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

Maximum Security had the dubious honour of being Marvel’s first big crossover following Onslaught and Heroes Reborn, at a time when crossovers were considered one of the industry’s most deadly poisons. It was masterminded by Kurt Busiek, who was the writer of Avengers at the time, and unusually for Marvel, the crossover didn’t wind from issue to issue of existing series, but rather took place in a single “parent” series.

This was a remarkably DC-like approach which has become commonplace, but for the time it was a decidedly different matter, and a deliberate attempt at making crossovers viable again after much negative feedback over how they operated in the 90s. While Marvel’s other titles did tie in - often for just one issue - the main story played out entirely in the miniseries, which itself was only 3 issues long, and released over 2 months. Clearly, Marvel were being cautious.

The story saw Marvel’s various alien races clubbing together to decide that Earth was too much of a threat, and deciding to dump all of its criminals on the planet to keep them busy. Not a bad concept in theory, but it was unfortunate that it relied on some of Marvel’s niche-appeal cosmic properties to retain interest. Most of the tie-ins simply involved the title character fighting a loosely-affiliated alien from the backwaters of Marvel continuity. It’s fair to say that the crossover, while not hated, is at best barely remembered.

The first issue may have telegraphed the eventual reception. It featured a radically re-designed US Agent, who resembled Judge Dredd, and the main villains were revealed as Ronan the Accuser and Ego, the Living Planet. None of these characters are especially A-List, and while the idea of earth being transformed into the new host for Ego is a nice threat, there was never any serious suggestion it would succeed - and indeed, ultimately only succeeded in causing grief for, er, Quasar.

Between Jerry Ordway’s art and Busiek’s writing, the issue does have quite an old-school superheroics feel to it, and Busiek’s Avengers run always had the benefit of feeling quite timeless. This series didn’t really bring out the best in either, though, and they both seem to struggle with such a massive cast. USAgent is a poor lead, too, for someone like Busiek whose slightly wistful, nostalgic style can’t really portray brutalist nutcases very well.

It’s worth remembering that all of this cosmic stuff was happening at a time when cosmic titles were the least popular they’ve ever been. Perhaps it was an attempt to revive them, but in retrospect, it was a failed one - the Annihilation crossover was far more successful.

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

In the late 90s, the quality black hole that had affected almost every comic released in the past decade was starting to lose its grip, not least due to the efforts of writers like Kurt Busiek, who was producing some top quality superheroics on both Avengers and Thunderbolts. In 1998, all of the Marvel Annuals took a “team-up” approach, and Busiek’s contribution (along with co-writers Karl and Barbera Kesel) was the “Captain America/Citizen V” team-up, which, with series regular Mark Bagley on art, was a Thunderbolts annual in all but name.

Bagley’s artwork was as strong then as it is now, delivering consistent, expressive superhero work that places him alongside the likes of John Romita Jr. In this issue, removed from the traditional urban superhero setting, Bagley gets the chance to render jungles and castles in a story that’s positively swashbuckling, as Citizen V and Captain America team up to fight Baron Zemo and Techno.

There are a few continuity-based oddities in the issue. At this point in history, for example, Captain America was using his bizarre photon-shield, The Fixer is in his “Techno” incarnation, and the current incarnation of Citizen V was pretending to be a man, which is a fairly major plot-point that gets addressed in this annual. Ten years later, it seems odd to see such things being treated as the status quo, but it’s also a constant reminder that any change, no matter how permanent it might seem, is usually just a story with an ending somewhere.

Indeed, even the traditional superheroic actions of Captain America seem far removed from the recent political intrigue of the character, both before and after his death. Busiek’s handle on him is actually remarkably effective, though, as he organises Zemo’s slaves against him and helps Citizen V assume her mantle, inspiring others through his actions. This issue (and ’98’s “Captain America / Iron Man” annual, also by Busiek) both suggest that Busiek’s Captain America might just be one of those great runs that never happened - understandably, given how much control Busiek already had over the Avengers franchise at the time, writing both Avengers, Iron Man and Thunderbolts (which had close ties to the property) but none of that makes it any less disappointing that a Busiek run on Cap never happened.

Taken in isolation, it’s a nice little story that treads some unfamiliar ground with some largely under-used characters who’ve fallen out of favour in recent years, though the issue really shines if taken as the chapter of Thunderbolts, slotting somewhere between #17 and #21. With Busiek’s writing and Bagley’s art, it was never going to be a mediocre turn, though, and it’s certainly worth picking up if you see it cheap.

After the success of the really-rather-good 52, and the failure of the catastrophically-bad Countdown, it’s fair to say the jury’s still out on DC’s grand “weekly comic” experiment. So the question is, can Trinity push the balance back towards the favourable side?

The omens are good, in that lessons have clearly been learned from what did and didn’t work in those prior series. For the first time, Trinity doesn’t tie into (whether launching off the back of, or leading up to) a big “event” series – although, that said, it’s a little jarring that it’s come out so soon after the first part of Final Crisis, as you have to keep reminding yourself that this is a standalone story, not designed to slot specifically alongside current events. Indeed, the fact that it’s simply a standalone long-form story makes you wonder just whether the weekly format is necessary – it’s not taking place in “real time” a la 52, and it’s not building up to an event as Countdown attempted to, so will it really be able to sustain interest for 52 weeks?

Still, if there’s another positive omen, it’s in the identity of the creative team. Mark Bagley is given a deservedly high-profile launchpad for his DC career, while Kurt Busiek – rarely the most spectacular writer in comics, but certainly among the most reliable - gets to make up for having missed out on being part of the 52 team by taking the reins here. And they make a fairly solid start, it has to be said. If the main weakness of the book so far is a story that doesn’t yet seem to be doing very much, nor inspiring a huge amount of interest, then its main strength is at least in the telling. One of the benefits of having such an experienced hand as Busiek on board is that there’s no messing about with the characterisation – the opening scene of our three heroes’ secret identities meeting for coffee gets them all spot on, with Busiek keen to play up various contrasts (from the way they order food to their varied interpretations of the same dream). There’s nice attention to detail, too, in the caption boxes that follow the thought patterns of all three as they go their separate ways (and the nice artistic touch of the slightly-altered logos on all three making up the first letter, which winds up looking far neater than the similar but simplistic approach taken in Superman/Batman).

It’s still disconcerting to see a Marvel legend such as Bagley drawing such iconic DC characters, and I suspect it will remain so for a little while to come. Despite such preconceptions, though, his work is exactly as you’d expect - decent, clear storytelling, with an energy and dynamism that makes the occasional bit of odd face-shapery forgiveable. His versions of Wonder Woman and Batman are the stronger points, while Superman perhaps needs some work before he becomes an iconic-looking figure. But the consistency of artist will, I’m sure, be one of the book’s strongest assets as the weeks roll on, and on this evidence Bags looks to have been a good choice.

If the book falls down anywhere, it’s in the backup story. I can see the practical reasoning behind splitting the book like this (Bagley’s a quick and consistent artist, as shown by his astonishingly long and always-on-time Ultimate Spidey run, but could he cope with 22 pages a week for a whole year?), but these pages are certainly the weaker, quite aside from the fact that they cause the main feature to truncate and arguably lessen its breathing space. The approach of focusing on the villains provides a good flip-side, and there’s arguably more plot here than in the main story; but with Fabien Nicieza’s slightly overwrought scripting, it gets a bit too bogged down in flowery mysticism, although a neat “alternate Gotham” sequence featuring Green Arrow and Speedy (and, er, “the Arrow-signal”) holds intruging promise. In addition, Scott McDaniel’s loose and cartoony art style fails to hold up all that well against Bagley’s work.

Nevertheless, it’s overall a solid enough start that I’m willing to take the bait. After completing 52, I’d agonised over whether to start buying Countdown, but my snap judgement of “leave well alone” after reading the first issue turned out to be the right one; I’m going to stick my neck out here, though, and whack this one on the pull list. Let’s see how it gets on.

So, it’s been a couple of months now and Seb and I have (mostly) kept our heads down, dutifully reviewing a comic a day for a fair few weeks with very little industry sarcasm and speculation. Well, not much anyway. Still, it’s not enough for us. We want a place where we can talk about the latest news and rumours, poke some fun, and generally talk about wider industry issues without the pretense of reviewing a comic to do so. And thus, The Sunday Pages is born, allowing us to indulge in editorials and commentary just once a week, giving us somewhere to put all those nuggets we think of which would otherwise end up unsaid.

For the inaugural column, you’ll be getting some news about the long-awaited reprint of Sam ‘n’ Max: Surfin’ the Highway, some information about a possible comics-based movie from Guillermo Del Toro that’s NOT Hellboy-related, a look at Marvel’s latest “Phoenix Rising” teaser, and some speculation about what DC’s forthcoming Trinity and Final Crisis might mean for the future of the shared DC universe… Continue reading »

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.

Now this is an odd beast that you don’t see a lot of nowadays - a fill-in issue. For those of you who started reading comics after the year 2000, a fill-in issue is one that is run in a comic when the regular art and writing team are unable to meet their deadlines. Sounds bizarre, I know - couldn’t they just delay the comic for a few months? Haha. That’s just a little satire for you. Still, in this case, regular team of Bagley and Busiek do contribute a framing device, and it’s likely any delay was built-in to allow then to get ahead on the extra-sized Thunderbolts #12, so we won’t be too hard on them.

At this point in time the Thunderbolts were operating under their original gimmick - Villains masquerading as Heroes in the wake of the Onslaught disaster that “killed” most non-mutant heroes - though actually sent them into a bizarre pocket universe of gritted teeth, unusual postures and tiny little lines (good lord, take that Image! I’m on fire today!) In this issue, a suspicious Black Widow - one of the surviving Avengers - confronts MACH-1 (the Beetle) and Songbird (Screaming Mimi) and tells a story (written by Roger Stern and illustrated by Ron Frenz) about the early days of the original “new” Avengers, comprised largely of former villains (Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch) and their difficult path to acceptance as heroes. As an interesting footnote, the Avengers fight Radioactive Man, who later joins the Thunderbolts himself.

The issue ends with the Widow cautioning the other two - she doesn’t have the evidence she needs to take them down - yet. Despite being a fill-in, it’s an important beat in the redemptive arc of the Thunderbolts as they consider the Widow’s words, and it’s just a pity that the Heroes Reborn story/business arrangement with Image was ending as this issue was released, thereby truncating the Thunderbolts’ deception. In fact, the heavy rain depicted throughout the issue is actually a reference to the Heroes Return limited series (which brought the Heroes Reborn lot back into the regular MU) that was incorporated into almost all Marvel Comics that month. Now that’s the kind of detail that makes the Marvel Universe worth loving.

Anyway, in issue 10 the Thunderbolts are revealed to the public as the Masters of Evil after achieving their goal of getting the security levels they needed, in issue 11 they take over the planet (er…really) and in issue 12 they fight the newly returned Avengers/Fantastic Four. As a result, #9 ends up feeling too much like a fill-in, as the events of the issue don’t really have any time to cement in before the jig is up. Had the Image/Heroes Reborn deal not ended so soon, you can be sure it would’ve had more importance.

As it is, Thunderbolts #9 is a nice little issue, though it’s fair to say that the absence of the regular team is felt - Busiek and Bagley were doing stellar work this first year of Thunderbolts, so an issue of what amounts to a piece of Avengers history isn’t the best use of the pagetime - but it’s certainly not a bad one.