Category: Marvel Masters & Masterworks

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Marvel Masterworks: Luke Cage, Hero for Hire volume 1


By Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, Billy Graham, Tony Isabella, George Tuska & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9180-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Ideal Item for new Marvel Movie-verse addicts… 8/10

In 1968 the consciousness-raising sporting demonstration of Black Power at the Olympic Games politicised a generation of youngsters. By this time a few comics companies had already made tentative efforts to address what were national and socio-political iniquities, but issues of race and ethnicity took a long time to filter through to still-impressionable young minds avidly absorbing knowledge and attitudes via four colour pages that couldn’t even approximate the skin tones of African-Americans.

As with television, breakthroughs were small, incremental and too often reduced to a cold-war of daringly liberal “firsts.” Excluding a few characters in Jungle comic-books of the 1940s and 1950, Marvel clearly led the field with a black soldier in Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos team (the historically impossible Gabe Jones who debuted in #1, May 1963, and was accidentally re-coloured Caucasian at the printers, who clearly didn’t realise his ethnicity). He was followed by first negro superheroes Black Panther in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966), and the Falcon in Captain America #117 (September 1969).

America’s first Black hero to star in his own title had come (and gone largely unnoticed) in a little remembered or regarded title from Dell Comics. Created by artist Tony Tallarico and scripter D.J. Arneson, Lobo was a gunslinger in the old west, battling injustice just like any cowboy hero would, first appearing in December 1965.

Arguably a greater breakthrough was Joe Robertson, City Editor of the Daily Bugle; an erudite, brave and proudly ordinary mortal distinguished by his sterling character, not a costume or skin tone. He first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man # 51 (August 1967), proving in every panel that the world wouldn’t end if black folk and white folk occupied the same spaces…

This big change slowly grew out of raised social awareness during a terrible time in American history; yes, even worse than today’s festering social wound, as typified by cops under pressure providing no answer to the seemingly constant Black Lives Matter events. Although far rarer, those tragedies occur here in the UK too, so we have nothing to be smug about either. We’ve had race riots since the Sixties here which left simmering scars that only comedians and openly racist politicians dared to talk about. Things today in post-Brexit Britain don’t seem all that different, except the bile and growing taste for violence is turned towards European accents as well as brown skins…

As the 1960s became a new decade, more positive and inclusive incidences of ethnic characters appeared in the USA, with DC finally getting an African-America hero in John Stewart (Green Lantern #87 December 1971/January 1972), although his designation as a replacement Green Lantern might be construed as more conciliatory and insulting than revolutionary.

The first DC hero with his own title was Black Lightning, who didn’t debut until April 1977, although Jack Kirby had introduced Shilo Norman as Scott Free‘s apprentice (and eventual successor) in Mister Miracle ##15 (August (1973).

As usual, it took a bold man and changing economics to really promote change. With declining comics sales at a time of rising Black Consciousness, cash – if not cashing in -was probably the trigger for “the Next Step.”

Contemporary “Blaxsploitation” cinema and novels had fired up commercial interests throughout America, and in that atmosphere of outlandish dialogue, daft outfits and barely concealed – if justified – outrage, an angry black man with a shady past and apparently dubious morals must have felt like a sure-fire hit to Marvel’s bosses.

Luke Cage, Hero for Hire launched in the summer of 1972. A year later the Black Panther finally got his own series in Jungle Action #5 and Blade: Vampire Hunter debuted in Tomb of Dracula #10.

This stunning full-colour hardback compendium collects the first 16 issues of the breakthrough series: the entire run before the series was thematically adjusted to become Luke Cage Power Man.

The saga begins with Lucas, a hard-case inmate at brutal Seagate Prison. Like all convicts he claims to have been framed and his uncompromising attitude makes mortal enemies of the savage, racist guards Rackham and Quirt whilst not endearing him to the rest of the prison population such as genuinely bad guys Shades and Comanche either…

‘Out of Hell… A Hero!’ was written by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by George Tuska & Billy Graham – with some initial assistance from Roy Thomas and John Romita senior – and sees a new warden arrive promising to change the hell-hole into a proper, correctly administered correctional facility.

Prison Doctor Noah Burstein then convinces Lucas to participate in a radical experiment in exchange for a parole hearing, having heard the desperate con’s tale of woe…

Lucas had grown up in Harlem, a tough kid who had managed to stay honest even when his best friend Willis Stryker had not. They remained friends even though they walked different paths – until a woman came between them. To be rid of his romantic rival Stryker planted drugs and had Lucas shipped off to jail. While he was there his girl Reva, who had never given up on him, was killed when she got in way of bullets meant for up-and-coming gangster Stryker…

With nothing to lose Lucas undergoes Burstein’s process – an experiment in cell-regeneration – but Rackham sabotages it, hoping to kill the con before he can expose the illegal treatment of convicts. The equipment goes haywire and something incredible occurs. Lucas, panicked and somehow super-strong, punches his way out of the lab and the through the prison walls, only to be killed in hail of gunfire. His body plunges over a cliff and is never recovered…

Months later a vagrant prowls the streets of New York City and stumbles into a robbery. Almost casually he downs the felon and accepts a reward from the grateful victim. He also has a bright idea. Strong, bullet-proof, street-wise and honest, Lucas will hide in plain sight while planning his revenge on Stryker. Since his only skill is fighting, he became a private paladin… A Hero For Hire…

Making allowances for the colourful, often ludicrous dialogue necessitated by the Comics Code’s sanitising of “street-talking Jive” this is probably the grittiest origin tale of the classic Marvel years, and the tense action continued in ‘Vengeance is Mine!’ as the man now calling himself Luke Cage stalks his target.

Stryker has risen quickly, now controlling a vast portion of the drug trade as the deadly Diamondback, and Cage has a big surprise in store when beautiful Doctor Claire Temple came to his aid after a calamitous struggle.

Thinking him fatally shot her surprise is dwarfed by his own when Cage meets her boss. Seeking to expiate his sins, Noah Burstein has opened a rehab clinic on the sordid streets of Times Square, but his efforts have drawn the attention of Diamondback who doesn’t like someone trying to fix his paying customers…

Burstein apparently does not recognise Cage, and even though faced with eventual exposure and return to prison, the Hero for Hire offers to help the hard-pressed medics. Setting up an office above a movie house on 42nd Street Cage meets a lad who will be his greatest friend: D.W. Griffith: nerd, film freak and plucky white sidekick.

However, before Cage can settle in, Diamondback strikes and the age-old game of blood and honour plays out the way it always does…

Issue #3 introduced Cage’s first returning villain in ‘Mark of the Mace!’ as Burstein – for his own undisclosed reasons – decides to keep Cage’s secret, and disgraced soldier Gideon Mace launches a terror attack on Manhattan. With his dying breath one of the mad Colonel’s troops hires Cage to stop the attack, which he does in explosive fashion.

Inker Billy Graham graduated to full art chores for ‘Cry Fear… Cry Phantom!’ in #4 as a deranged and deformed maniac carried out random assaults in Times Square. Or was there perhaps another motive behind the crazed attacks?

Steve Englehart took over as scripter and Tuska returned to pencil ‘Don’t Mess with Black Mariah!’ in the next issue: a sordid tale of organised scavengers which introduced unscrupulous reporter Phil Fox, an unsavoury sneak with greedy pockets and a nose for scandal…

The private detective motif proved a brilliant stratagem in generating stories for a character perceived as a reluctant champion at best and outright antihero by nature. It allowed Cage to maintain an outsider’s edginess but also meant that danger and adventure literally walked through his shabby door every issue.

Such was the case with ‘Knights and White Satin’ (by Englehart, Gerry Conway, Graham and Paul Reinman) as the swanky, ultra-rich Forsythe sisters hire him to bodyguard their dying father from a would-be murderer too impatient to wait the week it will take for the old man to die from a terminal illness.

This more-or less straight mystery yarn (not counting a madman and killer-robots) is followed by ‘Jingle Bombs’, a strikingly different Christmas tale by from Englehart Tuska & Graham, before Cage properly entered the Marvel Universe in ‘Crescendo!’ when he is hired by Doctor Doom to retrieve rogue androids which had absconded from Latveria.

They were hiding as black men among the shifting masses of Harlem and the Iron Dictator needed someone who could work in the unfamiliar environment. Naturally Cage accomplishes his mission, only to have Doom stiff him for the fee. Big mistake…

‘Where Angels Fear to Tread!’ in issue #9 finds the enraged Hero for Hire borrowing a vehicle from the Fantastic Four to play Repo Man in Doom’s own castle just in time to get caught in the middle of a grudge match between the tyrant and an alien invader called the Faceless One.

It was back to street-level basics in ‘The Lucky… and the Dead!’ as Cage takes on a gambling syndicate led by the schizophrenic Señor Suerte who could double his luck by becoming murderous Señor Muerte (that’s Mr. Luck and Mr. Death to you): a two-part thriller complete with rigged games and death traps that climaxes in the startling ‘Where There’s Life…!’ as relentless Phil Fox finally uncovers Cage’s secret…

Issue #12 featured the first of many battles against alchemical villain ‘Chemistro!’, after which Graham assumed full art duties with ‘The Claws of Lionfang’ – a killer using big cats to destroy his enemies – before Cage tackles hyperthyroid lawyer Big Ben Donovan in ‘Retribution!’ as the tangled threads of his murky past slowly become a noose around his neck…

‘Retribution: Part II!’ finds Graham and Tony Isabella sharing the writer’s role as so many disparate elements converge to expose Cage. The crisis is exacerbated by Quirt kidnapping Luke’s girlfriend, and fellow Seagate escapees Comanche and Shades stalking him whilst the New York cops hunt him.

The last thing the Hero For Hire needs is a new super-foe, but that’s just what he get in #16’s ‘Shake Hands With Stiletto!’ (Isabella, Graham & inker Frank McLaughlin): a dramatic finale which literally brings the house down and clears up most of the old business. This would lead to a re-branding of the nation’s premier black crusader, but that’s meat for a different collection.

Bracketed by an Introduction from Steve Englehart – offering an informative issue-by-issue breakdown on how the series was created and bonus material including a cover gallery, promotional material from the times, unused artwork and pre-corrected/toned down pages (LCHFH was one of the most potentially controversial and thus most scrupulously edited books in Marvel’s stable at the time) and full creator Biographies, this is a fabulous and unmissable glimpse at one of the edgiest series of the era, and a fine way to back up the live-action Netflix iteration.
© 2015 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks volume 16: Amazing-Spider-Man 31-40 & Annual 2


By Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr. & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-730-5

After a shaky start The Amazing Spider-Man quickly became a popular sensation with kids of all ages, rivalling the creative powerhouse that was Fantastic Four. Before too long the quirky, charming, action-packed comics soap-opera would become the model for an entire generation of younger heroes impatiently elbowing aside the staid, (relatively) old thirty-something mystery-men of previous publications and hallowed tradition.

The rise and rise of the wondrous Web-spinner continued and even increased pace as the Swinging Sixties unfolded and, by the time of the tales in this third sumptuous hardcover (re-presenting Amazing Spider-Man #31-40 and including Annual 2, originally released between December 1965 and September 1966), Peter Parker and friends were on the way to being household names as well as the darlings of college campuses and the media intelligentsia.

Sadly by 1966 Stan Lee and Steve Ditko could no longer work together on their greatest creation. After increasingly fraught months the artist simply resigned, leaving Spider-Man without an illustrator.

In the coincidental meantime John Romita had been lured away from DC’s romance line and given odd assignments before assuming the artistic reins of Daredevil, the Man Without Fear. Before long he was co-piloting the company’s biggest property and expected to run with it.

In this momentous compilation of (mostly) chronological Arachnoid adventures, the World’s Most Misunderstood Hero successfully challenged the dominant Fantastic Four as Marvel’s top comicbook both in sales and quality.

Ditko’s off-beat plots and quirkily bizarre art had reached an accommodation with the slick and potent superhero house-style that Jack Kirby had developed (at least as much as such a unique talent ever could), with a marked reduction of signature line-feathering and moody backgrounds plus a lessening of concentration on totemic villains.

Although still very much a Ditko baby, The Amazing Spider-Man had attained a sleek pictorial gloss whilst Lee’s scripts were comfortably in tune with the times if not his collaborator. Although Lee’s assessment of the audience was probably the correct one, disagreements with the artist over the strip’s editorial direction were still confined to the office and not the pages themselves.

However an indication of the growing tensions could be seen once Ditko began being credited as plotter of the stories…

After a period where old-fashioned crime and gangsterism predominated, science fiction themes and costumes crazies started to return full force here as the world went gaga for superheroes and the creators experimented with longer storylines and protracted subplots…

When Ditko abruptly left, the company feared a drastic loss in quality and sales but it didn’t happen. John Romita (senior) considered himself a mere “safe pair of hands” keeping the momentum going until a better artist could be found but instead blossomed into a major talent in his own right, and the Wallcrawler continued his unstoppable rise at an accelerated pace…

Change was in the air everywhere. Included amongst the milestones for the ever-anxious Peter Parker collected here are graduating High School, starting college, meeting true love Gwen Stacy and tragic friend/enemy Harry Osborn and the introduction of arch nemesis Norman Osborn. Old friends Flash Thompson and Betty Brant subsequently begin to drift out of his life…

The fabulous four-colour fantasy opens – following the standard Stan Lee Introduction – with  ‘If This Be My Destiny…!’ from issue #31 which depicted a spate of high-tech robberies by the Master Planner and a spectacular confrontation with Spider-Man. Also on show was the aforementioned college debut, first sight of Harry and Gwen and Aunt May on the edge of death.

This led to indisputably Ditko’s finest and most iconic moments on the series – and perhaps of his entire career. ‘Man on a Rampage!’ showed Parker pushed to the very edge of desperation as the Planner’s men made off with the chemicals that might save Aunt May, resulting in an utterly driven, berserk Wallcrawler ripping the town apart trying to find them.

Trapped in an underwater fortress, pinned under tons of machinery, the hero faced his greatest failure as the clock ticked down the seconds of May’s life…

This in turn produced the most memorable visual sequence in Spidey history as the opening of ‘The Final Chapter!’ took five full, glorious pages to depict the ultimate triumph of will over circumstance. Freeing himself from tons of fallen debris Spider-Man gave his absolute all delivering the medicine May needed, to be rewarded with a rare happy ending…

Russian exile Kraven the Hunter returned in ‘The Thrill of the Hunt!’ seeking vengeance by impersonating the Web-spinner whilst #35 offered ‘The Molten Man Regrets…!’: a plot-light but inimitably action-packed combat classic as the gleaming bandit foolishly resumed his career of pinching other peoples jewels…

Amazing Spider-Man #36 featured a deliciously off-beat, almost comedic turn in ‘When Falls the Meteor!’ as deranged scientist Norton G. Fester began stealing museum exhibits whilst calling himself the Looter…

In retrospect these brief, fight-oriented tales, coming after such an intricate, passionate epic as the Master Planner saga, should have been seen as some sort of clue that things were not going well, but the fans had no idea that ‘Once Upon a Time, There was a Robot…!’ which featured a beleaguered Norman Osborn being targeted by his disgraced ex-partner and some eccentrically bizarre murder machines in #37 and the tragic comedy of ‘Just a Guy Named Joe!‘ – wherein a hapless sad-sack stumblebum boxer gains super-strength and a bad-temper – were to be Ditko’s last arachnid adventures.

When Amazing Spider-Man #39 appeared with the first of a two-part adventure that featured the ultimate victory of the Wall-Crawler’s greatest foe no reader knew what had happened – and no one told them…

‘How Green Was My Goblin!’ and ‘Spidey Saves the Day! (“Featuring the End of the Green Goblin!”)’ calamitously changed everything whilst describing how the arch-foes learned each other’s true identities before the Goblin “perished” in a climactic showdown. It would have been memorable even it the tale didn’t feature the debut of a new artist & a whole new manner of story-telling…

Issues #39 and 40 (August – September 1966) were a turning point in many ways, and inked by old DC colleague Mike Esposito (under the pseudonym Mickey Demeo) they still stand as another of the greatest Spider-Man yarns of all time, heralding a run of classic tales from the Lee/Romita team that saw sales rise and rise, even without the seemingly irreplaceable Ditko.

Earlier in 1965 however the artist was blowing away audiences with another oddly tangential superhero. ‘The Wondrous World of Dr. Strange!’ was the lead story in the second Spider-Man Annual (October of that year and filled out with vintage Spidey classics).

The entrancing fable unforgettably introduced the Webslinger to arcane other realities as he teamed up with the Master of the Mystic Arts to battle power-crazed wizard Xandu in a phantasmagorical, dimension-hopping masterpiece involving ensorcelled zombie thugs and the stolen Wand of Watoomb.

After this story it was clear that Spider-Man could work in any milieu and nothing could hold him back…

Also included from that immensely impressive landmark are more Ditko pin-ups in ‘A Gallery of Spider-Man’s Most Famous Foes’ – exposing such nefarious ne’er-do-wells as The Scorpion, Circus of Crime and the Beetle, making this astounding tome one of the most impressive Spider-Man books you could ever read, even if later editions have slightly altered contents. If you want to experience the quintessential magic of the Amazing Arachnid this book has to be your first stop…
© 1965, 1966, 1996 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks volume 12: The X-Men 101-110


By Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-628-7

In 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a cerebral, scholarly wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants dubbed Homo Superior.

After years of eccentric and spectacular adventures, the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 (issue #66 cover-dated March) during a sustained decline in costumed hero comics, when mystery and all things supernatural once more gripped the world’s entertainment fields.

Although their title was revived at the end of the year as a reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel Universe and the Beast was transformed into a monster to cash in on the horror boom, until new editor-in-chief Roy Thomas green-lighted a bold one-shot in 1975 as part of the company’s line of Giant-Sized specials…

This superb second deluxe hardcover compendium recaptures the stellar excitement of those exuberant days through X-Men #101-110 of the decidedly “All-New, All-Different” X-Men (from October 1976 to April 1978) when the merry mutants were still young, fresh and delightfully under-exposed and only beginning their inexorable rise to mega-stardom. Moreover scripter Chris Claremont & artist Dave Cockrum were on the on the verge of utterly overturning the accepted status quo of women in comics forever…

What You Need to Know: The team now consisted of old acquaintance and former foe Sean “Banshee” Cassidy, Hulk villain Wolverine, and new creations Kurt Wagner, a demonic German teleporter codenamed Nightcrawler, African weather “goddess” Ororo Monroe AKA Storm and Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin, who could transform into a living steel Colossus and joined field-commander Scott (Cyclops) Summers and Jean Grey – still labouring under the nom-de guerre Marvel Girl…

But not for much longer…

For months a long-running, blockbuster-widescreen plotline had been building. Xavier, plagued by visions of interstellar wars and alien mind-mates, was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Not coincidentally, former students Havok and Polaris had attacked the new team, apparently willing allies of a mysterious madman disguised as Cyclops’ old alias Eric the Red.

That devastating conflict then segued into a spectacular battle as remorseless robotic Sentinels returned under the hate-filled auspices of rogue Federal Agent Steven Lang and his mysterious backers of Project Armageddon. Coordinated attacks successfully snared the semi-retired Jean, Wolverine, Banshee and Xavier himself, compelling Cyclops to co-opt a space-shuttle and, with the remaining team, storm an orbiting space-station to rescue them.

Although the new X-Men were victorious, their cataclysmic clash wrecked their only means of escape and, as an immense solar flare threatened to eradicate the complex, their only chance of survival meant certain death for one X-Man…

Bracketed by a brace of team pin-ups (by Paul Ryan and Javier Saltares respectively and both inked by Al Williamson), the ten tales of stunning power and imagination contained herein begin with the debut of a landmark character in ‘Like a Phoenix from the Ashes’ (by Claremont, Cockrum & inker Frank Chiaramonte) as the shuttle spectacularly crashes back to Earth.

The X-Men had travelled in a specially shielded chamber but Marvel Girl had been compelled to pilot the vehicle unprotected through the lethal radiation storm.

As the mutants escaped the craft slowly sinking in JamaicaBay, a fantastic explosion propelled the impossibly alive Jean into the air, clad in a strange gold and green uniform and screaming that she was “Fire and Life Incarnate… Phoenix!”

Immediately collapsing, the critically injured girl was rushed to hospital and a grim wait began.

Unable to explain her survival and too preoccupied to spare time to teach, Xavier then packs Banshee, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Storm and Colossus off to the Irish mutant’s home in County Mayo for a vacation, blissfully unaware that Cassidy Keep has become a deadly trap for his new students…

Within the ancestral pile, Sean Cassidy’s mutant cousin Black Tom has usurped control of the manor and its incredible secrets and at Eric the Red’s behest has contrived an inescapable ambush, assisted by an old X-Men enemy.

‘Who Will Stop the Juggernaut?’ (inked by Sam Grainger) sees the neophyte heroes in well over their heads and fighting for their lives, but finds room to tell the origin of weather-witch Storm and provide an explanation for her crippling claustrophobia, before ‘The Fall of the Tower’ shockingly concludes the tale as the heroes and the Keep’s Leprechauns (no, really) unite to expel the murderous invaders.

Although bi-monthly at the time, the epic kicked into strident top gear with ‘The Gentleman’s Name is Magneto’ as the weary heroes then divert to Scotland and check up on their gun-toting biologist/housekeeper Moira MacTaggert‘s island lab: a previously secret facility containing many of the mutant menaces the X-Men have defeated.

It’s a bad move as the ever-active Eric has restored the dormant master of magnetism to full power. He’d been turned into a baby – a strangely common fate for villains in those faraway days – but was all grown up again now – and very angry…

Arriving from America, MacTaggert and Cyclops are only just in time to lead a desperate, humiliating retreat from the exultant, triumphant Magneto. Cyclops doesn’t care: he realises the entire affair has been a feint to draw the heroes away from Xavier and Jean…

He needn’t have worried. Although in ‘Phoenix Unleashed’ (inks from Bob Layton) Eric orchestrated an attack by Firelord – a cosmic flamethrower who had been a herald of Galactus much like the Silver Surfer – Jean was now fully evolved into a being of unimaginable power who readily held the fiery marauder at bay…

In the interim a long-standing mystery was solved as the vision which had haunted Xavier was revealed as a fugitive princess from a distant alien empire.

Lilandra of the Shi’ar had rebelled against her imperial brother and whilst fleeing had somehow telepathically locked onto her inter-cosmic soul-mate Xavier. As she made her circuitous way to Earth, embedded Shi’ar spy Shakari had assumed the role of Eric the Red and attempted to remove Lilandra’s potential champion long before she arrived…

During the blistering battle that followed the X-Men’s arrival, Shakari snatched up Lilandra and dragged her through a stargate to another galaxy, but now, aware that the fate of entire universe is at stake, Xavier urges his team to follow.

All Jean has to do is re-open a wormhole to the other side of creation…

A slight digression followed as overstretched artist Cockrum was given a breather by a fill-in “untold” tale of the new team featuring an attack by psychic clones of the original X-men in ‘Dark Shroud of the Past’(by Bill Mantlo, Bob Brown & Tom Sutton, but with a framing sequence from Cockrum).

The regular story resumes in a wry tribute to Star Trek as ‘Where No X-Man Has Gone Before!’ (by Claremont, Cockrum & Dan Green) finds the heroes stranded in another galaxy where they meet and are defeated by The Shi’ar Imperial Guard (an in-joke version of DC’s Legion of Super Heroes), until bold interstellar freebooters The Starjammers arrive to turn the tables and uncover a mad scheme to unmake the fabric of space-time.

Lilandra’s brother Emperor D’Ken is a certified maniac and wants to activate a cosmic artefact known alternatively as the M’Kraan Crystal and “the End of All that Is” in his quest for ultimate power. He’s also spent time on Earth in the past and has played a major role in the life of one of the X-Men …

This tale (from issue #107) was the last drawn by Cockrum for many years. He would eventually return to replace the man who replaced him.

As X-Men and Starjammers battle the Crystal’s impossibly deadly automated guardians, this final chapter sees the newly puissant Phoenix literally save all of reality in a mind-blowing display of power and skill, all whilst trapped in a truly staggering other realm before taking the heroes home, appalled and enthralled by the intoxicating, addictive nature of her own might.

The conclusion of this ambitious extended saga was drawn by John Byrne (with inks from Terry Austin) and his efforts were to become an industry bench-mark as the X-Men grew in popularity and complexity. However, even though the bravura high-octane thrills of “Armageddon Now” seemed an unrepeatable high-point, Claremont & Byrne had only started. The best was still to come…

In ‘Home Are the Heroes’ Wolverine finally began to develop a back-history and some depth of character as technological wonder Weapon Alpha attacked the recuperating team in an attempt to force Logan to rejoin the Canadian Secret Service. Renamed Vindicator he would later return with Alpha Flight – a Canadian super-team which would eventually graduate to their own eccentric high-profile series.

This splendid compilation ends rather limply with another hasty fill-in as ‘The “X”-Sanction’ (illustrated by Tony DeZuniga & Cockrum), finds hired cyborg-assassin Warhawk infiltrating the mansion in search of “intel” for a mysterious, unspecified master before getting his shiny silver head handed to him…

The immortal epics compiled here are available in numerous formats (including softcover editions of the luxurious and enticing hardback under review here), but for a selection that will survive the continual re-readings of the serious, incurable fan there’s nothing to beat the sturdy and substantial full-colour feel of these sturdily Marvellous Masterwork editions.
© 1976, 1977, 1978, 1990 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc/Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks volume 36: Golden Age Marvel Comics 1-4


By Carl Burgos, Bill Everett, Paul Gustavson, Ben Thompson & others (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-7851-1624-9

Whereas a vast percentage of DC’s Golden Age archive is still readily readable today, a great deal of  Marvel Comics’ Timely and Atlas output is, for most modern tastes, dated and quite often painfully strident – maybe even offensive to 21st century eyes and sensibilities.

Nevertheless, I’d rather have the raw historical form rather than any bowdlerised or censored reworking and even in their most jingoistic and populist excesses there are usually individual nuggets of gold amidst the shocking or – horror of horrors – badly crafted yarns from the House of Ideas’ antediluvian antecedents.

Moreover, there’s quite a lot to be said for putting the material in lavish and expensive hardbound volumes for those early comic adventures and I must admit that when they were good the individual efforts were very good indeed.

Marvel took quite some time before producing expensive deluxe volumes featuring their earliest comic adventures and this collection of the first four issues of the anthology title which started it all for Timely/Marvel/Red Circle/Atlas (before eventually settling on Marvel Comics), despite re-presenting some of the most revered adventures of the Golden Age, clearly shows why.

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh and hyper-critical: I have to admit that there’s a lot of material here that I spent much of my early life lusting after. I am however a complete comics nut with broad tastes and flexible standards. There are shameful horrors and truly pitiful examples of the medium lurking in my dusty comics boxes. I am not a new, casual or particularly discriminating punter.

Hi – I’m Win and I actually adore old comics…

After a rather shaky start in 1936, the invention of Superman paved the way for explosive expansion and saved the fledgling comicbook industry. By 1939 the new kids on the block were in a frantic flurry of creative frenzy and every publisher was trying to make and own the Next Big Thing. The Goodman pulp fiction outfit leapt into the new marketplace and scored big with their initial offering Marvel Comics: released late in the year before inexplicably switching to the marginally less euphonious Marvel Mystery Comics with the second issue.

During the early days ofAmerica’s Golden Age, novel ideas, raw ambition and sheer exuberance could take you far and, as most alternative means of entertainment escapism for kids were severely limited, it just wasn’t that hard to make a go of it as a comicbook publisher. Combine that with a creative work-force which kept being drafted, and it’s clear to see why low and declining standards of story and art didn’t greatly affect month-to-month sales during the years of World War II.

However once hostilities ceased a cascade-decline in super-hero strips began almost as soon as GI boots hit US soil again. Those innocent kids had seen a lot and wanted something more than brashness, naivety and breakneck pace from their funnybooks now…

Both The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner quickly won immediate favour with the burgeoning, fickle readership but the rest of the stories were soon acknowledged to be pure filler material and thus subject to immediate replacement. Still, two out of seven was pretty good: Action and Detective Comics only had the one super-star apiece…

Another holdover from the pre-comics phase of the company was a predilection to treat the instalments as serial chapters; always promising more and better if you’d just come back next month…

Before the years was out the “Big Two” would clash; frequently and repeatedly battling like elemental gods in the skies above the city…

Goodman seemed to favour and push Ka-Zar and The Angel: characters that devolved from his own stable of pulp genre stars. Sadly neither the generic jungle adventures of the company’s premiere Tarzan knockoff or the thud-and-blunder “Crime-busting Rogue” potboilers – which owed so much to Charteris’ iconic Saint – just didn’t appeal to kids as much as the graphic histrionics of the anarchic Fire and Water anti-heroes when transformed into comic strips…

An editorial policy of rapid expansion was quickly adopted: release a new book filled with whatever the art and script monkeys of the comics “shop” (freelance creative types who packaged material on spec for publishing houses: Martin Goodman bought all his product from Lloyd Jacquet’s Funnies Inc.) dreamed up, keep the popular hits and disregard everything else.

Timely Comics – or Red Circle- as the company occasionally called itself, had a huge turnover of characters who only made one or two appearances before vanishing, never to be seen again until variously modern revivals or recreations produced new improved versions of characters such as Angel, Ka-Zar or Electro.

After a knowledgeable and informative – although perhaps tad apologist – introduction by Golden Age Guru Roy Thomas, the hot-dogging begins with the landmark Marvel Comics #1 which sported a cover by pulp illustrator Frank R. Paul introducing to the gasping populace Carl Burgos’ landmark conception of ‘The Human Torch’ …

The Fiery Fury led off the parade of wonderment, bursting into life as a malfunctioning humanoid devised by Professor Phineas Horton. Igniting into an uncontrollable blazing fireball whenever exposed to air, the artificial innocent was consigned to entombment in concrete but escaped to accidentally imperil the metropolis until it/he fell into the hands of a gangster named Sardo.

When the crook’s attempts to use the android as a terror weapon dramatically backfired the hapless newborn was left a misunderstood fugitive – like a modern day Frankenstein’s monster. Even his creator only saw the creation as a means of making filthy money…

The opening episode of ‘The Angel’, by Paul Gustavson, owed a criminally large debt to the 1938 Louis Hayward film The Saint in New York. Although dressed like a superhero, the do-gooder was a blend of Charteris’s iconic well-intentioned scoundrel and The Lone Wolf (Louis Vance’s urbane two-fisted hero who was the subject of 8 books and 24 b-movies between 1917 and 1949), but the four-colour paladin’s foes soon tended towards only the spooky, the ghoulish and the just plain demented.

He also seemed able to cast a giant shadows in the shape of an angel. Not the greatest aid to cleaning up the scum of the Earth but he seemed to manage in this initial enterprise where he is asked to clean up New York: then suffering from the deadly depredations of a crime syndicate dubbed ‘the Six Big Men’…

Appalling reproduced in this volume, ‘The Sub-Mariner’ by Bill Everett, was actually an expanded reprint of a beautiful black and white strip from Motion Picture Funnies.  Prince Namor was the scion of an aquatic race that lived under the South Pole. These advanced folk had been decimated by American mineral exploration a generation previously, and the Sub-Mariner’s mother Fen had been dispatched to spy upon the invaders. She had gotten too close, falling pregnant by one of the interlopers, and twenty years later her son was an amphibious mutant superman determined to exact revenge on the air-breathers – which he promptly began by attacking New York City…

Cowboy Jim Gardley was framed by ruthless cattle-baron Cal Brunder and found the only way to secure a measure of justice was to become ‘The Masked Raider’, dispensing six-gun law. Al Anders’ Lone Ranger riff was competent but uninspired, lasting until the twelfth issue of Marvel Mystery.

Offering a complete thrill, ‘Jungle Terror’, by Tohm Dixon, followed gentlemen explorers Ken Masters and Tim Roberts (visually based on Caniff’s Pat Ryan and Terry Lee) battling savages in the Amazon to find cursed diamonds before a brief prose vignette – a staple of early comics – recounted a racing car drama of ‘Burning Rubber’ by Ray Gill, before the aforementioned ‘Adventures of Ka-Zar the Great’ saw Ben Thompson adroitly adapt Bob Byrd’s pulp novel King of Fang and Claw to strip form. In the first part South African diamond miner John Rand and his wife crashed their plane into the Belgian Congo where their son David grew up amidst jungle splendour and became brother to the King of Lions Zar. An idyllic life was only marred years later when murderous explorer Paul De Kraft killed old John, leaving young David to seek vengeance as the mighty brother of lions…

Behind a Claire Moe Angel cover, the abruptly re-titled Marvel Mystery Comics #2 (December 1939) again offered ‘The Human Torch’ by Burgos, wherein the fiery fugitive had attained a degree of sophistication and control before stumbling onto a murderous racing car racket where gangster Blackie Ross ensured his drivers always won by strafing other contestants from an airplane, until the big-hearted, outraged Torch stepped in…

Gustavson then despatched ‘The Angel’ to Hong Kong to save museum researcher Jane Framan from falling victim to a curse.

This time the dangers of the Lost Temple of Alano proved to be caused by greedy men not magical spirits, whilst ‘The Sub-Mariner’ himself was the threat in Everett’s second chapter as the Marine Marvel went berserk in a city powerhouse before showing his true colours by chivalrously saving a pretty girl caught in a conflagration.

‘The Masked Raider’ by Anders broke up an entire lost town of outlaws, after which the debuting ‘American Ace’ by Paul Lauretta (clearly patterned on Roy Crane’s soldier of fortune Wash Tubbs) found Yankee aviator Perry Wade flying straight into danger when the woman who caused the Great War returned to start WWII by attacking innocent European nations with her hidden armies…

‘The Angel’ then starred in an implausible, jingoistic prose yarn by David C. Cooke illustrated by Moe, single-handedly downing a strafing ‘Death-Bird Squadron’ before Thompson introduced fresh perils – including a marauding malicious ape named Chaka to plague young David in more ‘Adventures of Ka-Zar the Great’.

Marvel Mystery Comics #3 (January 1940 and sporting an Angel cover by Alex Schomburg) saw ‘The Human Torch’ slowly evolving into a recognisable superhero series as he battled a ruthless entrepreneur trying to secure the formula for a super-explosive so that he could sell it to Martians, whilst ‘The Angel’ battled a bloodthirsty death-cult sacrificing young women, before ‘The Sub-Mariner’ took a huge leap in quality after policewoman Betty Dean entrapped and then successfully reasoned with the intractably belligerent sub-sea invader.

With global war looming ever closer, opinions and themes were constantly shifting andEverettreacted brilliantly by turning Namor into a protector of all civilians at sea: spectacularly preying on any war-like nation sinking innocent shipping. Naturally, even before America officially joined the fray, that meant mostly Nazis got their subs and destroyers demolished at the antihero’s sinewy hands…

When gold and oil where discovered under ranch land, ‘The Masked Raider’ stepped in to stop greedy killers from driving off the settlers in a timeless tale of western justice, but current events overtook the ‘American Ace’, who faded out after this tale of Blitzkrieg bombings, in a picturesque Ruritanian nation. Even Cooke & Everett’s text thriller ‘Siegfried Suicide’ was naming and shaming the Axis directly now in a yarn where a lone yank saved a bunch of French soldiers from German atrocity, but under African skies the ‘Adventures of Ka-Zar the Great’ saw the boy hero rescue his animal friends from a well-meaning zoo hunter in a yarn which revealed hints of a Jungle Book style congress of animals…

The final inclusion in this volume – Marvel Mystery Comics #4, February 1940 – has a Schomburg cover depicting Sub-Mariner smashing a Nazi U-Boat leading into another Burgos epic for ‘The Human Torch’ wherein the android gains a secret identity as Jim Hammond and returns to New York to battle a criminal genius terrorising the city with warriors cloaked in deadly, sub-zero ‘Green Flame’.

‘The Angel’ too was in the Big Apple, grappling with a small-time hood who had manipulated a monstrous hyper-thyroid case named ‘Butch the Giant’ – impervious to pain and able to punch through brick walls – into being his slavish meal ticket, whilst ‘The Sub-Mariner Goes to War’ saw the passionate Prince return to his Polar people and rally them and their advanced technology into a taskforce to enforce his Pax Namor upon the surface world’s assorted war mongers…

Even by its own low standards, ‘The Masked Raider’ tale of claim-jumping was far from exemplary, but prose crime puzzler ‘Warning Enough’ (by Cooke & H. Ramsey) was a rather enthralling change of pace tale.

‘Electro, the Marvel of the Age’ by Steve Dahlman, introduced the brilliant Professor Philo Zog who constructed a wonder robot and then formed a secret society of undercover operatives who sought out uncanny crimes and great injustices for the automaton to fix. The first case involved retrieving a kidnapped child actress…

Another debut was ‘Ferret, Mystery Detective’ by Stockbridge Winslow & Irwin Hasen, which saw the eponymous crime writer and his faithful assistants solve the case of a corpse dropped on the authors doorstep, before the increasingly impressive ‘Adventures of Ka-Zar the Great’ saw the return of the despised De Kraft and the beginning (but not the end: that’s frustratingly left to the next issue and volume) of the jungle lord’s just vengeance…

Despite all the problems I’ve whinged about, I’m constantly delighted with this substantial chronicle, warts and all, but I can fully understand why anyone other than a life-long comics or Marvel fan would baulk at the steep price-tag in these days of grim austerity, with a wealth of better quality and more highly regarded comics collections available. Nevertheless, value is one thing and worth another and the sheer vibrant, ingenious rollercoaster rush and vitality of the material, even more than its historical merit, is just so overwhelming that if you like this sort of thing you’ll love this sort of thing. Although the stories might be of variable quality and probably not to the tastes of modern fans, for devotees of super-heroes, aficionados of historical works and true Marvel Zombies there’s still lots to offer here.

As always, in the end, it’s up to you…
© 1939, 1940, 2004 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age USA Comics Nos.1- 4


By Al Avison, Al Gabriel, Basil Wolverton, Syd Shores, George Klein & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2478-8

Whereas much of DC’s Golden Age archive is still readily readable today, a great deal of  Marvel Comics’ Timely and Atlas output is both dated and quite often painfully strident, and even offensive to modern eyes and sensibilities.

Even so, I’d rather have the raw historical form rather than any bowdlerised or censored reworking and even in their most jingoistic and populist excesses there are usually individual nuggets of gold amidst the shocking or – horror of horrors! – badly crafted yarns from the House of Ideas’ antediluvian antecedents.

Moreover, there’s quite a lot to be said for putting the material in lavish and expensive hardbound volumes for those early comic adventures and I must admit that when they were good the individual efforts could be very good indeed.

The quarterly USA Comics launched with an August 1941 cover-date and the four complete issues reprinted in this sturdy deluxe hardback reveal a period of intense experimentation and constant change as the eager publishers weaned themselves away from the “comics shop” freelancers-for-hire production system and began to build a stable – or bullpen – of in-house creators.

Since these stories come from a time of poor record-keeping, frantic scrabbling to fill pages and under the constant threat of losing staff and creators to the war-effort, the informative introduction discussing the lack of accurate creator detail and best-guess attributions from comics historian Dr. Michael J. Vassallo is a godsend for interested fans, and with covers and House ads reproduced throughout, the World War Wonderment and Patriotic Perils begin with The Defender illustrated by Al Avison, Al Gabriele, Joe Simon and diverse unknown hands (who might or might not have been Sam Cooper, Al Fagaly, George Klein & Charles Wojtkoski AKA “Charles Nicholas”); another flag-clad patriotic mystery-man, who, with designated boy sidekick Rusty, smashed a band of Nazi-backed river pirates plaguing Manhattan’s waterways.

Next comes the utterly outrageous origin of The Whizzer (by Avison & Gabriele) which saw young Bob Frank gain super-speed after his dying father injected him with mongoose blood to counteract jungle fever and snakebite.

Orphaned and vengeful, the young man thereafter dedicated his life to stopping criminals such as the thugs who had forced his ailing parent to hide and die in such a hellhole…

‘Mr. Liberty debuted in ‘The Spirits of Freedom’ by Phil Sturm, Syd Shores, & Klein, as with war erupting everywhere, history Professor John Liberty was visited by the ghosts of American patriots who offered him supernatural assistance to stamp out all threats to democracy.

After Arthur Cazeneuve’s prose crime-thriller ‘Haunted Fireplace’ the astonishing Rockman: Underground Secret Agent blazed into action in ‘The Tunnel That Led to Death’ by the incomparable Basil Wolverton – but with a splash page drawn by Nicholas – which introduced a patriot from super-scientific kingdom Abysmia; miles below American soil, determined to safeguard his upstairs neighbours from tyranny…

Howard Purcell working as Michael Robard then stylishly introduced ‘Young Avenger’ a junior superman summoned by mystic voices to battle spies and saboteurs, before arctic elemental ‘Jack Frost’ sprang to life to avenge a murder on ice in a classy origin yarn by Stan Lee & Nicholas. The polar opposite to the Human Torch (I’m such a wag, me) travelled to New York and soon occupied the same well-intentioned/hunted menace/anti-hero niche pioneered by both the blazing android and the Sub-Mariner: a much-used formula still effective to this day…

USA #2 (November 1941) led with a new nautical costumed crusader in ‘Captain Terror Battles the Fiends of the Seas’ (by Mike Suchorsky) as retired gentleman adventurer Dan Kane returned to the masked identity he had adopted during the Spanish War to hunt down a Nazi destroyer haunting American waters in an action-packed, extra-long exploit. With the Allied effort increasing on all fronts civilian “Mr.” became ‘Major Liberty’ to crush a monster-making Nazi who turned a peaceful Caribbean resort into ‘The Island Menace!’ (Shores & Klein).

Ed Winiarski then introduced Assistant District Attorney Murphy who chose to crush Home Front racketeers disguised as gaudy tramp Chauncey Throttlebottom III AKA ‘The Vagabond’ after which ‘The Defender’ (by Klein) took Rusty South of the Border to stop a plan to destabilise the nation’s South American allies. The text piece describing ‘When USA Heroes Meet!’ by Stan Lee was swiftly followed by another Wolverton Rockman stunner wherein the Subterranean Supremo tackled Zombo the Hypnotist whose mesmeric powers made men into slavish ‘Killers of the Sea’.

After which an uncredited ‘Jack Frost’ exploit found the freezing fugitive avoiding cops but still destroying a marauding robot octopus ship, ‘The Whizzer’ – also unattributed – ended a string of murders by jockey-fixers ruining the horse-racing industry.

USA Comics #3 (January 1942) opened with ‘Captain Terror and the Magic Crystal of Death’ (Suchorsky) as the bold buccaneer spectacularly smashed a sabotage ring organised by wicked ersatz gypsies, after which Major Liberty faced – or rather didn’t, if you get my point – a cunning killer masquerading as ‘The Headless Horseman’ (by Shores & and an unnamed assistant) whilst Winiarski’s Vagabond demolished yet another would-be kingpin of crime.

Once The Defender had finished a hyperthyroid maniac dubbed ‘The Monster Who Couldn’t be Stopped!’ (Klein), Lee’s prestidigitation prose piece ‘Quicker than the Eye!’ gave way to the latest Rockman instalment which he’d scripted for Nicholas to illumine; a broad fantasy set in Jugoslavia where evil pixies had abducted the beauteous Princess Alecia. Object: Matrimony!

Young wannabes Frank Giacoia & Carmine Infantino got a big boost to their careers when they illustrated the anonymously scripted Jack Frost yarn involving strong-arm thugs forcing hospitals to buy their adulterated black market drugs and, after an engaging ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ feature page (which included who had produced it), Winiarski then contributed Tom ‘Powers of the Press’ – a reporter and refreshingly plainclothes hero who, with the aid of diminutive photographer Candid Kenny Roberts, tracked down murderous payroll bandits to explosively end the third issue.

Major Liberty made the cover and lead spot in USA #4 (May 1942), using his ghostly gifts to smash a gang of spies and infiltrators terrorising German-born Americans in a breathtaking romp from Shores & his unknown collaborator, whilst Jack Frost battled mad cryogenics researchers in ‘The Adventure of the Frozen Corpses’ – attributed to Pierce Rice & Louis Cazeneuve – and The Defender stopped the maker of a deadly artificial fog assisted as ever by Rusty and the skilled artistic endeavours of George & Klein and others.

The Vagabond (by Winiarski and an unknown assistant) found the Faux Hobo exorcising a haunted castle in pursuit of a Mad Monk and loot from a decades-old cold case, after which the anonymously-penned text thriller ‘Diamond of Juba’ was followed by another Suchorsky Captain Terror tale, which saw the seaborne stalwart smashing a Nazi plot to starve Britain into submission.

The uncredited Rockman story then saw the Underworld Agent stop murder and banditry in Alaska, after which the equally unattributed Corporal Dix debuted in the stirring tale of a soldier on leave who still found the time to clear up a gang of cheap hoods and set his own wastrel brother on the right and patriotic path…

This premier collection then ends on a riotous high note as The Whizzer (by Howard James) finally came up to full speed in a rocket-paced action romp with the Golden Rocket crushing a gang of thieves targeting a brilliant boy-inventor.

I’m delighted with this substantial chronicle, warts and all, but I can fully understand why anyone other than a life-long comics or Marvel fan would baulk at the steep price-tag in these days of austerity, with a wealth of better-quality and more highly regarded Golden Age material available. Still, value is one thing and worth another, so in the end the choice, as always, is yours…
© 1941, 1942, 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks volume 22: Amazing-Spider-Man 41-50 & Annual 3


By Stan Lee, John Romita Sr. & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-914-6

The rise and rise of the wondrous web-spinner continued and even increased pace as the decade progressed, and by the time of the tales in this fourth sumptuous hardcover (collecting Amazing Spider-Man #41-50 and Annual 3, spanning October 1966 to July 1967) Peter Parker and friends were on the way to being household names as well as the darlings of college campuses and the media intelligentsia.

By 1966 Stan Lee and Steve Ditko could no longer work together on their greatest creation. After increasingly fraught months the artist simply resigned, leaving Spider-Man without an illustrator. Meanwhile John Romita had been lured away from DC’s romance line and given odd assignments before assuming the artistic reins of Daredevil, the Man Without Fear.

Now he was co-piloting the company’s biggest property and expected to run with it.

With issue #41 and ‘The Horns of the Rhino!’ Romita took complete artistic control, inking his own pencils in a blockbusting rip-roarer as a super-strong spy tasked with abducting J. Jonah Jameson‘s astronaut son was stopped by the Astounding Arachnid, who found the victim a far harder proposition in the next issue. Amazing Spider-Man #42 ‘The Birth of a Super-Hero!’ saw John Jameson mutated by space-spores and go on a terrifying rampage in a explosive, entertaining yarn only really remembered for the last panel of the final page…

Mary Jane Watson had been a running gag for years; a prospective blind-date arranged by Aunt May whom Peter had narrowly avoided – and the creators had skilfully not depicted – for the duration of time that our hero had been involved with Betty Brant, Liz Allen, and latterly Gwen Stacy. In that last frame the gob-smacked young man finally realised that he been ducking the hottest chick in New York for two years!

‘Rhino on the Rampage!’ in #43 gave the horn-headed villain one more crack at Jameson and Spidey, but the emphasis was solidly on foreshadowing future foes and building Pete and MJ’s relationship.

The Marvel mayhem continued with the return of a tragedy-drenched old foe as Stan & John reintroduced biologist Curt Conners in #44′s ‘Where Crawls the Lizard!’. The deadly reptilian marauder threatened Humanity itself and it took all of the wall-crawler’s resourcefulness to stop him in the cataclysmic concluding chapter ‘Spidey Smashes Out!’

Issue #46 introduced another all-new menace in the form of seismic super-thief ‘The Sinister Shocker!’ who proved little match for the Web-spinner whilst ‘In the Hands of the Hunter!’ brought back a fighting-mad and extremely vengeful Kraven to menace the family of Peter Parker’s new best friend Harry Osborn.

Apparently the obsessive big-game hunter had entered into a contract with Harry’s father (the super-villainous Green Goblin until a psychotic break turned him into a traumatised amnesiac) and now the Russian rogue wanted paying off or payback…

Luckily Spider-Man was on hand to dissuade him, but it’s interesting to note that at this time the student life and soap-opera sub-plots became increasingly important to the mix, with glamour girls Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy (superbly delineated by the masterful Romita) as well as former bully Flash Thompson and the Osborns getting as much or more “page-time” as Aunt May or the Daily Bugle staff, who had previously monopolised the non-costumed portions of the ongoing saga.

Amazing Spider-Man #48 introduced Blackie Drago: a ruthless thug who shared a prison cell with one of the wall-crawler’s oldest foes. At death’s door the ailing super-villain revealed his technological secrets, enabling Drago to escape and master ‘The Wings of the Vulture!’

Younger, faster, tougher, the new Vulture defeated Spider-Man and in #49′s ‘From the Depths of Defeat!’ battled Kraven the Hunter until a restored and reinvigorated Wall-crawler stepped in to thrash them both.

Issue #50 introduced one of Marvel’s greatest villains in the first of a three part yarn that saw the beginnings of romance between Parker and Gwen Stacy and the death of a cast member, re-established Spidey’s war on cheap thugs and common criminals (a key component of the hero’s appeal was that no criminal was too small for him to bother with) and saw a crisis of conscience force him to quit in ‘Spider-Man No More!’ only to return and become entangled ‘In the Clutches of… the Kingpin!’ (inked by Mike Esposito, moonlighting from DC as Mickey Demeo).

The remaining two chapters of that groundbreaking, gang-busting triptych are reproduced in the next volume but there’s still one last treat in store…

This chronicle concludes with ‘…To Become an Avenger!’ (Amazing Spider-Man Annual # 3 and out of sequence – so if you’re that way inclined read this tale first) as the World’s Mightiest Heroes offered the Web-Spinner membership in the team and an end to most of his pecuniary and P.R. woes if he could capture the Hulk.

As usual all was not as it seemed but the action-drenched epic, courtesy of Lee, Romita (on layouts), Don Heck & Demeo/Esposito is the kind of guest-heavy package that made those summer specials a kid’s ultimate delight.

Topped off with a cover gallery and glorious pin-ups of the entire cast of Peter Parker’s life, one last Ditko action-page and a group shot of Spidey with all the heroes stronger than him, this classic compendium is the ideal way to introduce or reacquaint readers with the formative Spider-Man. The brilliant adventures are superb value and this series of books should be the first choice of any adult with a present to buy for an impressionable child.

…Or for their greedy, needy selves…
© 1966, 1967, 1997 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age Human Torch #2-5A

New Expanded Review

By Carl Burgos, Bill Everett & others (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-7851-1624-9

Marvel Comics took quite some time before producing expensive hardbound volumes reprinting their earliest comic adventures and this collection of the first four solo outings for one of Timely/Marvel’s Holy Trinity, despite re-resenting some of the most well-regarded and revered adventures of the Golden Age, provides a few solid and somewhat expensive possible reasons why.

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh and hyper-critical: I must 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 with broad taste and mutable standards. There are shameful horrors and truly pitiful examples of the medium lurking in my dusty comics boxes. I am not a new, casual or particularly discriminating punter.

Hi – my name’s Win and I’m an old comics collector …

During the early Golden Age, novel ideas and sheer exuberance could take you far, and as the alternative means of entertainment escapism 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 which 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.

In 1940 the comicbook industry was in a frantic expansion mode and every publisher was trying to make and own the Next Big Thing. The Goodman pulp fiction outfit leapt into the new industry and scored big with anthology Marvel Comics in late 1939 (which became Marvel Mystery with the second issue), with both the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner finding huge favour with the burgeoning, fickle readership. Two out of seven was pretty good: Action and Detective Comics only had the one super-star apiece…

An editorial policy of rapid expansion was in play: release a new book filled with whatever the art and script monkeys of the comics “shop” (freelance creative types who packaged material on spec for publishing houses: Martin Goodman bought all his product from Lloyd Jacquet’s Funnies Inc.) dreamed up, keep the popular hits and disregard everything else.

In quick succession Daring Mystery Comics #1 (January. 1940) and Mystic Comics #1 (March 1940), followed with limited success and a rapid turnover of concepts and features. Timely Comics – or occasionally Red Circle – as the company then called itself, had a huge turnover of characters who only made one or two appearances before vanishing, never to be seen again until variously modern revivals or recreations produced new improved versions of heroes like the Black Widow, Thin Man, original Angel, Citizen V or Red Raven.

That last one is especially relevant. Although fresh characters were plentiful, physical resources were not and when the company’s fourth title Red Raven #1 was released with an August 1940 cover-date it failed to ignite any substantial attention with either title character or B-features Comet Pierce, Mercury, Human Top, Eternal Brain and Magar the Mystic, despite being crammed with the stunning early work of young Jack Kirby.

The entire magazine was killed and its publishing slot and numbering handed over to a proven seller. Thus, Human Torch debuted with #2 (Fall 1940) – the first issue to solo star the flammable android hero, and introduced his own fiery side-kick.

Just so’s you know; the next two releases fared a little better: Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941) and at long last, a solo book for Sub-Mariner (Fall 1941)…

Although the material in this collection is of variable quality and probably not to the tastes of modern fans; for devotees of super-heroes, aficionados of historical works and true Marvel Zombies there’s still lots to offer here…

After a knowledgeable and informative introduction by Roy Thomas, the hot-dogging begins with ‘Introducing Toro – the Flaming Torch Kid’ by Carl Burgos as the blazing star discovered a circus boy who possessed all his own incendiary abilities before fighting a criminal strongman with a ray-gun. The misnamed elder Torch was actually a miraculous android and not at all human but here he found a plucky, excitable teen assistant who would become his faithful comrade for the remainder of his career…

This was followed by Bill Everett’s ‘Sub-Mariner Crashes New York Again!!!’ as the sub-sea Prince once more attacked America, after which ‘Carl Burgos’ Hot Idea’ and ‘Bill Everett’s Hurricane’ were text features supposedly detailing how the respective creators came up with their tempestuous brain-children

The remaining stories are pretty pedestrian. ‘The Falcon’ by Paul Reinman features a young District Attorney who corrected legal shortcomings and miscarriages of justice as a masked vigilante, ‘Microman’ (Harold Delay & Paul Quinn) stars a young boy exploring his own garden at insect size and Mandrake knock-off ‘Mantor the Magician’ by Al Gabriele saw a fez-topped modern wizard battle crooks posing as ghosts.

Joe Simon’s Fiery Mask debuted in Daring Mystery #1 and ended his career here with ‘The Strange Case of the Bloodless Corpses’ as the multi-powered physician hunted a remorseless mad doctor terrorising the city…

Issue #3 is actually pretty impressive, with an ambitious and spectacular untitled 40-page Torch epic which saw Toro seduced by Nazism, before seeing the patriotic light and burning off Hitler’s moustache, whilst the text piece ‘Hot and Wet’ had the two elemental stars debate whose creator was best before a 20-page Sub-Mariner crossover (anticipating Marvel’s successful policy of the 1960s onward) found Namor and the Torch teaming up to trash Nazi vessels destroying Allied convoys, before scuttling a full invasion together.

By Human Torch #4 much of the work is obviously being ghosted to a greater or lesser degree. The Torch takes way too long solving the ever-so-simple ‘Mystery of the Disappearing Criminals’, after which Ray Gill introduced star-spangled hero The Patriot in a 2-page text piece.

At least Everett was still very much in evidence and on top form when the Sub-Mariner took ten beautiful pages to save an Alaskan village from plague, blizzards, an onrushing glacier and incendiary bombs in a genuine forgotten classic before lacklustre Captain America knock-off The Patriot shambled through a proper comic-strip tale of Bundist (that’s German/American Nazi sympathizers to you, kid) saboteurs to close the issue.

That line-up continued in the last issue reprinted here (Human Torch #5A, Summer 1941 and the “A” is because the series did a little lock-step and caught up with itself: the next issue would also be a #5). The fiery star and his Flaming Kid clashed with a mad scientist named Doc Smart in ‘The March of Death’, then joined forces again with Namor in a Stan Lee scripted prose vignette entitled ‘The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner Battle the Nazi Super Shell of Death!’

Sub-Mariner and guest-star the Angel followed, fighting Nazi zombies in ‘Blitzkrieg of the Living Dead’ (attributed to Bill Everett, but clearly overwhelmed by lesser hands in the inking and perhaps even pencilling stages) and The Patriot wraps thing up in a bold and experimental job by future art great Sid Greene wherein the Red, White and Blue Home-front Hero tracked down a Nazi who killed by playing the violin…

I’m happy to have this book, warts and all, but I can understand why anyone other than a life-long Marvel fan would baulk at the steep price-tag in these days of austerity, with a wealth of better-quality and more highly regarded Golden Age material available. Still, value is one thing and worth another, so in the end it’s up to you…
© 1940, 1941, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks volume 27 The Avengers 21-30


By Stan Lee, Don Heck & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-993-6

After first launching the Avengers with the venerable concept of putting all your star eggs in one basket, narrative and scheduling problems prompted Stan Lee to downplay Marvel’s most popular stars in favour of lesser lights with les crowded schedules, allowing the title to develop healthy emotionally character-driven sub-plots that were necessarily missing for decades from its thematic precursor and rival Justice League of America.

By the time of this stellar third deluxe collection (re-presenting Avengers #21-30 from October 1965 to July 1966) the policy was paying big dividends as the team became another hotbed of stewing passions and brewing internal conflicts with veteran campaigner Captain America constantly at war with and doubting himself whilst wrangling young, unruly and ambitious newcomers – and ex-criminals – Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch in the tried and true, soapily operatic Marvel Manner.

Avengers #21 (by Stan Lee, Don Heck & Wally Wood) launched another big-name villain in Power Man, created by the evil Enchantress in ‘The Bitter Dregs of Defeat!’ as part of a diabolical plan to discredit and displace the heroic ideals. Her scheme succeeded in splitting up and outlawing the team, but after a clash with the Circus of Evil in #22 the plot was foiled by the indomitable Captain America in ‘The Road Back.’

A two-part Kang tale followed as the team was shanghaied into the far-flung future to battle against and latterly beside the Tyrant of Time. Avengers #23 (incidentally, my vote for the best Marvel cover Jack Kirby ever drew) ‘Once an Avenger…’ was superbly inked by the elder John Romita before the yarn spectacularly concludes with the epic ‘From the Ashes of Defeat!’ by Heck & Dick Ayers.

The underrated team faced their greatest test yet when they were cunningly captured, magnificently survived and easily escaped the deadliest man alive in #25′s ‘Enter… Dr. Doom!’ but, as change was ever the watchword for this series, the following two issues combined a threat to drown the world with the return of an old comrade.

‘The Voice of the Wasp!’ and ‘Four Against the Floodtide!’ (Lee, Heck & Frank Giacoia) made for a superlative action-romp as the undersea barbarian Attuma attempted to raise the world’s sea-level to destroy humanity. Notified by the long-retired Wasp the Avengers dashed to the depths to stop the marine maniac, but that saga was simply a prelude to the main event…

Issue #28 featured the return of Giant-Man in a new guise. ‘Among us Walks a Goliath!’ was an instant classic which introduced the villainous Collector and extended the company’s pet theme of alienation by tragically trapping the size-changing hero at a freakish ten-foot height, seemingly forever.

Avengers #29, ‘This Power Unleashed!’ then brought back Hawkeye’s lost love Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow and a brainwashed Soviet agent in an unlikely attempt to destroy the team using fearsome foes Power Man and Swordsman as cannon-fodder before this delightful diversion annoying ends on a classy cliffhanger with ‘Frenzy in a Far-Off Land!’ as the dispirited colossus desperately sought a cure to his colossal condition.

Seeking expert aid the grim giant became embroiled in a civil war amongst a lost South American civilisation: a two-part yarn that threatened to end in global incineration – but one that concludes in another volume…

Riveting tales of action and adventure, a charismatic blend of established and new characters and some of the best illustrated narrative in Marvel’s history makes this tome both utterly enticing and aggravatingly frustrating, but as the next book is also stuffed with brilliant adventure tales I suppose dedicated fans will be content  to buy that one too.

These stories set the tone for Marvel’s superheroes: the group dynamics, the themes and even the kinds of menaces they faced. Where the Fantastic Four were as much explorers as champions; a family with the same passions, the Avengers were disparate individuals called together to get a job done. How well these adventures still read is testament to how well the creators succeeded in their craft…
© 1965, 1966, 1993 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks: All-Winners 1-4

New Expanded Review

By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Carl Burgos, Bill Everett & others (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-7851-1884-5

Unlike their Distinguished Competition, Marvel Comics took quite a while to get into producing expensive hardbound volumes of their earliest comic adventures. In the cold hard light of day it’s fairly clear to see why. The sad truth is that a lot of Golden Age Marvel material is not only pretty offensive by modern standards but is also of rather poor quality. One welcome exception, however, is this collection of the quarterly super-hero anthology All Winners Comics.

Over the course of the first year’s publication (from Summer 1941 to Spring 1942) the stories and art varied wildly but in terms of sheer variety the tales and characters excelled in exploring every avenue of patriotic thrill that might enthral ten year old boys of all ages. As well as Simon and Kirby, Lee, Bill Everett and Carl Burgos, the early work of Mike Sekowsky, Jack Binder, George Klein, Paul Gustavson, Al Avison, Al Gabriele and many others can be found as the budding superstars dashed out the supplemental adventures of Captain America, Sub-Mariner, The Human Torch, Black Marvel, The Angel, Mighty Destroyer, and The Whizzer.

This spectacular deluxe full-colour hardback compendium opens with a fulsome and informative introduction from Roy Thomas – architect of Marvel’s Golden Age revival – ably abetted by Greg Theakston, after which  All Winners Comics #1 commences with Carl Burgos’ Human Torch adventure ‘Carnival of Fiends’ as Japanese agent Matsu terrorises the peaceful pro-American Orientals of Chinatown whilst the physically perfect specimen dubbed the Black Marvel crushes a sinister secret society known as ‘The Order of the Hood’ in a riotous action romp by Stan Lee, Al Avison & Al Gabriele after which Joe Simon & Jack Kirby contributed a magnificent Captain America thriller-chiller in ‘The Case of the Hollow Men’ as ghastly artificial zombies rampaged through the streets of New York…

Stripling Stan Lee scripted the prose teaser ‘All Winners’ – an affable chat between the four-colour stars – after which an untitled Bill Everett Sub-Mariner yarn saw the errant Prince of Atlantis uncover and promptly scupper a nest of saboteurs on the Virginia coastline whilst the inexplicably ubiquitous Angel travelled to the deep dark jungle to solve ‘The Case of the Mad Gargoyle’ with typical ruthless efficiency in an engaging end-piece by Paul Gustavson.

Issue #2 (Fall 1941) began with the Torch and incendiary sidekick Toro tackling the ‘Carnival of Death!’ – a winter jamboree this time rather than a circus of itinerant killers – in a passable murder-mystery with less than stellar art, after which Simon & Kirby delivered another stunning suspense shocker in the exotic action masterpiece ‘The Strange Case of the Malay Idol’.

Lee graduated to full comic strips in ‘Bombs of Doom!’ as Jack Binder illustrated the All Winners debut of charismatic behind-enemy-lines hero The Destroyer; the text feature ‘Winners All’ saw a Lee puff-piece embellished with a Kirby group shot of the anthology’s cast and second new guy The Whizzer kicked off a long run in an untitled, uncredited tale about spies and society murderers on the home-front. After a page of believe-it-or-not ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ a ghost artist produced ‘The Ghost Fleet’ to end the issue with another Sub-Mariner versus Nazi submariners action romp.

All Winners #3 pitted the Torch against Japanese terrorists in ‘The Case of the Black Dragon Society’, a rather over-the-top slice of cartoon jingoism credited to Burgos but perhaps produced by another anonymous ghost squad. Simon and Kirby had moved to National Comics by this issue and Avison was drawing Captain America now, with scripts by the mysterious S.T. Anley (geddit?) but ‘The Canvas of Doom!’ still rockets along with plenty of dynamite punch in a manic yarn about a painter who predicts murders in his paintings, whilst The Whizzer busted up corruption and slaughter in ‘Terror Prison’ in a rip-roarer from Lee, Mike Sekowsky & George Klein.

‘Jungle Drums’ was standard genre filler-fare after which Everett triumphed with a spectacular maritime mystery as ‘Sub-Mariner visits the Ship of Horrors’ and The Destroyer turned the Fatherland upside down by wrecking ‘The Secret Tunnel of Death!’

The final issue in this compendium was cover-dated Spring 1942 and with enough lead time following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the patriotic frenzy mill was clearly in full swing.

A word of warning: though modern readers might well blanche at the racial and sexual stereotyping of the (presumably) well-intentioned propaganda machines which generated tales such as ‘Death to Nazi Scourge’ and ‘The Terror of the Slimy Japs’, please try to remember the tone of those times and recall that these contents obviously need to be read in an historical rather than purely entertainment context.

The aforementioned ‘Terror of the Slimy Japs’ found the Human Torch and Toro routing Moppino, High Priest of the Rising Sun Temple and saboteur extraordinaire from his lair beneath New York, whilst Cap and Bucky contented themselves with solving ‘The Sorcerer’s Sinister Secret!’ and foiling another Japanese sneak attack before The Whizzer stamped out ‘Crime on the Rampage’ in a breakneck campaign by Howard “Johns” nee James.

‘Miser’s Gold’ was just one more genre text tale followed by Everett’s take on the other war as ‘Sub-Mariner Combats the Sinister Horde!’ …of Nazis, this time, after which the Destroyer brought down the final curtain by hunting down a sadistic Gestapo chief in ‘Death to Nazi Scourge’.

Augmented by covers, house ads and other original ephemera, this is a collection of patriotic populist publishing from the dawn of a new and cut-throat industry, working under war-time conditions in a much less enlightened time. That these nascent efforts grew into the legendary characters and brands of today attests to their intrinsic attraction and fundamental appeal, but this is a book of much more than simple historical interest. Make no mistake, there’s still much here that any modern fan can and will enjoy.
© 1941, 1942, 2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks Golden Age Captain America vol. 1


New expanded review
By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby and various (Marvel Comics)

ISBN: 0-7851-1619-2

Over the last twenty years a minor phenomenon developed in the world of comic collecting. The success of DC’s Archive imprint – which produced luxury hardback reprints of rare, expensive and just plain old items out of their mammoth back-catalogue – gradually resulted in a shelf-buckling array of Golden and Silver Age volumes which paid worthy tribute to the company’s grand past and still serves a genuine need amongst fans of old comics who don’t own their own software company or Money Bin.

It should also be noted that many volumes, at least latterly, seemed to coincide with the release of a film or TV show.

From tentative beginnings in the 1990’s DC, Marvel and Dark Horse have pursued this (hopefully) lucrative avenue, perhaps as much a sop to their most faithful fans as an exercise in expansion marketing. DC’s electing to spotlight not simply their World Branded “Big Guns” but also those idiosyncratic yet well-beloved collector nuggets – such as Doom Patrol, Sugar and Spike or Kamandi – was originally at odds with Marvel’s policy of only releasing equally expensive editions of major characters from “the Marvel Age of Comics”, but in recent times their Dawn Age material has been progressively released.

A part of me understands the reluctance: sacrilegious as it may sound to my fellow fan-boys, the simple truth is that no matter how venerable and beloved those early stories are, no matter how their very existence may have lead to classics in a later age, in and of themselves, most early Marvel tales just aren’t that good.

This Marvel Masterworks Captain America volume reprints more or less the complete contents of the first four issues of his original title (from March to June 1941) and I stress this because all the leading man’s adventures have often been reprinted before, most notably in a shoddy, infamous yet expensive 2-volume anniversary boxed set issued in 1991.

However, the groundbreaking and exceptionally high quality material from Joe Simon & Jack Kirby is not really the lure here… the real gold nuggets for us old sods are the rare back-up features from the star duo and their small team of talented youngsters. Reed Crandall, Syd Shores, Alex Schomburg and all the rest worked on main course and filler features such as Hurricane, the God of Speed and Tuk, Caveboy; strips barely remembered yet still brimming with the first enthusiastic efforts of creative legends in waiting.

Captain America was created at the end of 1940 and boldly launched in his own monthly Timely title (the company’s original name) with none of the customary cautious shilly-shallying. Captain America Comics, #1 was cover-dated March 1941 and was an instant monster smash-hit. Cap was the absolute and undisputed star of Timely’s “Big Three” – the other two being the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner – and one of the very first to fall from popularity at the end of the Golden Age.

Today, the huge 1940s popularity of the other two just doesn’t translate into a good read for modern consumers – excluding, perhaps, those far-too-few Bill Everett crafted Sub-Mariner yarns. In comparison to their contemporaries at Quality, Fawcett, National/All American and Dell, or Will Eisner’s Spirit newspaper strip, the standard of most Timely periodicals was woefully lacklustre in both story and most tellingly, art. That they survived and prospered is a Marvel mystery, but a clue might lie in the sheer exuberant venom of their racial stereotypes and heady fervour of jingoism at a time when America was involved in the greatest war in world history…

However, the first ten Captain America Comics are the most high-quality comics in the fledgling company’s history and I can’t help but wonder what might have been had National (née DC) been wise enough to hire Simon & Kirby before they were famous, instead of after that pivotal first year?

Of course we’ll never know and though they did jump to the majors after a year, their visual dynamic became the aspirational style for super-hero comics at the company they left and their patriotic creation became a flagship icon for them and the industry.

This lavish and exceptional hardback volume opens with ‘Case No. 1: Meet Captain America’ by Simon & Kirby (with additional inks by Al Liederman) wherein we first see how scrawny, enfeebled young patriot Steven Rogers, continually rejected by the US Army, is recruited by the Secret Service. Desperate to counter a wave of Nazi-sympathizing espionage and sabotage, the passionate young man was invited to become part of a clandestine experiment intended to create physically perfect super-soldiers.

When a Nazi agent infiltrated the project and murdered its key scientist, Rogers became the only successful graduate and America’s not-so-secret weapon.

Sent undercover as a simple private he soon encountered James Buchanan Barnes: a headstrong, orphaned Army Brat who became his sidekick and costumed confidante “Bucky”. All of that was perfectly packaged into mere seven-and-a-half pages, and the untitled ‘Case No. 2’ took just as long to spectacularly defeat Nazi showbiz psychics Sando and Omar.

‘Captain America and the Soldier’s Soup’ was a rather mediocre and unattributed prose tale promptly followed by a sinister 16-page epic ‘Captain America and the Chess-board of Death’ and the groundbreaking introduction of the nation’s greatest foe whilst solving ‘The Riddle of the Red Skull’ – a thrill-packed, horror-drenched master-class in comics excitement.

The first of the B-features follows next as Hurricane, son of Thor and the last survivor of the Greek Gods (don’t blame me – that’s what it says) set his super-fast sights on ‘Murder Inc.’ – a rip-roaring but clearly rushed battle against fellow-immortal Pluto (so not quite the last god either; nor exclusively Norse or Greek…) who was once more using mortals to foment pain, terror and death.

Hurricane was a rapid reworking and sequel to Kirby’s ‘Mercury in the 20th Century’ from Red Raven Comics #1 (August 1940) but ‘Tuk, Caveboy: Stories from the Dark Ages’ is all-original excitement as a teenaged boy in 50,000 BC raised by a beast-man determines to regain the throne of his antediluvian kingdom Attilan from the usurpers who stole it: a barbarian spectacular that owes as much to Tarzan as The Land that Time Forgot…

Historians believe that Kirby pencilled this entire issue and although no records remain, inkers as diverse as Liederman, Crandall, Bernie Klein, Al Avison, Al Gabrielle, Syd Shores and others may have been involved in this and subsequent issues…

Captain America Comics #2 screamed onto the newsstands a month later and spectacularly opened with ‘The Ageless Orientals Who Wouldn’t Die’, blending elements of horror and jingoism into a terrifying thriller, with a ruthless American capitalist the true source of a rampage against the nation’s banks…

‘Trapped in the Nazi Stronghold’ saw Cap and youthful sidekick Bucky in drag and in Europe to rescue a pro-British financier kidnapped by the Nazis whilst ‘Captain America and the Wax Statue that Struck Death’ returned to movie-thriller themes in the tale of a macabre murderer with delusions of world domination, after which the Patriotic Pair dealt with saboteurs in the prose piece ‘Short Circuit’. Tuk then tackled monsters and mad priests in ‘The Valley of the Mist’ (by either the King and a very heavy inker or an unnamed artist doing a passable Kirby impression) and Hurricane speedily and spectacularly dealt with ‘The Devil and the Green Plague’ in the depths of the Amazon jungles.

17-page epic ‘The Return of the Red Skull’ led in #3 – knocking Adolf Hitler off the cover-spot he’d hogged in #1 and #2 – as Kirby opened up his layouts to utterly enhance the graphic action and a veritable production line of creators joined the art team (including Ed Herron, Martin A, Burnstein, Howard Ferguson, William Clayton King, and possibly George Roussos, Bob Oksner, Max Elkan and Jerry Robinson) whilst eye-shattering scale and spectacle joined non-stop action and eerie mood as key components of the Sentinel of Liberty’s exploits.

The horror element dominated in ‘The Hunchback of Hollywood and the Movie Murder’ as a patriotic film was plagued by sinister “accidents” after which Stan Lee debuted with the text tale ‘Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge’ before Simon & Kirby – and friends – recounted ‘The Queer Case of the Murdering Butterfly and the Ancient Mummies’; blending eerie Egyptian antiquities with a thoroughly modern costumed psychopath.

Tuk (drawn by either Mark Schneider – or perhaps Marcia Snyder) reached ‘Atlantis and the False King’ after which Kirby contributed a true tale in ‘Amazing Spy Adventures’ and Hurricane confronted ‘Satan and the Subway Disasters’ with devastating and final effect.

The last issue in this fabulous chronicle opens with ‘Captain America and the Unholy Legion’ as the heroes crushed a conspiracy of beggars terrorising the city, before taking on ‘Ivan the Terrible’ in a time-busting vignette and solving ‘The Case of the Fake Money Fiends’, culminating on a magnificent high by exposing the horrendous secret of ‘Horror Hospital’.

After the Lee-scripted prose-piece ‘Captain America and the Bomb Sight Thieves’ young Tuk defeated ‘The Ogre of the Cave-Dwellers’ and Hurricane brought down the final curtain on ‘The Pirate and the Missing Ships’.

An added and very welcome bonus for fans is the inclusion of all the absolutely beguiling house-ads for other titles, contents pages, Sentinels of Liberty club bulletins and assorted pin-ups…

Although lagging far behind DC and despite, in many ways having a much shallower Golden Age well to draw from, it’s great that Marvel has overcome an understandable reluctance about its earliest product continues to re-present these masterworks – even if they’re only potentially of interest to the likes of sad old folk like me – but with this particular tome at least the House of Ideas has a book that will always stand shoulder to shoulder with the very best that the Golden Age of Comics could offer.
© 1941 and 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.