Marvel Comics Presents ran for 175 issues from 1988 until 1995. Each issue included four eight-page stories with typically two or three on-going features (and no ads). It spotlighted some of the leading creators of mainstream comics over a period of precipitous economic growth and even more rapid decline. Reading through it is an opportunity to revisit any number of weird aspects of 90s superhero comics. This blog is a primitive, oddly regimented, manifestly scattershot crawl through an often disappointing but occasionally splendid comic. All image copyrights are Marvel's. Issue credits linked below. Updated on Wednesdays. Marvel Comics Presents #29: Early October 1989(4.8.20) Credits: grandcomicsdatabase Wolverine returns to the cover by virtue of trapsing into the Havok feature. Dennis Jensen's outing is an over-stuffed contribution with an unduly sinewy Wolverine brandishing oddly sparkly claws. The rear is marred by a distorted Black Panther anatomy, though there's a crafty effort to unify the broader image via Havok's concentric circle effect. The million dollar question is whether declining sales necessitated a hasty insertion of Wolverine into the Havok feature solely to get him back on the cover. A. Havok, "Pharaoh's Legacy" [6/8] A promising Plasma splash page is immediately followed by a dreary detour through the desert and the leaden insertion of Wolverine into the narrative. The Wolverine ex machina has Logan finding Havok in an arbitrary oasis and speaking with a seemingly Scotch accent. A wooly battle with henchmen burns a few pages, but Buckler's choices are jarring. One panel consists almost entirely of a horse's face. Others seem eerily like swipes of the first installment. Patterson's rescue operation inks simply aren't enough to stave off the dull, perfunctory feel of a progressively clumsy feature. B. Black Panther, "Panther's Quest" [17/25] This installment takes a few beats to reset the initial narrative thrust of this remarkably long-running feature and, in some ways, shed the moral gravity of the exceptionally dark prior issue. At the level of craft, Colan and McGregor are confidently exploring. There's a collage-like splash that stitches together an assembly of narrative elements into a wispy but resonant reminiscence. There's also some increasingly intricate narration which slides into what would more naturally be pitched as a separate box caption or thought balloon for the security forces as they reinsert themselves into T'Challa's race to locate his mother. Rockwitz's touch is notable, too, with pale oranges and purples and some wilder efforts to delineate T'Challa's posture during his more meditative scenes. It's a simultaneously dusky, dawny lighting effect that casts a wistful air to the anxious proceedings. C. Coldblood, "Rise and Shine" (4/10) The dystopian setting of the feature transitions to Las Vegas as the machinations surrounding Coldblood continue to get filled out. And, while the action arguably picks up here, there's a shagginess to the narrative that juts up against the pristine, cinematic feel of Gulacy's art. To be sure, there are some exceptionally attractive moments here, most notably a craft-tint infused explosion half-splash, but the persistently strongest touch is the tight, tripartite stanzas of characters sauntering at the camera which was used often and to great effect in Gulacy's Shang-Chi work. D. Quasar, "It Came From Within" Few writers can match Mark Gruenwald's knowledge of the Marvel sandbox and this outing conveniently lines up with the launch of his notable Quasar run, so he's mostly having a leisurely play with a grab bag of toys. The goofy conceit of Man-Thing spawning Quagmire via a womb-vortex is a chin-scratching way to insert a Squadron Supreme character into the 616 continuity. But there's so little to glom on to story-wise nor do Ryan's pencils do much to enliven the action. Charitably, this might be seen as an execution fo the editorial promise (from the letter's page a few issues back) that MCP would begin contributing to the broader Marvel universe continuity. Power Ranking: Black Panther (B+), Coldblood (B+), Quasar (C+), Havok (C)