It’s a shame Andy Diggle’s run on Thunderbolts is about to come to an end because after spending months engaged in stories that were arguably editorially-mandated (get rid of the old Osborn-lead team, introduce the new “black ops” team, do a Deadpool crossover…) Diggle is finally doing the one thing that long-time fans of the book have always wanted – bringing back the original team to the book.

Indeed, this issue also brings back a character from the wider Marvel Universe with links that go right back to the title’s first year – it’s not a reference that hinges on you knowing that fact, but it certainly enriches the issue if you do. As well as delivering some fan-pleasing scenes between Abe, Norbert and Melissa, Diggle also takes the time to flesh out the characters of Mister X and Headsman – even giving the latter a real name for the firt time ever – although if “Cleavon Twain” isn’t an alias, then you have to wonder what the odds were that he WOULDN’T become an axe-wielding maniac when he grew up.

Artwork on the issue comes from Miguel Sepulveda. His characters occasionally look a little stiff, but the storytelling is decent and everyone is recognisable, which is an essential condition on a book composed of fairly un-familiar villains.

It’ll be interesting to see where Diggle takes this – he’s been hinting for a while that Osborn’s Thunderbolts team is destined to implode at any moment – something evidenced by the Mister X/Headsman conflict in this issue. However, the re-assembly of the old team is so at odds with the way the book was deliberately re-worked to get away from them that one wonders whether they can actually return. Perhaps it’s a fake-out. Perhaps it was part of the original pitch. Maybe it’s actually up to the next writer entirely. Either way, for the first time in a while, Thunderbolts feels like a familiar and enjoyable purchase, rather than a somewhat dutiful one, and I’m glad my trust in Diggle appears to be paying off.

Four issues in, and the big question about X-Men Forever has changed from “Will this work?” to “Why is this working?”. In abstract, the concept still looks like a complete trainwreck, with Chris Claremont retuning to the early nineties X-Men setting he left behind when first evicted from the pages of Uncanny. The writer’s relish for the characters has gone a long way, hoverer, and his making the most of the non-canon setting has allowed for some extremely memorable moments, but what really makes the book work is its extremely good timing when compared to the rest of the franchise.

With Storm apparently turned traitor, the remainder of the X-Men are forced to divide their forces in the hope of regaining the momentum, but the changes in two of their number continue to throw them off balance. On its own terms, there’s not too much to be said for the issue. The characterisation still rings effortlessly true, and, as usual, Claremont’s expositionary style has started to grate after several consecutive issues. The plot is internally coherent, and Tom Grummett’s art is never less than serviceable. In fact, the penciller seems to considerably raise his game during the latter pages of the book, adopting an approach reminiscent of Adam Kubert and finding room for a nicely-judge John Byrne homage during the team’s fight with Storm. As usual, it’s the moments of lunacy that make the book, with Sabretooth’s reasons for going along with Cyclops’ orders a particular classic.

While there’s much to congratulate the creative team for, some praise must also be given to Marvels’ editorial and marketing staff. Launching the book with a run of fortnightly issues was a masterstroke, providing an extremely effective way of immersing readers into the new/old setting. Also important is the release of the series just over a year after the X-Men’s San Francisco setting was introduced, ensuring that there is genuine novelty in the Westchester location. There’s certain cynicism in targeting the one period of X-history that hasn’t been strip-mined in recent years, but it does go a long way to make the book distinctive, with only the admittedly small cost of making James and myself realise that we now constitute a nostalgia marketing category.

While Astonishing X-Men and X-Force aren’t going to be loosing any sleep, Forever is starting to put many of the X-Franchise’s second-string titles to shame.

The Phantom Fleet is volume 11 in Titan’s series of hardback, magazine-size reprints of Dan Dare’s adventures. This storyline began in April 1958, and was published weekly in Eagle magazine until December 1958, in issues 17-52 of Volume 9. Also included is a Dan Dare story from Eagle Annual #5, “Operation Plum Pudding” which, as the name suggests, is a Christmas-themed 8-page yarn set in the far-flung future of 1997.

The book opens with an introduction by Jeff Wayne, who you will no doubt recognise as the man responsible for the musical “War of the Worlds”, followed by an article about Frank Bellamy, the successor of Dan Dare creator Frank Hampson. Although interesting, it does seem oddly placed, since none of Bellamy’s work is actually contained in this collection.

The Phantom Fleet itself runs an impressive 70 pages (remember that these pages are much larger than current comics) and feature some truly classic art and design work. If Wednesday Comics has awakened your interest in how comics used to look, you won’t find any better example than the retro-futurist visuals of Dan Dare. Although this is the penultimate story in Hampson’s run on the character, it’s a perfect place to start, since by this point, the character’s world was well-established and his creators had settled into a groove, knocking out instalments as if it had become second nature.

The stories sees Dare encounter a pair of alien races – the Pescods and the Cosmodes – and naturally, it’s not long before everyone’s blowing the crap out of one another. It might seem a bit straight these days, but back then, this kind of story was new and revolutionary, and Dare’s impact in popular culture has justifiably resonated down through the generations. It’s an enjoyable story, particularly as a historical look at the British Comics industry in its heyday – since Dan Dare was the cover feature of Eagle, we also get the straplines from each issue too – “Exhibition and Show Jumping News, P.8″, “78 Prizes, Free Circus and Cricket, P.11″ – some of those are worth the cover price alone!

The production on this collection is exceptional, and whether you’re a fan of Dare or not, you could do far worse than to start with this collection.

In a list of things wrong with Incredible Hulk #600, the fact that any serious attempt at counting up issues of Incredible Hulk can only come up with 598 in total* is way, way down the list. But that does indicate the level of competence we’re dealing with here. In a week where Spider-Man #600, flawed as it was, managed to offer a story-bonanza the likes of which we will almost certainly never see again, Incredible Hulk #600 looks almost like a joke by comparison.

For those wondering, this is an issue of the regular Hulk series in all but name. Loeb and McGuinness are the creative team, and bring with them everything that entails. Splash pages. Nonsensical plot developments. Cringeworthy dialogue. As a matter of considered criticism, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Or perhaps someone else can suggest why “Rulk” suddenly decides, after repeatedly encountering the Hulk, to absorb the gamma energy from him. Makes all the gun-toting of the earlier Hulk issues seem a bit redundant, doesn’t it?

The story does serve to tie together some of the more incomprehensible threads of Loeb’s Hulk run – apparently, A-Bomb, Rulk and more besides are all part of some Gamma-Soldier program being developed by AIM and MODOK. It’s incredibly hard to see this as anything more than revisionist storytelling, since there wasn’t anything to suggest this in the previous year’s worth of stories, at least. We’re also once again teased with the suggestion that we’ll learn the identity of the Red Hulk, and once again, we don’t. It wouldn’t matter if the mystery were compelling, but the longer it’s drawn out, the less sense it makes. Personally, I want to know just so I can see how well the “clues” stack up – right now, the smart money is on General Ross, but only because Rulk uses a gun and keeps calling Banner a “milksop”, which is a word that literally no-one has used since the 1960s.

But let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that Rulk comics are your cup of tea. I like Frank Miller’s All Star Batman in an ironic, deconstructionist way, so I appreciate that there’s room for people to read Loeb’s Hulk too. Issue #600 of Spider-Man treated fans to multiple backups and a massive lead story. Does Hulk #600 do the same?

Not as such.

The lead story is a hair longer than a normal issue. Stan Lee’s short is a demented highlight, but a backup about the new She-Hulk comes over as a transparent marketing exercise. A reprint of Hulk: Gray #1 does, again, make sense if your goal is to shift more copies of the TPB collection, but in an anniversary spectacular, it feels rather cynical and half-hearted. If you’re a big Hulk fan, the issue itself is decent value that, had it could out before Spidey #600, might feel acceptable. But the bar was inadvertantly raised, and if you’re a casual dip-in, dip-out Hulk fan, you probably won’t be pleased with the results.

* Tales to Astonish/Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 – 474 issues.
Hulk/Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 – 112 issues before becoming Incredible Hercules.
Jeph Loeb’s Hulk – 12 published issues
474 + 112 + 12 = 598. Which makes #600 the, er, 599th issue.

So there it is. Captain Britain and MI13, all out for 15. An innings all-too-short, but one filled with world-class batting. And I’ll stop with the tortured metaphor right there, because I’m far less interested in cricket than Paul Cornell is. And it probably should have been 16, anyway, what with the annual.

Anyway, yes, it’s over – and the campaigns and the pleading and the critical acclaim simply weren’t enough to save it. We’re left with a “complete” run of a series that, while far from flawless, had enough wit and charm for ten UK-based action-packed swords-n-spies-n-superheroes books. And while “Vampire State” might not have been the greatest arc the series had to offer – despite being the full-on epic that Cornell clearly wanted to do all along – it still manages to round itself off in textbook fashion. And if the story beats in the final chapter all feel a little bit like ticking boxes that we’d already seen coming (although nobody can have seen coming the really quite brilliant one-page “surprise appearance” – and even using the later, less familiar design can’t change the fact that doing so essentially puts MI13 and Doctor Who in the  same universe) it’s acceptable when you consider that the issue also has to give us a fond farewell to these terrific characters. Which it manages, admittedly through a rather cheating final-page device, but one that’s so utterly lovely you can’t help but applaud.

With the series over, thoughts naturally turn to all the things we hoped it would get round to doing but never quite managed to – the unexplored potential that makes its cancellation all the more galling. It’s clear that Cornell’s long-term plan revolved around getting all the pieces in place ready to play with them properly – remember that when we opened, the “team”, such as it was, consisted of Wisdom, Cap, Skrull John and Spitfire – and this necessitated spending more page time with the likes of Faiza and Dane. No great problem, but “Vampire State” feels like the point at which it all finally came together – and so you felt that having been slightly peripheral at times, the book’s two most important characters (Pete and Brian) might have been allowed to dominate a bit more from here on in – although that said, both get real moments to shine here as the plan to defeat Dracula reaches its climax.

Really, though, rather than lamenting the demise of the series, we should at least be celebrating its existence in the first place. We got a few story arcs of a proper, British superhero series to be proud of, that maintained a consistent level of entertainment and quality throughout (speaking of that, it’s a shame that Kirk’s run on art was hampered by the need for fill-ins, but it’s good to see a whole issue from him here – not his best ever work, but reliably effective storytelling), and that introduced us to one of the best sets of characters in either of the Big Two’s shared universes. We can only hope that one day they’ll be back, and with Cornell at the helm as well – for now, though, I suppose we have to let him go and play with the Americans for a bit.

This week’s capsule reviews are of Doctor Who: Room with a Deja View, Green Lantern #44, Ms. Marvel #42 and Supergirl #43.

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