Hera

Howard’s ex-wife Sonia Greene steps up to the plate. In Vienna, the cult presents Adolf with an opportunity to finally make something of himself. Einstein goes head-to-head with Edison. Twain gets Tesla out of a hole. Houdini and Howard are invited to a very special wedding.

The pulp hit returns with the start of a new arc as the Cthulhu Cult uses a familiar ceremony to build flesh beasts from the merged bodies of the unsuspecting. Meanwhile, Twain presents the boys with a gift, but Tesla first has a score to settle at Earhart’s airfield. The adventure continues with “Tying the Knot.”

Perhaps borrowing a bit from the base concept of “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” writer John Reilly and artist Tom Rogers bring Nikola Tesla and Howard Phillips Lovecraft together with Amelia Earhart, Harry Houdini, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein, who bridges the gap between the two primary characters, on the fringes. Interestingly enough, the relationship (at least for this adventure) between Tesla and Earhart is what drives “Herald: Lovecraft and Tesla” #1 to even be relevant. Reilly doesn’t burden readers with particulars to anchor this story to the time period, choosing instead to supply that information as details around the main plot. Tesla is engaged to Amelia Earhart and fears for her safety on her trans-Atlantic flight. Recently fired by Edison, Tesla goes out seeking help and eventually finds his path meeting that of Lovecraft’s. Reilly’s story meanders a bit, as he introduces readers to Lovecraft and Houdini, but pulls itself back together with a cliffhanger ending

If you want to go by the more traditional naming scheme, “What If: Wolverine – Father” could more accurately be called “What If Wolverine had Raised Daken?” And this being a What If? story, you can probably guess that it’s not all sunshine and roses. A story such as this presents the perfect opportunity to examine the nature vs. nurture debate. Writer Rob Williams doesn’t really see it as a debate (or at least, not an open once), though, since his interpretation of Daken is that he’d turn out evil regardless of environment. Well, either that, or his point is that too much parental guidance is equally as bad as none at all. Either way, Daken turns out just like he did without Wolverine’s parenting, which leaves Logan with little choice but to attempt to do what he does best. Williams wisely side-steps the whole “Romulus” conspiracy theory that Daken was originally a product of, plugging Sabretooth into the issue’s otherwise vacant villain position. A guest appearance by Professor Xav

I recently interviewed Jo Duffy for an article I’m writing, and she talked about how, early in her career at Marvel, they thought that she’d be a perfect fit to write “Ms. Marvel” even though she really wanted to write “Power Man and Iron Fist.” She eventually got to write Luke Cage and Danny Rand’s adventures, but the initial thinking was, “let’s put the female writer on the book about the female character.” I have no idea if that kind of behind-the-scenes antiquated sexism has affected the comic book career of Kathryn Immonen, but there’s no doubt that she’s been asked to stick mostly to the women of Marvel during her work so far. In the interview in the back of this issue, she talks about how the genesis of this story went back a few years, when she mentioned that “Frankie Raye had gotten the short end of the stick,” so there’s a strong sense that she was involved in the decision to write about the ladies of Marvel. But in everything she’s done so far, Kathryn Immonen has shown he