CLANDESTINE PART ONE - CLANDESTINE CLASSIC

CLANDESTINE CLASSIC
Premiere Hardcover, 2008

The first story arc in the CLANDESTINE ongoing series is titled "Family Reunion". In it, we meet the core cast: siblings Walter, Dominic, Samantha, Kay, Rory, and Pandora. The last two are the youngest and initially believe themselves to be the niece and nephew of Walter, but they soon learn they are his younger brother and sister, and that everyone they had been told was an aunt or uncle is actually a sibling.

There are other Destines who pop up here and there, notably genius Newton, who lives in a parallel universe, and Gracie, the family mystic -- but the above characters comprise the core cast. Additionally, by the end of the first four-part story arc, we meet Adam Destine, the family's father -- who sired all of his offspring with an otherworldly genie.

CLANDESTINE

Following my months long Captain Britain marathon, I decided to keep the Alan Davis train going over the summer with a series I've had interest in quite a while: CLANDESTINE. I was vaguely aware of this series when it debuted in 1994, but I wasn't entirely sure what it was. And as I was an avowed fan of the "Image Comics" art style, Alan Davis's clean, clear artwork did not appeal to me at the time (how tastes can change!).

CLANDESTINE was an ongoing series, apparently a joint production between Marvel U.S. and Marvel U.K., but it was canceled after only a dozen issues. Alan Davis, the creator of the series, left after eight of those issues and the remaining four were published without his input. About a year after the series' cancellation, Davis returned to the characters for a two-part limited series, X-MEN AND THE CLANDESTINE. He immediately disavowed the final four issues of the ongoing series and picked up with the characters exactly where he had left them.

Following the X-Men crossover, the ClanDestine disappeared for over a decade. Then, in 2008, Davis produced a new five-issue limited series starring the characters. This series led into a trio of annuals, released in 2012, which saw the ClanDestine interacting with the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Wolverine, and Dr. Strange.

As with my Captain Britain reviews, the ClanDestine posts were composed mainly from memory, since I read these books in July, before I had decided to start blogging. But I like to think I have some interesting -- or at the very least, not boring -- things to say about the books. So, beginning Wednesday: A three-part CLANDESTINE review series.

COMIC BOOKS, THEN AND NOW

Note: This post uses the general term "comics" throughout to mean specifically Marvel superhero comics.

Okay, look -- I don't mean for this to turn into a "get off my lawn" rant, but there's a good chance it will. I am 34 years old -- apparently the target audience for today's superhero comics (which is ludicrous to begin with) -- and I fully, honestly believe comics were better when I was younger than they are now. I don't necessarily mean from a technical standpoint, of course. While I admit I tend to prefer many of the artists of my youth to the ones of today, there are plenty of great artists doing excellent work nowadays. And computer coloring and lettering, when done well, blow most of the old stuff out of the water.

Art by Jim Lee (left, 1991) and Dale Keown (right, 2011).
Note the much brighter, more exciting, and visually appealing
colors on the left piece vs the drab, boring hues on the left.

TRANSFORMERS: REGENERATION ONE #85

"LOOSE ENDS, PART 5"
Writer: Simon Furman | Penciler: Andrew Wildman | Inker: Stephen Baskerville
Colorist: John-Paul Bove | Letterer: Chris Mowry | Editor: John Barber
Editor-in-Chief: Chris Ryall

The Plot: Optimus Prime leads his Autobots into final battle with Megatron and his zombie forces. Megatron reveals to Prime that he he has programmed the Ark to launch every nuclear missile on Earth  in the event that either Prime or Megatron should lose their duel.

On Cybertron, Soundwave continues to explore the Hall of Silence, while Hot Rod struggles to figure out what to do about the situation.

The Wreckers, Spike, and the human resistance attack the Ark, and Spike makes it inside. Kup manages to kill Ratchet after being inoculated against the Scraplet infection, frying Megatron's brain just as he is about to kill Optimus Prime. The tables turned, Prime kills Megatron instead. At that precise instant, Galvatron awakens elsewhere on Earth. The missiles are not launched after all, due to Spike frying the Ark's systems before Megatron's failsafe can kick in.

Lastly, on Nebulos, Scorponok invites Grimlock to join him, with the incentive of a new, fully-transformable body.

CAPTAIN BRITAIN PART EIGHTEEN - EXCALIBUR VISIONARIES: ALAN DAVIS, VOL. 3

Much like "The Cross-Time Caper", my Captain Britain review series was intended to be relatively short. I figured maybe one post per book, except two for the Omnibus -- a total of eleven installments. But here we are on part eighteen! Hopefully folks have stayed with me this long. As I noted way back when I stated the series, I hadn't intended on blogging when I read the stories, so my "reviews" are little more than recaps with my own random thoughts tossed in, stream-of-consciousness style. My next, much shorter review series -- to be announced on Monday -- will be in the same format, but then I'll get into issue-by-issue reviews of a classic Marvel run, which will be structured more like my TRANSFORMERS series.

So if you've made it this far into my ramblings on the subject of Captain Britain, I really appreciate that. Let's see of we can tough it out for one last post. Much like Alan Davis at this stage in EXCALIBUR, I'm starting to get a little bored with my subject matter!

CAPTAIN BRITAIN PART SEVENTEEN - EXCALIBUR VISIONARIES: ALAN DAVIS,VOL. 2

Note: This volume contains a fill-in issue and a one-shot called EXCALIBUR: XX CROSSING, neither of which involved Alan Davis in any way. I didn't read either of them for my marathon session.

Alan Davis's run as writer of EXCALIBUR continues with our heroes moving into Braddock Mnor as their new base of operations, thanks to Brian's lighthouse having been destroyed during the anti-Phoenix/Necrom affair. It's nice to see Davis drawing the house again, and the place looks pretty much exactly as it did during his previous run with it. We even get to return to the caverns beneath the manor where the Mastermind computer resides, now joined by Widget.

Davis writes, but does not draw, the two issues immediately following number 50. The first is a throw-away adventure following a group of saurian analogues for Excalibur from a world where dinosaurs rule the Earth. The second of these presents Davis's attempt to unify all previous Phoenix-related stories into one single origin for the Phoenix Force. It's certainly a handy issue for Phoenix-philes, but since we're concerned mainly with the Captain Britain related aspects of this run, it is of little concern for this review. I will mention however, that it guest stars the X-Men, and the beautiful Davis cover makes me wish he'd drawn the interiors.

ALAN DAVIS

In case it hasn't been hammered into your skull yet by way of my Captain Britain reviews -- I love Alan Davis.  I've met him once, in the Marvel booth at the San Diego Comic-Con in 1999, when he was the "plot-master" for the core X-Men books.  I got his autograph and a head sketch of Cyclops -- which, frustratingly, I seem to have misplaced, or I would present it here.  I regret now that I didn't ask Davis for Captain Britain, but I barely knew Cap back then, having never read early EXCALIBUR, and with the Moore/Davis trade paperback reprint a couple years away.