Welcome to Graphic Novel Comic Books

A lawyer by the name of Charles Blackwater is hired to defend a cult named the Beyond Reason Spiritual Fellowship from a range of allegations of everything from kidnapping and fraud to drug trafficking and child pornography.  He takes the case for the money, exposing his penchant for greed.  Blackwater visits the cult’s compound and reads their literature and comes to the opinion that the accusations are unfounded.  So he defends the cult in court and wins, the cult is found innocent on all charges.

Having done a good deal of research on the occult prior to the trial Charles Blackwater found it fascinating and continued his studies.  In his quest for knowledge he is gifted a book that the Beyond Reason cult had referenced in their writings but had failed to provide it to Blackwater upon request.  The book is a blue print on how to con the strong and take advantage of the weak for your own gains.  This inspires Blackwater to investigate further into the charges against the cult he defended and unfortunately he finds out that at least some of the allegations were true.  The lawyer decides to contact a newspaper writer that works for a paper that focuses on UFOs and the occult.

Before they meet however, the cult breaks into the lawyers house and blast him of out a window where he falls to his death and into madness.  Charles Blackwater is dead, but his shadow or spirit continues to exist in the astral plane or the spiritual plane or whatever your religion or culture has deemed it should be called.  There he bonds with a creature named Omen who needs Charles physical form to fight the end of times that is coming.

Meanwhile the Beyond Reach cult manages to awaken the slumbering Fin Fang Foom (a massive dragon) and through him, his master is prepared to turn everything in existence into dream.  I hesitate to delve further into what is or can happen to the world as I think much of it is left open to interpretation.

Charles Blackwater / Omen assemble a team familiar with cult knowledge and meta-physical powers to stop Fin Fang Foom in the astral plane before he mates and begins the end of times.  Meanwhile, in the physical realm Fin Fang Foom is destroying New York city.  In the spirit realm Fin Fang Foom begins mating with one of the Beyond Reach cult members.  The group of humans led by Omen manage to destroy Fin Fang Foom’s unborn child and apparently slays the dragon, though I don’t believe he can truly be destroyed permanently.

The book opens up with Amatsu-Mikaboshi eating the essence of Nightmare Lord of Horror and gaining his powers.

Ok, so Hercules is now a god.  And I’m not talking demi-god, he’s somehow been empowered to to be omniscient & omnipotent.  So imagine the power of Zeus or Odin in Hercules’ frame with Hercules wisdom.  Anyway he summons Earth’s mightiest heroes to battle Amatsu-Mikaboshi.  Amatsu-Mikaboshi uses Nightmare’s power to put all the Earth’s heroes to sleep for most of the rest of the story, so if you were hoping to see any Marvel heroes other than Thor do anything of interest in this book don’t bother picking it up.

So, it’s time to build a new “God Squad“.  No really, that’s what they call it.  This incarnation includes Thor (of course), Amedeus Cho (I guess it’s easy to be a god now), Sersi of the Eternals, Galactus (no really), Silver Surfer, Venus goddess of love and Daimon Hellstrom son of Satan.

Then there’s lots of fighting dead gods & alive ones.  Hercules finds some other minor gods hiding and saying goodbye to eternity.  They come up with an idea of transferring every human being to another dimension.  Hercules gets speared to death only to be reborn more powerful?  I thought he was already omnipotent…

Anyway, Hercules re-summons Earth’s mightiest heroes — even the dead ones — to battle the small stuff that is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  When they can’t get all life into the pocket dimension Hercules forces Amatsu-Mikaboshi into the pocket dimension and everyone is saved.

Hercules returns everything to the way it was before Amatsu-Mikaboshi began this Chaos War and in doing so loses all his powers.  Oh, and by returning everything to the way it was, he resurrects some recently dead heroes like Alpha Flight and restores Mount Olympus.  Meh.

At the very beginning of the book we learn that Nick Fury of SHIELD has sent the Hulk into space to destroy some sentient satellite thingy and the Illuminati which consists of Reed Richards, Professor Xavier, Tony Stark, Black Bolt & Doctor Strange hijacked his space ship to send him to a world without intelligent life where he could hurt no one.  Of course this freaks the Hulk out and he begins ripping his ship apart which alters his trajectory and diverts him straight into a wormhole.

After leaving the wormhole the Hulk’s space ship crash lands into a populated planet where he is immediately attacked by its inhabitants.  Apparently the travel through the wormhole weakened the Hulk so he actually loses the fight and gets enslaved by the imperial servants of the planet and gets an obedience device installed in him.

Hulk is then sold and then thrown into the slave pits to fight monsters.  When Hulk defeats the first monster he attacks the Red King, the villain and leader of the world’s empire — which begs the question as to why he a king instead of an emperor.  The Red King dons a Robotech-like set of armor which supposedly makes him invincible, yet the Hulk is still able to cut him before he is cowed through his obedience disk.

Hulk gets teamed up with seven other gladiators and they bond over their victories and pledge loyalty to each other.  As time goes on Hulk begins to get his strength back.  With his renewed strength, Hulk and his team of gladiators defeat each group of monsters that they get thrown into the arena with.  Fearing that the locals are beginning to see Hulk as the fulfillment of an old prophecy – one who will both save the world & destroy it – the Red King’s men throw Hulk into an arena with the one person they believe that he cannot defeat, the Silver Savage who is really the Silver Surfer who also has an obedience device.

In the fight that follows, Hulk smashes the Silver Surfer’s obedience disk which frees him and returns his power cosmic.  With his power restored the Silver Surfer is able to free all of the slaves which begins a rebellion of former slaves & outcasts against the empire.

The Silver Surfer leaves the planet leaving Hulk there by his own request.  With his new army of gladiators and former slaves Hulk defeats all enemies that the empire throws his way.  When the Red King goes as far as bombing his own people to destroy the Hulk, his bodyguard named Caiera the Oldstrong who is nearly a match for the Hulk himself leaves the empire and joins Hulk’s crusade.

The Red King uses captured aliens who infest any life form the find and turn them into killing machines known as the “spikes” to hunt down and destroy Hulk’s army.  Through the abilities of one of Hulk’s new allies, the Hulk finds a way to converse with the leaders of the spikes and makes them his ally.

The Hulk then brings the fight to the Red King and defeats him.  The Hulk takes the role of King over the Empire and takes Caiera as his queen.  He tries to bring peace between the the different factions of the empire and even plays with the thought of just escaping into the wilderness with the woman he loves before she tells him that he doesn’t need to run away and hide and that he has found his place in life.  Caiera also tells him thatt she was pregnant with his child.

In celebration, some of the Hulk’s loyal citizens bring out his salvaged spacecraft to the center of the capitol city.  When they do it begins emitting an alarm signaling that the core of the spaceship is compromised.  Hulk tries to throw the spaceship out of range before it explodes but it is too late.  Everyone in the capitol is killed instantly, and only a handful survive, including the Hulk’s fellow gladiators.  The Hulk blames the humans for destroying his world, his queen and his unborn child and declares war on Earth and begins the journey back home.

This leads directly into World War Hulk.

The book starts off explaining that there is a criminal organization called the Org that only a handful of people know about.  The Org has its’ hands in just about every criminal organization from AIM to the Maggia as well as “every mob and/or terrorist organization you could think of”.  Taskmaster is one of the few people that not only know about the Org but works with them.  The Org assigns Taskmaster jobs to train thugs to be fighters for various criminal groups but after Siege, Taskmasters’ escape from justice was taken as a sign that he was now working with SHIELD so the Org put a bounty of a billion dollars on his head.  This brings seven criminal groups down on him including some of his former students.

The first confrontation takes place in a diner where Taskmaster is trying to remember something and during the fight Taskmaster saves the life of a waitress named Mercedes who will become pivotal to the storyline as she gets added to the bounty too.  Taskmaster realizes that the only way to get the hit removed for himself and Mercedes is to find the Org and straighten the whole thing out one way or another.

Turns out however that Taskmasters photographic reflexes come at a price, and thet price is that he can’t remember details of anything else in his life, even his name…  He goes on to explain that he receives phonecalls from the Org and they act as his memory by guiding him to his next mission and thus through life.

So the only way to find the Org is to travel to places he remembers which gives him memory hints as to where to go next.  Taskmaster and Mercedes travel to Mexico to meet an old friend of Taskmaster’s who of course he doesn’t remember named Jefe Grande who lets it slip that Taskmaster used to be a SHIELD agent named Tony Masters.

Next Taskmaster & Mercedes proceed to the Bolivian Andes where more memories flood back into Taskmaster.  In fact he remembers that he was in SHIELD and during a mission he injected himself with a substance that unlocks the minds full capabilities that was meant for agents of the Third Reich. That injection is what gave him his photographic reflexes and turned his memories into goo.

There he also remembers that Mercedes is the voice of the Org and so he shoots her.  It just wings her before he recalls that she was also part of his SHIELD team and also his wife…

Some clown who goes by the name of Redshirt (Star Trek reference) and leads a group known as MILF is actually the one who started the rumor about a hit on Taskmaster.  His goal was to have Taskmaster lead him to the Org so that he could take it over.  Meanwhile Nick Fury & Steve Rogers are hunting for Mercedes to rein her in as she has gone rogue with Taskmaster.

So Taskmaster fights Redshirt and the only way to beat Redshirt is to record his muscle movement which Taskmaster does, but at the cost of all his recent memories.  So things return to normal, Taskmaster wakes up to get a call from Mercedes playing the Org and assigns him on another mission for the betterment of the world.

The first book collected in Deadpool Classics 1 is New Mutants 98, also known as Deapool’s first appearance.  The story isn’t really about Deapool though, but it is neat to see his first appearance.  In this book he’s been hired to kill Cable and is doing pretty well until Domino saves the day.

The second storyline is from a limited series called Deadpool: the Circle Chase.  This storyline revolves around Deadpool, Weapon X, Weasel & Vanessa trying to find the secret location of Tolliver’s will.  Tolliver was an exotic gun dealer who recently died and his will held the key to the most powerful weapon on earth.  Vanessa is Deadpool’s ex-squeeze who he still has a thing for her and Weapon X (Garrison Kane) has a bit of a beef with Deadpool.  When an old enemy named Slayback kidnaps Vanessa and attacks Deadpool all grievances are put aside.  During combat Weasel figures out how to activate Tolliver’s ultimate weapon Zero (who is more famously known as Stryfe’s teleporting android) who destroys Slayback and spares Deadpool only because he displays a touch of humanity.

The next storyline Deadpool: Sins of the Past really turns out to be a four issue brawl fest with Black Tom Cassidy’s henchmen, Juggernaut, Siren, Banshee and a squad from interpol.  Really, it’s pretty much 4 comic books of straight violence.  I’m not complaining mind you, just saying.  Black Tom Cassidy is dying and Dr Killbrew may be the only one who can save him.  Dr Killbrew had a hand in creating Deadpool and his prescription for Black Tom is to find Deadpool and use his healing factor put Black Tom back together.  Unfortunately, Deadpool’s healing factor is not what it used to be and it’s causing havok with Deadpool who isn’t known for evading damage.  Deadpool finds out that he fancies Siren and Black Tom takes Deadpool’s severed hand as his own to help save his life.  Deadpool kidnaps Dr Killbrew to help restore his healing factor.

The final story from the first unlimited Deadpool line involves Deadpool attempting to destroy a gamma reactor protected by Sasquatch.  In this story we begin to see the hero-desire within Deadpool start to take shape as he saves not just the lives of three men from the initial explosion, but he dives into the gamme core which burns his skin off to prevent the southern hemisphere from getting irradiated.  We are also introduced to Landau, Luckman & Lake who will become pivotal in Deadpool’s quest to become a hero.