Bob Layton’s run on Iron Man is one of those era-defining ones that happened before my time. You hear this sort of thing mentioned all the time – Mark Gruenwald on Cap, Peter David on the Hulk, that sort of thing. In fact, these kind of runs are so era-defining that when you look back on them, they seem almost… outdated. Iron Man’s alcoholism is firmly ingrained in the character now, for instance, but once upon a time, someone had to actually write that story. It piques your curiosity as a fan – but no Iron Man story interested me enough to go back and read it, until Iron Man: Doomquest.

Clearly released as a companion to both the Iron Man film and Bendis’ recent homage to the story in Mighty Avengers, Doomquest collects four issues of Iron Man in which he travels through time with Doctor Doom. That’s more pages than it sounds, by the way, because two of the issues are double-sized.

The initial story, from Iron Man #149 and #150, sees the two sent back in time by one of Doom’s rebellious servants during a fight in castle Doom. Something about the idea of Doom and Iron Man in Camelot has intrigued me ever since I first found out about it. Certainly, the idea of Tony Stark, man of science, thrust into a world of magic is an appealing idea – as is pitting Doom against Stark, two sides of the same (armoured) coin. The result is something brilliant, even by today’s standards. Layton’s writing contains some great moments of humour, drama and adventure – I laughed every time Doom addressed Iron Man, who he believes to be Stark’s bodyguard, as “lackey”. The solution, where Doom and Iron Man team up is a brilliant moment that shows just how pragmatic Doom and Iron Man can be. Romita’s artwork is almost unrecognisable compared to his modern style, but nonetheless, the greatness is still there, if slightly less developed.

The second half of the collection contains the sequel to that story, originally from Iron Man #249 and #250, in which the two again travel in time, this time to the future, where they meet Merlin and a reborn King Arthur, and have to save the world from their own futures – the evil, armoured offpring of Stark’s bloodline, and the still-living, mostly cybernetic Doom. Again, it’s fantastic. A classic story that’s held up well by modern standards.

The issues are collected in Marvel’s excellent premiere hardback format. They have some classy-looking covers that make me want to buy them all, but I’ve managed to hold out until now. The collection could do with a little extra material – the Camelot issues end with Lady Morgana escaping, and no resolution to that plot, so if possible it would’ve been nice to see that thread followed up somehow.

As a comics fan you dream of witnessing character-defining stories like this as they happen, but in lieu of that, why not go and read the ones that already exist? Doomquest might be old, but it’s barely showing its age. It’s a fun story, and a genuinely deserved classic.

It’s Superman, Superman and more Superman at Comics Daily this week. For plenty of good reasons – the recent judgment regarding Action Comics #1, obviously, and the publication of the brilliant All-Star Superman #10 are on our minds. But – and I can imagine you’re dying to know – what does John Byrne think of it? (continue reading…)

Just as Gaydos returned for his stint on Alias’ Jessica Jones last week, so this issue of New Avengers sees David Mack returning to the character he had a hand in creating – Maya Lopez, the deaf hitwoman-turned-heroine known as Echo.

Little is made of Echo’s powers in this issue. From her appearances in Dardevil, we know she has a taskmaster-style ability to copy any movement she sees exactly, but it’s largely underplayed in this issue in favour of simply showing her as a formidable fighter.

The plot gives us a rare look into the actual workings of Secret Invasion, as we see a skrull attempting to replace Maya. The skrulls, it appears, are going to have a ridiculous array of powers to call upon, which is going to make them incredibly difficult enemies to fight, though as this issue demonstrates, they also lack the experience to properly use their powers to maximum effectiveness. Despite employing the powers of several heroes, the skrull is still beaten by Maya and Logan, though it does manage to escape. Afterwards, Maya retires to the Avengers… er, apartment, I guess, before sleeping with Hawkeye. That guy really puts it around.

It’s a fairly straightforward story, but nicely plays off Maya and Logan’s history together (as explained in the pages of Daredevil some years ago) by pairing them up. Bendis is remarkably restrained with his dialogue, allowing Mack’s amazing pencils to speak for themselves. I’ve never seen Mack’s work like this – I’m only used to his painted pages, and I had to check the cover to make sure it was actually him. Let’s get this straight: Mack is nothing short of an amazing penciller. If I worked at Marvel I’d give him whatever it took to have him pencilling something on even a semi-regular basis. As it is, he only seems to put out the odd issue of Kabuki through Icon – a move that seems purely designed to keep him at Marvel ready for this kind of project. Either way, keep doing it.

Oh, and apparently: next issue – Skrulls! For a change? Someone should speak to the Brand New Day guys about writing those next-issue teasers.

Just when you think Grant Morrison can’t get any more metatextual – and this is the man who wrote Flex Mentallo and Animal Man, lest we forget – he gives us a Superman story in which the Man of Steel creates a microscopic, time-accelerated replica of Earth in order to observe the human race’s development in a world without him… and in said world, in a dingy Cleveland apartment, an artist’s hand draws Superman – the original, 1930s Superman – on a blank page. “Bravura” doesn’t cover the half of it.

This is just one of the reasons why All Star Superman wins Eisners. Why it’s the best superhero comic in years. Why it’s a comic that, hell, makes you realise why you read the damned things in the first place – that swoops down once every three months to pluck you from the despair of an industry in which Jeph Loeb can get regular work. This is, basically, what it’s all about.

And apologies for spoiling one of the best aspects of this issue, but quite frankly, I had to tell someone about it. And it’s far from the only thing that happens in it, anyway. In fact, events rattle along at breakneck pace, as the series’ underlying arc finally begins to pay off – and as Superman’s (apparent) impending death draws closer, he steps up his efforts to ensure the world will be adequately protected in his absence while still attempting to keep up with the day-to-day business of saving lives (from battling giant robots to talking down the suicidal).

One of the biggest successes of All Star Superman has been in attracting a readership that includes those who don’t usually care for the character. I wonder, though, what they’ll make of this issue – as it goes further than any before it in elevating its lead to both literal and figurative godlike status. While I’m not someone whom this would necessarily irk – as a massive fan of the character myself – where I think Morrison succeeds in making the idea fly (sorry) is that everything is done in such customarily charming fashion. And he creates a palpable sense of sorrow over the loss that the world is going to suffer – for arguably the first time, we’re really made to care, to realise that the world will be a poorer place after Superman dies.

The melancholy is made all the more powerful, too, by the sheer sense of wit and fun that has run through the increasingly far-out, “anything is possible” sci-fi concepts that drive the series. This issue sees perhaps the purest concentration so far of Morrison’s imagination pouring out onto the page, each successive idea trumping the last until, yes – we actually see a believable homage to the infamous “little Supermen shooting out of his hands” power from the ‘50s that Mozza spoke of in interviews back when the series started.

There isn’t really a lot left to say about All Star Superman as a series without endlessly retreading the same ground. It’s the product of a near limitless imagination working at the peak of its powers, allied to a sense of aesthetic wonder unmatched by any other title going (indeed, the only reason I haven’t really mentioned Frank Quitely so far is that, again, I’m not sure if there’s anything new I can say about him; save to reiterate my view that he’s the most gifted artist currently working in the industry). Even by the high standards of this series, though, the current issue is an absolute masterpiece. If you’re any sort of comics fan, you simply owe it to yourself to be reading this – how often, after all, do you get to contemporaneously experience something that people will be talking about for decades to come? Because that’s what All Star Superman is – as an advert for the craft in its current form, it has no peer. It is, quite simply, magical.

Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue at random, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

There was a time, before the earth cooled and the seas formed, when Chris Claremont was considered to be one of the industry’s top writers. A time when he was writing one of the industry’s best-selling and most highly regarded books – Uncanny X-Men. These days, he’s considered something of a living fossil, shuffled off to the side on X-Men satellite titles after failing to recapture the brilliance he was remembered for on two seperate occasions. But still, we’re not here to debate what went wrong.

When this issue came out, I wasn’t reading comics. I would dare say I was barely even aware of the X-Men. I first read it a few years later in the UK’s magazine-sized X-Men re-print comic. By this time, I was aware of the X-Men cartoon, and had moved on to the comics, and I was utterly loving the expanded universe. Sure, it didn’t always make sense, but I was old enough to understand that things in the cartoon didn’t necessarily match up exactly with the comic.

To this day, I think Rogue is one of the best characters to come out of X-Men – remind me to bore you with the details one day – but she’s certainly been my favourite for a long time. While I’m enjoying the current focus on Rogue in the recent X-titles, it’s a sad truth that no-one ever really wrote her as well as Claremont did.

In this issue, Rogue falls out of the Seige Perilous. She finds herself in the X-Men’s Australian base, long after the rest of the team has abandoned it – and what’s worse, it’s inhabited by the Reavers – cyborg mercenaries with anti-mutant tendancies. Naked and without her stolen powers, Rogue finds herself attacked by a zombie-looking Ms. Marvel 0 somehow, the two are sharing their life-force. To escape, she steals Gateway’s power and teleports herself to the savage land. Ms Marvel eventually follows, and a fight ensues – at the end of the issue, Magneto unexpectedly rescues Rogue just as Ms. Marvel tries to kill her.

It’s an excellent Rogue character piece, and touches on many areas of X-Men lore. In this issue alone, there are Reavers, the Savage Land, Deathstrike, as well as subplots involving The Shadow King and Lila Cheney. Somehow, Claremont made it all work. X-Men, as played by Claremont, was a sci-fi soap opera and was structured as such. In this issue, some mysteries are introduced, some are resolved, and throughout the focus remains on Rogue’s character. Compared to modern comics, there’s a lot going on in this one issue.

The art is by Jim Lee, and looks great as a result. Lee’s style has altered substantially over the years, but back then, there’s no denying he was perfect for the title, managing to do Claremont’s character moments as well as the big action scenes.

As an individual issue, it’s not strictly perfect – there’s a lot going on that might be hard to grasp for a new reader, but as with any soap, follow it a little and you’ll soon pick it up…

Christ, what a barren week. With the exception of Amazing Spider-Man and Ex Machina (both of which have been covered too recently on here for me to do again so soon), there was nothing out that I actually follow on even a semi-regular basis. I decided, then, to check out a few different DC titles to see if there was anything worth reviewing. Aside from a handful of books that happily roll along with their own stories – Batman, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle - I haven’t really been keeping up with the DCU over the last year, as it’s felt desperately like the entire line is simply treading water until Final Crisis comes along. The various “big” storylines – The Sinestro Corps, Salvation Run and so on – have been staggeringly uninteresting, and every time I’ve tried to dip into Countdown it’s been utterly impossible to comprehend.

This lack of accessibility for casual readers was borne out by the various books I decided to have a look at this week – Batman and the Outsiders, The Brave and the Bold and Justice League of America. All team (or, in the case of TBATB, “team-up”) books, all mid-storyline. None particularly accessible to new readers, nor indeed anything like enthralling enough to consider worth getting over the hurdle of unfamiliarity. Still, though, I’ve had to at least pick one to look at in something resembling detail, so let’s go for Justice League of America. It’s a tie-in to the aforementioned Salvation Run miniseries, in which the Earth’s major supervillains, including Lex Luthor and the Joker, have been “deported” to a distant planet and basically left to fend for themselves. Er, yeah. Maybe the series itself is brilliant, I don’t know (although I’d be worried by the fact that writer Bill Willingham left after a few issues – I mean, how often do writers leave miniseries?), but it certainly doesn’t sound like it.

Anyway, the JLA are on their way into space, in what I think is an attempt to rescue the Martian Manhunter, who’s been secretly scouting the planet on Batman’s behalf (blah blah secrets, blah blah mistrust, and didn’t we take care of all of this with Infinite Crisis? Isn’t he meant to be FriendlyBatman now? And while we’re at it, why has he formed a new Outsiders, when the Outsiders were originally the team he formed while not a JL member?) And… oh, it’s just rubbish, really. Not offensively bad in an Ultimates 3 or All-Star Batman way, just… flat and bland. There’s no sense of team dynamics, no real characterisation at all beyond the broadest of strokes. The dialogue throughout is lame, with John Stewart and Wonder Woman even falling victim to “Describe… what’s… happening… to… me!” syndrome – and why J’onn J’onnz’s team-mates keep impersonally referring to him as “the Martian”, I’m not sure. Do they call Superman “the Kryptonian” behind his back?

I mean, look, this is the Justice League. This is a title that features Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. This should be flagship. It should be about the world’s greatest heroes banding together to tackle threats too huge to handle alone. It should have an A-list writer and artist team (Ed Benes may be technically proficient, but his work is somewhat soulless, and far too rooted in the Michael Turner School of Breasts and Thighs). It should, to put it bluntly, be a lot better than this. Launched on a wave of hype courtesy of the overrated Brad Meltzer, it’s only taken a year and a half for the series to become an entirely forgettable irrelevance, which has to be some kind of record even when set against the Justice League Detroit shambles of the mid-80s. Will it survive when James Robinson’s new title begins later in the year? On this evidence, there’s no compelling reason whatsoever in its favour.