Wednesday Cover: Killraven

I received my Killraven hardcover today, collecting the six-issue miniseries written and penciled by Alan Davis and inked by his frequent collaborator, Mark Farmer. It's a fun, "action movie"-styled retelling of the early Killraven stories from Marvel's Amazing Adventures comic back in the 1970s, focusing on a group of human gladiators rebelling against the oppressive rule of alien conquerors - specifically, the Martians of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.

Those early stories were drwn by a variety of artists and scripted by several different company writers in a fairly straightforward Marvel superhero action style. These writers included Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and Marv Wolfman. But with the fourth chapter of the saga, (Amazing Adventures #21), Don McGregor came aboard as the permanent scribe. For several issues, he maintained pretty much the same slam-bang tone as his predecessors, but around the time that artist P. Craig Russell came on the book, the series started to get more and more frankly philosophical and psychedelic. It was good, innovative comics, and very different from the usual Marvel fare of the time.

The 2003 miniseries went back to the property's roots as an action book, and under the pen of the extraordinarily talented Davis, it was an excellent action book. The art was dynamic, the story fast-paced and exciting. I'm really happy to have the whole thing collected in one volume.