Dark Reign Files is on Comixology!

So, here's Dark Reign Files on Comixology. I had a lot of fun coming up with the concept behind this book - that the super-computer villain Quasimodo had been contracted to analyze villains for Norman Osborn (at the time, Quasimodo hadn't appeared in comics for 8 years). I wish we had been given enough money to afford original art for the cover - the collage looks cheap. But I had a blast with this one; the introduction page is one of the funniest things I wrote for Marvel.

Straight from the files of Norman Osborn! The Dark Reign's chief power broker assembles a case study of professional criminals on the superhuman grid -scrutinizing threat, loyalty, influence, power, and expendability. In the words of the Green Goblin himself: "Our purpose is to know our enemies - and our enemies' enemies - as we do ourselves."

Pick it up at Comixology!

Now on Comixology: New Avengers: Most Wanted Files

This one came to our handbook team in an interesting way; our editor, Jeff Youngquist had just approved one book we'd requested, but hit us with New Avengers: Most Wanted Files as our penanc (that is, he said, "but you have to write this"). I had to make the deadline early because of my brother's wedding and I was pretty stressed out as I wrote the entries I had promised to cover. It's always left a bad taste in my mouth. Anyway, now it's preserved forever online!

An essential companion to NEW AVENGERS, SPIDER-MAN: BREAKOUT, TOXIN and more! Revelations, clarifications and explanations abound as Marvel shines its searchlight on the jailbreak of the century! In the tradition of SECRET WAR: FROM THE FILES OF NICK FURY and SECRETS OF THE HOUSE OF M, NEW AVENGERS: MOST WANTED features HANDBOOK-style bios of all the escapees, from the Answer to Zzzax!

Check it out at Comixology!

Starlin's Thanos, part 8 of 10: Gazed Too Long

Need to catch up? Part 1: The Mad Titan and the Cosmic Cube; Part 2: Chaos Meets the True Neutral; Part 3: Laid to Rest; Part 4: The Gloves Are On; Part 5: The Power Glove; Part 6: They Bite; Part 7: The Holiest War

Although Jim Starlin spent the latter half of the 90s away from Thanos, the character himself lingered on. Previously, creators had been wary of dealing with a character whom they saw as Starlin's pet - but now that The Infinity Gauntlet had made Thanos one of Marvel's biggest villains there were many who wanted a shot at him. Unfortunately, creators other than Starlin (or Ron Marz) tended to fall upon the same old tropes Starlin had already thrown out in The Infinity Gauntlet - that is, they wanted Thanos to be worshiping Death and seeking power for himself.

Thanos appeared all over the place, even in Incredible Hulk/X-Man 1998 Annual, but there were a few appearances which were particularly notorious: in 1997, Mark Waid & Andy Kubert used Thanos as the main antagonist in their first year of Ka-Zar. Pitting Thanos against Ka-Zar, a non-powered jungle hero, irritated many of Thanos' fans. The other came in 2000's Thor #21-25 wherein Dan Jurgens & John Romita Jr. sent Thanos on yet another quest for cosmic power, this time using Thor's foe Mangog as his lackey (further upsetting Mangog fans, as the villain had previously been a threat powerful enough to end Asgard on his own).

At the same time, Starlin slowly crept back to Thanos. Peter David and Chriss Cross had begun a new Captain Marvel series, using Mar-Vell's son Genis as the new Captain Marvel, bound to Rick Jones as his father had been. The series went over well, and for their 11th issue, Jim Starlin came to play (along with Al Milgrom as his inker again). The story involved Genis meeting a version of Mar-Vell from another reality, giving him the chance to finally meet a version of his father. Bringing in Starlin for this tale continued to demonstrate how he was considered the definitive Mar-Vell creator. Shortly after, there was a sequel.

Back in his Incredible Hulk run, Peter David had written a run-in between Rick's wife Marlo and Death, herself - mostly to set-up one of his infamous puns ("a brush with Death"). David now brought Marlo's connection to Death into the fore of Captain Marvel via a two-part story in issues #17-18, drawn by Starlin & Milgrom. In this tale, Death is revealed to be hiding within Marlo's body while a being called Walker pursues her; to stop Walker come Thor and Thanos as Marlo's defenders. This was the first time Starlin had ever participated in a Thanos story he didn't write himself but David's Thanos was fairly on-point, serving as a chaotic neutral figure.

It was from this that 2002's Infinity Abyss was born. The title drew obvious lines back to Starlin's Infinity trilogy of the 1990s, but this time Starlin was writing and drawing the series (Milgrom again inking). Although Spider-Man, Dr. Strange and Captain Marvel participated in the story, the real stars were Thanos and Adam Warlock. As a cosmic tremor is felt, Warlock once again emerges from a cocoon (establishing a precedent for Starlin rebooting Adam every time he would return to the character). A cosmic custodian named Atlez is dying and Adam must defend Atlez's successor. Assisting Adam are his former Infinity Watch allies Gamora, Pip, Moondragon and, of course, Thanos.

The villains of the story are the Thanosi, clones Thanos made of himself and designed to combat different superhumans (Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Professor X, Gladiator and Galactus, to be precise). Thanos reveals his Thanosi included earlier models who he pit against Ka-Zar, Thor and the Avengers (referencing Steve Englehart & Jorge Santamaria's Avengers: Celestial Quest) but the doubles were faulty and tended to lapse into mindless destruction, so Thanos abandoned the project. It's a not-so-very-thinly disguised attack on how other creators had used Thanos. Even Gamora is allowed to criticize other writers' use of Thanos as, overhearing a Thanosi talk about worshiping Death, raising armies and gaining cosmic power, she notes Thanos has evolved past that point.

Jim Starlin continued to solidify his interpretation of his creation Thanos, the former tyrant now cosmic pilgrim. But other Marvel writers continued to oppose his wishes.

Next Tuesday: False Conclusions.

The Official Index to the Marvel Universe has arrived at Comixology!

I was one of the writing crew members for The Official Index to the Marvel Universe at the same time we were producing The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. I wish we'd been able to index more books, but the index project covered a lot of titles, many of whom had scarce data available online.

Follow the history of the Marvel Universe as it unfolds with the Official Index to the Marvel Universe. Each issue provides synopses for dozens of individual comics, including back-up strips, introducing you to the characters, teams, places and equipment that appeared within, providing vital information about first appearances, where they last showed up and where they appeared next! Join us as we chronicle the Marvel Universe, starting with Spider-Man (from Amazing Fantasy #15 on), Iron Man (from Tales of Suspense #39 on) and the X-Men (from 1963's X-Men #1 on).

You can buy issues #1-14 at Comixology!

Starlin's Thanos, part 7 of 10: The Holiest War

Need to catch up? Part 1: The Mad Titan and the Cosmic Cube; Part 2: Chaos Meets the True Neutral; Part 3: Laid to Rest; Part 4: The Gloves Are On; Part 5: The Power Glove; Part 6: They Bite

In the 4th season of the television series Angel, the creators came up with a different 'Big Bad' menace for their heroes. They conceived of the character Jasmine, a 'Big Good,' someone whose goodness makes them a threat to the heroes. It's a provocative idea, but ultimately Jasmine was simply evil; she claimed the ends justified the means, but it made it very easy to dismiss her as yet another 'Big Bad' because the program needed to hit the expected beats of an action-adventure series.

It is certainly possible for a good person to cause an evil to erupt through their actions. With my recent work in missions, I've learned about missionaries whose good intentions led to a new evil where they were. The idea that good is as bad as evil is a strange kind of infantile moral relativism that doesn't bear much scrutiny. But here we are: The Infinity Crusade.

So, The Infinity Crusade is not a subtle work. The villain is the Goddess, Adam's good half, who was glimpsed during The Infinity War. Just as the Magus was drawn from Adam's evil self, the Goddess was designed in imitation of Her, Adam's would-be mate. For most of the crossover, she dresses in armour with a page boy's haircut as an evident reference to Joan of Arc.

The Goddess' goal? To purge the universe of all life, that being the only means to eradicate evil. That's not a plan that calls for much nuance. To achieve her means, the Goddess mesmerizes many super heroes, appealing to those who are the most noble or spiritual. Once again, Thanos and Adam Warlock must save the universe while the rest of Earth's heroes are mostly ineffectual.

Jim Starlin teamed with Ron Lim and Al Milgrom again on this series, which felt even more rushed than The Infinity War (Lim takes some tremendous shortcuts in the final issue). However, this series did at least wrap up Starlin's Infinity Gauntlet with a full trilogy.

There are fantastic ideas in The Infinity Crusade, but the execution botches it. The heroes in the Goddess' thrall are little more than glassy-eyed zombies, so the series sidesteps any attempt at portraying how the heroes could be so easily ensnared. Some of the tie-ins delved into this territory, but there was little in the way of consequences in this series when what it really needed were some dramatic scenes of the heroes post-brainwashing as they grappled with how their virtues had been toyed with. Compare to Starlin's earlier Warlock series and how the Magus' Universal Church of Truth was grounded and see what might have been.

Basically, The Infinity Crusade asserts that if you're a religious person, you're a sheep. How much better to be like his pets, the totally-neutral Adam Warlock and totally-grey Thanos.

Enough of the plot; what about Thanos? It was in this event that Thanos was revealed as the keeper of the Reality Gem; as he'd demonstrated that he no longer wanted ultimate power, he was an obvious custodian. The scene which reveals this in Infinity Crusade #1 obscures Thanos visually (saving the big reveal) but it's obvious from Thanos' speech balloons. Which reminds me, I should have given props to Ken Bruzenak, who developed the distinctive speech balloons Thanos used throughout the 1990s. He'd had blue speech balloons back in the 70s, but the wavy lines around his balloons in the 90s added strength to his dialogue.

With the completion of his trilogy, Jim Starlin took a step back from Marvel Comics for a time, focusing on creator-owned work. But in the 21st century he came back with a vengeance.

Next Thursday: Gazed Too Long.

On Comixology: Heroic Age: X-Men

By 2010 I wasn't really an X-Man fan (though Mike Carey was writing some decent stuff at the time), but the idea of covering the X-Men characters in Heroic Age: X-Men intrigued me. I put the book together using X-Men, mutant villains, anti-mutant villains and pro-mutant humans to give a wide view of who the X-Men were. I was especially proud to sneak in the pro-mutant human stuff and reveal what they'd been up to since last seen.

As mutantkind begins to pull back from the brink of extinction, Steve Rogers joins the fight! Appraising the state of mutants today, Steve assesses the X-Men, X-Factor, the New Mutants, the Five Lights and more from the mutant community! This Heroic Age files book also includes considerations for the humans who have sympathized with the mutant condition and takes aim at the worst of anti-mutant bigotry! See the world of mutants from Steve Rogers' vantage point, featuring everyone from Apocalypse to X-23!

Now available at Comixology!

On Comixology: Heroic Age: Villains

So, the second Heroic Age title was Heroic Age: Villains. I tried to take a wide view of the Marvel Universe's villains, even including a 2099 villain who was in the regular MU at the time (Halloween Jack). It didn't come as naturally to me as the Super Heroes book, but I enjoyed it.

Under the guidance of Steve Rogers, Earth's heroes are at an all-time high but that doesn't mean the villains are taking it lying down! Get inside Steve Rogers' secret files as he analyzes evil from the cosmic menaces of Thanos and the Cancerverse, to the arcane might of Hela and Black Talon, to the armies of Leviathan and Hydra, to the costumed escapades of Deadpool and the White Rabbit!

Get it on Comixology here!