Where Monsters Dwell #4 & Where Monsters Dwell #5

Where Monsters Dwell was a five-issue limited series that was part of the recently concluded Secret Wars Marvel crossover event. The multiverse collapses in on itself --

Now all that remains is Battleworld: a massive, patchwork planet composed of the fragments of worlds that no longer exist, maintained by the iron will of its god and master, Victor von Doom!

Each region is a domain unto itself!

While abandoning a tribal princess carrying his child, flying ace (and general jerk) Karl Kaufmann agreed to fly the fetching, well-heeled Clemmie Franklin-Cox to her husband. En route, an unnatural storm stranded them in a dangerous region of Battleworld . . .

Where Monsters Dwell

To repair his plane, Kaufmann need to steal an engine and propeller from the beautiful warrior women with whom Clemmie had very happily settled down. He convinced a tribe of diminutive cannibals to wage war on the ladies. As his troops died by the dozens, Kaufmann grabbed his plane parts, and promptly deserted them.

If the original Where Monsters Dwell, an early-70s Marvel reprint series of Silver Age SciFi and horror, treated the cultural verities of the U.S.-Soviet Union Cold War and its underlying logic of Mutually Assured Destruction through a prism of aliens from outer space, the present Where Monsters Dwell, subversively penned by Garth Ennis with compelling art by Russ Braun, depicts a social milieu where men are scheming, pussy-hungry, bloodthirsty cowards and women are strong, moral and lesbian. It is a world that is the polar opposite of the Cold War 1950s and 1960s. I think it is a fair description of our world today. If there is any hope for the species to survive, men need to be shown the way out of the halls of power.

Below are nine scans from Where Monsters Dwell #4 and Where Monsters Dwell #5. The murderous poltroon flying ace gets his just desserts. He ends up trapped on an island of dung and guano with his impregnated native princess.

Where Monsters Dwell (Vol. 2) #1 & #2

The plan for the holiday weekend was for a lot of running and at least one day of graphic indulgence. (Last month I got out of the habit of a Friday-night scanning of pages from the prior weekend's reading. I'm reading fewer comic books, some weeks none at all, as I attempt to read at least two books a month.)

Yesterday, following a morning run in the July heat, I made the error of picking up Occupy Comics #2 off the top of a stack. I say error because the three issues of Occupy Comics are not light reads. At the center of each are segments of Alan Moore's detailed history of the comic-book industry. So instead of sitting down with my runner's high to a rejuvenating smorgasbord of colored panels I chewed through Moore's description of the shady foundations and reprehensibly exploitative practices of corporate comics.

The drop off in posts on current Marvel titles corresponds with a hiatus in the Where Monsters Dwell (Vol. 1) project I have been pursuing sporadically. Where Monsters Dwell was a Bronze Age Marvel reprint series of material, chiefly Kirby and Ditko work, from the company's pre-superhero Silver Age. The last post published was in early April. I am working my way backward, and I hit a hole in my collection, Where Monsters Dwell #13, and I have run into trouble finding a copy.

Fortunately, as part of a tie-in with the latest crossover, Secret Wars, Marvel has resurrected the title after the last issue appeared 40 years ago.

The story -- penned by Garth Ennis; art by Russ Braun, with fantastic colors by Dono Sanchez Almara -- is a throwback to the pulp magazines of the 1930s, out of which the modern comic-book industry grew, with the interesting tweak that the leading man biplane pilot is an alcoholic coward afflicted by satyriasis, while the female sidekick, no mere eye-candy appendage, is the one who actually fights and wears the pants.

Below you will find scans of the opening pages to Where Monsters Dwell #1. The poltroon flying ace Karl Kaufmann skips out on the jungle princess who holds in her belly the fruit of his loins. These four scans are followed by the cover of Where Monsters Dwell #2 followed by the concluding pages to that issue.

What adolescent can resist a death struggle between a gigantic great white shark and a super-sized alligator (both from the age of dinosaurs), topped off by the appearance of a troop of Amazons?

Fury MAX #11

Below are three scans from Fury MAX #11, written by Garth Ennis, with art by Goran Parlov and colors by Lee Loughridge. This has been a high-quality, consistently excellent series. Starting with the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, with stops along the way in Castro's Cuba and the Cambodian jungle camp of General Giap, Ennis tells the secret history of U.S. covert military operations through the jaded eye of war-weary but ever-bloodthirsty Colonel Nick Fury. With issue #11 we're on the Honduras-Nicaragua border in the 1980s during the Contras-Sandinistas war. Fury is playing cat and mouse with a renegade group of U.S. Special Forces who are racking up a horrific body count. This is a beautiful, well-crafted comic book. Check it out.