The Avengers in the Veracity Trap

The Avengers in the Veracity Trap is the latest graphic novel in Abrams Books' MarvelArts line. It's by Chip Kidd and Michael Cho. Like the previous MarvelArts release, Ross' Fantastic Four: Full Circle, it's a visual treat: the color and design is fantastic, and Cho's art perfectly captures the Marvel Age vibe, down to sort of meta touches like every character being introduced in a Mighty Marvel Pin-Up.

Storywise, it starts with an Avengers brawl with a host of Kirby-style Marvel monsters, courtesy of Loki, but soon develops in an even more metatextual direction as Thor pursues Loki outside the realm of the comic. The Avengers soon must come to terms with the sense-shattering reality of their existence and the fictional counterparts of Kidd and Cho finding the story becoming all too real!

What could easily have been either an extended joke or a saccharine nostalgia piece, manages to do a little of both, and avoid going too far in either direction. The affection the creators feel for these characters come through, but they keep it all moving.

In the end, Kidd and Cho get to do what they do best, as do the Avengers, and the team-up put an end to Loki's schemes.

Veracity Trap is available digitally, but something that's something looks this good and that is fundamentally about the love and impact of those Silver Age stories deserves to be read in physical form.

A Map of the Vega System

 This map by Todd Klein of the Vega System in the DC Universe appeared in a color version in Omega Men (vol 1) #33. This black and white version I believe appeared in the DC Heroes Roleplaying Game supplement Atlas of the DC Universe (1990).

Paperback Flashback: Thief of Llarn

Having recently revisited Gardner Fox's Sword & Planet novel Warrior of Llarn, 1966's Thief of Llarn. Poor Alan Morgan can't relax into married life with the beautiful princess Tuarra of Karthol because the thieves' guild of Llarn is stealing all the ultra-rare, precious stones called verdals. One of which happens to be in Tuarra's wedding ring.

On their way to consult with some scientists in another city-state, Morgan and his wife are waylaided by an immortal, psychic entity, who also is very much concerned about the verdal thefts. He forces Morgan to go undercover for him under threat of death rather than, you know, just teaming up. As the legendary thief, Uthian the Unmatched, Alan Morgan must steal a verdal from a remote, ancient city, then infiltrate the thieves' guild to find out who has commissioned these crimes and why. As is typical with this sort of thing, it is a leader with designs on conquest and a super-weapon.

This sequel is, I think, better than the first. Where Warrior of Llarn, while colorful, followed the predictable points in the Sword & Planet Hero's Journey, this one is freed from those restrictions. There are couple of interesting perils and new cultures and the character of super-thief Uthian the Unmatched brings a bit of Sword & Sorcery verve to things, even if he's only Alan Morgan playing a role. The Tower of Ten Thousand Deaths was neat as was the variegated force field that protected the verdal Morgan had to steal. He seemed like something that might have appeared in Fox's Adam Strange.

Will the Pre-Crisis Legion Ever All Get Collected?

The collection strategies of the Big Two for hardcovers/trades annoys me at times. Let's use for an example the Legion of Super-Heroes, Pre-Crisis since that's the only Legion era I really care about. 

You've got multiple ways to read the Silver Age/early Bronze Age Legion stuff, though several are out of print. The Showcase Presents volumes carry you up to Superboy #220 (1976), the archives to Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #233 (1977), but the omnibuses (the most recent format) only carry you to Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #106 (1967).

If you had the archives, you could then pick up with Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 1 and 2, which would carry you through DC Comics Presents #14 (1979). If you only have the omnibuses, you've got a gap of 12 years.

Either way, you would next go the Legion of Super-Heroes: Before the Darkness Vol. 1-2. This carries you through stories in 1982 and Legion of Super-Heroes #283. If you followed that up with Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga trade you'd have a gap of 3 issues. If you sprang for the Deluxe Edition hardcover, it has those issues, and you're covered to issue 296 (1983).

Next, you would pick out Legion of Super-Heroes: The Curse, and if you got the Deluxe Edition, that will carry you up to issue 313 (1984), and the launch of a new Legion title. That's Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 and there were two slim trades of that volume in 2007 and 2008. That would get you up to issue 13 of that series and 1985. Pre-Crisis, this series continues until about issue 27 (or maybe Annual 2) both of which are in 1986. So, 14 issues of the main title plus some limits and annuals uncollected.

And then there's the old Legion title (what was volume 2) that became Tales of the Legion during this period. None of the material from 314-325 (after which it becomes a reprint book) has been collected!

Why so many formats? And why the gaps?

Paperback Flashback: Planet of Peril

Continuing with some Sword & Planet reading, I decided to check out one of ERB's earliest imitators: Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline was an editor and literary agent predominantly, but he wrote a number of adventure stories in a Burroughsian vein in the 30s and 40s. The Planet of Peril, serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1929, is his first planetary romance, and the first of a trilogy about Robert Grandon of Terra on the planet Venus.

Overall, the beats of the story are various much in the mold of A Princess of Mars. Grandon arrives on Venus (Zarovia) by telepathic transmission, gets in some danger, meets a friend, meets a girl, then has numerous perilous episodes before he and girl can be united marriage. And of course, Grandon ascends to a place of rulership. 

Kline's prose is probably as good as Burroughs' and his adventuresome perils are as imaginative as the typical Burroughs work (if maybe not quite as good as ERB's best): there jungle beasts, intelligent, giant ants, and lecherous potentates. The pace is quick and punctuated with serialized adventure fiction cliffhangers. Kline seems to have put just as much thought into his Venusian neologisms and invent biosphere.

The differences between The Planet of Peril and the Barsoom stories are interesting. John Carter's combat prowess is explained by his status as a sort of eternal "fighting man." Grandon, by contrast, is just a bored rich guy. On the other hand, Grandon's transport to Venus is given more of a story justification (if a pseudoscientific one) rather than just happening. Also, unlike the Barsoomians, Kline's Venusians can and do employ armor when it would benefit them to do so. Vernia has the interesting wrinkle of being more of an antagonist than Dejah Thoris, but on the other hand, Kline doesn't sell her allure with near the facility that Burroughs does his Martian princess.

Overall, if you like Burroughs' planet romance fiction, you'll probably like Kline's.

Fantastic Four: First Steps

Last night, I caught Fantastic Four: First Steps. It's been a good summer for superhero fans, with films from both Marvel and DC that easily above average for the genre. It's unfortunate, perhaps, that coming out in close proximity means the films will inevitably be compared to each other.

Like Superman, FF eschews the origin story to jump into a universe where the characters are already firmly established (4 years for the FF, 3 years for Superman) and well-loved by the public. FF pits new challenges against its protagonists, who are both heroes, celebrities, and effectively politic players through what is (I guess) an NGO. The first is a happy one: Sue's pregnancy. The second is the arrival of the Silver Surfer (though the name is never used in the movie, I don't think) who heralds the coming of Galactus.

Again, like Superman, FF gets a bit episodic with the overall narrative, as the team conceives and tries and generally fails at different means of stopping the threat. Franklin Richards is born in what may be films first zero gee birth sequence while they are feeling Galactus' relentless herald through space, after a failed attempt to negotiate with World Devourer.

FF has a more serious tone that Superman, despite having a bit less darkness to it. (While the world is imperiled there are no on-screen murders or torture, for instance). There are less jokes, though, and decidedly less of the typical Marvel quipiness.  The warmth of the team and their connection as a family does come through, though.

If I have a complaint about the film, it is with these family dynamics. The often (in the comics) fractious team members are pretty harmonious. A reasonable choice given how plot heavy it is, but none of the team get any sort of individual arc, except arguably Reed. There are gestures in that direction, but only gestures. Reed and Sue get a decent amount of character development and a bit of growth, but Ben only has the surface features of his comic portrayal, and Johnny, his hot-headed youth and womanizing attenuated to only shadows, doesn't really have anything else to replace, save perhaps a certain impatience and doggedness. He's worst served by the script.

Still, the performances are good with what they have to work with. There are tense sequences. The mid-century design sensibility manages to break the Marvel sameness to give it a distinct style. Galactus maybe should have been worked on a bit more to shore up imposing solidity, but we do get to see a giant in a goofy helmet stride through New York City, as that's something.

Paperback Flashback: Warrior of Llarn

I'm rereading a pulp novel from the 1964 I read a few years ago (well, technically I'm listening to it as a audiobook this time).

Gardner Fox isn't exactly known for his great contributions to literature, though he made substantial contributions to Golden and Silver Age DC Comics. According to Wikipedia, he's co-creator Barbara Gordon, the original Flash, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Doctor Fate, Zatanna and the original Sandman, and he's estimated to have written more than 4,000 comics stories. He also wrote a number of stories for pulp magazine in their heyday, and I feel like his work is always competent, and often above average for their output.

Warrior of Llarn is a Sword & Planet yarn in the vein of Burroughs' Mars and an original paperback, not a fix-up of his older pulp work. Earthman Alan Morgan gets transport to a distant world by means as yet mysterious. He saves a princess and gets involved with a war between two civilizations. The level of technology of the world is a bit higher than Barsoom, and Fox provides a Dune-esque (a year before Dune) explanation for why people with energy weapons might still use swords. Like Fox's earlier Adam Strange stories for DC, the planet has suffered a nuclear war in the past, which is the cause of its strange creatures and current lower level of civilization. Fox's story is old fashion, even quaint in many ways, but he's accomplished at delivering the goods. Whatever the books faults, it's not boring.

Fox wrote a sequel, Thief of Llarn, which, if memory serves, is a bit better than the first.