk pace, using the introduction of various characters to also set up the central mystery. Suddenly seeing people like Moira MacTaggert alive again keeps the reader occupied; it's not even clear that there is a secret behind the story until the very end of the second part. Once that's in place, the threads start to unravel as Xavier regains consciousness, Legacy finds more evidence of how strange their world is, and X tries to stop them in their tracks by manipulating others. The truth finally comes out: Moira's responsible! Except that it's not really Moira . . . it's a facet of Legion's personality that's taken her shape. It's yet another story where Legion is at the core, but while it was a little incongruous in Fall of the New Mutants, it's built up to better over the course of this book.

Carey also makes sure to explain what the stakes are and exactly what's happened to the world. Essentially, Legion has separated Utopia Island from the rest of the world and created a false reality wherein he is the hero he always wanted to be. This has been foreshadowed with his shirtlessness and people name-dropping him in otherwise unrelated conversations. Legion can warp reality to a massive scale . . . but he's not great at details. That's why Kitty Pryde could escape and why Xavier still exists in the Age of X timeline.

The manipulation also has consequences; when reality returns to normal, everyone still has their memories. This means that the former supervillain Frenzy still remembers being married to Scott Summers, potentially throwing a wrench into the Cyclops/Emma Frost relationship. Others have further changes: Chamber, formerly of Generation X, regains his old combustion powers at the expense of his rebuilt chest and face. This isn't an event that can be written off and forgotten as "just a dream." This kind of ending also doesn't deflate the story; even classics like "Days of Future Past" can feel a bit hollow once the story is resolved. A recent Uncanny X-Men solicitation hints at something going wrong in Cyclops' mind; it might very well be the return of the Basilisk persona.

Rounding out the Age of X trade are the two "Universe" issues which really should have been put towards the front. They show what happened to the Avengers, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange in this timeline. By the time you read the stories here, the twist has been revealed, so it becomes a little unclear about how much of these stories actually happened. They technically take place in Legion's head as the backstory for his own little fan-fiction universe . . . except that they also feature a few mutants. While the Avengers tale is quite sadistic and the Doctor Strange/Dazzler story is just dull, Jim McCann and Paul Davidson's Spider-Man story is one of the event's highlights. Hunted for being too similar to a mutant, Spidey sacrifices his life to save the woman he loves . . . a pregnant Mary-Jane Watson. It's as if McCann wrote the story as a big "up yours" to Joe Quesada's treatment of the character.

Despite this odd ending, X-Men: Age of X really succeeds as both a major X-Men story and as a narrative in its own right.

 Next week, it's back to GI Joe to simultaneously celebrate the Fourth of July and kick off the second annual Indie-Pendence Month.

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Review: X-Men Legacy Vol. 1: Divided He Stands and X-Men Legacy Vol. 2: Sins of the Father hardcover/paperback (Marvel Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

The infamous impenetrability of the X-Men franchise is only partly due to the characters; the constant title changes and reboots can really throw a wrench in the works. For instance, X-Men Legacy Vol. 1: Divided He Stands follows the numbering from the Claremont and Lee "Adjectiveless" run and Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. Admittedly, as the title modifier implies, X-Men Legacy is targeted more towards long-term fans, with Professor X, Gambit and Rogue as its core characters. Mike Carey and Christos Gage, both of whom are continuity hounds, guided Legacy through most of its run. Carey’s first arc on the book spans two trades (technically three, but Original Sin is really its own story), with a massive cliffhanger between Divided He Stands and X:Men Legacy Vol 2: Sins of the Father.

We all know that Professor Xavier is a jerk, but the act that caused Kitty Pryde to make that statement doesn’t even rank on the litany of questionable decisions brought up here. Divided He Stands takes place directly after the Messiah CompleX [sic] crossover which introduced Hope Summers and revealed that Bishop is evil . . . ish. (That neckerchief was always suspicious.) The story opens with Xavier almost dead from a headshot by Bishop. He’s been saved by the Acolytes, Magneto’s former followers now under the command of the ancient mutant Exodus. The first chapter is confusing if you’re not up on your X-history or if you haven’t read Messiah CompleX directly beforehand. Carey, however, knows this, and much of the rest of Divided He Stands revolves around flashbacks and more familiar characters.

Exodus and a depowered Magneto repair Charles’ mind while at cross-purposes; Exodus is such a mutant supremacist that the now-human Magneto, whom he used to worship as a messiah, disgusts him. The resulting story is a little like “Shadowplay” from More Than Meets The Eye Volume 3, which was a great story so I don’t mind the similarity. One very cool artistic move was to have different artists illustrate the flashbacks and memories while Scot Eaton drew the main story. Billy Tan, Mike Deodato, John Romita, Jr., and Greg Land break up what could have been some artistic dullness, matching Eaton’s basic style while having their own characteristics. (Land’s contributions are brief enough that those who really can’t stand his style shouldn’t be bothered by it.)

As part of Xavier's mental therapy -- along with some bouts of mental torture along the way -- he's forced to observed the bad decisions he made. Some time is spent on the infamous Deadly Genesis mini-series which revealed a massacred X-Men team that existed right before the introduction of the “All-New, All-Different” team. Another point of focus is from back in the '60s, when Xavier faked his death and forced Jean Grey to not tell anyone that he was hiding in the basement. In fact, the one thing that Mike Carey doesn’t focus on which I wish he would have is the Onslaught incident; we do see Xavier’s mindwipe of Magneto, but their status as a merged entity goes mostly undiscussed. The aforementioned cliffhanger comes in the form of Mister Sinister, who as it turns out was a key part of Xavier’s childhood.

This retcon, explored in the first part of the Sins of the Father trade, actually makes a lot of sense. Since Sinister is at least 150 years old, he would naturally go after other powerful mutants long before he went after Cyclops. Some of this storyline ties into the “New Son” story from the old Gambit title and the Black Womb character who helped Sinister manipulate Gambit’s genetics. Some of the weirdness -- like the emaciated and elderly Black Womb wearing a corset -- is overruled by some key character moments, such as Xavier having to leave the Korean War due to the stress to his mind caused by the death and destruction around him. Gambit also enters the story at this point, joined by Sebastian Shaw of the Hellfire Club, who, like Xavier and the Juggernaut, was one of the children tampered with by Sinister.

However, the best part of Sins of the Father is near the end of the story as Xavier returns to the new island home of Utopia. His mental coercion to have Cyclops come out to meet him in the forest is the last straw in a long line of manipulation, as the White Queen enters the professor’s mind just to make sure that all traces of Sinister are gone. It’s just a bonus for them that they get to walk through Scott’s childhood and see how Xavier’s secrecy affected his life. Flashbacks by Marco Checchetto are done in a sepia filmstrip style to fit in with a “home movie” motif provided by Emma Frost. Unfortunately, the relationship between Scott and Xavier was too far gone to repair (as readers of Avengers vs. X-Men know too well).

So why was this split into two trades instead of one? I think part of it might be because the massive Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire and Supernovas trades scared away some potential readers. Another reason is that Marvel wanted to collect two one-shots in Sins of the Father that fit well into the main themes of X-Men: Legacy. The first one, Odd Men Out, printed two previously unseen stories by the late Dave Cockrum. While the stories -- one featuring Professor Xavier playing catch-up with classic supporting character Fred Duncan, the other following the classic New Mutants on winter vacation -- aren’t too great, I admire the tribute. The other is a weird and fourth-wall-demolishing story by Stan Lee in which Magneto and Xavier beg Lee to give them a break from their hectic lives. This one probably could have been left out entirely, but I can’t argue with collecting as much as possible.

After X-Men Legacy Vol. 1: Divided He Stands and X:Men Legacy Vol 2: Sins of the Father, I still have a lot of catching up to do on Mike Carey’s X-Men: Legacy. He has a Geoff Johns-like sense of how to make continuity work in his favor. Next week, we’ll see that at work in a great alternate universe crossover.

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Review: New Mutants Vol. 3: Fall of the New Mutants hardcover/paperback (Marvel Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

Previously, on Uncanny X-Month…

Jean Grey died!

An ugly dying supervillain pretended to be Jean to freak out the X-Men while Scott hooked up with a girl who looked just like Jean! Plus Storm grew a Mohawk!

Jean really came back because she wasn’t really dead, and Cyclops abandoned his wife and kid to hang out with his high school buddies!

Scott’s wife turned out to be Jean’s clone, who summoned demons to New York all under the watchful eye of Mister Sinister!

Then they replaced Robert Kelly’s brain . . . with a computer!

Oof. Sorry about that, I’ve been watching way too much of the old X-Men animated series. Anyway . . .

At the center of New Mutants Vol. 3: Fall of the New Mutants is a potential plotline overlooked by writers for twenty years. Madelyne Pryor’s sacrifice to open Limbo required twelve mutant infants. One of them, Maddy and Scott’s son Christopher, would grow up to be Cable. The New Mutants turned the others over to the military, presumably so that they could be reunited with their parents. Unfortunately for the babies, this was right around the time when the US government was increasing its fear of mutants; the Mutant Registration Act would become a major concern in the X-books soon after X-Men: Inferno. With the X-Infernus storyline bringing Magik to the forefront around the time Zeb Wells launched New Mutants in 2009, the twentieth anniversary of the crossover was a great time to bring this plotline to fruition.

What made the New Mutants revival succeed compared to other team revivals is that the team had a clear purpose. It’s not just a reunion of old friends; it’s actually an official team of X-Men who all just happen to be New Mutants alumni. Cannonball, Sunspot, Mirage, and Karma were all teachers at the Charles Xavier Academy, so treating them as junior members again would devalue their contributions. This trade picks up after the events of Necrosha, which saw the return to life of Cypher and overtly violent actions by Warlock; both events are on the minds of the team as they are ordered by Cyclops to go on vacation. (I wish I had more to say about the criminally-underused Magma, but she doesn’t have much to do in this volume.)

Countering the New Mutants are the children of Project Purgatory, the results of raising those mutant infants in the time-displaced Limbo. They’re now young adults despite four years passing in the “real” Marvel universe; there’s a bit of a meta-textual edge to how Limbo’s “days inside, years outside” time frame plays out. Many of the Purgatory kids feature creepy mutations, such as arms that turn into organic flamethrowers or skin that hardens into rock whenever it’s cut, likely due to a mix of genetic tampering and Limbo’s own darkness. It’s clear that the kids and their military handlers have had a rough time living in one of Marvel’s Hell-equivalents, with quite a few soldiers sporting replacement arms taken from demons.

The project’s leader, General Ulysses, has a plan to control Limbo using a talisman powered by Magik’s Soul-Sword. This unfortunately drags the innocent Pixie, one of Magik’s friends and the user of a similar Soul-Dagger, into the mix, as she’s the first to be kidnapped and literally robbed of her soul for the process. Once Project Purgatory finds their actual target, they capture her along with the rest of the New Mutants, leading to some gruesome torture scenes. I’ll give Zeb Wells a lot of credit for keeping the plot moving and not dwelling too much on “torture porn." He also uses this as an opportunity to demonstrate just how strong the New Mutants are, with Cannonball and Mirage fending off horrifying physical and emotional pain. Karma, often a game-breaker as a telepath, is knocked out for much of the book, but she’s able to fight through her coma and really prove her worth.

The first two-thirds of the book work as a stand-alone as long as you’ve read Inferno, but the ending is going to feel weird if you haven’t followed the X-books for a while. Charles Xavier’s son, Legion, came back to life in the first trade of this series, and Karma was key to locking him within his own mind. He’s brought back as a weapon in Magik’s gambit to reclaim Limbo from its ancient gods. This resolves one part of Magik’s plotline and extends it in new ways to document the rise of the X-Men’s newest sociopath. When you’ve been abducted to serve as queen of a Hell-equivalent, de-aged, killed by a virus and brought back to life, that’ll happen. While I wish the arc was a bit more self-contained, I can appreciate where it fits into the bigger X-picture, and it does tie up some loose ends.

Another factor which drew me to read Fall of the New Mutants was Leonard Kirk’s artwork. Many readers will remember Kirk as a long-time penciller on JSA and he brings his considerable strengths to New Mutants. He really sells the creepy designs of Limbo and the Project Purgatory kids with Lovecraftian influences along with traditional Hellish features. I should also mention that the demons of Limbo speak a language which can be translated easily, as demonstrated by Cracked, and what they’re actually saying isn’t exactly what’s being implied. Considering the big part Cypher plays in the storyline, this is very fitting.

The Fall of the New Mutants trade works as both a key part of the New Mutants’ evolution and as a sequel to Inferno. While the book ended after the Schism event, many of its characters were able to stay visible, especially with Cannonball and Sunspot becoming members of the Avengers and Mirage starring as a co-lead in Fearless Defenders.

Next week on Uncanny X-Month, we found just how much a jerk Professor Xavier really was with a look at the opening arcs of X-Men: Legacy.

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Review: X-Men: Inferno hardcover/paperback (Marvel Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

The two stories collectively called the X-Men: Inferno crossover are arguably the last entry point to the X-Men franchise before it became hopelessly convoluted. It’s the third in a series of major crossovers, but Inferno makes sense without reading Mutant Massacre and The Fall of the Mutants. One of its central conceits is breaking down the barriers between X-Factor (the original five X-Men) and the Uncanny team (focused around Storm, Wolverine, Colossus and Rogue). At this point, the Uncanny X-Men were thought dead, and they were convinced that the X-Factor team were traitors due to their mutant-hunting façade. It’s a miscommunication propagated by Madelyne Pryor, Cyclops’s ex-wife, whose son is in the custody of X-Factor and who ended up in Australia with the Uncanny team.

I mentioned that there are two stories involved here, both of which are two-title crossovers and are loosely linked. Apart from the Uncanny/X-Factor crossover, there’s also the New Mutants and their adventures with the X-Terminators, the young wards of X-Factor. The X-Terminators mini-series is not collected in the older paperback edition of Inferno that I have, but the pertinent events are explained well-enough in New Mutants. To be perfectly honest, none of the X-Terminators are all that interesting, with the few that are -- like Rictor and Boom-Boom -- later migrating to New Mutants and X-Force.

What I really like is that Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson built up the two stories around women victimized into becoming villains, creating some narrative parallels. Even though Madelyne was named after folk musician Maddy Prior, it’s likely not a coincidence that her name is also similar to Medea, who went on a rampage after being wronged by her husband. The story also explores her link to Jean Grey: as a clone of the heroine, she was never intended to have a life until her master pulled her strings, and then she had to deal with an interaction with the Phoenix Force. Meanwhile, the younger mutants finally resolve the fate of Illyana Rasputin, Colossus’ younger sister who was kidnapped and aged up in a demonic Limbo, becoming that dimension’s savior. (I’m not even getting into some of the more recent retcons about Illyana’s motives or I’d be here all day.)

A demon from Limbo, N’astirh, while warring with Illyana’s tormentor S’ym, has come up with a scheme to link Limbo to Earth using twelve infants as a sacrifice. N’astirh also unlocked some of Madelyne Pryor’s powers to transform her into the Goblin Queen while also using her son Nathan as one of the infants in the portal scheme. When this plan goes awry, N’astirh delivers the boy back to Madelyne, who has fully embraced her powers and brought out the negative influences of the Uncanny X-Men, putting some of them in her thrall. That’s just about the simplest I can reduce the plot to, leaving out some really unnecessary bits like the transmode virus getting involved and Archangel’s constant angst over his then-recent transformation by Apocalypse. Yet believe it or not, this whole book has a relatively low level of X-angst; that doesn’t really kick in until the arrival of Gambit a few crossovers away.

It all leads back to Mister Sinister; this is his first major plotline so that’s not the cliché it would later become. Sinister’s a really nasty piece of work here, with an utter disregard for his creations like Madelyne. Turning him into just another underling for Apocalypse really reduced his level of menace; Inferno demonstrates his skill as a master planner with plots reaching back to Cyclops’ origin. He’s actually not in the story for much of the second act, letting the X-Men get angrier and angrier until he meets a well-deserved end. There’s even some callbacks to the last time the X-Men got this angry and Colossus snapped the neck of Sinister’s henchman Riptide, who is suddenly alive in this story. (Spoiler: cloning.)

A major highlight in the artwork -- from Mark Silvestri, Bret Blevins, and Walt Simonson -- is the demonic transformation of New York City. People are warped into their darkest forms and items become sentient and deadly. I can sense two film influences here, Ghostbusters and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, both of which were contemporary to Inferno. The former can be seen in the transformation of the Empire State Building into the locus of the Limbo portal; a group of “Ghostbusters” look-alikes are killed early on. The “Roger Rabbit” connection was a later realization that came while re-reading some of the New Mutants issues. Many of the now-alive possessed objects act like the Toons in how they exploit their forms for maximum mischief; when they worship Illyana, all I could hear was “Hi, Eddie!” from the Toontown sequence. Blevins especially shines in this crossover since he was used to turning Warlock into odd, personified objects.

Speaking of art, one thing I really enjoy about the old paperback version which I’m not sure is present in the hardcover is the title page. The entire thing is set up as an Aleister Crowley-style summoning diagram, with interlinking circles containing the different positions. There’s a later page showing the Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor casts as the Sefirot in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life (a concept Claremont used again in X-Men: The End). A lot of recent trades don’t put this much work into creating title pages; it’s a glimpse at a time when collected editions were a little more rare.

While the stories in X-Men: Inferno are a bit overlong, that’s just expected in a crossover, and the stories themselves have some great character bits. The artwork is also excellent; it may have just catapulted Silvestri over Jim Lee as my favorite Image founder. Blevins is an unsung master and Simonson, as always, can’t be beat. If you’re really new to reading the classic X-crossovers, you might be better off starting with the Phoenix Trilogy that I previously reviewed, followed by Mutant Massacre, but definitely make your way to Inferno.

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Review: Godzilla: Half-Century War trade paperback (IDW Publishing)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

IDW gained the Godzilla comics license in 2011, and for the most part, it took them some time to properly use it. This isn’t an isolated case; their Transformers comics especially have gone through a couple of different eras. So while IDW used a variety of ongoings-turned-limited series to figure out what to do with their newly-arrived license, they also gave writer/artist James Stokoe the opportunity to create a truly epic monster tale. Godzilla: The Half-Century War, as the title implies, follows the King of the Monsters from his post-World War II origins to the modern day. What sets this book apart from the other IDW Godzilla comics is its manga-based style.

In its loosest sense, the manga aesthetic is used by artists such as Humberto Ramos and Michael Ryan to give their artwork a distinct look. What Stokoe does is closer to Adam Warren’s Empowered; all of The Half-Century War looks like it’s a manga that’s been translated into English. A lot of this is due to the carefully constructed word balloons, which are designed to be too large for the English text and which feature centered question marks below the words themselves; both are common translation features. Many characters chuckle constantly or have some other verbal tic, another common manga standby. Mixed into this are Western techniques, such as turning Godzilla’s traditional “Skreeonk!” roar into a John Workman-style word balloon and deliberately faded coloring.

A Godzilla project is much like an Aliens project in that its human cast can determine whether it succeeds or fails. This can be judged in two factors: how important the humans are to the overall narrative, and how annoying those humans are. Stokoe thankfully anticipated this and provided an excellent main character in Ota Murakami, a young soldier on the front lines when Godzilla arrives in 1954. He’s not burdened with an excess of backstory and he’s quickly established as intelligent and almost insanely courageous by taking on Godzilla with a Sherman tank. As time marches on, Ota grows more bitter, but it’s not angst for angst’s sake. This is a man watching the world fall apart and unable to stop the onslaught of monsters.

One major advantage that IDW has over the previous license-holders is that they have access to Toho’s entire monster catalog. Toho requires companies to license each monster independently; Marvel and Dark Horse could only afford to get Godzilla and were forced to make up their own foes. This is also why the 1998 film didn’t have a second monster (amongst many other reasons, but that’s a huge field of worms). Either IDW shelled out the cash or Toho was willing to cut a package deal since the films were on hiatus until the 2014 release. Whatever the case, IDW can use all of the monsters they want, and Stokoe uses this resource to set up the timeline of The Half-Century War as a broad strokes version of the films. While Godzilla is alone in the first issue, the second sees him fighting Anguirus in a loose adaptation of Godzilla Raids Again!. It simultaneously answers the question, “What if Godzilla ended up in Vietnam in the depths of the war?”

Issue three jumps ahead as Ota and the Anti-Megalosaurus Force (an organization from the films) have tracked all of the monsters to Ghana. The AMF features all sorts of strange characters which we sadly don’t get to learn more about, especially the hippies charged with following Mothra. This issue’s fight features essentially every major monster from the '70s “Showa” era of films, with the exceptions showing up later due to plot reasons. Even Megalon gets a turn to shine; Jet Jaguar is sorely missed though. We also get to meet the villain building the machines used to summon the monsters: Dr. Deverich, whose last name is a combination of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the team behind the 1998 film. Unfortunately, his machines work too well, even reaching out into space ...

The fourth issue sees a shift in the narrative as the heavily wounded AMF are demoted to being, in Ota’s terms, storm-watchers for oncoming monsters. Humanity finally has a weapon to take on Godzilla: Mechagodzilla! This is specifically the '80s/'90s “Heisei” Mechagodzilla, my personal favorite design of the character, as it fits in with the villain. Back when Toho made Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, they thought about including Mechagodzilla as well, but decided that two kings of monsters were enough. Stokoe clearly disagrees, and the real and metal Godzillas are forced to team up against the crystalline foe. Exactly how SpaceGodzilla came to be in this continuity is thankfully ignored; that’s a character that didn’t need a fourth origin.

We finally, in issue five, join an aged and sick Ota one year after Dr. Deverich’s machine summons more monsters from space. Stokoe saved Gigan and King Ghidorah, two of Godzilla’s nastiest foes, for last, and the two have wreaked havoc on Earth while the AMF have rebuilt Mechagodzilla into its 2000s “Millennium”/”Kiryu” design. Just to prove he’s a bigger Godzilla fan than anyone else, Stokoe uses the Dimension Tide, an obscure black hole weapon from Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, as a key plot point. Ota finally confronts Godzilla face-to-face after taking control of Mechagodzilla, leading to a satisfying finale ... until another set of spines rises out of the ocean!

This is a storyline that I’d love to see revisited at some point in the future. For instance, how would Ota react to Godzilla’s son Minya? Either way, it’s safe to say that James Stokoe’s Godzilla: The Half-Century War is both a definitive Godzilla epic and a stunning work of art. It could also be the basis of a really great film, so hopefully IDW has sent Gareth Edwards a copy.

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Review: Classic GI Joe Vol. 4 trade paperback (IDW Publishing)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

By the end of Classic GI Joe Volume 3, about sixty percent of the franchise’s most popular characters had been introduced. The issues collected in Classic GI Joe Volume 4 came out right when the original Sunbow animated series started airing and became the foundation of that show’s cast, especially with the debuts of Spirit Iron-Knife, Flint, Lady Jaye, and the Crimson Twins. It becomes clear that Hasbro’s need to constantly introduce new characters was starting to hamper the story. There was no way for someone like, say, Blowtorch to really fit into what Larry Hama wanted to do, so as a result, he spends more time in a brown jumpsuit than in his firefighter’s outfit. Hama could get away with it because at the time, GI Joe was Marvel’s highest-selling subscription title.

There are some major narrative through-lines in this volume, although nothing akin to the Destro Saga in Volume 2 or the origin of Snake-Eyes. One of these concerns an attempt on Cobra Commander’s life by a boy introduced all the way back in issue #10. Billy Kessler is later revealed to be the Commander’s son, but he still refuses to tattle on the Baroness and Major Bludd’s complicity in his scheme. His storyline intersects with that of Storm Shadow, becoming his protégé in what I swear was the basis for Damian Wayne as Robin. The white-clad ninja’s plot about being framed for his master’s death continues past this volume and will later become entangled in the Snake-Eyes origin morass.

Before this, though, the book does tie up some loose ends with a return to Snake-Eyes’ cabin and Destro and Firefly’s attempts to seek revenge for their humiliation in the swamp. You can always tell when a character is one of Hama’s favorites, and such is the case with Spirit Iron-Knife, who gets a nuanced and very skillful portrayal right out of the gate despite having a rather silly “buckskin” uniform. I’ll even give Hama a pass for having Airborne in this story solely to set up a joke about “calling in the Indians." This arc also introduces the full idea of the Crimson Guards being surgically altered to look alike; when the original Guard, Fred, dies, Fred II is sent to take his place to the consternation of his kids. One of those kids will many years later become Snake-Eyes’ apprentice Kamakura.

One of the biggest plots to run through Volume 4 is one that won’t really kick off until the next trade. This isn’t IDW’s fault; they’ve split up the original 155-issue run into 15 trades to keep the price point steady, and if they tried to cut up the title into definite arcs, they would have run into resistance from fans. A chance run-in with “Bongo the Balloon Bear," a party-delivery mascot, eventually leads into one of Cobra’s infamous super-science plots after Bongo turns out to be Candy Appel (pun intended), the gorgeous daughter of a Cobra scientist. Random encounters like this normally feel lazy, but it’s a plot that the Joes would have encountered anyway as it starts out near their base in New York. It also provides a storyline for the newly introduced Rip-Cord, who falls hard for Candy and works as a nice every-man viewpoint character.

Much of the rest of the trade is filled up with done-in-one or done-in-two stories in an extended version of the "Cooldown method." Issue #35 sees Breaker, Clutch, and Rock’n’Roll on a road trip vacation, only to fall prey to the Dreadnoks. Issue 3#6 follows three plotlines concerning a mysterious Cobra installation at sea, switching between the “GI Jane” headquarters freighter, the Killer Whale hovercraft and the Liberty Island ferry in rapid succession. This feels like a proof of concept for what would become GI Joe: Special Missions, a second and more mature title not beholden to the toyline. The book starts to build up steam again near issue #38, as one team of Joes raids Candy’s father’s house and another goes into the Amazon to free Dr. Adele Burkhart, the activist kidnapped all the way back in the very first issue. Why does she return? Because the first issue of GI Joe Yearbook, which reprinted that issue and special files, came out around the same time, so it served as a direct sequel for newer readers.

There’s a key issue I skipped over: issue #34, “Shakedown!," which is up there with “Silent Interlude” as one of the greatest stories in the GI Joe franchise. It follows two shake-down flights: Ace and Lady Jaye take the revamped Skystriker out for a spin, while Wild Weasel takes the Baroness on a qualification run on the new Rattler. The two planes encounter each other by accident and an issue-long dogfight ensues. Both planes are taken to their limits, and so are their pilots, who eventually salute in passing as they run out of ammo. The Skystriker and Rattler were icons already and this issue confirms them as the vehicles of choice of GI Joe and Cobra. Humorously in hindsight, Ace brags about the Skystriker’s 92K memory ... which is just barely more memory than my 8GB iPod Nano and over 1000 times less memory than an F-22.

IDW has decided to reprint Classic GI Joe Volume 4 warts and all, and this includes some poor coloring, especially when it comes to hair. Just because Lady Jaye officially replaces Scarlett in the Joe ranks doesn’t mean that she should suddenly be a redhead. The Crimson Guard also frequently look wrong; it’s very possible that main artists Rod Whigham and Frank Springer didn’t have the proper character models at the time. Even with these mistakes and the confusion of the rapid introduction of characters -- the last issue brings in Barbecue mid-battle! -- this is part of GI Joe’s golden age. I’ll be highlighting more of this classic title while the brand’s fate on both toy store and comic book store shelves is in jeopardy.

Next week, though ...

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Review: Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine hardcover/paperback (Marvel Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

Every few years, Marvel comes up with a group of high-profile projects to draw in fans with huge media buzz about their concept or their creative team, akin to DC’s All-Star line. Right now, it’s the OGN line and the revived Marvel Knights imprint, but others include the Noir and Season One sub-lines and arguably the 2099 and Ultimate imprints.

The “Astonishing” line was designed to build off of the name recognition of Astonishing X-Men, which around 2010 was struggling with slipped deadlines and a controversial turn to evil by Forge. Only two mini-series ever came out of it; one, Astonishing Thor, suffered from extremely harsh reviews, and its failure helped to end the sub-line prematurely. But just as All-Star Batman and Robin has its All-Star Superman, Astonishing Thor has Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine.

Admittedly that’s overselling the book a bit, but while Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine isn’t a medium-defining classic, it is a fantastic character-driven adventure. It’s essentially in continuity despite the time-travel antics: it seems to take place during Spidey and Logan’s tenure in New Avengers since they’re not good friends but Wolverine is in his Astonishing X-Men costume. Jason Aaron pits Spider-Man’s optimism and perseverance against Wolverine’s anger and world-weariness. They’re Marvel’s two most popular characters and they work together well in the Avengers ... but on a personal level, they’re a total odd couple. I really wish this series could have continued so that this dynamic could be mined some more on a scale of Superman/Batman.

I also have to congratulate Jason Aaron on creating a decent time travel story in a medium filled with ones which are, at best, difficult to follow and, at worst, completely illogical. It’s clear that Aaron has the full timeline of events in front of him while he writes; the reader just doesn’t get to see it. Spider-Man and Wolverine start out in the time of the dinosaurs, then just as rapidly transport into the far future to see just how their meddling in the past changed history. Clues for the final reveal are set up as early as issue two and the exact way time is being warped is kept vague as to not interfere with the story itself. The main villain’s identity was actually well-hidden for the most part, even in the solicits, which kept the focus on minor new villains Czar and Big Murder. As a treat to fans of his Ghost Rider run, Aaron also brings back the Orb, whose head is a literal giant eyeball. Once you find out who’s behind the craziness, though, it all comes together. Here’s the big spoiler ...

It’s Mojo.

The slug-like ruler of the Mojoverse is one of Marvel’s most powerful and most underused (at least in recent years) villains. His stories parodied reality television before it even existed, positing him as the ruler of a dimension obsessed with watching Earth-616’s history play out as entertainment. He’s up there with Carnage on the crazy-awesome scale, with a wealth of power held in check by an incredible amount of sheer insanity, like his new-found obsession with making Snuggies out of skin, complete with faces Many of the odd plot turns taken in Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine can be explained with “Oh, it’s just Mojo. He’s crazy.” What makes it work is that Mojo himself takes all of this seriously; the Spider-Man and Wolverine odd couple is so entertaining that he could lose control of the Mojoverse if they escape.

That’s not to say that everything works perfectly even with this reveal. There’s a subplot about a “Phoenix Gun," which literally fires the Phoenix Force as a bullet and that ends up turning Wolverine into a new Dark Phoenix. This is never quite properly set up even when a flashback in the coda has Beast pondering creating the gun in the first place. It’s worth noting that this story came out just before Avengers Vs. X-Men -- which Jason Aaron was heavily involved in -- and works as a subtle alternate history of that event’s ending. Hank McCoy somehow turning the Force into a weapon makes a bit more sense than having it wished away. A much stronger subplot sees Spider-Man chase after a girl he met during his travels. Their eventual romance is unfortunately tampered with by Peter Parker’s infamous lack of luck; at least she isn’t stuffed in the fridge.

I’m usually not a huge fan of the Kubert brothers, but Adam’s artwork especially has been growing on me, first on Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers title and now here. I think a lot of it has to do with the colors, which are far brighter in Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine than they are in, say, Superman: Last Son. This keeps the lighter mood appropriate and makes the plot easy to follow. One of my favorite chapters pits Logan against Peter in his pre-Spider-Man wrestling career, while Peter ends up encountering the young and feral James Howlett in the wilds of Canada. This allows Adam to do his own take on his brother Andy’s famous Origin comic; I doubt that this was a coincidence.

I’ve always enjoyed lighter time travel stories, from Back To The Future and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to an issue of Joe Kelly’s Deadpool where Wade was literally drawn into an old issue of Amazing Spider-Man. It’s nice to read a time-travel story where the stakes, while high, aren’t taken entirely seriously. In a few years, when Dan Slott is done with Spider-Man, I’d really like to see Aaron take the reins on the character. Until then, I’d love to get a sequel to Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine, if only to see some more Mojo.

Next week: it’s an IDW book that originally came out from Marvel, featuring so many characters you’ll need an aircraft carrier to hold them all.

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