This week's podcast is on a revenge trip!

This week, the Back Issue Diving Podcast shines the spotlight on Parker: The Hunter, a graphic novel adaptation of Richard Stark's Parker stories. It's a damn beautiful comic book and worthy of a better talk-up than I can give it, but I tried anyway!

You can download it HERE, or listen below! As usual, follow me on Twitter @ChrisBComics for updates on future episodes.

Everybody wants some - Looking back at "Spider-Hunt"

For a large portion of the 1990's, Marvel and DC's blue chip heroes were each spread pretty thin by multiple monthly series, minis, and other gimmick-laden specials like 3-D issues and "secret files" issues. Having four (or more) monthly series devoted to a single character is beyond redundant, and different editorial houses found different methods of making each individual series matter. Superman's books were a weekly soap opera, with each issue flowing into the next and writers and artists literally passing the story to one another as if they were in some comic making relay race. The Batman titles of the time chose to stay separate (that is, until No Man's Land) and emphasize different "takes" on Batman, from the gothic horror of the main title to the action and espionage of Chuck Dixon's Detective Comics.

New Comics for the week of 1-11-17

Got money burning a hole in your pocket? Your L.C.S. would love to relieve you of it! Here are a few choice selections from this week's new releases:

Rob Durham's Cavewoman: Dragon #1 continues the Cavewoman saga, pitting the throwback jungle girl against "her strangest opponent yet". Saucy prehistoric adventures brought to you courtesy of Amryl Entertainment.

Bat Kicks and Monkey Fists

What makes Batman such an enduring character? Is it the power fantasy of a supremely capable billionaire boogeyman fighting the good fight and standing up for the little guy? Is it the toyetic nature of his gadgets and armaments? Is it his malleability and openness to interpretation? Since the days of Adam West and the original wave of Batmania, every generation has had their version of the Dark Knight, each reflecting the social mores of its time. Every time Batman falls out of the limelight, a new creative team comes along, be it in comics or on the screen, and shakes things up enough to herd readers and viewers back in droves.

This is kiddie stuff, remember?

What makes Batman such an enduring character? To kids?

He's a ninja, plain and simple. Kids love ninjas. If your kid didn't at least once run around the house and pretend to be a ninja, let's face it, there's something wrong with your kid.

The Blue Man Group

Following the debacle that was Heroes Reborn, Marvel reshuffled the deck yet again with their core characters and dealt cards to new player. The Image duo of Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee had moved some copies and generated some buzz, but the books were facing a rapid decline in quality and fan interest. You won't meet too many fans who would disagree if you said handing the reigns of the Avengers, Iron Man, and Captain America over to guys like Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid was a solid move.

The freak show is in town - Circus themed shenanigans in X-Men #111

The circus is in town and the freak show is something to behold. Hank McCoy sees some familiar faces in the troupe, but his old X-Men pals don't seem to recognize him. Something wicked this way comes in X-Men #111

The Claremont/Byrne run on X-Men is the kind of thing you sort of have to love if you're a fan of superheroes. It's required reading by this point, especially if you want to understand how a team book should function. Despite the pair not always seeing eye to eye creatively, it stands the test of time as one of the best Marvel runs, standing on a pedestal side by side with Lee and Kirby's Fantastic Four and Frank Miller's Daredevil.

Today's issue is a fun little one-off that dovetails into a larger story involving the Merry Mutant's number one nemesis, Magneto. It's the prologue to one of their most memorable confrontations with the Master of Magnetism, but for today we'll be looking at one of their lesser-known adversaries, Mesmero.

First appearing in 1968's X-Men #49, Mesmero was a small time crook with a hypnosis gimmick endowed to him by the X gene. His wacky look and persona could possibly be attributed to Arnold Drake, a creator I know best for his work with on Doom Patrol. Drake's characters and stories were always more than a little off-beat, and I tend to think of him as one of predecessors to "trippy" writers like Grant Morrison. Mesmero is set up like a wrestling jobber here, at first portrayed as a huge threat, only to be knocked aside by Magneto to cap off the issue.

I guess I'm getting ahead of myself, so I'll back it up to the start of the issue. Hank McCoy, the bouncing Beast, is looking for his former X-Men teammates (he was in the Avengers at the time) and tracks them to a circus tent in Texas of all places. There he finds them performing in a circus with no memory of their former lives. They and the other circus folk get the drop on him and he has to lead a jailbreak of sorts against their captor, Mesmero. Just as things are about to play out the way you'd expect, the real big bad rears his ugly, helmeted head.

Beast is the star of the issue and Claremont does a good job of making him an endearing protagonist. He's a stand-in for fans of the pre-Giant Size #1 X-Men fans who maybe don't care for the new team or aren't familiar. Beast is one of my favorite X-Men, and if there's one thing I dislike about the Claremont run, it's that Beast isn't in much of it (from this era anyway).

The brainwashed, "circus folk" versions of the X-Men are pretty amusing. Jean Grey is a trapeze artist and sexpot, while her boy-toy "Slim" (Cyclops) is a buffoonish bouncer. Wolverine is kept in a cage and appears feral. Banshee in the carnival barker shouting "Hurry hurry hur-RAY!" Nightcrawler and Colossus are performing freaks. Each character is seen acting pretty much the opposite of their usual self. Between this and the Beast's P.O.V., this must've been a nice break from the usual soap opera stuff for Claremont.

The cover is by Cockrum, but the interiors are by Byrne. What can I say? It's John Byrne. It's great. His X-Men stuff is some of the best comic art of its time. The layouts are pitch perfect and he knows how to pick just the right moments for each panel. He and Claremont had hit their stride by this point.

Most remarkable to me is the fact that these old issues are only 17 pages long. Modern comics are usually 20-22 pages and they still have to stretch things into trade-filling arcs. The economy of storytelling here is great. (Of course Claremont is as verbose as he is clever so it's no wonder they can jam so much into such little space.)

I think the ending of this issue is brilliant because they lull you into this basic villain of the week kind of story and then drop Magneto on you out of nowhere at the end. When I first read this in Essential X-Men Vol. 1 as a kid, that last page reveal of Mags was one of the few non-John Romita Jr. images I would try to draw again and again. That splash has really stayed with me.

That's the Back Issue Dive for today, Thanks For Reading! Follow me on Twitter @ChrisBComics and check out my other writings at Work/Shoot, Age of Mega, Tabletop Legends, and my favorite passion project, Gotham Animated.

New releases for the week of 8/10/16

Back issue diving returns tomorrow! For today, here's some notable new issues hitting the stands this week:

All Star Batman #1 (DC Comics)
Scott Snyder returns to the dark knight after a pretty great run on the main series. This also sees the legendary John Romita Jr. tackle Batman in an ongoing series for the first time ever, unless I'm mistaken. The solicitation copy promises a road trip story with Bats and the duplicitous Two-Face as fugitives on the run. The preview art looks a notch above what Romita was doing on Superman, in case you had any fears that JR Jr. was losing his touch.

Deathstroke: Rebirth #1 (DC Comics)
Christopher Priest of Quantum & Woody and Black Panther fame brings his signature style to mercenary Slade Wilson's latest ongoing endeavor. This is the obligatory "Rebirth" issue before the ongoing series kicks off in a few weeks. Preview pages have already revealed that Priest's white-text-on-black-background scene transitions have carried over from his other work, hinting that DC might just let Priest take the ball on run with it. The man is a modern master at character work and dark humor, so ol' one-eye might be a good fit for him.

Superwoman #1 (DC Comics)
Big ups to DC this week for putting talented folks in charge of what sound like pretty interesting new reads. Phil Jimenez introduces us to the new Superwoman, Lois Lane, and the notion of turning the Superman paradigm on its ear intrigues me. The breathtaking cover art alone was enough to give me pause.

Sec One-Shot (Alternative Comics)
Sarah Ferrick's series of comic book love letters may be coming to an end, but there's plenty of time in this dreary life to rediscover them. Don't let the strange, pointy-nose figure on the wraparound cover throw you off, within that cover is sure to be a collection of heart wrenching, beautifully rendered vignettes.

Rochelle #1 (Antarctic Press)
A Kafka-inspired fever dream with a high school backdrop? Maybe. A gender flipped Spider-Man style story about what it takes to be a survivor? Perhaps. A mind-altering science fiction epic that spans all of time and cyberspace? Who knows? To be honest, I'm not sure what to expect from writer John Crowther and artist Dell Barras, but it looks like it could be fun.

Black Panther #5 (Marvel Comics)
Ta-Nehisi Coates begins his second arc with T'Challa, teaming him up with fellow Avenger Manifold in an effort to stem the tide of destruction paguing his home of Wakanda thanks to a rellious faction called The People. Chris Sprouse steps into Brian Stelfreeze's shoes for this month (and maybe this whole arc, I'm not sure), but if you're going to have a fill-in, Sprouse is a hell of a good one. Just thought I'd throw this out there, in case you were looking for a place to jump on with this series.

All-New All-Different Avengers Annual #1 (Marvel Comics)
Kamala Khan might be the biggest breakout character Marvel has produced in quite a while. (Sorry, Gwenpool.) This issue sees the junior Avenger and current Ms. Marvel torment her fellow heroes with her . . . wait for it . . . FAN FICTION! As a former fanfic dork myself, I'm looking forward to this one. It also reminds me of Kitty's fairy tale, for all of you old-school X-Men fans out there.

That's quite a pull this week! What looks good to you for this week? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter (@ChrisBComics) or on Facebook (Chris Bearden, the one with the Captain Boomerang avatar). Tomorrow I'll return to diving into back issues with a look at a short-lived Marvel series from a few years ago. Thanks for reading!