Title: Thunderbolts
Publisher: Marvel
Creative Team:Fabian Nicieza (writer), Mark Bagley (Penciler), Pat Zircher (Fill-in Penciler), Norm Breyfogle (Annual Pencils)
Core Issues: Thunderbolts #34-50, Thunderbolts Annual 2000
Essential crossovers: Avengers (Vol. 3) #32-#34, Maximum Security
Years: 2000-2001

Kurt Busiek may have been the original Thunderbolts writer, but the one with the longest pedigree on the series is still Fabian Nicieza, who shaped the team from issue #34 of the original series, right up until #109. Nicieza spent most of his run working with artist Pat Zircher, who took over with issue #51 – but many will have forgotten that for the first year or so, he mostly collaborated with original Thunderbolts penciler, Mark Bagley.

Today, when creators leave a title, it’s generally at the end of an arc, and often involves a relaunch or repositioning of the characters. This wasn’t always the case. In fact, Busiek actually began several plot threads in the couple of issues before he left for Nicieza to pick up – the most major being the series climax, in which Hawkeye (who was leading the team at the time) announced that the Thunderbolts were going to take down the Hulk.

Much of Nicieza’s early run owed something to Busiek’s plot notes, which is why the veteran writer retained a credit for several issues after. With events such as the return of The Beetle, the debut of MACH 2, the unmasking of Citizen V, the introduction of the new Scourge and the death of Jolt the early issues retained – indeed, recaptured – the pace of Busiek’s earliest stories. Although the opening 12 issues are considered classic, the latter half of Busiek’s run was comparatively limp – many of the book’s biggest events, in fact, occurred during the Nicieza/Bagley period.

Artistically, the book had been consistent ever since the series began. Bagley had drawn almost every issue, and his particular blend of superheroics and storytelling was then, as it is now, a joy to read. When Bagley was taken off the title to concentrate on his Ultimate Spider-Man run, he quickly became one of the industry’s top talents – or rather, people finally recognised him as such. Those of us reading Thunderbolts were already well aware.

For many years now, Marvel has treated the series rather like the red-headed stepchild of the Marvel Universe. While Busiek’s opening 12 issues garnered much acclaim, it was soon eclipsed by his work on the returned Avengers title. Nicieza’s run – explosive though it was, by the fans’ standards – never quite managed to get the book much attention. A cancellation was undone by a Busiek and Nicieza Avengers/Thunderbolts collaboration, and the relaunched book ticked over under Nicieza until it was handed to Warren Ellis and reworked into something massively successful – though perhaps not entirely similar to what came before.

In light of the rejuvenation of the brand, Marvel did little to remind people of the Thunderbolts’ more conventionally superheroic past. Even Busiek’s run – acclaimed though it was – has never been reprinted past issue #12. Nicieza’s run, even those issues with a name collaborator like Bagley – is unlikely to ever see print, if only because the second and third volumes required to get to it will end up slogging through Busiek’s weaker period first.

And yet the Nicieza/Bagley issues are arguably the title’s fasted-paced period, every one featuring a major event and interleaving several compelling plot mysteries. Although Nicieza eventually succumbed to his own predeliction for convoluted plots and pet characters, the run with Bagley, which ended in the title’s fiftieth issue, was incredibly entertaining.

It might not be revolutionary stuff – but if you’re interested in reading a companion to Busiek’s own Avengers run (which received a complete reprint in hardcover), the Thunderbolts of this period is the perfect book for it – not just because of the direct crossover, but because Songbird features in Avengers Forever, the Genis-Vell Captain Marvel of Avengers Forever guests in Thunderbolts, and the 2000 annual follows up on a Hawkeye/Mockingbird plot thread introduced in one of Busiek’s earliest Avengers stories. And best of all, it’s doubtlessly available on the cheap.

Title: Sensational Spider-Man
Publisher: Marvel
Creative Team: Dan Jurgens (story, pencils), Klaus Janson (inks)
Core Issues: Sensational Spider-Man #0-#6
Essential Crossovers: “Media Blizzard”, “The Return of Kane”, ”Web of Carnage” and “Blood Brothers” (multi-part stories, each also taking place in the other monthly Spidey books)
Years: 1996

In converstion with James about George Perez recently, I remarked that the legendary Teen Titans/Crisis/Avengers penciller had achieved one of those rare feats in comics – that is, becoming a widely-revered artist with both the Big Two publishers. There are a handful of artists that have done it, but very few in the great scheme of things that have achieved the same level of respect on both sides of the divide – but Perez has undoubtedly managed it, to the extent that you couldn’t really call him a “DC” or a “Marvel” artist over the other.

Dan Jurgens, meanwhile, is very firmly a “DC” artist – but he had a shot at becoming another one of those exalted few in the mid-1990s. Unfortunately, a pairing that seemed for all the world like a perfect matchup – Jurgens drawing Spider-Man – ended up only lasting around half a year, and culminating in disappointment all around.

Having spent the first half of the ’90s establishing himself as the definitive Superman artist of that era, the prospect of seeing Jurgens apply his bold, clean-cut style of superheroics to Spider-Man was a mouthwatering one; and while he’s always been a better artist than writer, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with his scripting of the Man of Steel, and again his style seemed a good fit. But from the outset, circumstances were difficult: the high-profile launch of Sensational Spider-Man, the new “third” monthly Spider-book given to the writer/artist, also happened to be the first issue featuring Ben Reilly as Spider-Man – new hairstyle, costume and all.

For those of us who actually liked Reilly, this was no bad thing (even less so if you happened to like the Bagley-designed costume, too – which I certainly do/did). But unfortunately, while he had a game stab at setting up Ben’s new supporting cast and setup (the launch issue #0, while a little bogged down in the sort of expository talking-to-self narrative of which Jurgens has always been fond, was actually pretty good fun), Jurgens’ heart wasn’t really in it. He wanted to be writing and drawing the real Spider-Man – but as far as Marvel were concerned (publicly at least), Ben was in it for the long-haul.

Still, we got some good material out of the run – even though the publication style of the time means it’s difficult to follow Jurgens’ issues alone as one whole, as only the first and last issues actually stood alone. The rest were all individual chapters of storylines spread across all three monthly Spider-books – so in Sensational we get part one of the Mysterio-starring “Media Blizzard” (the only story that had little to do with the ongoing saga, also featuring an utterly cracking redesign for my favourite Spidey foe), part two of “The Return of Kaine”, part one of “Web of Carnage”, and parts one and five of “Blood Brothers”. It’s all a bit bewildering, really.

Nevertheless, through all of that, Jurgens was working hard to try and carve out a niche for Ben himself. Of the three monthly books at the time, Sensational was the one that really seemed to care about the character – it’s the one that gave him his job and supporting cast – while Amazing and Adjectiveless were more concerned with the longer-term, Clone-Saga-fallout ramifications. As such, there’s some good character material – and of course, Jurgens got to play with his one major contribution to the Spider-mythos, courtesy of Ben’s brief relationship with the photographer Jessica, who turns out to be the daughter of Uncle Ben’s killer. A potentially intriguing plot, it’s wrapped up in far-too-hasty fashion due to Jurgens’ last issue on the title being as early as #6 (one suspects he would have drawn the story out far longer had he stuck around – as it is, that last issue is simply a rush-job of loose-end-tying). Tired of being stuck writing the adventures of a fake Spider-Man (even though at the time the editorial line was that Ben was the “real” one), he left the Spidey books, never to return.

The cruel irony is that if only he’d stuck around for a bit longer, he would have had the chance to do what he wanted after all – the new creative team of Todd Dezago and Mike Wieringo only had to do five issues themselves before Reilly was promptly dispatched, in the “Revelations” storyline; and by the first issue of 1997, Peter Parker and the classic duds were back. It’s a shame, as Jurgens’ run had been an interesting new direction – and looked terrific, especially under the inks of Klaus Janson – and it would have been nice to have seen him have a crack at the character proper. Although I can’t help but wonder, if he had stuck around, how long it would have taken for him to put Spidey in a time-travel story…

This twice-weekly project posted throughout February sees us looking at the forgotten creative runs on some of Marvel and DC’s biggest properties. Uncollected, uncelebrated, and unexplored, these runs fell between the cracks of history – and in this series of articles, we try to decide whether or not they actually deserved to.

Title: Fantastic Four
Publisher: Marvel
Creative Team: Chris Claremont & Salvador Larocca
Core Issues: Fantastic Four (Vol. 3) #4-#32
Essential crossovers: Iron Man (Vol. 3) #14, Heroes Reborn: Doomsday, Heroes Reborn: Ashema, Heroes Reborn: Doom
Years: 1998-2000

After the conclusion of the “Heroes Reborn” event (which farmed out several of Marvel’s biggest properties to Image creators), Marvel intended to bring back those series with some of their top-notch creative talent. Busiek and Perez’s Avengers run was undoubtedly the jewel in the crown, while Waid and Garney reprised a celebrated run on Captain America. By comparison, Scott Lobdell and Alan Davis’ Fantastic Four series was over almost before it started. Only 3 issues in, the team was unceremoniously dumped and replaced by Chris Claremont and Salvador Larocca.

It’s clear that Claremont and Larocca’s arrival wasn’t particularly planned – Lobdell had previously stated an intention to stay on board the title for a 50-issue run, and his plots were used for two issues following his departure. Claremont, for his sins, had recently returned to Marvel to work as an “editorial director”, and was presumably just in the right place at the right time to take over at short notice when relations between Marvel and Lobdell/Davis broke down, for whatever reason.

Having written the Fantastic Four at least once in the past, during the X-Men Vs. the Fantastic Four miniseries, it’s relatively easy to see what Claremont’s interests in the team are, as many were reprised here. In that series, Claremont wrote Doom as the dark mirror of Reed, capable of forging a diary so convincing that even Reed didn’t notice it was fake. This duality would later inform the ongoing plot when Reed found himself trapped in Doom’s armour and becoming more and more Doom-esque in his actions, mannerisms and morality.

Such big, character-centric ideas were the high points of Claremont’s run. However, it would take nearly a year for him to make any steps towards the Doom/Reed plot, and the intervening issues were incredibly weak and convoluted. As soon as Lobdell’s plots had been worked through, Claremont immediately set about reinventing the book’s status quo in his own tradition. His first year on the title relied heavily on alternate universes, and he introduced three separate new female characters, all of whom were the standard, Claremontian archetype – spunky, brilliant and utterly flawless. Two of them – Alyssa Moy and Valeria Von Doom (the teenage version) – caught on and enjoyed life beyond Claremont’s run on the title. The third – Caledonia – didn’t. Not least because, as an alternate Captain Britain, she was really an Excalibur refugee (as were many of the title’s concepts and villains during this period)

Despite being Rachel Summers with the serial numbers filed off (she even took the codename Marvel Girl) Valeria Von Doom – apparently the daughter of Sue and Doom from the future – would eventually become the focus of the book’s direction, as much for what she implied about the future of the team than for the mystery of where she came from. Although the plots became turgid as Claremont bounced the core team from dimension to dimension, the mystery of Marvel Girl’s origins drove the book’s subplots – as did the tension between Sue and Reed over various extra-marital issues (Reed’s ex-girlfriend, Alyssa Moy’s presence, Sue’s villainously-revealed “heart’s desire” to be Namor’s Queen, and of course, Valeria’s stated origin).

The book only really got going when Doom returned, forcing the various plots Claremont had been seeding to actually start blooming together. His X-Men run had long since proven that Claremont was a master of long-term plotting, but the convoluted nature of the individual issues and massively off-theme storylines suggested that his single-issue plotting was much rustier than his macro plotting. The final issues (#25-32, together with a group of “Doomsday” one-shots) cap Claremont’s run off, and tie up the loose ends so satisfactorily that it almost excuses the 18-issue mess that precedes it. A wordless, underwater sequence that opens issue #32 even proves that despite’s Claremont’s much-criticised wordiness, he does know what to be quiet occasionally.

Unfortunately, despite a truly enjoyable finale, the flaws in Claremont’s run were incredibly pronounced, and probably familiar to those who read his subsequent X-Men stories. The supporting characters and villains Claremont used – many of them new creations – were usually little more than a codename and visual (I’m looking at you, Lockdown, Rosetta Stone, Caledonia, The Ruined, The Bacchae and the Twisted Sisters), and characters had a tendency towards exposition that constantly grated. Many of the stories involved mind-control and body-modification (more staples of Claremont’s work) and the plots were virtually photocopied from issue-to-issue. It wasn’t a high point for either Claremont or the Fantastic Four.

There is, at least, one thing that can be universally praised about this period in Fantastic Four history: Larocca’s art. For me, this is Larocca at this height of his ability – before the horrific digital inking of X-treme X-Men, before the lifeless photoreferencing of Invincible Iron Man – just pure storytelling. Even if he does have a habit of drawing Sue Richards like she’s smuggling melons in her uniform, and the computer colouring (by Liquid!) is so obviously a product of a company who just got access to their first copy of photoshop and want to squeeze every available colour onto the page.

In retrospect, it’s not difficult to see why Claremont and Larocca’s run has passed into history fairly unnoticed. Although his series finale works well as a postscript to the Heroes Reborn era, the series’ main contributions to the lore were to introduce Alyssa Moy (who was given a near-total makeover when she returned in the Millar/Hitch run) and to introduce Valeria, who was eventually replaced by her own infant self when Carlos Pachecho and Jeph Loeb were writing the book. Hardly broad strokes. Still, there are some good ideas in there, and if nothing else, it’s consistently a good-looking book, even if the writing is uneven. It might not be a hidden gem, but the finale plotline, at least, is worth a look. Just avoid everything before #24 and you’ll be fine.

The Avengers reboot at the start of this year was, admittedly, fairly strong. The thing is, after 7 years of Bendis’ New Avengers, I was done with it. Between the increased price, the gradual decline in enthusiasm and the fact that the franchise was getting a wholesale reboot, I figured that was the time to leave. If only to reassure myself that I’d never pick up an issue of New Avengers and find myself reading about The Hood for 75% of the story again.

That left a gap in my budget, and after some dithering, I decided to fill it with Avengers Academy. Although Christos Gage isn’t a writer who burns up the charts, his Thunderbolts fill-ins were enjoyable enough, and the new character designs that had been released as teasers really hooked me. Plus, it was launching at $2.99, and as much as I hate to admit that I might let finances get in the way of my love of the medium, price has become a genuine consideration for me since the $3.99 era began.

As it turns out, I’d probably have bought Avengers Academy even if it was $3.99. There’s nothing massively revolutionary about it – it’s just a really well-done slice of superhero-filtered teen angst/soap opera, much in the vein of Claremont’s X-Men or Runaways – but since very few books have that feeling these days, it gets away with it. It, like Generation Hope, feels more like X-Men than X-Men does right now – and as longtime readers of this blog know, I’ve got a soft-spot for the X-Men.

It helps, too, that Avengers Academy combines the X-Men-style soap opera with a high-concept twist half-stolen from Thunderbolts. At the end of the first issue (spoilers!) we discovered that these kids – ostensibly picked to be trained up as the next generation of Avengers – were actually picked because they’re the “problem” children, potentially headed down the path to super-villainy. It’s particularly interesting because the first issue’s main character – Veil – seems completely level-headed, if a little shy and socially reclusive. When we discover that she’s considered a potential villain, the audience feels the same betrayal that the character does, the same will that they be proven wrong. To get an audience invested like that in the space of one issue takes skill.

In an industry seemingly obsessed with events and stakes-raising, it’s always nice to find a book able to tell character-centric stories. I fully admit this is more of a personal favourite than a flawless technical masterpiece along the lines of Power Girl, but if you’re into superhero comics, I find it hard to imagine this one leaving you cold.

Another week, another discussion about comics – this time, Seb and I consider the implications of OMIT, the most recently-completed Spider-Man storyline which cleared up some of the mess around One More Day – for some interpretations of the phrase “cleared up”. Click through for the full discussion.

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With our dissection of the final book’s plot out of the way, in the final part of Comics Daily’s epic discussion of epic Scott Pilgrim epicness we get back onto the subject of the film, and how well – or otherwise – it translated our precious comics to the screen.

Part Three – The Adaptation

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