Underrated/Overlooked: WrestleMania

WrestleMania is obviously the biggest day of WWE’s (and formerly the WWF’s) calendar year. It started out simply as a showcase for big matches and glitzy celebs, morphed into the “end of the season” for major feuds that would be shuffled and reset the next night, and has now settled into being a sort of hybrid of both. It’s the show the company builds to, that every performer brings their A-game to and that attracts an impressive amount of celebrity participation and media hype.

For the most part, each WrestleMania has had its own distinct identity. It’s hard to pick out every SummerSlam and certainly next to impossible to remember what happened one year to the next at Unforgiven or Extreme Rules, but if you name the Roman numeral (or blasphemous plain old number in at least two cases, not to mention the madness of X-7 and so on—it should ALWAYS be Roman numerals), a true wrestling fan worth their salt can spit back to you which WrestleMania it was.

III was Hulk/Andre. IV was when they did the World title tournament. IX everybody wore togas. Hart/Michaels Iron Man at XII. They called XVI 2000 to drive me nuts. Brock Lesnar nearly killed himself at XIX. Flair retired at XXIV. HBK followed him at XXVI.

To be fair, XXII doesn’t really stand out, but you get the gist.

Thing is, try as they might to stack the show from start to finish with hits—not so much during the V-VIII era, but more or less before or after—and as much as the folks performing go above and beyond to make their moments count, each WrestleMania generally gets remembered for one or two matches tops (X-7 is the exception that proves the rule).

III is the aforementioned Hulk/Andre plus Savage/Steamboat. V is the Megapowers. VI is the Ultimate Challenge. X is the Ladder match. XII is the Iron Man. 13 (bleh) is Austin/Hart. X-8 is Hogan/Rock. XXV and XXVI are the HBK/Undertaker matches.

And so on.

But each year there is at least one (usually more) classics that slip under the radar simply because they’re the third, fourth or fifth best matches on a card where everybody wants to have a classic. Those are the showdowns I want to remember today. In doing so, I’m leaving plenty out myself, but each of these holds a special place in my own heart.

Roddy Piper vs. Adrian Adonis (WrestleMania III)
The third WrestleMania gets a lot of consideration for being among the best ever based on the enormity of the event itself, the epic feel of the main event and the fact that Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat had flat out one of the best matches of all-time; however, despite its pedigree, not much else from this show gets remembered. A lot of it is perfunctory—fine not great—but there’s also some cool miscellany, like Alice Cooper accompanying Jake Roberts to the ring, King Kong Bundy squashing a midget, and this match. It was no technical classic, but as far as cosmically satisfying wrestling finishes, this is right up there with reformed bad guy Piper putting the irritating Adonis to sleep and then Brutus Beefcake shaving his head to officially become “The Barber.” Despite having been the most hated man in the business a year earlier, Piper is tremendous as a babyface here, having the time of his life before heading off to Hollywood for a couple years, and Adonis is equally perfect and totally unselfish as the heel getting humbled; two guys who knew how to light the crowd afire and played their roles to a T made for a great WrestleMania moment.

The Rockers vs. Haku & The Barbarian (WrestleMania VII)
WrestleMania VII was a bit of an off-year, as the Hogan-Sgt. Slaughter main event felt like a bit of a comedown from the Ultimate Challenge a year before, but Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior had one of my favorite matches ever, plus you had this little gem opening the show. After getting squashed by the Twin Towers and 1989 and then screwed by The Orient Express a year later, The Rockers finally got a chance to shine, showing off what they could do in an energetic little guys hitting and running against giants exhibition. It was a glimpse of the future, as Shawn Michaels displayed a mere hint of the skills that would later make him Mr. WrestleMania, while Marty Jannetty kept pace and Bobby Heenan’s team was nicely generous in making the David vs. Goliath battle believable.

Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart (WrestleMania X)
Shawn Michaels is far and away my favorite wrestler of all-time (sorry, Christopher Daniels, I’ll await your sad text tomorrow) and I have plenty of love for his Ladder match with Razor Ramon on this show, but at the end of the day, ask me to pick and I’ll take the Hart brothers wrestling clinic every time. It kind of bucks the title and intent of this post to include this here, I suppose, since most people would agree it’s a classic, but on a WrestleMania that had said Ladder match, it generally doesn’t get its due as the match of the night I felt it was. The fluidity of Bret and Owen trading holds and counters as only two guys who grew up and learned their craft in the same place under the same tutor if not side-by-side is a cooler deal for me than any gimmick ever could be. On its own, this would still be an amazing match, especially to a fan like me who digs the “purist” aspect, but it also had one of the best ever angles and storyline builds behind, the optimal pro wrestling brother vs. brother feud (and that’s saying something), to boost it into the stratosphere. No disrespect meant to the Ladder match or those two gents, because I could watch that one all day as well, but this is likely in my all-time top five.

Ahmed Johnson & The Legion of Doom vs. The Nation of Domination (WrestleMania 13)
From one end of the spectrum to the other, there was no science to this one whatsoever, but it was an outstanding brawl during a down period for the WWF. WrestleMania 13 (ick) gets labeled as a one match show for the superb Austin-Hart Submission match with the double turn, but I dug this one as well. Johnson was pretty limited by injuries, the LOD were far past their prime and nobody in the Nation was doing career-best work at this point, but they all went out there and just beat the crap out of each other in the very definition of a garbage match, albeit one that actually worked. Ahmed in his own LOD spikes was a nice touch, as was Hawk actually bringing a kitchen sink to the ring to use as a weapon. If they had ended the Johnson-NOD feud here, Ahmed may have still had a shot to get back over as it was a great blow off.

Kurt Angle vs. Kane (WrestleMania X-8)
This show got sold on Hogan-Rock, with Triple H against Chris Jericho and to a lesser extent Undertaker vs. Ric Flair as well as Steve Austin vs. Scott Hall being somewhat in the mix. Kurt Angle, despite being perhaps the best performer in the company at the time, got left out in the cold with no dance partner, so they threw him in there with Kane to more or less kill time. Diminished expectations aside, it ended up being a nice little hidden highlight, as these two had good chemistry—they had a TV match around the same time that may have been even better than this one—and Kane brought his work boots to keep up with Angle. The story of the match wasn’t so much whether or not Angle could win, but if he could make Kane tap to the ankle lock, and both guys played it perfectly, timing their ebb and flow for maximum suspense; Kane’s best WrestleMania match for sure.

Chris Jericho vs. Christian (WrestleMania XX)
Another fondly remembered match by most, but as it wasn’t for a title, didn’t have a streak on the line and didn’t feature a celebrity or Legend, it does still get lost in the shuffle of the last decade’s WrestleMania highlights. The buildup to this wasn’t just well-done, it demonstrated long-term restraint practically unheard of in 2004 WWE, as the issues between the two former best friends had begun over four months prior, with the great storyline that saw them betting on who could bag Trish Stratus or Lita, then Jericho and Trish developing real feelings for one another, pissing Christian off in the process. These two knew each other well by this stage in their careers, so the match itself was predictably great, but it was Trish’s involvement and phenomenal heel turn that put the icing on the cake.

Batista vs. Umaga (WrestleMania XXIV)
Similar to Kurt Angle in 2002, six years later Batista found himself as the odd man out, with his chief rivals Edge and The Undertaker preoccupied with one another and John Cena, Randy Orton, Triple H and Shawn Michaels all having their WrestleMania dance cards booked. “The Animal” got stuck in an under-promoted Raw vs. SmackDown match with the similarly un-tethered Umaga, and the two preceded to go out and have a sweet power-based match that was hard-hitting, intense, and just the right length. Batista generally seems to rise to the occasion at WrestleMania, as he and Undertaker put on a classic at XXIII in part out of resentment over not getting the main event slot, so the combination of a big time atmosphere and good old fashioned spite made a good motivator for him.

Rey Mysterio vs. Cody Rhodes (WrestleMania XXVII)
This is a pre-emptive strike of sorts, given that this match is only a year old, but WrestleMania XXVII is already looked back at as an underperforming show, which means the more in the rearview it gets, the more Undertaker-Triple H will take on an Austin-Hart at WrestleMania 13 (yick) quality and a decent undercard will get forgotten. Again, a long-ish term feud—Rey put Cody out with a facial injury three months prior that led to his transformation past the Dashing gimmick into his deranged character—and this felt like a big deal despite not being the most anticipated showdown of the night by any means. Rey was a very giving veteran, making Rhodes look good, and Cody seized his opportunity, going over a legend at the biggest show of the year and cementing his place at the top. Also, Rey dressed as Captain America.

Underrated/Overlooked: Psionex

In most iconic super hero-super villain archenemy pairings, the two individuals or teams involved are bound by their stark differences, cracked mirror similarities, or in some cases a little bit of both.

Superman is the alien who is an everyman while Lex Luthor is the human who sees himself as above his fellow man. Spider-Man is the hopeful optimism of youth in the face of adversity battling old men like Doctor Octopus or The Green Goblin who have given up on altruism and are driven by greed. Batman is the imposition of order while The Joker is the embodiment of chaos. Doctor Doom is the intelligence of Mr. Fantastic without morality and civic unselfishness keeping him in check.

The New Warriors never really had an archenemy. Some might say it was The Sphinx, and in that case you could argue the dynamic was the young agents of change versus the timeless champion of inevitability, but he was really Nova’s bad guy first and foremost. If you look at the bad guys in other big Warriors storylines like Tai, the Poison Memories or the Dire Wraiths, they were all basically one and done adversaries.

Breaking it down to numbers, the villains who plagued the New Warriors the most frequently and were their opposite number at least in the sense of being a team of young people were Psionex, introduced in issue #4 of the original series and recurring for the remainder of the volume as foes to our heroes, reluctant allies against a larger threat like Terrax, and even Night Thrasher’s attempt at a rehabilitation project.

If there was a weakness to Psionex in their core concept, it was that they didn’t really stand for much of anything, whereas the Warriors had a very strong sense of identity. Certain buzz phrases would recur through all of that classic first Warriors series—“making hard choices,” “searching for the truth,” “the power of love over the love of power”—creating not only a clear mission statement for the good guys, but the potential for an antithesis that was never really filled outside of in part with stuff I mentioned like The Sphinx and other little cases.

The initial hook to Psionex was a simple one: They were unbalanced young people given super powers by Genetech, the faceless corporation who would bug the New Warriors because why not. As it said on the blurb of their introductory issue, “They were bred for one purpose: To destroy the New Warriors!” but aside from having powers that gave various members of the team trouble, you never got the whole “bred for one purpose” thing. This wasn’t like the Injustice League or Dark Avengers or some incarnations of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants where each member of the villain team was picked specifically to target an opposing player on the good guys; it was just a bunch of randoms with cool powers.

However, it’s in those powers and their relative inventiveness that Psionex raises a notch or two up in my mind. Fabian Nicieza clearly put some time into coming up with these guys’ abilities, and in an era where “generic energy blast” was the flavor of every month—I’m looking at you Acolytes—it was refreshing and appreciated.

Asylum was a mental patient who never spoke but had a body composed entirely of Darkforce matter that induced hallucinations in anybody she came into contact with; similar to Cloak but with a twist of mental imbalance. Coronary at first glance seemed like the team powerhouse, but who was actually a “bio-telepath,” capable of messing with people’s internal functions so as to make them vomit, give them a heart attack or do other nastiness. Impulse had an enhanced metabolism which gave him fairly generic heightened speed, reflexes and healing, but his crazy thrill seeker personality coupled with his gang background made him interesting and led to classic moments like him trying to take on Terrax singlehanded and getting his back snapped (he got better). Mathemanic not only had a great name, but the most bizarre and intriguing abilities, as he practiced “mathematical telepathy,” messing with statistical regularities so he could do things like forcing his foes to perceive interstellar measures of distance and thus not see what’s in front of them or slowing the passage of time by altering perceptions. Last but not least you had Pretty Persuasions, an exotic dancer with an energy whip who could increase and then draw power from the “erotic urges” of others, making her one of the most straightforwardly sexual characters in comics at the time, but in an odd “what you see is what you get” refreshing kind of way.

Psionex had their initial clash with the Warriors, then a rematch that ended with Terrax’s rebirth and a temporary truce/half the villains fleeing. Later, after Asylum dissipated during a fight with Nova, Firestar and Speedball, another New Warriors villain, Darkling, found her mask and took up her mantel, getting Psionex back together and attempting to make them into heroes who would use the excessive force the Warriors were unwilling to; this period showed some potential for the group to really forge their own place in the Marvel Universe—or at least in the New Warriors mythos—but while it made for a few good stories, they were heavily focused on Asylum, with the rest becoming more or less window dressing. After Asylum accidentally killed a child by inducing an unknown heart condition while trying to scare him straight, we got a pretty emotionally hard hitting story—Nicieza’s final issue—where Mathemanic tries to turn back time by affecting perceptions across New York City, but ultimately is convinced that he can’t undo what is already done.

From there Psionex joined up briefly with Night Thrasher and Rage before gradually receding into a background role in the Marvel Universe for the past couple decades, generally only showing up for cameos when Nicieza is writing a book like New Thunderbolts or part of huge villain armies in titles being penned by New Warriors fans like when Christos Gage had the reins of Avengers: The Initiative.

In addition to their powers, the other thing Psionex really had going for it was that Mark Bagley did a bang-up job on their designs. They really were a motley crew of misfits, as befit their status as nut jobs, with the nerdy Mathemanic looking like he belonged nowhere near a group that also included S&M bombshell Pretty Persuasions. Asylum’s lack of physical form anchored by that golden mask was cool, as was Coronary’s evolving crystalline shape—although the weird skirt he rocked at first was bizarre—and even Impulse’s fairly traditional super villain get-up had neat touches like the evil Spider-Man bug eyes or weird wrist gauntlet blades. Richard Pace would ramp up the exaggerated elements of Psionex during his all-too-brief run on New Warriors and breathe even more life into Bagley’s work.

But again, while Psionex had plenty of potential in the abilities and visual departments, their lack of personalities, individually or as a group, and no real direction hurt their lasting legacy. It wasn’t enough just to be crazy, particularly in the 90’s, and after that initial Genetech-sponsored fracas, it wasn’t even quite clear why they were always tangling with the New Warriors.

Still, there’s something there in Psionex, even if it’s just that they bring something different to the table in terms of abilities that go beyond the tired cocktail of super strength, mind powers and, yes, energy blasts. I’m not saying they’re ever going to anchor a line-wide crossover or anything, but maybe next time an Avengers writer needs to kill half a standalone issue that’s really about the heroes’ relationships anyways, rather than use the Wrecking Crew yet again, they give Psionex a shot.

Underrated/Overlooked: Legion Worlds

After being quietly appreciated for the better part of a decade, Legion Lost, the 12-part series by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and a young Olivier Coipel that reinvented the Legion of Super-Heroes for a new century, has in recent years gained a deserved higher profile. Lost presaged a lot of DnA’s later work with bold science fiction in their later Annihilation, Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy stints, placing the relatively optimistic Legion I grew up with and dropping them into a foreign universe with exotic challenges that forced the teenagers to grow up and face unspeakable tragedy and sacrifice. It was a powerful story with aggressive art by Coipel that topped many fans’ “why hasn’t this been collected?” lists until just recently; today, not only can you grab the trade at stores, one of the new series launched by DC bears its name.

DnA would go on to launch a Legion ongoing building on the darker edge and emphasis on character drama they brought to Lost, but first as a bridge, they penned the six-part Legion Worlds, an anthology that explored the 31st century landscape the missing Legionnaires had left behind and what had become of their teammates. The sprawling art team included a mix of untapped talents like Yvel Guichet, Enrique Breccia, Paul Rivoche, Jamie Tolagson and Kilian Plunkett with established names such as Coipel, Darwyn Cooke, Rick Burchett, Duncan Rouleau, Rick Leonardi, Steve Dillon and Mike McKone, plus covers by then up and comer John Cassaday.

It’s a clever storytelling device on DnA’s part as the Legion—and thus the readers—has been away from their universe for over a year (real time) and there’s a lot of ground to cover to set up the new series. They had fun with the vastness of the Legion’s landscape, setting each standalone chapter on a different planet housing one or more members of the scattered team and familiar to fans. As with any series of the format, some stories were not as strong as others—I don’t remember the M’Onel-centric Earth story in the first issue much, though that was mostly a primer for the rest of the series, and recall not investing too much in the Magno/Cosmic Boy spotlight on Braal—but the stuff that stood out did so strongly.

The second issue has Ayla Ranzz, the Legionnaire known as Spark, returning to her home on Winath, with both her twin brother, Live Wire, and erstwhile love interest, Chameleon, among the Lost. It’s the kind of thoughtful, psychological, and slightly creepy story DnA excels at, with Ayla trying to pick up the pieces of her life and finding it hard to do so as something of an outcast in her own home where everybody is born with a twin and “solos” are shunned. Ayla’s older brother, Mekt, a solo himself and formerly the villain Lightning Lord, has also returned, supposedly reformed, somewhat mentally addled and hoping to bond with his sister over their common sense of loss. There’s a mystery plot about natural disasters and whether or not Mekt could be responsible, but the real meat is in the family drama, and the tension Ayla feels both over being adrift and at the possibility her brother may not be as innocent as he claims is palpable.

Issue #4 shifts the action to Xanthu, where Star Boy—one of my favorite post-Zero Hour Legionnaires—has returned home with lover Dreamer and teammate XS in tow to help his world fend off the threat of Robotica, a race of artificial intelligence that has gained sentience and rebelled against the beings they feel have oppressed them. It’s very much a war story, as the heroes face overwhelming odds and basically go on one suicide run after another, but it also shows another side of how much the Legion defined these characters and kept them as well as the universe optimistic and bright; in its absence, people like Star Boy and XS have struggled with their purpose, but keep fighting because it is in some sense all they know and all they have left. Robotica is a new take on a familiar trope—the robots go crazy because we don’t appreciate them enough—done with visual panache by Duncan Rouleau, a master at drawing robots and the like.

Next up the focus falls on Karate Kid, who has journeyed to the isolated and peaceful planet of Steeple, bringing along Ferro for a period of contemplation and prayer as they deal with the loss of the Legion. I’ve always loved Karate Kid in all his various incarnations, and this story highlights all the cool stuff about Val Armorr, as he is the one Legionnaire who seems to have moved on in a healthy way with his strong sense of self and devotion to continued enlightenment; of course he also still gets to kick stuff. A bruiser from Takron-Galtos makes his way to Steeple, and while Val is initially reluctant to raise a hand against him, having devoted his energy to quelling rage and violence, the overmatched Ferro gives it a shot and gets badly injured in the process. Karate Kid is now faced with the dual challenges of facing down the bad guy and also saving his friend’s life; the former he does in a great fight sequence illustrated by Steve Dillon, and the latter forces him to make a powerful choice that adds punch to an already rocking tale.

The finale heads to Rimbor, birth world of the Lost Ultra Boy, and the place his pregnant wife Apparition has chosen to hide from mercenaries hired by her mother. Consistent with its portrayals across Legion history, Rimbor is already a nasty place, filled with gang wars and violence, and a pretty crappy place for a pregnant lady to hang out, even if she can become immaterial at will, but Apparition has made an awesome ally in Timber Wolf, who makes his post-Zero Hour debut here and whom DnA as well as Kilian Plunkett do a great job with. After five issues mostly touching on how much was taken away by Legion Lost, it’s cool to end with the reintroduction of a classic character in a fun way, as DnA make T-Wolf every bit the badass he was in the old days, but add in some charm and a quirky paternal concern for Apparition’s unborn “cub.”

I didn’t actually buy Legion Lost, as I was just getting back into comics at the time and just missed it by a couple months, so when I did decide to track down the modern incarnation of another comic I’d loved as a kid, Legion Worlds was my first exposure. I’ve since gone back and read Lost, but even on its own, World did a fantastic job giving you a tour of a universe both somewhat recognizable and completely altered, moving several pieces in place to ensure you’d be invested in the ongoing series. With the creative talent involved and awesome array of characters that play parts big and small, this is a hidden Legion gem for sure.

Underrated/Overlooked: 1602: Fantastick Four

Neil Gaiman’s 1602 and the sequels it spawned are stories that involve incredible occurrences and unearthly shows of power taking place in a time ill-equipped to explain them as anything other than witchcraft, but when you got down to it, they were really about seeing which enduring Marvel figures could swim rather than sink on the strength of character alone.

1602 focuses on the Marvel pantheon of the Silver Age, a group whose collective origins generally came from atomic experimentation gone awry and other radioactive catastrophes we’d probably dismiss as hokey were they used as start points today, but at the time both fit into the tropes of popular science fiction and reacted to the general populace’s fears when it came to nuclear Armageddon and the like. In 1963, getting bit by an irradiated spider or caught in a gamma blast played on real world anxiety while also fitting into a fictional tapestry that somehow projected reason into the most unlikely of places.

Take those same origins and try to apply them in 2003 to a 17th century setting and you start to strain. However—and this is my take, as there is no deeper evidence so far as I know—Gaiman wasn’t trying to validate the timelessness of Marvel origins, but rather that that personas created alongside the super powers could stand any test even when relocated across the decades one way and centuries the other.

My prime example would be that Daredevil’s genesis does not travel well into the world of 1602—rather than being blinded by radioactive isotopes, he touches strange green goop in a cave to get his super senses—but the swashbuckling spirit of the character tempered by tragedy and laughing in the face of danger made the sightless Irish troubadour Matt Murdock maybe my favorite character in the series.

While Gaiman only just got to the Fantastic Four in his first story, Peter David would dig in three years later with Marvel 1602: Fantastick Four and show the First Family to be perhaps the most adaptable of all the Marvels.

The Fantastic Four are one of the best examples of character over powers in comic book history. By the time the FF was born in 1961, their abilities—super strength, flame, invisibility, stretching—had all been done and even their explorers of the fantastic deal had been done to an extent by the Challengers of the Unknown, but the personalities and rapport Stan and Jack bestowed upon Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben was the heart of what made them great, helped revolutionize comics and propelled their adventures to dizzying heights of awesome.

In Fantastick Four, David zigs where Gaiman zagged as far as exaggerating the bold and heroic qualities of 1602 over the dour skullduggery of Nicholas Fury and his lot. Where 1602 was a period drama, FF is in many ways equal parts comedy and adventure, both of which PAD is expert in. Gaiman had the Four trapped in a dungeon for most of his series and foreshadowed their arrival on the scene to perfect effect; David has them out in the world and enjoying what it has to offer.

Each individual has their persona tweaked just enough to puff them up to fit the stage: Reed is even more oblivious to anything save discovery, Susan is reflectively more dogged in her pursuit of his attention, Johnny’s romantic nature bubbles over to recklessness and Ben’s propensity for drama takes him down a different and interesting path as a performer in the troupe of William Shakespeare—who figures prominently in this tale, by the way. In a time where bizarre and outrageous occurrences have sprung up like wildfire seemingly overnight, there’s no better way to explore the altered landscape than alongside the Fantastick Four.

And of course if ever a character was suited to take his rightful place in a 17th century pumped full of pomp and pageantry on the super level, it’s Doctor Doom. The not-so-good Doctor was handsome—that was even his nickname—throughout Gaiman’s 1602, taunting the captive quartet and cavorting with The Black Widow, but here he’s wearing the iron mask and speaking in all his third person glory. I’m always entertained by reading a good Doom-as-pompous-royal story regardless of the chronal backdrop, but in an age where kings and queens really did rule, David’s take shines the perfect storm of regality, arrogance, and absurd overconfidence.

I could talk about the characters all day—I haven’t even gotten to the clever weaving in of the Frightful Four (the Four Who Are Frightful) and their powers or why an even more detached than usual Namor (Numenor) fits the period nearly as well as Doom—but the story is a hoot as well.

Doom captures Ben’s buddy Shakespeare, so the Four take off in hot pursuit of the villain’s flying pirate ship in their own flying pirate ship. The Doctor has hired the Frightful Four to take him to the edge of the world and wants the Bard along to tell tale of his triumph. Johnny absconds with Doris Evans—yes, there’s a 1602 analogue of Dorrie Evans and she’s awesome—pulling her along on the journey against her will so she doesn’t marry Wyatt Wingfoot. I thought the ultimate destination was Attilan—and I daresay PAD makes a game of playing it that way—but it’s actually Atlantis—or what passes for 1602 Atlantis—where fights with sea monsters, palace intrigue and much more ensue.

Pascal Alixe’s art is as beautiful as it has ever been on this book. He’s a master of capturing facial expressions, portraying texture and setting scenes that need to be larger than life, such as the aforementioned flying pirate ship vs sea monster kerfuffle. I love his Thing and his Human Torch, but c’mon, those are the easy ones; that I love his Sandman and Medusa speaks more to how much work he puts in.

Again, I could go on, but I’d just spoil the whole book. I could mention the Shakespeare-Doris Evans dynamic; I could expound more on how the Four Who Are Frightful’s “powers” work and how Peter David really gets The Wizard; I could tease the Black Widow’s fate; I could mention that amidst the fun, the jokes and the wonder, there’s a genuinely heart-wrenching storyline for Johnny that winds up ending the story.

I could, but instead I’ll just say 1602: Fantastick Four is a wonderfully buoyant little tale with smart flourishes, dynamite art and the wit you’d expect from something written by Peter David.

I’ll also note that while I’ve observed 1602 to be an acquired taste—I’ve obviously acquired it—you should really not stop with just the original, as you’re missing out on truly underrated and overlooked work by Greg Pak, Jeff Parker and a host of brilliant artists.