Marvel Universe: Time And Again

by Saladin Ahmed

What mysteries await buried deep within the multitude of the Marvel Universe? During an advance scouting mission in World War II, Captain America and Bucky come across an old farmhouse where a group of concentration camp escapees are fending off recapture. Years ago, Spider-Man came back from an alien world with a fantastic new costume - a living alien symbiote looking to bond with him permanently! Anxious to find a world worthy enough to sate the mighty hunger of GALACTUS, Norrin Radd's early explorations as the Devourer's new Herald bear no fruit. When a Secret Invasion of Skrulls turns Manhattan upside down, Miles Morales must choose: do his great powers come with great responsibility? When Detective Misty Knight places the newest super-suit on the block, Daredevil, at the scene of a crime, sparks will fly - and not the good kind. What secrets has Kitty Pryde been keeping from her summer at Camp Maplebrook? And as World War II draws to a close, Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos face a mission unlike any other they've ever tackled! COLLECTING: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL 1, CAPTAIN AMERICA ANNUAL 1, DAREDEVIL ANNUAL 1, SILVER SURFER ANNUAL 1, SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL 1, X-MEN GOLD ANNUAL 2, JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY: THE BIRTH OF KRAKOA 1

Genres: Marvel, Comics, Graphic Novels, X Men, Spider Man, Fiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 2019

About the author

Saladin Ahmed was born in Detroit and raised in a working-class, Arab American enclave in Dearborn, MI.

His short stories have been nominated for the Nebula and Campbell awards, and have appeared in Year's Best Fantasy and numerous other magazines, anthologies, and podcasts, as well as being translated into five foreign languages. He is represented by Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON is his first novel.

Saladin lives near Detroit with his wife and twin children.

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 2 out of 5]

Time for some tacky nostalgia with these decidedly un-special 2018 Marvel specials that take characters back into their past for some pointless stories!

What was Miles Morales doing during Secret Invasion? Punching Skrulls. Need to be reminded of Bendis/Maleev’s Daredevil? Here’s a story from that era where Daredevil and Misty Knight fight some gangsters messing around with Mutant Growth Hormone! And who doesn’t want to read Silver Surfer as Galactus’ Herald getting all angsty and teary-eyed over picking another planet to get eaten for the umpteenth time!!1 Zzz…

Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos encounter Krakoa the living island for some mild body horror and Venom gets up to some unsavoury shenanigans during his first encounter with Spidey. Whatevs… The stories are just so rote, uninspired and uninteresting that they’re instantly forgettable.

Teen Kitty Pryde at summer camp was a decent story about tolerance and the cruelty of kids and I didn’t mind the Cap and Bucky WW2 story, where they save some concentration camp survivors deep in Nazi territory, mostly because I like Chris Sprouse’s art.

It ain’t much though and, for quite a comparatively chunky book, Marvel Universe: Time and Again really isn’t worth the time.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bunch of Marvel annuals from 2018 where the stories all flashback to earlier times in the character's history.

Amazing Spider-Man - Ties that Bind ★★★★ Saladin Ahmed, Garry Brown & Lee Loughridge
My favorite story in the book. It's about the symbiote taking Pete's body over at night and doesn't realize he's harming others or Peter. I love this quote from the symbiote, "The friend has worn us. Now we will wear the friend." Brown's art is too unpolished for me. Loughridge's colors do a good job of giving the book an 80's Marvel look.

Captain America - Ziegenfarm★★★ Tini Howard, Chris Sprouse, Ron Lim, Karl Story, Walden Wong, Scott Hanna, Jesus Aburtuv, Erick Arciniega, & Israel Silva
Cap and Bucky help some prisoners that escaped from the death camps of WWII. Chris Sprouse's art looks more angular than normal due to the inks.

Daredevil ★★★ Erica Schultz, Marcio Takara & Marcelo Maiolo
Stars Misty Knight while she was still a police detective. She meets Daredevil for the first time and is reluctant to accept his help. The art is too sketchy for my tastes but I like the 70's feel to the story.

Silver Surfer - Facing the Music ★★ Ethan Sacks, Andre Lima Araujo & Chris O'Halloran
An untold tale from when Silver Surfer was still a Galactus's herald. He feels remorse at killing a populated world. All pretty standard stuff. Araujo's art is really basic and lacks backgrounds of any kind.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man - Youngblood ★★★★ Bryan Edward Hill, Nelson Blake II, Alitha E. Martinez, Mark Bagley, Roberto Poggi & Carlos Lopez
Miles fights a skrull during Secret Invasion. Good art and story.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man - Right of Way ★★★★ B Emily Ryan Lerner, Alberto Alburquerque, Carlos Lopez
Ganke and Miles take a driver's ed class when Overdrive steals a semi. Forgetting all the things that are wrong with this (Teenagers in NYC very rarely get drivers licenses, especially if they aren't rich), it's not bad and kind of fun.

X-Men Gold - Into the Woods ★★★★ Seanan McGuire, Marco Failla & Rachelle Rosenberg
A 14 Year old Kitty Pryde goes to summer camp where she is confronted by anti-mutant bigots. There is a WTF moment where some kids push a girl in a wheel chair off a dock.

Journey Into Mystery: The Birth Of Krakoa ★★★ Dennis Hopeless Hallum, Djibril Morissette-Phan & Rachelle Rosenberg
Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos get stranded on Krakoa right after an atomic bomb falls on it and created Krakoa. It's a weird story.

[Malum · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the Silver Surfer story a lot. The rest ranged anywhere from "meh" to "terrible".

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Collects AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL (2018) #1, CAPTAIN AMERICA ANNUAL (2018) #1, DAREDEVIL ANNUAL (2018) #1, SILVER SURFER ANNUAL (2018) #1, SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1, X-MEN GOLD ANNUAL #2, JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY: THE BIRTH OF KRAKOA #1

This collection is made up of a bunch of one-shot Annuals that don't have anything to do with each other. The official book description will basically tell you what you're getting in this collection, but the two that I found most interesting were the Miles Morales story, and the Black Suit Spider-Man story.

[Alex Sarll]

When I started reading these assorted annuals telling various Year One or indeed Year Zero tales of Marvel's heroes, I wasn't in any more nostalgic a mood than usual. Now...well, I think now we're all longing for simpler times. Some are by biggish names (Seanan McGuire on a young Kitty Pryde's brief return from the X-Men to summer camp, or Chris Sprouse doing art on the wartime Cap annual); others, while not by the characters' regular writers, are by familiar comics journeymen (though to be fair Bryan Hill's glimpse of Miles Morales after he got the powers, but before he became Spider-Man, is probably the best thing I've seen from Hill). The highlight for me was a heartbreaking forgotten incident, literally, in the long and compromised life of the Silver Surfer. Usually, it's a problem with stories like this that they'll generally never be mentioned again, that they can't really affect anything – but Ethan Sacks and Andre Lima Araujo twist that into something which enhances the bittersweet power of their piece. As against something like the Howling Commandos story, which feels completely at odds with subsequent Krakoa developments in a way that works against the grain of it. Somewhere between the two is the final story, Saladin Ahmed and Garry Brown on the nocturnal antics of Spider-Man's black costume, which doesn't really match any of the various subsequent retoolings of the symbiotes' origins, but is still really sweet. Poor rejected friend.

[Memphis Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't sure about this one. A bunch of annuals from some comics I've read and some I haven't? But it is a really great collection. The stories aren't strictly in the continuity of where the titles were in 2018. They are stories from the heroes' pasts.

And all the stories are really good! Totally worth checking out, even if you aren't reading the individual titles.

[Will Plunkett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being that the "eras" of these comics (not the original time periods shown in the panels, but sort of the storylines when I was a regular reader and collector) were from "my time," I felt like this was quite familiar. Good variety of characters and situations (splash pages of the Daredevil were hilarious), nice art and really strong story arcs well situated to annual-length pieces.

[Jose Zarate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this comic because of the way it looked and also because it included a little bit of everyone's favorite superheroes. There is one thing i didn't like the story for each superhero is very short.

[J New · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharp art and good one-in-done stories from Marvel’s past! Enjoyable!

[Willow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really solid collection of stories from character's pasts. Kitty Pryde at summer camp was particularly wonderful (and the reason I bought this collection in the first place)

[Abu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very boring and weird mix of stories.

[XMCU]

Some decent stories. Two of my favorites is Misty Knight/Daredevil & Captain America. I bought this For the Krakoa Story and it's alright. I think it could be better.

[Daniel Butcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A range of unconnected short stories from a hero's past which are of mixed quality.