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By Carl Burgos, Bill Everett & others (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-7851-1624-9
Marvel Comics have taken a very long time to get into producing expensive hardbound volumes reprinting their earliest comic adventures. Sadly this collection of the first four solo outings for one of Timely/Marvel’s Holy Trinity is solid and expensive proof why. That’s a harsh thing to say and I must personally admit that there was a lot of material here that I have been waiting most of my life to read. I am however a complete comic nut. I have every issue of Bomba, the Jungle Boy and Man From Atlantis and I only need one issue of Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane for a complete set. I am not a new, casual – or possibly even wholly discriminating – punter.
During the early Golden Age, novel ideas and sheer exuberance could take you far, and as the alternative escapes for most kids were severely limited, it just wasn’t that hard to make a go of it as a comic book publisher. Combine that with a creative work-force that kept being drafted, and it’s clear to see why declining standards of story and art didn’t greatly affect month to month sales during World War II, but promptly started a cascade-decline in super-hero strips almost as soon as GI boots hit US soil again.
For reasons too complicated to cover here, Human Torch #2 was the first issue to star the flammable android hero, and introduced his own fiery side-kick, Toro, The Flaming Kid! Carl Burgos takes the credit for that, and the Sub-Mariner tale is by Bill Everett, but the remaining strips, The Falcon, Microman, Mantor the Magician and the Fiery Mask range from poor to just plain sad. The next issue is actually fairly impressive, with an ambitious 40 page Torch epic which sees Toro seduced by Nazism, and a 20 page Sub-Mariner crossover (anticipating Marvel’s successful policy of the 1960s onward).
By the third issue much of the work is obviously being ghosted to a greater or lesser degree. The Torch takes way too long solving the ‘Mystery of the Disappearing Criminals’, but Everett is still very much in evidence as the Sub-Mariner takes ten beautiful pages to save an Alaskan village from plague, blizzards, an onrushing glacier and incendiary bombs in a genuine forgotten classic. Lacklustre Captain America knock-off The Patriot shambles through a tale of Bundist (that’s German American Nazi sympathizers to you, youngster) saboteurs to close the issue.
That line-up maintains in the last issue reprinted here as the fiery stars combat a mad scientist named Doc Smart in ‘The March of Death’, Sub-Mariner and guest-star the Angel fight zombies in ‘Blitzkrieg of the Living Dead’ (cruelly attributed to Bill Everett, but clearly not by him) and the Patriot tracks down a Nazi who kills by playing the violin.
I’m happy to have this book, warts and all. I can’t honestly say that any one not a life-long Marvel fan would agree and I’m damn sure none of us are content with a $50+ price-tag. Its value is almost purely historical and this history just isn’t worth all that.
© 1940, 1941, 2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.