OK, so, time to get back to reviewing comics simmo. What’s going to work this time? What sort of books will you review? How will you do it? Well, lets leave it kind of open right now. New stuff. Old stuff. Trades. Heck, I might even throw in a little bit of DC from time to time. (Yes, I am starting to dip my toe in there). Give me suggestions, let me know what you enjoy, don’t enjoy, would like to see reviewed. Onwards to the first review after a long hiatus then…
THE EVOLUTIONARY WAR
I got into Marvel comics when I was about 5. I remember getting a Marvel Pin-Up book for my birthday, with artwork from every book Marvel was publishing around then. Kirby FF. Colan DD. Starlin Warlock and Cockrum X-Men. All cool. But towards the back of the boo, one pin-up grabbed me. Looking back at it now, it’s easily the worst in the book: it’s a simple collage (a reprint from some early issue that I’ve since spotted in an Essential volume). But it was the Avengers. So many cool heroes on one page. And I was intrigued by (not Hercules) the guy with the bow and arrow.
Cut to 6 years later. A friend gave me a comic with Avengers in the title. But it didn’t look the same as the Avengers I remembered. The guy with the bow and arrow was in charge. And I liked it. So, I picked up another West Coast Avengers book, and this would be the one that pretty much began my collecting on a full-time basis. It was Annual #3.
The point of all of this backstory? Well, the annual was the 9th part of a larger crossover, and I’d never read the whole Evolutionary Wars story. So, in a fit of nostalgic lunacy, I’ve gone back and read all 11 parts, to see what was actually going on with the High Evolutionary. Except the ALF annual. Remember ALF? Yeah, I didn’t read his book.
So, the Evolutionary War. 11 annuals, all 64 pages long, with around half the books dedicated to the main story, the rest filled with minor stories and pin-ups, and a history of the High Evolutionary himself. All of it average.
The main plot involves the High Evolutionary sending out a team of armoured "Purifiers" (take note X fans, they’re different to the current religious batch) to wipe out genetic dead ends, destroy impurity, and, well, act as cannon fodder for heroes to knock around. That’s pretty much it. All the while, the High Evolutionary acts cryptically, mysteriously doing…well, I’m still not really sure what he does. He stands and plans. And, at least in the WCA annual, puts heroes into a maze with killer robots in order to…erm…test them?
It’s all rather silly. And, frankly, it’s hard to care about any of what’s happening. The final part, Avengers Annual #17, actually has a bit of momentum to it, as a rag-tag bunch prevent the Evolutionary from detonating a "genetic bomb". Aside from that, it all just muddles through. We do get a dose of X-Babies in the Uncanny X-Men Annual, and, after being destroyed for a few years, the Savage Land is restored. Ka-Zar and Shanna have a child, which I can’t remember seeing again. Apocalypse pops up in the X-Factor chapter, the Inhumans in Fantastic Four, a Gwen Stacy "clone" in Spectacular Spider-Man, and Speedball in Amazing Spidey. And confusingly, with no explanation, Beast goes from human and dumb in the first part to hirsute and loquacious (I’m typing like Beast here) in the Avengers part.
The art is what you’d expect from the late 80’s annuals: lots of work from lesser known talent, on a quality of paper that makes the ink kinda smudgy. Mark Bagley gets some of his earliest work in the Amazing & Spectacular Spider-Man annuals, which is nice to see, and looks a lot more angular than his more recent stuff. Art Adams pencils the X-Men, and Kieron Dwyer tries his hand with the FF.
It’s weird going back to this kind of stuff. On the one hand, it’s nice to go back and finally read a complete story, of sorts. On the other, the things I liked when I was 11 years old are certainly not the things that float my boat anymore. But then again, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
(Images sourced from comics.org)
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