Comic Review: Death's Head, Volume Two

PUBLISHER: MARVEL UK (1989-1990), MARVEL (1991, 1993)
WRITERS: STEVE PARKHOUSE, SIMON FURMAN, WALTER SIMONSON, GARY RUSSELL
ARTISTS: ART WETHERELL, GEOFF SENIOR, BRYAN HITCH, WALTER SIMONSON, MIKE COLLINS

The second volume of Death's Head reprints basically plot an ongoing attempt to keep the character alive, a rag-tag punch of crossovers and guest appearances as all involved defiantly refuse to give up on the concept while continuing to unwittingly dilute it. Since landing his own ongoing series the capitalist killer had been calmed down considerably into a Saturday morning cartoon - you remember how in that nineties X-Men show where Wolverine would always be snarling about wanting to hack people up  but would always listen to Cyclops this time bub or someone would get lucky this time bub and those claws would only be used on robots and electric fences and whatever? That's solo series Death's Head - make an exception this time, yes? Hope heroics are not catching, yes? Let you live this time, yes? As such a series of guest appearances where he can't very well go around killing other established characters are hardly promising.

First on the table are the last three issues of his solo book, pinwheeling towards cancellation as readers got bored in their droves. The first actually sees the first run-out for the character not under the pen of Simon Furman; instead Steve Parkhouse gets the job, possibly because of his familiarity with guest star the Doctor. In fact, once you throw in Dogbolter hiring Death's Head to nobble the Doc and steal the TARDIS it feels more like a Doctor Who comic with Death's Head in. Death's Head claims his first name is Death and calls a robot 'son', which says a lot for Parkhouse's handle on the character. He's given a time machine jetpack thing and sent off to find the Doctor's not being written very impressively either, his combination of skills and interests leading him to opt to play a jester in a pantomime, literally. His comic was full of shit like that, though it rapidly turns into an escalating contest of crapness - Death's Head gets embarrassed busting into a ladies' changing room, the Doctor escapes him with the help of a bloke called Dave who lets him share a pantomime horse costume. I'm not sure if Parkhouse just hates the seventh Doctor and Death's Head or just the reader. Naturally Dogbolter tries to double-cross them with a bomb (the story is called "Time Bomb" so no points for rumbling that little twist before it thuds in two-thirds of the way through the issue) and the pair work together - naturally with Death's Head resisting the chance to get even with the Doctor and the Doctor handily dumping him on top of Four Freedoms Plaza. It might be the worst Death's Head comic ever but then there's a way to go yet.

The desperation continues in the ninth issue of Death's Head then as it's time for a crossover with the first dysfunctional family of comics. The good news, much needed after Art Wetherell's efforts on the last issue is that this one has an artist - with Dragon's Claws cancelled Geoff Senior is free. The finest of Marvel UK's cadre never really made it far beyond Transformers but really his dynamism here shows that it was the industry's loss as his geometric style is a great fit; his Thing and Mr Fantastic especially are superb. Furman's back on scripting duties and while that means less humiliation for everyone he can't come up with a better plot than "everyone fights until a common enemy comes along". This time it's the Baxter Building's security system that brings along the "we'll finish this when we're all safe by actually we won't and Ben's not going to smash Death's Head's face in and neither is Death's Head going to shoot Ben because he needs a time machine and that's the only reason he saves Franklin, yes? Some good dialogue and the aforementioned incredible art helps but it's basically exactly the same plot as every other crossover the character's in, a series of excuses for the character not to actually kill anyone.

More of the same follows when the time machine - thanks to last-minute tampering by Reed - sends him to 2020, where he gets embroiled in a scuffle with Arno Stark, the Iron Man of 2020 who - as discussed here - had a sizable UK following for weird reasons. The plot is so close to the previous issue it's amazing even Furman - the man who wrote Maximum Dinobots - has the gall to be so blatantly repetitive. Fight, fight, realise common enemy, sort common enemy out, bedgrudging respect, no-one dies, no imagination was harmed in the making of this comic. A slight twist comes when cascading sales led to the series ending, meaning a last-minute arrival for Spratt and Bigshot (from the first volume) to try and get the character to something approaching status quo ahead of the axe.

While Death's Head had died a death comics themselves were booming post-Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, which opened up an adult market. Marvel blamed the failure of Dragons' Claws and Death's Head on the book's US format being lost on British shelves (no, seriously) and, eyeing the success of the seminal Deadline and Fleetway's similar Crisis opted to make the character part of their own planned large-format grown up comic Strip. Like the others it mixed the serial anthology format that continued to dominate the weird UK market with stories for grown-ups; initially it featured the likes of Marshal Law and The Man from Cancer but midway through the run with the title dying (sensing a theme here?) and decided to up the ante by bringing back some better-known names, with Death's Head joining up in #13 (the Punisher would also sign up soon afterwards).

The result was "The Body in Question", a respectable return to form tying up some loose ends from the ongoing (including Spratt and Big Shot crashing in on Death's Head in 2020 and the teased stuff about Death's Head's apparent wife looking for him in 8162) and then exploring the character's origins. It's a little darker than the previous material both in that they actually let him kill someone without diffusing it with comedy and in the introspective nature; it might just be the best post-Transformers script the character's had, certainly. Best of all is the format, with all sixty pages of the serial beautifully drawn by Senior and with painted colours too.

Around this time the character made his debut in an American Marvel comic for the first time (his solo series had been released in the USA as an import but actual distribution was sketchy) in Fantastic Four #338, written and drawn by Walter Simonson. I'm sure Walt did do some good comics but everything of his I've read recently has been garbage and it might be that I'm thinking of Louise Simonson. Fair play though the art is striking but the issue is part of some Kang-related time travel madness that's already trying to fit Iron Man and Thor (because Simonson) into things so Death's Head's appearance as an agent of the Time Variance Authority isn't hugely substantial, though Simonson has a fair handle on his dialogue and he's no worse than he was in much of his solo series but it's not the character's finest moment either. Even more inessential is a third run-in with the Doctor at a birthday party in which Death's Head cameos in about three frames; you can admire the editor's exhaustive approach but the truth is the strip is as much about Captain Britain as it is about Death's Head.

Furman had by now crossed the Atlantic for most of his work and with Transformers clearly on the way to the knacker's yard was getting odd bits on other titles as well. Among these was a fill-in stint on the aggressively quirky Sensational She-Hulk. The first issue involves a plot where Jen ends up with a valuable vase and a local kingpin hires a hitman to - chortle - smash it rather than kill her. I know, it's zany. Such a remit brings out various quirky Z-listers like Plant-Man, the Whirlwind and Death's Head, handily zapped to the present day Marvel universe after his run-in with the Fantastic Four. Naturally after an initial fight they end up working together against the blah blah fucking blah. Released at the same time was a short, simple and none too original strip in Marvel Comics Presents depicting Death's Head on the run from a vengeful fellow freelance peacekeeping agent which touched on the same stuff as the first issue of his own series, clearly intended to strike a chord with American audiences. Seeing as this effectively ended the original Death's Head as a live character it can be considered to have failed.

Marvel UK, spearheaded by Paul Neary, however weren't giving up and despite their series of failures launched a whole line of new books in the US format with a full American distribution operation. The result was a plethora of sub-Image crap like Killpower & Motormouth and Warheads the character of Death's Head got killed off and given a radical overhaul as the even more generic Death's Head II. This was without the consent or involvement of Furman and ironically briefly found commercial success (partly due to an X-Men crossover in the early issues) before the whole idiotic idea collapsed in on itself to the extent that Marvel UK found effectively end when the surviving parts were sold to Panini. No material from this incarnation is included in the trade, thankfully, but this is the context for the book's endcap.

Largely left out of the whole Marvel UK disaster, Furman was in the process of prepping for Transformers Generation 2 and killing off Alpha Flight while also doing a couple of fill-ins on What If...?. For the third of his issues (#54) he reversed the events of the Death's Head II limited series - Death's Head survives his run-in with Minion and instead Reed Richards is killed. Minion is then taken over by Baron Strucker and becomes Charnal; the thing's inventor Carol Necker then hires Death's Head to take him down. Temporal antics and emotional blackmail lead to the rounding up of the remaining members of the Fantastic Four plus allies Namor, Luke Cage, Captain America and War Machine. The result is typical of the title with much preposterous death (Namor just pipping Rhodey to the title of most hilarious) but does see a decent take on Death's Head, arguably one that could never have worked in the real Marvel universe. Though to be fair one that could have worked in the UK subsection if Furman could ever actually kill anyone off.

It makes for a solid ending however and along with "The Body in Question" (probably the essential solo Death's Head comic) are worth reading. As for the rest, the initial Fantastic Four crossover and the Iron Man 2020 issues are workable but the rest is a mess; the problem with a comprehensive round-up like this is that Death's Head seems to be endlessly introduced to a reader who's halfway through a book about the guy while Furman's repetitive structure really does wear thin. Like the first collection it's as good a way as any of rounding up the character's adventures but the truth is the concept never received the storylines to bring it to fruition.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 12 - The Return

PUBLISHER: MARVEL, 1997
WRITER: PETER DAVID
ARTIST: SALVADOR LAROCCA

Produced totally in house, this was a four-part weekly mini coping with the matter of actualy physically returning the Fantatic Four and the Avengers to Earth-616. Written by proper writer Peter David and drawn by the excellenet Salvador Larocca it should have been a triumph but what's happening is a real mess. Most of the pertinent information is dumped in the recap of the first issue with the rest of it being about Franklin Richards (who isn't bad as comic kids go but is also not exactly great either) arguing for the survival of the world he created with the Eternal Ashema. It's something of a foregone conclusion that the snot-nosed little genius will convince her to save everyone and that our heroes will successfully traverse the journey back to their own world but really you'd hope for a better story to get there.

Franklin and Ashema's telegraphed dialogue - him trying to plead for the sanctity of all life, her seeing the big picture but wouldn't you know it gradually coming around - takes up far too much while the actual heroes are given a somewhat perfunctory role in it all. Franklin is able to project himself to Reed and Sue and tell them what's going on; they buy it and rapidly talk around everyone else. It would be a difficult thing to do well to be fair but that doesn't make it any easier to read as Tony Stark abandons Pepper or Cap leaves Bucky behind with no reason on the word of a kid from another universe. Amusingly the gathering of who's from the real world is conducted by Franklin from memory and he (or rather Peter David) gets it wrong by including several characters who weren't absorbed by Onslaught, including She-Hulk and several Inhumans (only Crystal, as a serving member of the Avengers, made the trip).

David throws in Spider-Man (a hapless passenger when the 616 Hulk and the HR Banner, separated in the battle with Onslaught, find themselves reunited) for no readily apparent reason beyond providing clunking exposition, which considering that sort of thing fills every avaliable narration box feels a bit needy. The one flash of innovation comes later on when Dr Doom attempts to betray everyone by taking Franklin back to the Heroes Reborn Earth, hoping to rule it unopposed. While Franklin is saved Doom does end up going back to set up a thread on what would become known as Counter-Earth that was occasionally revisited; this avenue full of potential, with the planet packed with villains created by Franklin and opposed only by a handful of heroes like Bucky and the Swordsman, would get the occasional visit but was sadly never fully explored. And there was a Jeph Loed Rob Liefield revisit to the whole Onslaught thing in 2006; you cannot pay me enough to read that.

It's an underwhelming end to an underwhelming experiment; the general feeling is that Marvel want to get these guys back in order as soon as possible and just get over the whole thing. The four titles would relaunch under the Heroes Return banner with tip-top creators including the magnificent Kurt Busiek, Alan Davis, George Perez, Mark Waid, Scott Lobdell and Sean Chen. 

The universe's more telling legacy might have been in the Ultimate universe which launched two years later. The Ultimate series made a clean break with the rest of Marvel's output and didn't replace the long-established originals, featured decompressed storytelling that gradually introduced both heroes and the updated versions of their supporting cast rather than the breakneck pace of the Heroes Reborn titles. Young, hip writing talent was recruited to match the stature of the artists rather than trying to revisit old glories. The result was hugely successful and while it inevitably began to collapse in on itself after a decade Heroes Reborn managed that in months, so the lessons would seem to have been learnt.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 11 - World War 3

PUBLISHER: MARVEL, 1997
WRITER: JAMES ROBINSON 
ARTISTS: MIKE WIERINGO, MICHAEL RYAN, LARRY STROMAN, RON LIM

With the 12-issue contract with Image (or more Wildstorm by this stage) done with and a glorious return to in-house at Marvel ready to go the Heroes Reborn universe seemed to have ran its' course. However, a 13th issue of each title still came out, a crossover with Wildstorm's superhero books. Why I'm not sure - maybe as a thanks to the company for stepping in, maybe as a contractual thing, maybe as a last-minute fill-in. There's a certain oddness to the way it's presented in that each issue has nothing on the cover really announcing the presence of the Wildstorm heroes, depending on readers recognising the likes of Maul and Burnout, so it doesn't seem to be to give the Image studio a big money-spinning golden handshake.

The rub is that via the Negative Zone an alliance of Doctor Doom, the Skrulls and the Daemonites have been able to bind the Wildstorm universe and the Heroes Reborn universe together through a dimensional lock and the resulting alliance is winning the battle for Earth. It's really just an excuse for some smashing mix-up team line-ups - the Fantastic Four consist of Reed, Sue, Maul and Burn-Out; the Avengers of Captain America (actually Hadrian from WildCATs), the Scarlet Witch, Thor, Hellstrike, the Swordsman, Freefall and Brass; Stormwatch are Battalion, Hawksmoor, Fuji, Fairchild, Winter, Jenny Sparks, the Vision and Triton of the Inhumans; Wetworks consist of Dane, Jester, Mother-One, Pilgrim and Hawkeye; WildCATs are made up of Lord Emp, Zealot, Goliath, Gorgon, Grifter, Warblade and Void. Iron Man, the Thing, the Human Torch, Namor, Deathblow and the Hulk among those already MIA, Captain America is off being Nomad and Nick Fury's just died, replaced by Jeremy Stone as head of SHIELD - whose main weapon is Dane Whitman's Black Knights. No, Dane didn't get Onslaughted but there he is.

Now, if that's all got your eyes rolling this isn't for you. But I love this kind of mash-up and the writer is the superlative James Robinson, who turns in an 88-page action thriller full of everything you want from a crossover. There are deaths galore, big action set pieces, minimal plot intrusion, smart lines and a general "deal with it" attitude. There's also lots of detail thrown in that makes this amalgamated universe feel more natural than it should and each issue manages a great "oh shit" moment. Most of the Wildstorm characters get short shrift surprisingly though it's not really a story where characterisation is the aim of the game anyway, more just increasingly violent deaths as the combined heroes realise Doom's game and try to separate the universes as much as possible.

It's arguable that part of the success is that the basis in Heroes Reborn is only really recognisable due to a few design choices (like the Iron Man armour) and a few cast choices (fair play to Robinson for remembering the Swordsman when most of the Avengers writers didn't). It all makes for some good balls-to-the-wall comic book fun, something lacking over the preceding year. Sadly, with the copyright situation of the Wildstorm characters now being owned by DC and World War 3 being so minor league a reprint looks unlikely and it does deserve better than that.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 10 - Heroes Reunited

PUBLISHER: MARVEL, 1997
WRITERS: JIM LEE, BRANDON CHOI, WALT SIMONSON, JEPH LOEB
ARTISTS: RON LIM, BRETT BOOTH, MICHAEL RYAN, ANTHONY WYNN, ED BENES, TERRY SHOEMAKER, MIKE MILLER, JOE BENNETT

Much of the second half of the Heroes Reborn titles (especially Fantastic Four) were given over to the build-up to the arrival of Galactus and the twelfth issue of the four titles, all 48 pagers, covered this in "Heroes Reunited". As the name suggested this saw the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and the various supporting characters from Iron Man and Captain America all muck in against the big purple planet eater. The odd thing is, though, that it's an anti-crossover in a way - each title effectively has its' own crack.

In the first three instances the heroes lose, the sole survivor being a time-jumping Victor von Doom who works out what's needed by trial and error. It's an interesting approach for sure, and in Fantastic Four #12 at least has some shock value as people start dying. After that it gets a bit predictable and the Avengers & Iron Man instalments especially feel like treading water now the format's been blown but the creative teams all take some pleasure in killing off everyone else's characters early doors (the Fantastic Four getting ICBM'd about a quarter of the way through the Avengers #12 is the peak).

The non-central cast only really get a workout in their own books - the Inhumans are only really seen in Fantastic Four (and then briefly, certainly not enough to justify the time wasted introducing them), the full Avengers roster (including a repaired Vision) only gets much to do in their own book, Iron Man #12 is the only one to pretend that the Hulkbusters are in on this and Captain America #12 is the only one to bring Falcon and Bucky into things.

The final issue featured Doom's time travel equipment damaged, making the fourth attempt all or nothing. Convenient, that. After a promising start the finale is weak, the Silver Surfer being persuaded to fight against Galactus entirely by Bucky being stupid and then defeating him fairly easily before some wrap-up stuff for Cap's solo storylines, making for an underwhelming conclusion.

While it's a marked improvement on Industrial Revolution it's another weak crossover, this time due to a botched format experiment that isn't without promise but only works once rather than the three times it's actually used. It ensures that the last real event of the Heroes Reborn universe is as much of a failure as everything else.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 6 - Fantastic Four #7-11

PUBLISHER: MARVEL, 1997
WRITERS: JIM LEE, BRANDON CHOI
ARTISTS: BRETT BOOTH, RON LIM

Post-'Industrial Revolution' it was clear the Heroes Reborn universe would be rejoining the main Marvel universe to some extent sooner rather than later; solid reasons why are hard to find from credible sources during a time of considerable upheaval for the House of Ideas. It might have been that new management felt such big properties should be in-house, that sales were disappointing, that the critical backlash had an effect,, that it was a short-term plan to generate publicity or none of those things or all of them.

The decision was made to have the last two issues of each Heroes Reborn title be a crossover, with the dangling possibility floated that the universe would be actually destroyed by Galactus. Thus there was effectively five issues of each to get from the state of affairs seen in the 'Industrial Revolution' crossover in the sixth issue of each to the 'Heroes Reunited' storyline in the twelfth.

This halfway point saw many of the creative teams reorganised; Fantastic Four would continue with storylines plotted by Wildstorm founder Jim Lee and writer Brandon Choi but Lee stopped contributing interior art. Brett Booth, best known for his work on the early issues of Stormwatch alongside Lee, comes in and does a decent replica job for a few issues before handing over to cosmic crossover specialist Ron Lim.

Plotwise it's the same breathless stream of introductions as the first chunk of issues but here it seems masochistic, like Wildstorm want to do their version of the Negative Zone (and Burstaar), the Inhumans (overkill as only Crystal was actually brought into the universe) and the Heralds of Galactus. None of this gets much development; the Negative Zone serves the narrative purpose of allowing a few fun flashbacks to earlier adventures (including mention of Franklin Richards) and showing the growing realisation of the characters that something is badly amiss with the universe. 

After that it's a rush off to Attilan to meet the Inhumans and another predictable "fight through misunderstanding then all become friends" story. Interspersed with all of this are introductions to three of the Heralds - Firelord, Plasma and Terrax, who turns up to fight the group and deliver official notice of Galactus' imminent arrival. All of which is overcomplication as the already-established Silver Surfer and maybe Terrax could have covered most of what they add to the plot advancement; they just take up pages. It might have made sense if Jim Lee was still drawing and wanted to put his stamp on the characters but as it is it's just bizarre; the Inhumans will also make minimal impact on the later crossover despite foreshadowing Galactus and you're left wondering why we need a remake of how they met the F4 at this juncture.

The Four themselves are reduced to a bunch of stock phrases with the odd bit of soap opera thrown in (Sue's inexplicably pregnant! Johnny and Crystal fall in love immediately) and by now there's basically no point in them being separate from their regular incarnations - Sue's business position or Johnny's casino antics aren't mentioned, for example. They're just the first family of superheroes like they were six months before.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 5 - Industrial Revolution

PUBLISHER: MARVEL, 1997
WRITERS: JIM LEE, BRANDON CHOI, JEPH LOEB, SCOTT LOBDELL
ARTISTS: JIM LEE, ROB LIEFIELD, RYAN BENJAMIN

The sixth issue of each of the heroes reborn titles saw a crossover drawing all the characters together - although there had already been some overlap. So it's a bit of a damp squib anyway even before the scant content. The storyline tentatively starts in Fantastic Four #6 but really it concerns tidying up the whole Latveria Doctor Doom/Silver Surfer/Super Skrull storyline - including linking the four's powers to those of the surfer and the first glimpse of this universe's galactus. Then at the end they're alerted to a situation brewing at Avengers Island.  

 

There the gamma reactor used for whatever the avengers need power for that requires a gamma reactor being built under a superhero base is going critical in their tussle with the Hulk. The Four and Iron Man head in to help - requiring Hawkeye and the Swordsman to be invalided out of the plot. Everyone meets up, speaks platitudes to each other and then Bruce Banner sacrifices himself (or likely not) for the second time in seven issues trying to save the ever-imperiled Eastern seaboard from gamma meltdown. Avengers Island still gets wasted but without any other casualties, the reactor being saved even if the team's base in trashed. Apart from maybe Hellcat, who Lobdell loses track of, and the Scarlet Witch, who's involved in some posession subplot that doesn't seem to be going anywhere good. And there's no mention of Hank Pym or the Vision either. There is a fleeting hallucination of Onslaught in the island's reactor, however, the first real glimpse that how the Heroes got where they are might be a plot point.
 

That just about stretches to filling Avengers #6 and Iron Man #6, so there's still Captain America's contribution. Occe again the dynamic team of Loeb and Liefield manage to drop the standard because most of it is a random battle aboard the SHIELD helicarrier between AIM, Modok and Zemo on one side with Cap and Cable on the other. Yeah, Cable, Liefield's creation from the main Marvel Universe turning up somehow thanks to time travel magic to big Cap up for 18 pages of awful splash pages while Bucky inexplicably tells everyone she just had a piss. Cable's snapped away at the end, realising the Heroes are still alive and needs to find out where. Which is a nice plot avenue that doesn't really ring true as it's hard to imagine Cable giving much of a toss about Iron Man or the Human Torch. The dialogue and actual plotting meanwhile are so bad; it's just a random fight scene with Cap spouting catchphrases about stopping Nazis like he's in a first gen licensed tie-in game while Cable creams at how inspiring he is. Oh and in the last couple of pages someone reminds him it's part of the crossover and the Avengers and Iron Man materialise in Nick Fury's office to tell him Tony Stark will be taking over the team. In a splash page.
 

Not only could this huge plot point have taken up page space otherwise used establishing that Bucky needs to read a sign to remind her to wash her hands after a slash but it also reverts much of the setup to pre-Onslaught formatting, making the first arcs of three of the books totally pointless. An apt summary for a poor crossover even on charitable relative terms.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 1 - Fantastic Four #1-5

PUBLISHER: MARVEL, 1996
PLOT & PENCILS: JIM LEE
SCRIPT: BRANDON CHOI

In the mid-1990s Marvel had a bit of a problem; anything X-Men and Spider-Man related was selling well, anything else really wasn't. The Avengers and its' satellite titles - Captain America, Iron Man, Mighty Thor and several smaller series - weren't selling well at all and neither was the venerable Fantastic 4. Part of the problem was a sequence of ever-convoluted storylines and retcons, most notably The Crossing event which saw Tony Stark outed as a bad guy, killed off and replaced by an alternate reality teenage version - this being in the days when Marvel would actually keep stupid ideas like that it continuity rather than the current method of just pretending they didn't happen.

The solution was a pair of publicity stunts; these groups would be tied into the gigantic X-Men led Onslaught crossover and 'killed off' - and by killed off it means shunted into a pocket universe created by Franklin Richards, though this precise revelation would at least be teased out. In the meantime for part two of the event their old ongoings were cancelled (with the exception of Thor's book, which returned to the name Journey into Mystery and covered other Asgardian happenings) and the books were relaunched with a new #1, always Marvel's default idea for anything in 1996.

For further attention the books were 'outsourced' - while still actually remaining under Marvel branding the actual content was handed to former employees at Image, in the form of Jim Lee's Wildstorm and Rob Liefield's Awesome Comics, for 12 months. This was a smart idea; regardless of the merits of either both were sales gold at the time and embracing big name creators rather than losing talent was something of a new direction for Marvel, who had a rigid structure and was still overrun by long-serving staffers.

Wildstorm took over production of Fantastic Four and Iron Man and the decision was made to do a new if not fresh origin for each group. Fantastic Four benefited from the pencils of Jim Lee himself, who also laid down the framework for the altered reality. Much of the basics are the same; like the later Ultimate universe it's more of an update as once again a situation is contrived to get scientist Reed Richards, his squeeze Susan Storm (here a high ranking executive in the Storm Foundation business empire), her brother Johnny (who handles the Foundation's casino in Las Vegas) and their broken down pilot friend Ben Grimm into a spacecraft in time to get a healthy dose of cosmic radiation - thus ending up with Fantastic powers.

The leaden dropping of the word fantastic, the characters' self-selected superhero names, the ease with which they deal with their transformations, Sue creating the team logos out of electrical tape and the general lampshading of the situation makes you wonder why they bothered with an origin story instead of starting up with the Four in full flow after a brief summary or even just handle it in flashbacks and dialogue, such is the level of discomfort in meshing the Silver Age cheese and modern trappings.

Still, once that's done Lee and Choi don't hang around, rapidly introducing us to the pocket universe's versions of Mole Man the Black Panther, the Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom and the Super Skrull across six issues - not to mention Alicia Masters and Wyatt Wingfoot, plus Namor. An odd thing that would run across all four titles is that not all of these were actually swallowed up by Onslaught, which can be explained by Franklin drawing on his knowledge of the heroes to fill out the world but does also somewhat go against the spirit of things.

The flow and speed actually helps and once again harks back to the Silver Age when in the early issues Fantastic Four really was like that with a future legend debuting every issue or so. It's not a bad read, it's just not an especially good one either, with the price of the brake-neck speed being an abundance of infodump speeches and busy frames packed with narration boxes. Jim Lee's work is similarly adequate, though I've never personally considered him much more than a good superhero artist rather than a genuine great. He doesn't do a bad job or anything but there's nothing to get excited about here.

Minifigures - The Fantastic Four

Before Disney took over Marvel the House of Ideas didn't have the funding for their own "Cinematic Universe" (stop sniggering) and instead sold the rights off to other people. The result is that three of their biggest properties in the form of Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic 4 were farmed out, which at least means their own films have given more of a focus to the Avengers and other properties that wouldn't have got a look-in otherwise. Of the three the F4 have arguably suffered the most; there were a couple of crude films from 20th Century Fox a decade ago, directed by Tim Story. These received a moderately warm reception at the time but are now poorly thought of, especially compared to the CGI-and-banter saturated Whedonfests Disney churn out every summer. However, the rights for the properties only revert back to Marvel after a certain time without production and Fox decided to effectively cockblock them a year or so ago by rebooting the F4 films, just as Sony did with Spider-Man. Josh Trank's take on Marvel's first family served a double purpose; not only was there a chance for it to make Fox money but it kept the rights out of Disney's hands and took a competing property out of the running - likely for the next ten years.

Trank - a highly talented director whose Chronicle is one of the better superhero films of the recent explosion of the things - turned out a film that was obviously tampered with but also suffered from severe miscasting. The result was panned by critics and did poorly at the box office; Marvel however sealed the deal by doing every little thing they could to undermine it - while Fox owned the film rights Marvel owned basically everything else and were effectively able to block any F4 merchandise at the time of the film to avoid it competing with stuff they owned 100%. This even led to the long-running comic book series being placed on hiatus while Lego were obviously leant on to make sure no F4 characters appeared in their ongoing Marvel Superheroes line.

As ever where there's such a gap in the market there are Chinese bootleggers. Copies of Lego's superhero minifigures are abundant and great fun; most are near-perfect copies of those available in sets, usually for around £2 a piece. But if you're a bootlegger with access to moulds and tampographing equipment it's probably easy enough to design your own and the gap in the market for F4 toys gave several (naturally elusive, considering the copyright violation) companies inspiration. There have been sets of both the classic costumes and the white ones seen in the film; after a little trial and error I've managed to put together a set that I like - or two sets, as there are options out there to do a 'casual' and 'action' set.

MISTER FANTASTIC

There are two or three Reeds out there; a stretched version with elongated legs and arms, both lifted from the licenced Minifigure of Woody from Toy Story, is the most common and is available in both the blue classic and white uniforms. It's actually a decent enough way of representing his power in hard plastic while also meaning you can actually do stuff with him. There's a neat version of the swept-back hair complete with greying temples that really adds to the personality as well. 

The only 'standard' Minifigure I've yet come across for Reed is an underwhelming little thing with a silly face design and a much less impressive hairpiece (though it does still have grey on the temples). Really, the most sensible option was to buy a second 'stretched' figure and swap in standard sized arms and legs, which were easy enough to find. Accessories-wise I think the gun came with the stretched version and I have no idea where the other little bit of machinery the smaller one is holding is from; the fun thing is that with 30+ years of space-themed Lego there are lots of fun bits of kit that go nicely as one of Reed's gadgets.

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN

There are again two or three versions of Sue, though these are closer and more consistent that the different Reeds. Again, there's blue, white and powered up. The latter is one of my favourite Minifigs outright; there's something very, very cool about the transparent plastic all over while the little detail paint apps really pop out even if they're slightly illogical. The uniform seems to correlate more with the white version but not by enough to bother me and as you can gather I'm pretty particular about this sort of thing. Perhaps as a reflection of how cool it is this is one of the slightly harder to find off-brand figures, but not to the point where you'll spend a fortune.

The 'standard' version is available in blue or white. The blue version is more refined than the similar Reed and complements the 'invisible' version nicely, with the same hair and facial features, though the uniform doesn't quite line up. And the fun thing is that if you want a representation of Sue's forcefield power basically any shaped clear part that can clip to the Minifigure's hand will do.

THE HUMAN TORCH

There have been several versions of Johnny in both flame on and standard. For the 'action' one there are three 'classic' versions - a solid version with dark red plastic, a transparent version and a transparent version with the '4' logo. The second is the more accurate no doubt but I eventually settled on the latter for the entirely selfish reason that it means the one without the logo can be repurposed as the original Human Torch. More obscure is a version based on the most recent live action movie where the character was played by Michael B Jordan; as a result the Minifigure head was brown (even through Jordan's skin colour can't be seen when he's flaming) and the uniform and wavy flame hair are yellow; this is often labelled as Pyro due to its' broad similarities to the Brotherhood member but it's got a 4 logo. Very odd.

For standard versions there is again the white and blue. The latter again fits well, though I can never quite decide on a hairpiece that looks good; the blonde spiky one fits the character's personality in lieu of anything much better; the modern side-parting might be a better fit but isn't yet out in any 'fair' colours.

THE THING

The Thing has had probably the most diverse treatment, with three totally different Big Figs and at least one Minifigure out. The former takes three different approaches - one seems to be a heavy retool of the official Hulk Big Fig and is by far the best fit; for added variety this is available in blue, white or red (either a reference to the team briefly having red uniforms or I have half a recollection of him donning these when he briefly left) pants. There's also a brown figure that's a notably different sculpt featuring a large cylindrical Minifigure-style ehad; the style doesn't really work even if the colours and detailing are nicer that the orange one. Finally there's a totally different sculpt with seems based on the latest film and looks awful.

Personally I'm always torn on Big Figs; they feel like cheating but they do the job well and some characters just don't look right at a small scale. The Thing is arguably one, though I picked up the small Minifigure as much to line up with the other three 'standard' guys. It's got some nice detailing but does look underwhelming at the same height (though it's worth nothing the Thing was illustrated as roughly human style in the first two films).

Comic Review - Shogun Warriors

In 1972, inspired by imported Dinky toys based on Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds, the Japanese toy company Popy decided to put out a licensed figure of the anime character Mazinger Z. Unlike most Japanese toys of the period it eschewed tin in favour of a mix of diecast metal and ABS. It was so successful that Popy followed it up with a string of other super robots licensed from popular kids cartoons, the range becoming known as Chogokin after the fictional alloy Mazinger Z was constructed from.