Rampage (UK) #6 (Story 1)

Background

Rampage was a UK-only Comic/Movie/Teen-Geek-Pop magazine that covered video games, Marvel, Star Trek, Star Wars, Pokemon, the latest Disney movies and whatever else the team at Panini thought might interested teens that month. In keeping with the eclectic mix of content, it also featured a rather cluttered style that reminds me of a rich kid's bedroom. Expensive consumer crap piled deep from dresser to carpet and pouring out of the cupboard.

The title ran for around thirty-odd issues, before folding in 2007. The UK teen Marvel consumer magazine mantle was subsequently picked up in 2008 by Marvel Heroes (UK Magazine), which while still quite consumer-oriented was markedly cleaner in style and more Marvel-specific in content.

My "Rampage" collection is pretty patchy, but I did manage to pick up this back issue from UK eBay. Spidey appears in the back-up story. Let's get reviewing!

Story 'Touch of Evil'

First up, let's tackle this Avengers story. Captain America arrives back home at the Avengers Mansion to discover the place has been somewhat damaged. The Scarlet Witch is there to relate what has occurred.

Crusher Creel (aka the Absorbing Man, a bit of a favorite villain in these UK magazine stories) invaded the Avengers Mansion. He was on a revenge kick, and had brought samples of different objects with him in order to absorb their properties and defeat the heroes. There's a polymer to get him past security, Titanium to defeat Giant-Man, Adamantium to beat Iron Man, then Vibranium which stops the Vision and Diamond which is "too pure for Scarlet Witch's hexes to work".

The heroes devised a trap, leading to Creel to "absorb the properties of their mainframe computer" which makes him super-clever. But they planted a virus in the system which shuts him down.

End of flashback. Captain America congratulates the rest of the team in a remarkably patronizing fashion.

General Comments

I have one major complaint. The idea that Creel would arrive with a prepared collection of materials is an excellent one. But that just makes the concept of "touching data" and "becoming a program" so much more ludicrous by contrast. Data is fundamentally intangible. Information is not matter. Have we ever seen Creel touch a car and turn into a truck? Does he touch a painting and transform into pure Beauty? Extending his powers to abstract concepts is daft.

Secondly, I wasn't too impressed with the intro/outro concept. It added nothing to the story at all, except adding a page to the length. And when he does arrive, Cap treats the rest of the Avengers like children, as if any battle won without his presence is a special event.

Overall Rating

Two webs. Now, go read the review of Rampage (UK) #6 (Story 2) which features our favorite web-crawler!