Ms. Marvel Team-Up by Eve L. Ewing, Clint McElroy, Joey Vazquez, Ig Guara, et al.

Ms. Marvel Team-Up

Collection published: 2019
Contents originally published: 2019
Acquired and read: September 2025

Writers: Eve L. Ewing & Clint McElroy

Artists: Joey Vazquez with Moy R. & Ig Guara

Colorist: Felipe Sobreiro

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

I have diligently subscribed to Ms. Marvel in single-issue format via my local comic book store since Kamala Khan's debut in 2014. Once she stopped appearing in series named after her, my comic book guy has continued to stick related series featuring her into my pull box, forcing me to read X-Men comics. I was thus surprised to recently realize that Kamala co-starred in a six-issue miniseries way back in 2019, which he did not pull for me, and which I had failed to notice, so I tracked down a trade paperback collection of it.

This is a team-up title, consisting of two three-issue stories. The first, by Eve L. Ewing and Joey Vazquez, teams her up with Spider-Man. Specifically, there's a flipbook-style first issue that tells the same story from both Kamala's and Peter's perspectives, culminating in a body-swap; the second issue is body-swap shenanigans; and then the third resolves everything. Other than a backup story in Ms. Marvel vol. 4 #38, I think this is my first time encountering the writing of Eve Ewing, though I know she wrote some Black Panther comics I will get to soon. The story is a bit contrived, but I suppose that's part of the whole bodyswap genre; without that, there's no story and no fun. I liked her work here. Joey Vazquez would later illustrate a few issues of The Magnificent Ms. Marvel, and he does a good job here; I think Ms. Marvel requires someone with a strong command of faces, and he has that.

A good blockchain joke and a good period joke. What more do you need?
from Marvel Team-Up vol. 4 #2 (script by Eve L. Ewing, art by Joey Vazquez)

The second story, by Clint McElroy and Ig Guara, teams Kamala up with her idol, Captain Marvel. Despite some good art from the ever-reliable Ig Guara, you couldn't pay me to care about the Kree, and unfortunately too much of this story is about the Kree and Carol Danvers's relationship with them; Kamala contributes little to the story other than to serve as a voice of dissent for Carol. To be honest, I felt like Kamala changed her positions at random, alternating between enthusiasm and skepticism based on what the plot required. Pretty tedious... but the first story was a good addition to the Ms. Marvel canon, and justified picking up the book. I'm sorry my comic book guy missed it!

Three Stories from Black Panther Adventures by Marc Sumerak, Ig Guara, Jay Leisten, Elliott Kalan, Christopher Jones, et al.

Black Panther Adventures

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 1968-2013
Read: October 2025

This collection of Black Panther comics was recently added to Hoopla; it consists of six stories from non–Black Panther books (mostly Avengers, with one Fantastic Four story), mostly not set in the "main" Marvel Universe. In original release order (which is not the order the stories are collected here), they come from The Avengers #52 and 62, Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four #10, Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #22, The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #1, and Marvel Universe: The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #8. Of these six, I'd already read three of them: the two regular Avengers stories were collected in Mighty Marvel Masterworks Presents The Black Panther, Volume 1 and the Fantastic Four story in Marvel-Verse: Black Panther. 

Thus, I'm just reading and reviewing the three new-to-me stories collected here.

Writers: Jeff Parker, Marc Sumerak, Christopher Yost, Elliott Kalan, Roy Thomas

Pencilers: Manuel Garcia, Ig Guara, Patrick Scherberger, Christopher Jones, John Buscema

Inkers: Scott Koblish, Jay Leisten, Patrick Scherberger, Pond Scum, Vince Colletta, George Klein

Colorists: Andrew Crossley, Ulises Arreola, Jean-François Beaulieu

Letterers: Dave Sharpe, Clayton Cowles, Sam Rosen, Art Simek

I think that far too many Black Panther stories released prior to the character's MCU debut feel the need to introduce him by making him the ruler of this mysterious land our heroes know nothing about. That was the approach taken in Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four #10, collected here, among other stories, and it's also the approach taken in Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #22 ("Wakanda the Wild Side!" by Marc Sumerak, Ig Guara, and Jay Leisten). I guess it's a perfectly valid approach to introduce the character... but it also makes for a pretty boring story in this particular instance, as the Black Panther is thus mostly a side presence. Which I guess is okay, this is an Avengers comic, not a Black Panther one... but then why put it in a Black Panther book? Anyway, I didn't think this one had much going on. Also, what a weird Avengers line-up: Captain America, Wolverine, Storm, Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Giant-Girl (nee the Wasp)... can you even have X-Men on the Avengers? It doesn't seem right.

The other two stories are, thankfully, ones where Black Panther actually is in the Avengers. The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #1 ("Trust" by Christopher Yost and Patrick Scherberger*) is a six-pager about Black Panther teaming up with Hawkeye. It's fine, though I didn't find the bickering terribly believable.

Next panel: Black Panther getting overwhelmed, of course.
from Marvel Universe: The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #8

I did find the bickering believable in Marvel Universe: The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #8 ("Mayhem of the Madbomb!" by Elliott Kalan, Christopher Jones, and... Pond Scum!? I guess not everyone's parents can be good at naming kids), where Black Panther is forced to team up with the Hulk when literally no other Avenger is available to stop terrorists from setting off a "madbomb" on the Empire State Building. Never were two superheroes less well-matched, and both story and art are fun. Clearly the best of the three new-to-me stories.

 ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE 

* On the collection's credit page, the artist is given as Scott Wegener, but in the actual story, Patrick Scherberger. As far as I can tell from the GCD, Wegener did the art for the main story in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #1, not the back-up, which is what's actually collected here.

Marvel Action: Chillers by Jeremy Whitley, Bill Underwood, et al. / The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone by Tini Howard and Ig Guara

from Marvel Action: Chillers #2
(art by Bill Underwood)

I cap off my run of Elsa Bloodstone comics with two one-off stories that are part of larger events, but read pretty much fine on their own. First, Marvel Action: Chillers #2 has a frame story about Riri Williams (I think she is the girl Iron Man?) and Doctor Strange investigating... something, I already forget. What really matters is that they come across evidence of a magical battle between Elsa Bloodstone and werewolves—one of whom is Captain America! The bulk of the story is a flashback to that battle.

In this story, Elsa is a teenage monster hunter, not the full-grown woman we've seen elsewhere, but otherwise she's recognizably the same character, perhaps a bit less over-the-top violent than she was in, say, Nextwave (see entry #3 below). (It would be hard not to be, admittedly.) She's a bit of an eager beaver, keen to team up with Captain America. Overall, it's a pretty simple story: she fights Captain America, figures out what's wrong with him, the two work together to defeat the werewolves, the end. But once you subtract the frame, there are only about fifteen pages to work with, so how complicated can it get? 

I know Jeremy Whitley's writing from IDW's My Little Pony comics, which is generally solid, and Bill Underwood is new-to-me as an artist but someone I'd like to see more of. Fun enough, and does exactly what it says on the tin, as Elsa might say. Had anyone putting together the Bloodstone & the Legion of Monsters trade (see #1 below) thought about updating its contents for its 2022 rerelease, it would have fit well in there, sans frame.

from The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone #1

So too would have The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone #1. Part of the problem with reading through Elsa Bloodstone comics is that many significant things have happened to the character in comics where she is not the main character. Sure, I was happy to read Nextwave, where she's part of an ensemble cast, or Monsters Unleashed! (see #5 below), where she was a secondary lead for part of the run. But if you look at her entry on the Marvel Chronology Project, you will see that she pops up all over the place: four issues of Wolverine vol. 2, then four issues of Fearless Defenders, two issues of Avengers World, three issues of A-Force, three issues of Doctor Strange: Damnation, two issues of Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider, and so on. Did I really want to pick up a bunch of storylines where Elsa was a mere side character? I decided no. But this does mean that things get imparted about her that I didn't get to read. Most significantly... she got a brother? Her mom was pregnant at the end of the original Bloodstone miniseries (see #2 below), but Cullen Bloodstone is a fully grown man, part monster, so not the same guy. Actually, digging into the MCP further, he mostly appears in Avengers Arena and Avengers Undercover, but not actually very many stories that also feature Elsa! So even if I had read all of those stories, Cullen still might have been a surprise to me.

Anyway, this story has Elsa and Cullen living together in Bloodstone Manor, which in this story seems to be outside London, not in Boston, on a night where monsters are running amok because Doctor Strange is dead, negating many of the spells he used to keep the monsters tied up. What Elsa and Cullen soon discover is that they are not the only Bloodstone children, there's also Lyra, a child Ulysses had ten thousand years ago, before he became immortal, and she's been in suspended animation since. The three siblings must learn to work together and tame their own demons, literal and metaphorical. (Cullen turns into a deadly monster when he's not careful.)

from The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone #1

The result here is a very solid piece of comics from writer Tini Howard and artist Ig Guara, both creators whose work (on Death's Head and The Omega Men respectively) I have enjoyed in the past. Howard, in particular, knows how to balance the inherent goofiness of superhero-adjacent comics with strong character work. I hope to keep reading more by her. Guara does some good action (and this story has a lot of that) and also is strong enough with faces to carry the conversations in the art. I feel reasonably certain that like most event comics, The Death of Doctor Strange was probably pointless (I am sure he got better), but also like many event comics, some of the tie-ins are interesting enough on their own. I wonder if any future writers will do anything with the set-up this story ends with, because it's a good one for Elsa and her weird family.

"Little Red Fighting Hood" originally appeared in issue #2 of Marvel Action: Chillers (Oct. 2020). The story was written by Jeremy Whitley, illustrated by Gretel Lusky and Bill Underwood, colored by Nahael Ruiz and Heather Breckel, lettered by Valeria Lopez, and edited by Elizabeth Brei. 

The Death of Doctor Strange: Bloodstone was originally published in one issue (Mar. 2022). The story was written by Tini Howard, illustrated by Ig Guara, colored by Dijjo Lima, lettered by Joe Caramagna, and edited by Tom Groneman. It was reprinted in The Death of Doctor Strange Companion (2022).

This is the penultimate post in a series about Elsa Bloodstone. The next installment covers Elsa Bloodstone: Bequest. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Bloodstone & the Legion of Monsters (1975-2012)
2. Bloodstone (2001-06) 
3. Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E. (2006-07)
4. Marvel Zombies: Battleworld (2006-15)
5. Monsters Unleashed! (2017-18)
   

2021 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic Ballot

Here it is, my rankings for the recently-but-awkwardly-renamed category of Best Graphic Story or Comic.

Things I Nominated

I don't read very many current comics in their year of release; since I read most of my comics through collected editions, I'm always about a year behind, which makes it tricky to nominate things. In 2020, the comics I kept up with were Brian Michael Bendis and Ryan Sook's Legion of Super-Heroes, Saladin Ahmed and Minkyu Jung's The Magnificent Ms. Marvel, Brian Ruckley and Anna Malkova's Transformers, the anthology series Transformers: Galaxies, and the first Transformers / My Little Pony crossover, Friendship in Disguise! Only one of those could I claim unabashed enjoyment of, so I did nominate Friendship in Disguise! 

It didn't make the ballot. I would be surprised to see it even make the longlist, as I don't think Transformers comics ever have, even when at their peak with More than Meets the Eye.

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6. Die: Split the Party, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Stephanie Hans

This series is one-half D&D, one-half Jumanji, and now, weirdly, one-half the Brontës' Tales of Angria!? Anyway it's possible something quite clever is happening here, but I never cared.

5. Invisible Kingdom: Edge of Everything, written by G. Willow Wilson, art by Christian Ward

This is the second volume of a space opera trilogy; the library had the first volume (Walking the Path) on Hoopla, so I went ahead and read both together. I liked the basic ideas here, though it does feel heavily Saga-influenced with all the zipping around and quickly sketched worldbuilding. It's about a space Amazon delivery crew, a nun who finds out her religious order is corrupt, and what brings them together. Christian Ward's art is beautiful, but I found the writing and the art made it a struggle to track the space Amazon characters as individuals, much to the detriment of the story. There are some big things that don't seem developed enough, while on the other hand, some small things drag out for a long time. I really wanted to like this, as I like both creators, and madcap-underdog-space-adventures is basically my favorite genre, but I never got into it.

4. Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, adaptation by Damian Duffy, art by John Jennings

This is a comics adaptation of Parable of the Sower, the first of Octavia Butler's two "Earthseed" novels; I own the novel but have not yet got around to reading it. Coming to the adaptation without having actually read the book, I found it somewhat stilted. There is a lot of narration (pulled, I assume, from the novel's prose), and I didn't feel the art carried the story as much as it might have. The art looks good, and is tonally appropriate, but there are a lot of characters that I couldn't always keep straight. It seemed interesting, but never really grabbed me.

3. Monstress: Warchild, written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda

On the other hand, volume five of Monstress was fine. Not great, but fine, and one of the better installments of the series. I do like the ongoing story of Kippa, even if much of the rest of the set-up leaves me cold, so I am ranking it higher than Parable.

2. Once & Future: The King Is Undead, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Dan Mora

This collects the first six issues of a new series from eternal Hugo favorite Kieron Gillen. The premise is good fun: sure you can bring King Arthur back to life... but wouldn't that make him a zombie? There's also the potential to say some interesting stuff about British national identity, and occasionally the book does. Mostly, though, it's a fast-paced action story with lots of twists and turns, and fun characters, supported by strong art from Dan Mora. Enjoyable, and I would read more of this, but I felt there was room for more thematic depth. 

1. Ghost-Spider: Dog Days Are Over, written by Seanan McGuire, penciled by Takeshi Miyazawa with Ig Guara, inked by Takeshi Miyazawa & Rosi Kämpe with Ig Guara

I'm not sure I've ever read a Seanan McGuire Hugo finalist that I've unreservedly liked, but this collection of comics about Ghost-Spider (the hero formerly known as Spider-Gwen) came the closest. This was pretty delightful superhero stuff: Gwen Stacy is trying to be in a band and fight crime in her own universe of Earth-65 while also trying to attend college and make a friendship with an older version of Peter Parker on Earth-616. It's pretty typical "young superhero" tropes with just enough novelty to make it enjoyable; in the Marvel multiverse, Deans of Admission just shrug off when new students are transfers from other timelines! I've been a fan of Takeshi Miyazawa ever since Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, and he is as dependable here as always, a perfect match for what McGuire is doing on writing. Overall a cute package that made me want to go back and read all the Spider-Gwen comics.

Ranking is tricky because this is definitely less ambitious than Monstress or Parable of the Sower. It is, on the other hand, does a better job of being what it wants to be, and what it wants to be is more to my taste. My main reservation is that the story basically just stops; this collects the first five issues of a ten-issue series. I guess we will have to wait to see the nominating data to understand why, but I am a bit baffled as to why the nominators didn't just nominate the whole ten-issue series as a single work; as it ran from Oct. 2019 to Oct. 2020, it would have been eligible as a single unit, and I probably would have liked it unreservedly (assuming McGuire sticks the landing).

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Overall Thoughts

I kind of feel like I should deploy No Award? But that seems churlish; I can see why someone else would like all of the items on this list, even when I didn't particularly enjoy them myself. Some years there have been some great sf&f comics up for the Hugo Award, that I was glad to have read, but that mostly was not the case this year.

Obviously Monstress will win. Maybe things will finally be shaken up in the 2023 awards, when Saga will finally be eligible again.

Review: The Omega Men: The End Is Here by Tom King, Barnaby Bagenda, et al.

I had three reviews go up at Unreality SF, all of 2017 Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas. Two first Doctor stories, "The Destination Wars" and "The Great White Hurricane," and two sixth Doctor stories, The Behemoth and The Middle.

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2016 (contents: 2015-16)
Acquired September 2016
Read January 2017

The Omega Men: The End Is Here

Writer: Tom King

Artists: Barnaby Bagenda, Toby Cypress, Ig Guara, José Marzan Jr.
Colorists: Romula Fajardo Jr., Tomeu Morey
Letterer: Pat Brosseau

In interviews about Threshold, Keith Giffen stated his intentions to bring in the Omega Men at some point. Clearly, we need to be grateful that he did not, because it might have prevented this comic from existing. Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda present the third incarnation of the Omega Men, but possibly the first to actually deliver on their potential-- they pick up on the morally ambiguous aspects of the Omega Men set up in the early issues of the 1983 Roger Silfer/Keith Giffen run to great effect. This version of The Omega Men is violent and harsh. Former Green Lantern Kyle Rayner comes to the Vega system to try to make peace, but finds that sometimes, violence is the only response to oppression. But this is a violence beyond that of most superhero-adjacent comic books. The nine-panel grid gives the proceedings a monotonous feel-- in a good way. It's like one of those movies where there are no cuts, you just have to watch the horrible things happen.

A prisoner of the nine-panel grid... just like he's a prisoner of THE OMEGA MEN!!!
from The Omega Men vol. 3 #1 (art by Barnaby Bagenda)

King was a CIA agent of some stripe before he became a comic book writer, and his depictions of the complications of the Vega system really benefit from this. The six worlds of Vega (gone are the umpteen worlds of the old days; Starfire's homeworld of Tamaran doesn't seem to be in Vega anymore) have been conquered by the Citadel. Vega is the only source of a precious mineral, and it's impossible not to see echoes of Western involvement in the Middle East for its resources. King and Bagenda depict a lot of local conflicts, too; it's not just Star Wars-style Evil Empire vs. Hapless Rebels. Each planet has its own factions, some of whom find merit in co-operating with the Citadel for whatever reason. You even have the planet Euphorix, where the Citadel resettled the Brahmins from another system to that planet, so there's its natives, plus the Brahmins, plus the Citadel. I liked the delving into religion, too: both the Citadel and Vega worship the same god, Alpha, the first cause, but the inhabitants of Vega also worship Omega, the end. There's a lot of nuance and story here.

Scrapps, the Patchwork Girl???
from The Omega Men vol. 3 #5 (art by Barnaby Bagenda)

The End Is Here makes up one longer story, but each issue is its own standalone, too, another piece in the puzzle that is the true agenda of the Omega Men, and the slow unlocking of their backstories, and the slow breaking of Kyle Rayner. The first couple I felt were the strongest, maybe because that was when the book was new and fresh and I had no idea what could happen. It did eventually settle into a pattern, but still found ways to surprise me, like with Kyle and the Princess Kalista in hiding on Hny'xx, the market world-- suddenly it was a survival thriller, as we got a taste of what it's like to just live in Vega when you can't rebel.

Life in dystopia is always so much fun...
from The Omega Men vol. 3 #7 (art by Barnaby Bagenda & Ig Guara)

If there was ever an argument for the New 52, this book was it. In my review of the 2005-06 Omega Men revival, I commented on how the core premise of the series mutated over time-- and by the point the Omega Men were appearing in R.E.B.E.L.S., a return to the original hook would have been inexplicable and impossible. The New 52 lets DC do that. Like the best reboots, this is a different angle on something that was there all along. The Omega Men had become sort of impotent and toothless-- look at how Tigorr went from savage beast to a one-eyed cigar-chomping stereotype. Fun, but not exactly a feral freedom fighter/terrorist. In The End Is Here, King and Bagenda bring The Omega Men back, the way they always should have been.

(Also the propaganda poster style covers by Trevor Hutchison are delightful. I would buy every one of them as a print if I could.)