#IReadsYou Review: CYBERFORCE #1 30th Anniversary Edition

CYBERFORCE #1 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
IMAGE COMICS/Top Cow Productions

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

STORY: Eric Silvestri
ART: Marc Silvestri
COLORS: Joe Chiodo
LETTERS: Mike Heisler
EDITOR: Cynthia Sullivan
COVER: Marc Silvestri and Scott Williams with Joe Chiodo
VARIANT COVER ARTISTS: Priscilla Petraites; Brett Booth
46pp, Color, $4.99 U.S. (June 2022)

Rated T+/Teen Plus

Cyberforce created by Marc Silvestri

“The Tin Men of War” Part One

Cyberforce was one of Image Comics debut titles, and it was created by one of Image Comic' founding members, Marc Silvestri.  Cyberforce #1 (cover dated: October 1992) was the first issue of a four-issue miniseries.  It introduced a team of mutants who had their mutant abilities enhanced with cybernetic implants as the result of experimentation.  Volume 2 of Cyberforce ran for 35 issues from 1994 to 1997.  Since then, Cyberforce has returned in 2006, 2012, 2015 and 2018.

Image Comics has published a commemorative edition of that first Cyberforce #1 from 1992.  Cyberforce #1 30th Anniversary Edition reprints the story contents of Cyberforce #1 and also includes an illustrated sixteen page section focusing on the early history of Image Comics.  Cyberforce #1 is written by Eric Silvestri; drawn by Marc Silvestri; colored by Joe Chiodo; and lettered by Mike Heisler.

Cyberforce #1 opens in New York City – the inner city.  Velocity, a young woman who is a mutant, is on the run.  It seems that she is being hunted by “C.O.P.S.” (Cybernetic Operatives for Protection and Security), and their leader, Ballistic, a female cybernetic operative.  These operatives are in the service of Cyberdata, a monolithic multinational conglomerate which creates cybernetically enhanced resistance fighters.

Luckily for Velocity, there is a team made up of such fighters who escaped from Cyberdata.  They are Ripclaw, Heatwave, Stryker, Cyblade, and Impact.  They are known as “Cyberforce,” and they may be Velocity's only hope to avoid the clutches of Cyberdata.

THE LOWDOWN:  Initially, Cyberforce was not my favorite Image Comics superhero title.  That was Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.s, but over the years, I have come to really like Cyberforce.  I think the original Cyberforce miniseries is the best early Image Comics' title and is also one of the best superhero comic books of the early 1990s.

Cyberforce is obviously inspired by Uncanny X-Men.  Cyberforce creator, Marc Silvestri, was the lead artist on that title from 1987 to 1990.  I think Cyberforce once had the potential to rival the X-Men, but in the end, average writing and mediocre Silvestri copycat artists, as well as middling spin-offs dragged this potential franchise down.

Cyberforce #1 30th Anniversary Edition is a celebration of a particular time, when the debut of Image Comics offered so much promise for creator-owned superhero comic books.  Over time, Image Comics would gradually become a home for a wide variety of genres of creator-owned comic books, especially in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and action genres.  However, Cyberforce #1 30th Anniversary Edition remembers the beginnings of Image Comics, and for some of us, those beginnings will always be special.

Also, 1992's Cyberforce #1 is just a damn good first issue.  Yes, writer Eric Silvestri seems to be squeezing a tad too much information into the first issue, but he makes this first issue and the world it introduces seem like the place to be.  Marc Silvestri's art lacks the polish that it would usually get from the inks of Scott Williams.  Still, his dynamic layouts and the steadiness of his drama make for engaging graphical storytelling.

Joe Chiodo's muted colors add a sense of realism to the story.  Mike Heisler's letters catch the shifting tones and intensity of the narrative that sell the story.  The result is a memorable first issue.

Sometimes, I dream that Cyberforce will be mine, and I will finally bring them to the heights they deserve.  Well, while a fanboy is dreaming, older fans can celebrate with Cyberforce #1 30th Anniversary Edition and new readers can discover something they might like.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of Top Cow and of the early years of Image Comics will want to read Cyberforce #1 30th Anniversary Edition.

A
★★★★+ out of 4 stars


[The comic book includes 16-page section of back matter:

“30 Years of Cyberforce” by Lisa Wu looks back at the early days of Image Comics and Top Cow.  It is comprised of a Q&A with Marc Silvestri, Scott Williams, David Wohl, and Brian Haberlin.  It also includes examples of original art and color guides.

“Cyberforce Through the Years”: this is comprised of a cover gallery from various Cyberforce publications; character sketches by Marc Silvestri; art related to trading cards; storyboards for an unproduced Cyberforce animated television series; photos of toys; and miscellaneous images.]

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


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#IReadsYou Review: SPAWN #300

SPAWN #300

IMAGE COMICS

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

STORY: Todd McFarlane with Scott Snyder (Chapter 2)

PENCILS: Greg Capullo (Chapter 1); Todd McFarlane (2); Jason Shawn Alexander (3) J. Scott Campbell (4); Jerome Opeña (5)

INKS: Todd McFarlane with Jonathan Glapion and J. Scott Campbell

COLORS: FCO Plascencia; Brian Haberlin; Peter Steigerwald; Matt Hollingsworth

LETTERS: Tom Orzechowski

EiC: Jon Goff

COVER: Todd McFarlane

VARIANT COVER ARTISTS: Todd McFarlane; Greg Capullo; Greg Capullo and Todd McFarlane; J. Scott Campbell; Jerome Opeña; Jason Shawn Alexander; 

72pp, Color, $7.99 U.S. (September 2019)

Spawn created by Todd McFarlane

Spawn is a superhero/antihero character that stars in the long-running comic book series, Spawn.  Published by Image Comics since its first issue, Spawn is Image's longest running title and, in terms of number of issues, is one of the longest-running independently-published comic book series in American comics history.  [When I use the term, “independently-published,” I mean that it is not published by a comic book publisher like Marvel or DC Comics that is owned by a media conglomerate.]

Created by writer-artist and Image co-founder, Todd McFarlane, Spawn first appeared in Spawn #1 (cover dated: May 1992).  Spawn is Albert Francis Simmons.  He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps, and he went on to work for the United States Secret Service and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  Simmons joined the U.S. Security Group as a highly capable assassin, but is murdered during a mission.

Because of his life as an assassin, Simmons is sent to Hell where he made a deal with Malebolgia, one of the major Lords of Hell.  Simmons agreed to become a “Hellspawn” (an officer in Hell's army) and to serve Malebolgia if he is allowed to see his wife, Wanda, one last time.  While Malebolgia does return Simmons to Earth as a creature named “Spawn,” he stripped Simmons of his memories.  Eventually, Spawn decided to break his agreement Hell, and then, began a long campaign to stop the forces of evil.

Spawn has reached its three-hundredth issue, and like he did for Spawn #100 and Spawn #200, McFarlane adds big names to this special issue's creative team.  That includes DC Comics' superstar, Scott Snyder, as co-writer; superstar comic book artist Greg Capullo; rising star, Jerome Opeña; artist Jason Shawn Alexander; and variant cover hustler, J. Scott Campbell.  Colorists FCO Plascencia, Brian Haberlin, Peter Steigerwald, and Matt Hollingsworth join longtime Spawn letterer Tom Orzechowski to complete the creative team.

Spawn #300 opens in Kearney, Nebraska, where the Johnston family is having its annual family reunion during the first weekend of August, as it has for the last twenty-six years.  What is different this year is that there is a killer among them.

Meanwhile, Spawn continues his mission to free humanity from the clutches of both Heaven and Hell.  Having already freed his own ass, Spawn is without his allies from Hell, and Heaven sure hasn't stopped being his enemy.  Now, Spawn must face two of his oldest adversaries, the Clown and Violator.  While Spawn fights to survive to the next stage of his struggle, new allies, however, are emerging...

I was a Spawn reader from the first issue back in 1992.  I even read spin-off miniseries and ongoing series like Angela (Image Comics, 1994-1995), Curse of the Spawn (Image Comics, 1996-1999), and Spawn/WildC.A.T.S. (Image Comics, 1996).  I stuck with Spawn for almost six years.  Why did I quit?  The story never really seemed to be going anywhere, and the story was stuck in a rut.  It was always about Spawn either pining for his life as Al Simmons or struggling against his destiny as a “Hellspawn,” a member of the officer corps that would lead the forces of Hell.

Twenty-seven years later, Spawn has not changed much.  Spawn is still struggling against Hell, but now he sees Hell and Heaven as interchangeable adversaries.  Spawn wants to lead humanity in a war against both sides in order to free itself, as he did.

Todd McFarlane, like many of his Image Comics cohorts, launched Image with comic books that looked like superhero comics.  However, these superheroes were military types – special operatives, secret agents, mercenaries, etc., and the stories featured the kind of action and violence of military science fiction and fantasy.  Quite frankly, the initial Image Comics titles were closer to movies like James Carmeron's Aliens (1986) and select titles from actor-screenwriter Sylvester Stallone's filmography (especially the Rambo film series) than they were like classic comic books.  Sure, some Image titles had a passing resemblance to Marvel and DC Comics titles.  Cyberforce and WildC.A.T.s shared elements with Marvel's X-Men, and Spawn had more than a passing resemblance to Batman, especially to the Batman of Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.  Still, Image Comics was introducing new kinds of superheroes to the American comic book artists.

The problem was that Todd McFarlane and his Image colleagues were never really good at the techniques of writing comic books.  They were all about big action-oriented illustrations that depicted violence and characters in action-figure poses.  Comics uses graphics, including illustrations, to tell stories.  Pretty art, overwrought, “detailed” art, and striking visuals does not really tell a story.

However, it is good to see the art team of Greg Capullo (pencils) and McFarlane (inks) back together.  The Capullo-McFarlane team drew most of the issues of Spawn that I read, so their reunion in Spawn #300 gives me a nice feeling of nostalgia.  Nothing else in this issue registers with me, although I must say J. Scott Campbell is perfectly utilized here.  The chapter that Campbell draws, which introduces “She-Spawn,” epitomizes the low-brow, exploitation, speculator-market crap heap from which Campbell emerged on his way to being a “superstar creator” and comic book “legend.”

The coloring and lettering in Spawn #300 are of professional quality but don't make the issue feel like the landmark it should be.  In the end, I did find some things in Spawn #300 that I liked, enough to make me be generous with me grading.

★★★ out of 4 stars

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"

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Review: NEW X-MEN #114

NEW X-MEN No. 114
MARVEL COMICS – @Marvel

[This review originally appeared on Patreon.]

STORY: Grant Morrison
PENCILS: Frank Quitely
INKS: Tim Townsend
COLORS: Brian Haberlin
LETTERS: Richard Starkings and Comicraft
COVER: Frank Quitely
32pp, Color, $2.25 U.S., $3.50 CAN (July 2001)

X-Men created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

“E is for Extinction” Part One of Three

When Joe Quesada became Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, one of his first goals (apparently) was to make the company's flagship titles regain some of “their former glory.”  One of the franchises in need of some polishing was the X-Men, and Quesada recruited writer Grant Morrison, known for his work at DC Comics, to take the X-Men in a new direction.

Morrison took X-Men, the X-title that began in 1991.  Its title was changed to New X-Men, but retained the series numbering.  Thus, the new direction began with New X-Men #114, written by Morrison; drawn by Frank Quitely (pencils) and Tim Townsend (inks), colored by Brian Haberlin; and colored by Richard Starkings.

As New X-Men #114 (“E is for Extinction” One of Three) opens, Scott Summers/Cyclops and Logan/Wolverine are in the process of destroying a Sentinel, after saving a persecuted mutant, Ugly John, from the death machine.  Meanwhile, Professor Charles Xavier, a.k.a. “Professor X,” attacks his renewed mission to help a new generation of mutants with a sense of urgency that can also be described as an episode of mania.

Jean Grey is trying to assist him, and so is Henry “Hank” McCoy a.k.a. “Beast.”  However, each has his or her own issues.  Jean and Scott's relationship is in a difficult state.  Hank has undergone a shocking “secondary” mutation that sometimes physically complicates his ability to be a super-scientist.  What the X-Men do not realize is that a new enemy has arisen from seemingly nowhere, and she wants to launch a campaign of genocide against all of mutantkind.

As a kid, I read most of my comic books so many times that they practically fell apart.  As an adult, the only comic books that I read repeatedly were Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, The Sandman, and anything by Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Will Eisner.  I also often re-read works of alternative comix creators like Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, Peter Bagge, and R. Crumb, to new a few.  Everything else was one-and-done.

I must admit, however, that I have lost track of how many times I have read the New X-Men story arc, “E is for Extinction,” especially “Part One” in New X-Men #114.  I think that the reason is because no matter when I read it, this story arc feels fresh and ground-breaking.  New X-Men # 114 especially seems new and an exhilarating; it is as if by reading it I find myself on the cusp of a revolution.

Well, New X-Men ended up being only “kind of a revolution.”  The rest of Grant Morrison's run on this series was never as explosive and “begin-with-a-bang” as “E is for Extinction,” mostly because this first story arc was so different from anything an X-Men comic book had ever been.  It was as if there were a decades' worth of advancement between New X-Men #114 and the two decades of X-Men comic books that had come before it.

Also, I find that Morrison's best work on an established comic book series is usually his first 12 issues, as was the case here.  After the first year, Morrison's work on established series or characters turns weird or contrived, although that weirdness is usually still better than most other comic books coming out at the same time.

It also did not help that Frank Quitely was incapable of keeping up a monthly schedule, so that the first two years of Morrison's run on New X-Men is a patchwork of inconsistent art styles, some of them ugly and some of them being an ill fit with Morrison's storytelling.  It seemed as if Quitely was the only artist who could make Morrison's New X-Men stories seem truly revolution.

Another thing that I have to admit is that I had and still have mixed feelings about the villain, Cassandra Nova, who turns out to be some kind of sibling to Professor X.  I think a better choice for “E is for Extinction” villain would have been either an obscure X-Men villain from the distant past or an obscure Marvel character reconstructed or “retconned” into being a mutant.  The entire subplot slash narrative angle involving Cassandra and Professor X is almost a bridge too far for me.

Still, even with my complaints, I think that New X-Men #114 is one of the all-time great single issues ever published in American comic books, so I am going to read it again.  In fact, I am going to find other individual New X-Men back issues (especially the Quitely-drawn ones) so that I can enjoy Grant Morrison's “revolution” of the X-Men.

A+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaus


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I Reads You Review: BLACK PANTHER (1998) #1

BLACK PANTHER (1998), VOL. 2 #1
MARVEL COMICS – @Marvel

WRITER: Christopher Priest with Joe Quesada
ARTIST: Mark Texeira with Alitha Martinez
COLORS: Brian Haberlin
LETTERS: RS, Comicraft’s Siobhan Hanna
COVER: Mark Texeira
EDITORS: Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
EiC: Bob Harras
32pp, Color, $2.50 US, $3.50 CAN (November 1998)

The Black Panther, also known as T’Challa, is a Marvel Comics character and was the first black superhero in mainstream American comics.  Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, the Black Panther first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 (cover dated July 1966).

The Black Panther received his first starring feature in the comic book series, Jungle Action, beginning with #5 (cover dated July 1973).  The character would eventually star in an eponymous series, Black Panther, which ran for 15 issues in the late 1970s.  In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were two Black Panther miniseries and a feature in the anthology series, Marvel Comics Presents.

Changes at Marvel Comics brought on by the company filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy gave Black Panther new life and his longest running series to date.  In 1998, Marvel Comics asked Joe Quesada to work for Marvel in an exclusive capacity.  Marvel contracted Quesada and his partners at Event Comics, including inker, Jimmy Palmiotti, to produce a line of Marvel comic books dubbed “Marvel Knights.”  Quesada edited the Marvel Knights line and worked on a number of low-profile characters, which included Black Panther.

Writer Christopher Priest and penciller Mark Texeira helped launch Marvel Knight’s Black Panther Vol. 2.  Priest used characters from the 1990-91 miniseries, Black Panther: Panther’s Rage, and introduced new characters, in particularly Everett K. Ross, an attorney in the Office of the Chief of Protocol at the U.S. State Department.

Black Panther Vol. 2 #1 opens with Ross, dressed only in his underwear and holding a pistol, perched atop a toilet.  How did he get there?  It’s a long story, and we get to read about it as he explains how he ended up in that predicament to his boss.

Ross is assigned by the State Department to keep an eye on T’Challa a/k/a The Black Panther, the king of the African nation of Wakanda.  The Black Panther is also an Avenger, and he is in the United States to investigate The Tomorrow Fund.  This is a program funded with money from Wakanda to help inner city American youth, but now the fund is tied to the death of a child.

For Ross, it is a misadventure that begins in the Leslie N. Hill Housing Project where he is to meet a king.  It hits a high low point when Ross meets the devil.

Writer Christopher Priest stated that he used the character Everett K. Ross to bridge a gap between the African culture in which much of the Black Panther mythos is based and Marvel Comics’ predominantly white readership.  I can’t speak to that.  I think comic books have maintained a “predominantly white readership” for a number of reasons.  That includes substandard marketing, advertising, and public relations, to say nothing of the publishing and editorial policies regarding who is hired and assigned to create comics.

I think that Black Panther Vol. 2 #1 is a good comic book because Priest simply delivers some exceptional character writing with Everett K. Ross.  He uses Ross both as the point of view and as the character through which Black Panther’s background and activities are seen and filtered.  It is a fresh and novel way of conveying the weird fiction that is superhero adventure comics.

I am currently rereading Priest’s Black Panther from the beginning.  I don’t know how long he maintains Ross as a storytelling vehicle, nor do I remember if this story maintains the level quality with which it begins.  But Black Panther Vol. 2 #1 remains one of the more unique re-launches that I have ever read.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


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