23 Monday Dec 2013
Posted in superhero
Tags
Astonishing X-Men, ghost box, ghost boxes, Marvel Comics, simone bianchi, Warren Ellis, Wolverine, X-men
Collector’s Guide: From Astonishing X-men: Ghost Box (Astonishing X-Men #25-30 plus the 2-issue Ghost Boxes series). Dialogue by Warren Ellis; Art by Simone Bianchi.
29 Tuesday Oct 2013
Posted in superhero
Tags
cyclops, jean grey, phoenix, professor x, scott summers, wedding, Wolverine, X-men
X-men #30 from 1994 has a wrap-around cover featuring the wedding of Scott “Cyclops” Summers and Jean Grey (Marvel Girl, Phoenix, Dark Phoenix, Black Queen, etc.). We had it unfolded and framed until it seemed like a fun wedding present to drop in the mail. Before it left, we snapped a couple pics, including our favorite panels from the issue: Professor X feels a bit melancholy after the wedding, until he opens a letter from his old pal Logan — better known as Wolverine.
Collector’s Guide: From X-Men #30; Marvel, 1994.
The wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey in “The Ties That Bind.” Script by Fabian Nicieza, pencils by Andy Kubert, inks by Matt Ryan. Includes 3 Fleer Ultra cards celebrating the wedding of Scott and Jean (painted art by Bob Larkin). Kubert/Ryan wraparound cover. Cover price $1.95.
18 Friday Oct 2013
Collector’s Guide:
– From Wolverine: Enemy of the State by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.
20 Friday Sep 2013
Posted in educational
Tags
album of north american animals, animals, clark bronson, nature, rand mcnally, vera dugdale, Wolverine
This week we’ll take a look at three of our favorite animals from The Album of North American Animals: the wolverine, the bobcat, and the cougar! This wonderfully illustrated book came in many editions, some of which fetch high prices on Amazon. We have the sixth printing, from the mid 80s, which cost much less. Many of the 26 animals featured within have become exceedingly rare due to loss of habitat caused by the expansion of our cities and industry. Liberate the mountain lions!
Collector’s Guide: from Album of North American Animals; Rand McNally, 1966. Text by Vera Dugdale, illustrations by Clark Bronson.
16 Tuesday Jul 2013
Posted in superhero
Hiya, Chuck! You can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t f%#$ with Wolverine’s sense of smell. He is the bullshit detector of the Marvel Universe, sniffing out aliens, robots, holograms, phantoms, fake costumes, and psychic projections. This is a Jim Lee panel we like so much that we cut it out and put it on the wall.
Collector’s Guide: from X-men #1; Marvel, 1991.
15 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in superhero
Uncanny X-men #100 ended a three-part saga culminating in the crashing of their spacecraft and the subsequent death of Jean “Marvel Girl” Grey. She would erupt from the wreckage as Phoenix and spawn decades of continuity in the process.
Big fraggin’ deal. The truly historic moment of this issue was the execution of the now-legendary fastball special! That’s where Colossus grabs Wolverine and throws him at something far away that needs to be destroyed right the hell now.
Collector’s Guide: from Uncanny X-men #100; Marvel, 1976.
03 Wednesday Apr 2013
Posted in first issue, superhero
Tags
Image Comics, Jim Lee, Scott Lobdell, Travis Charest, WildC.A.T.S, Wildcats, Wolverine, X-men, Zealot
Travis Charest draws Wolverine and Zealot taking on the daemonites from the WildC.A.T.s series. Only here, the nasty aliens inhabit the bodies of Nazis in the 1940s. Aliens masterminding the Third Reich may not be the most original science fiction idea, but Charest and Scott Lobdell make it a solidly entertaining tale in the vein of Indiana Jones. Cool Jim Lee cover, too!
Image and Marvel made four WildC.A.T.s X-Men crossovers: Golden Age, Silver Age, Modern Age, and Dark Age, each with a different creative team. The first three also came in 3-D, and look pretty awesome.
In these pre-adamantium days, Wolverine doesn’t pop his claws. He opts for strapping some nasty hardware to his wrists, even though we’d seen four years earlier in Fatal Attractions that the claws were part of him. In these carefree days before Wolverine’s past became laid bare by Origins, he is also shown going by the name Logan in WW2 — not James Howlett. But don’t worry. You don’t need to be a continuity expert to kick back and enjoy this story! You can enjoy the first 1/3 in our gallery below.
Collector’s Guide: From WildC.A.T.s X-Men The Golden Age #1; Image/Marvel, 1997. Also available in 3-D. Reprinted in Wildcats/X-Men TPB #1.
See all WildC.A.T.s X-Men crossovers.
18 Monday Mar 2013
Brian Michael Bendis saw into the future. We’ve recently seen one of the most ridiculous series titles in comics history: Ultimate Comics Ultimates. Marvel, come on! But Bendis predicted this branding insanity in a dialogue from Ultimate X-men in 2003.
Here, Bendis and artist David Finch parody Bendis’ own famous dialogue style by filling the page with 38 separate panels for a single conversation! And, in this snappy discussion between Black Widow and Wolverine, Bendis pokes fun at the name “The Ultimates.”
All kidding aside, this story — Blockbuster — may be my favorite Spider-man/Wolverine team-up since James C. Owsley (Priest) paired them in the Soviet Union in the 1980s in a weird conclusion to the Hobgoblin saga. Throw in Daredevil and the Black Widow, and you’ve got some seriously action-packed adventure!
Collector’s Guide: From Ultimate X-men #35; Marvel, 2003. Reprinted in Ultimate X-Men TPB #7, “Blockbuster.”
16 Saturday Mar 2013
Posted in superhero
Tags
Adam Kubert, Mark Millar, Nick Fury, Return to Weapon X, Ultimate Nick Fury, Ultimate Wolverine, Ultimate X-men, Wolverine, X-men
Welcome to the Wolverine Gallery! In this scene from Ultimate X-men, Wolverine busts out of a cage and unexpectedly meets a wounded Nick Fury. After SNIKTing his way through the usual mess of unsavory commandos, Wolvie carries Fury to safety. For his good deed, he gets his @$$ shot off — which happens about a dozen times in “Return to Weapon X!” This flashback scene sets up later developments between Logan and Fury.
Collector’s Guide: From Ultimate X-men #11. Reprinted in Ultimate X-Men TPB #2 “Return to Weapon X”. Reprinted in Ultimate X-Men Ultimate Collection #1
24 Thursday Jan 2013
Posted in superhero
Welcome to the Wolverine Gallery! It’s an ongoing project, so just click Wolverine Gallery to see everything in this virtual exhibition. Today’s Wolverine feature comes from a three-issue series by writer Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Saga, Runaways) and artist Eduardo Risso (Chicanos, 100 Bullets.) We’ve seen Wolverine blown to smithereens by the explosive Nitro, get eaten by the Hulk, and get his adamantium ripped out of his body by Magneto. Now, Wolverine takes the most brutal punishment ever — he gets nuked!
Vaughan sets the story in Japan in 1945. A super-scumbag just made a samurai shiskebab out of Wolverine’s girlfriend. The two begin to settle it as comic book heroes settle things: kicking the crap out of each other. But, they really picked a bad day to be duking it out: the day the atomic bomb dropped. Let’s have a look.
Collector’s Guide: From Logan Black and White #2; Marvel, 2008. The series was also printed in color as Logan #1-3.
15 Tuesday Jan 2013
Posted in superhero
Tags
adamantium, adamantium skeleton, Death of a Dream, Fatal Attractions, Magneto, magneto pulled adamantium skeleton from wolverine, Wolverine, X-men
Today we’ll look at the scene where Magneto finally got so fed-up with our favorite shaggy-haired mutant that he ripped all the adamantium out of Wolverine’s body. Damn, that had to hurt!
We’ve shared some scenes where Wolverine got his adamantium skeleton. If you want to see the cover, see our complete Fatal Attractions hologram wraparound covers for this whole series. Enjoy!
Collector’s Guide: From X-Men #25; Marvel, 1993: part of the Fatal Attractions epic. Script by Fabian Nicieza, pencils by Andy Kubert, inks by Matthew Ryan.
19 Tuesday Jun 2012
Posted in superhero
Tags
Chris Claremont, John Romita jr, Storm, subscription, Uncanny X-Men, Uncanny X-Men 193, Wolverine, X-men
Normally I forego lengthy exposition here on Mars. But every so often, the madness of a memoir overtakes me. Today is one of those days. So, if you’d like to skip all this nonsense and simply bask in the radiant glory of Uncanny X-men #193, then just scroll your way down, down, down…
Still here? Okay, then. In 1985, I was 12 years old. Early in the year, perhaps with a cash gift for my birthday, I filled out my first subscription form. In 1985, this meant cutting out a square of paper from a Marvel comic — an act of pointless desecration that pains me to recall. Given a time machine, my first stop would be in 1985 to give a young Martian a ride to the copy shop, where for 5 measly cents he could spare the life of a Marvel comic.
Marvel was always running a deal: 16 issues for the price of 12, for example. Considering that 65 cents got you a complete comic in those bygone days of the Reagan era, you could get a lot of comics for not too much money. And so, a few months went by until I received the first issue of my first subscription in the mailbox.
At the time, Marvel placed its comics inside a brown wrapper which resembled a paper grocery bag, only less sturdy. It was a good way to make absolutely certain your coveted book would be torn, bent, exposed to the elements, and otherwise degraded well below a NM- to a VF or worse. These days, if my retailer doesn’t put that book in a silver age bag with a board and tape it shut before shipping it in a fairly indestructible cardboard box with plenty of cushioned packing material, someone will be getting an unhappy customer on the phone!
But at age 12, I simply ran from the mailbox to the house as fast as I could to kick off my shoes, jump onto the couch, and dive into the world of superheroes! It would take two more years before I discovered the joys of real Comic Shops as opposed to the news racks at Walgreens and Magic Mart; two more years before I discovered weekend employment as a golf caddy and the subsequent joy of squandering my entire paycheck on bagged and boarded back issues.
And so, I slid the comic book out of the gnarly brown wrapper. It was Uncanny X-Men #193, a double-length adventure marking the 100-issue anniversary of the “New” X-men: Storm, Colossus, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and all the wonderful characters brought to us from the minds of Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum. An occasion for rapturous thrills? A Mighty Marvel Milestone? A senses-shattering slab of superhero supremacy?
Actually, I hated it. Now, John Romita, Jr. has since earned my respect and affection as an artist, and many of his books hold places of honor in my collection. But, when I first saw his work, I felt dismay. I’d been brought up on the classic Marvel house style: Romita, Sr., John Buscema, Jack Kirby, Herb Trimpe, Steve Ditko, John Byrne — all tight, clean lines with boldness powerfully pounding the panels. The younger Romita’s light, sketchy style seemed to have little to do with all that — at least, to my 12-year-old eyes.
I finished the story and sincerely hoped that next month a different art team would be on the book. But the next month, it was the same artists! And the month after that — the same artists! This may sound stupid to you, this hope for another art team, but I had a lot to learn back then. I’d never had a subscription before. All the comics I read came from different time periods. I’d have a book I bought four months ago, and then a book I had at age six, plus a collected edition with 4 or 5 art teams, and then random books from 20 years out of Gramma’s garage. I’d never actually been with a book for any consistent length of time, but instead absorbed decades of comics’ history a la carte.
Now, with my first X-men subscription, I learned that creative teams stuck with books for a while! But my dismay grew worse. Before the subscription ended, my tender young brain received the horrifying classic Uncanny X-men #198. Although Romita Jr. gave my system a shock, he ill-prepared me for the work of Barry Windsor-Smith. Storm on the verge of death in Africa? A scene of live birth followed by the death of an old man? Realistic anatomy and humanized despair? I can appreciate this issue now, but it really was not “kid stuff.” Claremont and Windsor-Smith’s Life-Death was too intense — too adult — for a 12-year-old still accustomed to Herb Trimpe’s Hulk punching out a guy in brightly colored tights for 20 pages! It wasn’t exactly over my head so much as it was like switching from Kool-Aid to Jack Daniels without any notice.
Oh, but it got worse. Uncanny X-Men #205 showed up a few months later. What? This Windsor-Smith guy again? I don’t mind telling you that reading it gave me the most traumatic comic book experience of my entire life. It disturbed me. It unsettled me. It horrified me. Barry’s serpentine depictions of the terrifying bio-med transformation. The grotesque anatomy of Lady Deathstrike in her wires and fluids and weirdness. Do you know that feeling you get watching a really scary movie in the middle of the night with all the lights off during a storm? That’s nothing. I was ten times that troubled in the middle of a brightly-lit afternoon.
It would be many years before I could read that book without a severe case of the willies. In fact, I read it now and find it absolutely stunning! Along with Windsor-Smith’s work on Wolverine’s adamantium procedure from Marvel Comics Presents, it sets a very high bar for incorporating horror, science fiction, and superheroes. It was just a little more than I could handle back then!
In some ways, it reminds me of beer. (Fitting, as Wolverine really likes beer.) My first taste of beer proceeded my teens by a few years. It was the grossest liquid I ever put in my mouths — except maybe Nyquil. These days, I like to order the highest alcohol content beer the bar will serve me! Things change as you age, and that includes your tastes, and also what you can appreciate.
It also reminds me of calluses. When you first start playing the guitar, it hurts. Your fingers can’t take it for very long. But after time, you build up a protective layer of skin that keeps you from being so sensitive to pain. In time, it doesn’t bother you at all, and you can have loads of fun with it! Reading Uncanny X-men #205 at age 12 was like playing guitar with no calluses. I just had no protective barrier between my young mind and the pain Wolverine endured in that issue.
Shortly thereafter, my subscription to Uncanny X-men expired, and I did not renew it! But I learned a lot, and it shaped the future of my collecting. Understanding that creative teams stuck with books for a while made me much more attentive to who worked on a book, and when. I paid more attention to the artist and writer credits, and started to learn more about their work. I learned to identify what I liked, and find more of it. And while some people are loyal to characters or titles, I remain loyal to creative teams. Some readers may subscribe to X-men no matter who is producing the book, but I will always look for runs by creative teams who really “do it” for me. I also learned that just because I don’t “get” a book at first doesn’t mean it’s bad. Maybe I’m not just ready for it! The best stories age well with time, and the best of the best are almost timeless. So, don’t be too quick to dismiss something that doesn’t immediately grab you. You just might be overlooking a classic!
Now that you scrolled past all that reminiscing, enjoy the first comic book I ever got by subscription: Uncanny X-Men #193!
10 Saturday Dec 2011
Posted in superhero
Welcome to the Wolverine Gallery! It’s an ongoing project, so just click Wolverine Gallery to see everything in this virtual exhibition!
Today’s Wolverine feature comes from a 1993 X-Men Portfolio by John Byrne. The original prints in the Portfolio were black and white. So if you find one for $250 on eBay, don’t expect color!
09 Friday Dec 2011
Posted in superhero
Welcome to the Wolverine Gallery! It’s an ongoing project, so just click Wolverine Gallery to see everything in this virtual exhibition!
Collector’s Guide: From the interior of the back cover of Wolverine #50. It’s the one with the cool “ripped” cover that looks like a manila file folder with claw marks in it. Yes, they really put holes in the cover – you can see the first page through it!
Dig Jim Lee? So do we. Click Jim Lee if you don’t believe us. We have some sweet posters and wrap-around covers from his X-men days.
09 Friday Dec 2011
Posted in superhero
Welcome to the Wolverine Gallery! It’s an ongoing project, so just click Wolverine Gallery to see everything in this virtual exhibition!
Collector’s Guide: From the very first page of Marvel Comics Presents #1. Published September 1988, the serialized Wolverine stories kicked off the “Patch” adventures in Madripor. These would form the basis of Larry Hama’s 1988 Wolverine series.
06 Thursday Oct 2011
Posted in superhero
Tags
Who can resist mutants on shiny silver backgrounds? Here’s a pair of covers from the X-Men’s 30th Anniversary media blow-out in 1993. We reconstructed the full fold-out cover from Wizard for you.
Collector’s Guide: From Uncanny X-Men #300; Marvel, 1993. Also from Wizard X-Men 30th Anniversary Special #1; 1993.
03 Monday Oct 2011
Posted in superhero
Prepare yourselves for the most brutal battle in the history of comics as Wolverine returns — and unleashes a tidal wave of bloody revenge! It’s Wolverine versus the Hulk Gang to the death! Don’t miss the flesh-rending final chapter to the greatest Wolverine story ever told by the peerless Mark Millar and Steve McNiven!
Collector’s Guide: From Wolverine Giant Size Old Man Logan #1.
02 Sunday Oct 2011
Posted in superhero
Wolverine does to the Red Skull what Captain America should have done years ago. Backstory: Red Skull killed all the heroes years ago. He keeps their costumes in his trophy room. He especially likes wearing Cap’s outfit. But if you take Wolverine prisoner, you should lock up all the dangerous toys first!
Collector’s Guide: From Wolverine #72, part of the Old Man Logan series from 2008-2009 by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven.
22 Thursday Sep 2011
Welcome to the Wolverine Gallery! It’s an ongoing project, so just click Wolverine Gallery to see everything in this virtual exhibition. Continuing our glorious mission to document every single fight Wolverine has ever had with a dinosaur, Mars Will Send No More presents this goodie from artist Mike Mignola.
In Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure, Mignola and author Walter Simonson take our favorite reptile-ripping mutant to the Savage Land! Wolverine joins a primitive tribe and totally scores with a curvaceous jungle babe who doesn’t mind posing in her underwear when T. Rex comes to call.
We’re not really sure why Wolverine ever came back from there?!
Collector’s Guide: From Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure TPB.
20 Tuesday Sep 2011
Tags
Black Bolt, dinosaur, Inhumans, Mark Millar, Old Man Logan, Steve McNiven, tyrannosaurus rex, Venom, Wolverine
Mark Millar might have a direct link to our brains that helps him cook up insane ideas like “What if the alien symbiote Venom attached itself to a dinosaur?” Mark, we thought you’d never ask! Just make sure you get McNiven to draw that bad boy — and maybe you could work in Black Bolt from the Inhumans somehow.
Collector’s Guide: “Old Man Logan” spans Wolverine #66-72 plus Wolverine Giant Size Old Man Logan #1. Now collected in the Old Man Logan paperback and hardcover.
18 Sunday Sep 2011
Posted in science fiction, superhero
Welcome to the Wolverine Gallery! It’s an ongoing project, so just click Wolverine Gallery to see everything in this virtual exhibition. We continue our look at the terrible procedure that implanted Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton. This amazing artwork from Barry Windsor Smith appeared in a thirteen-part story serialized in Marvel Comics Presents #73-84.
Collector’s Guide: From Marvel Comics Presents #73. Reprinted in Marvel Premiere Classic Library Edition #5; Marvel, 2007. (Collects Wolverine: Weapon X, from Marvel Comics Presents #72-84.)
17 Saturday Sep 2011
Posted in superhero
Welcome to the Wolverine Gallery! It’s an ongoing project, so just click Wolverine Gallery to see everything in this virtual exhibition. Here begins a thirteen-part story with incredible art by Barry Windsor Smith in Marvel Comics Presents #73-84. This marks the first time we saw Wolverine’s torturous adamantium implant procedure in such detail.
Collector’s Guide: From Marvel Comics Presents #73. Reprinted in Marvel Premiere Classic Library Edition #5; Marvel, 2007. (Collects Wolverine: Weapon X, from Marvel Comics Presents #72-84.)
Drop by tomorrow for more of Wolverine’s adamantium procedure.
08 Thursday Sep 2011
Posted in superhero
Tags
adamantium skeleton, Barry Windsor Smith, Chris Claremont, Lady Deathstrike, Wolverine, Wounded Wolf, X-men
Welcome to today’s exhibit in our Wolverine Gallery! More Barry Windsor Smith art for you — this time from Uncanny X-Men #205. Here are some totally gruesome human science projects for you, and lots of Wolverine in berserker mode. The story is called “Wounded Wolf.” Smith also drew the first look we had at the full procedure for implanting Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton.
If you want to know who this Lady Deathstrike character is and why she wants to kill our favorite mutant, go check out Wolverine’s origin as revealed in the mid-80s in Alpha Flight #33-34. You’ll get the lowdown on psycho-lady and learn a few awesome things about Wolverine!
Collector’s Guide: From Uncanny X-Men #205.
01 Thursday Sep 2011
Posted in superhero
Tags
adamantium skeleton, Alpha Flight, Bill Mantlo, Lady Deathstrike, Mike Mignola, origin, Sal Buscema, Wolverine, Wolverine Origin
Hats off to Marvel for finding fresh ways to sell a gazillion Wolverine stories to today’s newer fans. We’re glad our favorite mutant can keep the lights on at the House of Ideas! But things were simpler before all this “Wolverine Origins” explosion. Part of Wolverine’s appeal was that we did not know all of his past! Bill Mantlo (with artist Sal Buscema) pulled back the veil ever-so-slightly in the first volume of Alpha Flight. We learned a little bit more about how Wolvie got his adamantium skeleton.
For those without photographic recollection of the plot lines, all you need to know is this: James MacDonald “Mac” Hudson was the founder of Alpha Flight. Alpha Flight was the name of a government project to create a Canadian super-team. Logan and Mac were buddies back when the team was coming together. Mac’s wife Heather donned Mac’s costume following his death in Alpha Flight #12. Here, Wolverine and Heather have a heart-to-heart in the forest before they get jumped by a horde of pissed-off samurai/ninja creeps.
Collector’s Guide: From Alpha Flight #33-34.
Also features two outstanding Mike Mignola covers. Roll the clip!
25 Thursday Aug 2011
Posted in superhero
Joss Whedon brought a certain simplicity back to Wolverine during the two years he and John Cassaday produced the Astonishing X-Men. Wolverine no longer trudged the planet with enormous paragraphs of Chris Claremont‘s monologues weighing him down. Whedon’s Wolverine just wanted a good scrap and a cold beer!
Witness these two brief scenes from Astonishing X-men #7 and #17. In #7, the team goes up against your basic evil giant monster from below. The rest of the team does their typical X-men soul-searching interior dialogue while fighting. But not Wolverine!
Later, in #17, a psychic messes with Wolvie’s head, turning him into some kind of foppish British school-boy. Oh the agony! But Wolverine gets a bump on the head that brings him to his senses.
We’ll even throw in a couple Wolverine variant covers from this killer series.
Collector’s Guide: Available in single issues as Astonishing X-men, and also collected as the Astonishing X-Men Omnibus.
Mars Will Send No More 