AVENGERS #340, #341, & #342

"CLAY SOLDIERS"
Plot: David Michelinie | Script: Scott Lobdell
Pencils: Paul Abrams | Inks: Robert Jones & Chuck Barnette
Letterer: Brad K. Joyce | Colorists: Renee Witterstaetter & Marie Javins
Edits: Ralf Macchio | More Edits: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: Captain America, Wasp, Hercules, She-Hulk, and Iron Man attend the opening of New York's new super hero medical research and treatment facility -- but the festivities are interrupted when a woman races toward Captain America for help, but gets hit by a car in the process. In Cap's arms, the woman warns him that "he's crazy" and that Cap must help "the children." Then she passes out. Later, at Avengers Mansion, Wasp and Jarvis dig up information on the injured woman, learning that she is married to a weapons manufacturer named Itzhak Berditchev, and that the couple has ten year-old quintuplet sons. Realizing these must be the children in question and suspecting that Berditchev recently stole some plutonium from Austria, Cap and Wasp send Jarvis, undercover as a gunrunner named Armond Carlyle III, to infiltrate Berditchev's estate while they follow.

At the estate, Jarvis gains entrance as Cap and Wasp sneak around the grounds. Wasp feigns unconsciousness when sprayed with gas, and Cap races into Berditchev's hedge maze. Jarvis is taken prisoner by two of Berditchev's sons, but manages to escape them. Elsewhere, Cap speaks with Berditchev via a video screen and learns that he saved Berditchev, then a child, from a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, and that Berditchev has since patterend his life -- and the lives of his sons -- around a twisted understanding of Cap's ideals. Soon, Cap overcomes Berditchev's assassin, Bulwark, while Jarvis and Wasp appeal to the children and turn them against their father. When everyone eventually crosses paths in Berditchev's control room, the munitions dealer has a nervous breakdown. He and Bulwark are arrested, and the Avengers prepare to turn his sons over to their recovering mother.

Continuity Notes: In the opening pages, Iron Man mulls over his "recent health problems" as seen in issues of his own title, while Hercules confides in She-Hulk that he feels like the "token god," covering while Thor is unavailable due to events in his ongoing series. There's also a reference to the Avengers' encounter with Thane Ector and the Collector last issue. Later in the story, Jarvis recalls his injuries at the hands of the Masters of Evil in AVENGERS #275.

In the issue, Wasp wears the costume she's shown using on the cover, but it's colored yellow-and-blue instead of blue-and-white.

SPIDER-MAN: LIFELINE #1 - 3

"PIECES OF FATE" | "SNAKES IN THE GRASS" | "A TASTE OF INFINITY"
Writer/Storytellers/Penciler: "Fabulous" Fabian Nicieza & Steve "The Dude" Rude
Inker: Bob Wiacek | Letterer: John Costanza | Colorist: Greg Wright
Assistant Editor: Brian Smith | Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Joe Quesada

The earliest days of Joe Quesada's reign at Marvel feature some curiosities -- stories which fly in the face of the philosophies he and his corporate overlord, Bill Jemas, forced onto creators and readers. SPIDER-MAN: LIFELINE is one of these. Though Quesada had been Marvel's editor-in-chief for over a year by the time this series was published, it seems pretty clear it was greenlit under the previous administration. Clue number one is that it's drawn by Steve Rude, a notoriously slow artist, so Marvel probably wanted to give him a lot of lead time to complete these three issues. But beyond that, LIFELINE is edited by Ralph Macchio, who had turned over the stewardship of the Spider-Man comics to Axel Alonso only a few months earlier. It's written with third-person narrative captions and thought balloons galore. It's heavy on continuity, being a direct sequel to, and featuring numerous reference to, a storyline in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN from more than thirty years earlier. All these things had been (or would soon be) outlawed by Quesada and Jemas in their attempts to make Marvel's comics as bland and awful as possible -- and as a result, when it was published, LIFELINE was breath of fresh air in what was fast becoming an unreadable and downright unenjoyable Marvel line.

But! I don't want to start this thing off on a negative note. I mean, I'll take every possible opportunity to talk about how utterly wretched the majority of Marvel's output was circa 2001 - 2005ish, and how, for the most part, the comics have never recovered from the harm Quesada and Jemas did when they took over -- which is why I had absolutely no choice whatsoever but to write the preceding paragraph -- but from here on out, we're going positive.

I've noted here more than once that I revere the Stan Lee/John Romita run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Taking Steve Ditko's creation of the character, his cast, and his villains for granted, it is Romita's version of Spider-Man, in collaboration with Lee, that I consider definitive. And for my money, the apex of that duo's run on the character is the "stone tablet" saga. It ran for a whopping ten issues (if you include the two-part coda featuring the Lizard), which was pretty unusual at the time. It followed Spider-Man's travails as he struggled to keep an ancient tablet out of the hands of the underworld's top gangsters, including the Kingpin and Silvermane, the latter of whom believes the tablet holds a key to eternal youth. In the end, Silvermane drinks a formula derived from the tablet's inscription and dies when he de-ages to nothingness.

THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN AMERICA: SENTINEL OF LIBERTY #1 - 4

"FIRST FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE" | "BETRAYED BY AGENT X"
"BATTLEGROUND: PARIS" | "ANGELS OF DEATH ANGELS OF HOPE"

Storytellers: Fabian Nicieza & Kevin Maguire | Pencilers (issue 4): Steve Carr & Kevin West
Inks: Joe Rubinstein (issue 1) & Terry Austin (issues 2 - 4) | Inking Assist: Tom Christopher
Letters: Richard Starkings | Color Art: Paul Mounts
Logo & Book Design: Joe Kaufman | Assistant Editor: Barry Dutter | Editor: Mike Rockwitz
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco
Special Thanks to: Mark Gruenwald, Gregory Wright & Suzanne Dell'orto

Return with me now, to the dark days of 1991. As Marvel descended into the abyss that would result in the likes of X-FORCE and Todd McFarlane's SPIDER-MAN, they also gave us... this. An uneven, but mostly very nice retelling of Captain America's origin by Fabian Nicieza, Kevin Maguire, Joe Rubinstein, and Terry Austin. This series was published in the "Prestige" format, running 64 ad-free pages per issue. It's something I had had on my "to read" radar for years, but only recently got around to it, and now I find myself wondering why I took so long!

So, look -- right off the bat, I'll admit I haven't read many versions of Cap's origin. I've read variations on some of his earliest adventures, in various mini-series, flashback stories, and so forth. But the actual origin -- Dr. Erskine/Reinstein, the super-soldier serum, the Nazi saboteur -- I'm pretty sure I've only ever read that in the Roger Stern/John Byrne encapsulation from CAPTAIN AMERICA #255. So when it comes to the material presented here by Nicieza and Maguire, I honestly have no idea what they've kept from prior versions and what they've created anew.

But -- taking the above into account, after reading this series, I feel like the filmmakers behind CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER must have looked to this story for inspiration, at least with regards to the early parts of the movie. Heck, a near-direct line can be drawn from the first issue to the film's first act, taking into account the typical changes one generally sees in Hollywood adaptations.

X-MEN: ROAD TO ONSLAUGHT VOLUMES 1 - 3

Volume 1: Paperback, 2014. Collects 1995's X-MEN PRIME, UNCANNY X-MEN #322 - 326, X-MEN #42 - 45, X-MEN ANNUAL '95, and X-MEN UNLIMITED #8.

Volume 2: Paperback, 2014. Collects 1995-96's UNCANNY X-MEN #327 & 328, X-MEN #46 - 49, X-MEN UNLIMITED #9, X-MEN/CLANDESTINE #1 & 2, and SABRETOOTH SPECIAL.

Volume 3: Paperback, 2014. Collects 1996's UNCANNY X-MEN #329 - 332, X-MEN #50 - 52, X-MEN UNLIMITED #10, X-MEN/BROOD #1 & 2, ARCHANGEL #1, WOLVERINE #101, and the XAVIER INSTITUTE ALUMNI YEARBOOK.

In 2014, Marvel enacted an ambitious plan to plug the gap between the AGE OF APOCALYPSE OMNIBUS and the ONSLAUGHT OMNIBUS with a series of three big trade paperbacks collecting every issue of X-MEN, UNCANNY X-MEN, X-MEN UNLIMITED, and other odds and ends which ran between 1995 and 1996. The result is a set of handsome books chock full of stories by various creators.

Volume one wastes no time, kicking right off with X-MEN PRIME, establishing the post-"Age of Apocalypse" X-universe. Then we have UNCANNY X-MEN 322, in which Onslaught's name is first spoken by Juggernaut -- though at that point no one, not even series writer Scott Lobdell, knew who or even what "Onslaught" was. X-MEN 42 through 44 follow, as writer Fabian Nicieza tells a story of Cyclops and Jean Grey and their roles in the fall of Magneto's space station, Avalon. Then it's back to UNCANNY for issues 323 and 324, featuring the debut of the mutant terrorists known as Gene Nation.

Next comes X-MEN ANNUAL '95 starring Jean and Beast and featuring my all-time favorite Mister Sinister story, by J.M. DeMatteis, Terry Dodson, and John Paul Leon. After this, it's a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the "All-New, All-Different" X-Men in UNCANNY #325 and X-MEN #45, featuring a reunion between Colossus and his former teammates and a connection between Gambit and Mister Sinister, respectively. X-MEN 45 is also the final issue from Nicieza, who had been the series' scripter all the way back to #11.

X-MEN: PHALANX COVENANT

Hardcover, 2014. Collects 1993-94's UNCANNY X-MEN #306, #311 - 314, & #316 - 317, X-MEN #36 & 37, X-FACTOR #106, X-FORCE #38, EXCALIBUR #78 - 82, CABLE #16, and WOLVERINE #85.

No, your eyes don't deceive you. Reading the contents above and comparing them with the contents of THE WEDDING OF CYCLOPS AND PHOENIX, which we covered last time, we've skipped five issues of X-MEN. This can be seen in greater detail over on my popular X-Men Collected Editions Chart. This gap is notable for being the only chunk of Fabian Nicieza's X-MEN uncollected, as well as one of only two chunks (along with issues 58 - 61) of uncollected X-MEN in general when using Scott Lobdell's five-year run on the sister title as a measuring stick (which itself is only missing issues 338 - 340 at this point). With any luck, someday in the near future, Marvel will plug these small holes and we'll finally have a full run of the Lobdell/Niciza UNCANNY and X-MEN in collected format.

At any rate -- "Phalanx Covenant" was 1994's X-Men event, pitting the merry mutants against the techno-organic Phalanx, a sort of mutated offshoot of the alien Technarchy which begat deceased New Mutant Warlock. The hardcover collection starts up with the obligatory recap, before moving into some lead-in material preceding the crossover proper. Remember when X-MEN: FATAL ATTRACTIONS skipped UNCANNY X-MEN #306 but included issue 315 as an epilogue? Well, PHALANX COVENANT is here to fix that little problem, plugging the issue 306 hole by printing that Phalanx-centric tale here, but skipping the non-Phalanx issue 315 instead. It's almost like they planned it that way!

UNCANNY 306's inclusion is due to the fact that it's the X-Men's first encounter with the Phalanx, as writer Scott Lobdell and artist John Romita, Jr. send Archangel and Jean Grey into the clutches of their old enemy Cameron Hodge at Archangel's one-time home in New Mexico. This represents something Lobdell did often during his run on UNCANNY; something I really like: he introduces the villain of the following year's crossover somewhere in the vicinity of the current year's. In this case, the X-Men were in between chapters of "Fatal Attractions" when the Phalanx were introduced.

AVENGERS/X-MEN: BLOODTIES & X-MEN: THE WEDDING OF CYCLOPS AND PHOENIX

BLOODTIES: Hardcover, 2011. Collects 1993's AVENGERS #368 & 369, AVENGERS WEST COAST #101, UNCANNY X-MEN #307, X-MEN #26, and 1996's BLACK KNIGHT: EXODUS.

THE WEDDING OF CYCLOPS AND PHOENIX: Paperback, 2012. Collects 1993-94's UNCANNY X-MEN #308 - 310, UNCANNY X-MEN ANNUAL #18, X-MEN #27 - 30, X-MEN ANNUAL #2, X-MEN UNLIMITED #3, X-MEN: THE WEDDING ALBUM, and WHAT IF? #60.

In 1993, the X-Men jumped directly from one crossover into another. The first, "Fatal Attractions", was within the X-family as we saw last time. The second, "Bloodties", teamed the X-Men with the Avengers in a celebration of the two groups' shared thirtieth anniversary. The catalyst for the crossover was Luna, child of the mutant Quicksilver and Inhuman Crystal, and the villain of the piece was Exodus, the leader of Magneto's Acolytes who had just debuted a few months earlier during the "Fatal Attractions" event.

AVENGERS/X-MEN: BLOODTIES is an installment in the since discontinued Marvel Premiere Classic Hardcover line, a set of books which originally began as more-or-less straight reprints of long out-of-print storylines (among the earliest volumes were the acclaimed SPIDER-MAN: KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, the Claremont/Miller WOLVERINE, and Barry Windsor-Smith's WEAPON X). Unlike the majority of the "oversized" X-MEN hardcovers I've looked at so far, the Premiere Classics were published in standard trim size, meaning the pages are no larger than those of a normal comic book or trade paperback. BLOODTIES was the eighty-second in the Premiere Classic line, and it's a very nice package.

X-MEN: FATAL ATTRACTIONS

Hardcover, 2012. Collects 1993-94's UNCANNY X-MEN #298 - 305 & 315, UNCANNY X-MEN ANNUAL #17, X-FACTOR #87 - 92, X-MEN UNLIMITED #1 & 2, X-FORCE #25, X-MEN #25, WOLVERINE #75, and EXCALIBUR #71.

This book is probably my favorite of all the X-MEN hardcovers I own, in terms of volume of contents. The two X-MEN BY CLAREMONT & LEE books came out a bit earlier than FATAL ATTRACTIONS, and they certainly covered a wide swath of X-continuity, between UNCANNY issues, X-FACTOR issues, annuals, and the like. And of course there were prior collections of the various X-events which preceded "Fatal Attractions", but those generally only collected the pertinent crossover issues (with the exceptions of FALL OF THE MUTANTS, which contained a great deal of lead-in material and X-TINCTION AGENDA, which included the original Genosha arc to lead the book off).

But FATAL ATTRACTIONS gives us our first real glimpse of the Marvel collected editions department's diabolical plan to eventually get every issue of X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN, as well as ancillary X-material such as annuals and X-MEN UNLIMITED issues, out there in some way or another -- not to mention squeezing in installments of other spin-off series where pertinent.

FATAL ATTRACTIONS begins with UNCANNY #298 and 299, written by Scott Lobdell and featuring the return of Magneto's Acolytes and the machinations of the Gamesmaster and the Upstarts. We then move into a solid run of X-FACTOR #87 (the famous "team psychotherapy" issue) through 91, written by the outgoing Peter David and fill-in scripter Lobdell, which provide some tangential groundwork for the upcoming "Fatal Attractions" crossover.

X-MEN: X-CUTIONER'S SONG & X-MEN: A SKINNING OF SOULS

X-CUTIONER'S SONG: Hardcover, 2011. Collects 1992-93's UNCANNY X-MEN #294-297, X-FACTOR #84-86, X-MEN #14-16, X-FORCE #16-18 and STRYFE'S STRIKE FILE.

A SKINNING OF SOULS: Paperback, 2013. Collects 1993's X-MEN #17 - 24, X-MEN: SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE MANSION, and material from MARVEL SWIMSUIT SPECIAL #2.

"X-Cutioner's Song", 1992's 12-part X-Men family crossover, is collected in full in a very attractive hardcover volume which opens, in a nice touch, with writer Fabian Nicieza's introduction to the original 1994 trade paperback edition. From there we get a brief recap page explaining what the X-teams have been up to in recent months, then it's on to the crossover in UNCANNY X-MEN 294, X-FACTOR 84, X-MEN 14, and X-FORCE 16. The story repeats this pattern two more times for a total of twelve chapters ending with X-FORCE 18 -- but the book isn't quite finished there. We also get a "quiet issue" epilogue from UNCANNY 297, and then the volume's collected issues come to an end with the STRYFE'S STRIKE FILE one-shot.

Bonus material consists of sixteen pages, beginning with second printing covers -- including one for STRYFE'S STRIKE FILE. A book of wall-to-wall text and pinups received a second printing. Who says the nineties weren't the merry Marvel age of mirthful excess? We next get both sides of twelve trading cards, which were originally packaged with the individual issues in polybags, reprinted at original size, followed by a MARVEL AGE cover and article about the crossover, a scan of a chapter still inside its polybag, trade paperback covers of previous collections, and recolored cover art for this volume.

The book's dustjacket and graphic design are crafted to make it a companion to the X-TINCTION AGENDA hardcover released earlier in 2011 (but in blue rather than X-TINCTION's red). The book's title is even redesigned from the original crossover logo, utilizing an old-fashioned jagged "X" in order to match the original "X-Tinction Agenda" logo instead. And while this is a nice idea, it really doesn't make much sense. These crossovers have nothing in common; no shared villain, no shared theme. Even a lot of the characters are different!

X-MEN: BISHOP'S CROSSING

Hardcover, 2012. Collects 1991-92's UNCANNY X-MEN #281 - 293, material from X-MEN #10 - 11, and X-MEN #12 - 13.

I have to confess -- I like the issues collected in this book. Its contents were released when Marvel relaunched the X-Men franchise in 1991, alongside the latter portion of the X-MEN BY CLAREMONT & LEE OMNIBUS volume 2. But, though that other material features Chris Claremont's final three issues on X-Men and continues without him under Lee as plotter and artist, I have a real soft spot for these contemporaneous UNCANNY issues instead, plotted by Lee and Whilce Portacio and drawn by Portacio with scripts from John Byrne and Scott Lobdell.

The book is laid out in about as straightforward a manner as possible: We have a direct run of UNCANNY X-MEN issues 281 through 293, then a two-part backup serial from X-MEN #10 and 11 (omitted from the Claremont/Lee book due to lack of involvement from either), and then the run of issues wraps up with X-MEN #12 and 13 in their entirety.

These contents may seem a mish-mash, but there's logic behind their inclusion. The book gets its name from UNCANNY 281 - 288, which introduce time-displaced mutant Bishop and follow his path to joining the X-Men. I believe at one time in the nineties, there was a trade paperback called BISHOP'S CROSSING as well, which contained only these eight issues. But for this hardcover edition (and its upcoming paperback reprint), Marvel has seen fit to include issues 289 - 293 as well, thus filling the full gap of UNCANNY issues between CLAREMONT & LEE volume 2 and the X-CUTIONER'S SONG collection (which we'll look at next month).

THE ROAD TO ONSLAUGHT

A love letter to the X-Men of the mid-nineties.

A few weeks back, in my review of WOLVERINE AND GAMBIT: VICTIMS, I noted that "...VICTIMS takes me back to high school and the year between 'Age of Apocalypse' and 'Onslaught', one of my favorite points in X-Men history." This bold statement elicited a comment from reader wwk5d, who said: "Interesting. That is probably one of my least favorite points."

I get this a lot, and I've seen the sentiment expressed often from many quarters. But it's just not the case for me. And don't get me wrong; I'm certain nostalgia plays a huge role in my opinion here. So much so that I'm going to ask you to bear with me as a provide a little backstory to hopefully explain where I'm coming from when I describe my affection for this era.

Although I had dabbled in the X-Men dating back to the Claremont/Lee X-MEN 1-3, I didn't become a regular X-reader until age fourteen with 1993's X-MEN #20, the issue whose cover teased the dramatic return of someone wearing a billowing purple cape. It wasn't Magneto, as readers were meant to believe, but Psylocke's former body possessed of a different character's consciousness (it's a long, long, long, long story -- and, perhaps tellingly as it pertains to the rest of this post, I was positively enraptured at that time by the mystery of Psylocke and her "twin", Revanche). In any case, the bait-and-switch tactic worked beautifully on me and from that issue forward I continued to pick up Fabian Nicieza's X-MEN every month.