Stan Lee Presents Captain America


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & various (Marvel/Pocket Books)
ISBN: 0-671-82581-X-225

Perhaps I have a tendency to overthink things regarding the world of graphic narrative, but it seems to me that the medium, as much as the message, radically affects the way we interpret our loves and fascinations. Take this pint-sized full-colour treat from 1979.

It’s easy to assume that a quickly resized, repackaged paperback book collection of the early comics extravaganzas was just another Marvel cash-cow in their perennial “flood the marketplace” sales strategy – and maybe it was – but as someone who bought these stories in most of the available formats over the years I have to admit that this version has a charm and attraction all its own…

During the Marvel Renaissance of the early 1960’s Stan Lee & Jack Kirby followed the same path which had worked so tellingly for DC Comics, but with less obviously successful results.

Julie Schwartz had changed the entire comics scene with his revised versions of the company’s Golden Age greats, so it seemed natural to revive those characters who had dominated Timely/Atlas in days past.

A new Human Torch had premiered as part of the revolutionary Fantastic Four, and in the fourth issue of that title the Sub-Mariner resurfaced after a twenty year amnesiac hiatus (everyone concerned had apparently forgotten the first abortive attempt to revive their superhero line in the mid 1950s). All that was left was to complete the triangle by bringing back the Star Spangled Sentinel of Liberty…

However although the teen Torch had won a solo-spot in Strange Tales he hadn’t set the World on fire there (sorry, utterly irresistible and I’m truly ashamed – just not enough to hit “delete”) so it was decided to revive the Company’s biggest Golden Age gun within the fledgling company’s star-packed team-book.

This carefully reformatted digest delight opens with the fabled contents of Avengers #4 (March 1964, inked by George Roussos) an epic landmark wherein ‘Captain America joins the Avengers!’ in a blockbusting tale which had everything which made the company’s early tales so fresh and vital. The majesty of a legendary warrior returned in our time of greatest need: stark tragedy in the loss of his boon companion Bucky, time-lost aliens, gangsters, Sub-Mariner and even wry social commentary all couched in vast amounts of staggering Kirby Action.

Six months later the Old Soldier won his own solo-series in Tales of Suspense #59 (cover-dated November 1964), initially in a series of short, self-contained action romps such as ‘Captain America’, (scripted by Lee and illustrated by the staggeringly perfect team of Jack Kirby & Chic Stone): an unapologetic rocket-paced fight-fest wherein an army of thugs invaded Avengers Mansion since only the one without superpowers was at home…

The next issue held more of the same, when ‘The Army of Assassins Strikes!’, this time attempting to overwhelm the inexhaustible human fighting machine at the behest of arch foe Baron Zemo, whilst ‘The Strength of the Sumo!’ was insufficient when Cap invaded Viet Nam to rescue a captured US airman, after which he took on an entire prison’s population to stop the ‘Break-out in Cell Block 10!’

After these gloriously visceral and bombastic escapades the series took an abrupt turn and began telling tales set in World War II. From ToS #63, March 1965, ‘The Origin of Captain America’, by Lee, Kirby & Frank Ray (AKA veteran artist Frank Giacoia) recounted, recapitulated and expanded the manner in which physical wreck Steve Rogers was selected as the guinea pig for a new super-soldier serum, only to have the genius responsible die in his arms, cut down by a Nazi bullet.

Now forever unique, Rogers became the living, breathing, fighting symbol and guardian of America, but spent his quieter moments as a husky but easygoing ordinary G.I. in boot camp at Fort Lehigh.

It was there he was accidentally unmasked by Camp Mascot Bucky Barnes, who blackmailed the hero into making the boy his sidekick. The next issue kicked off a string of spectacular thrillers as the Red, White and Blue Boys defeated enemy saboteurs Sando and Omar in ‘Among Us, Wreckers Dwell!’ before Chic Stone returned for the next tale ‘The Red Skull Strikes!’ in which the daring duo met and first foiled the Nazi mastermind’s schemes of terror and sabotage in America.

‘The Fantastic Origin of the Red Skull!’ saw the series swing into high gear and switch settings to Europe as sub-plots and characterisation were added to the all-out action and spectacle. With Cap captured by his bragging fascist foe and brainwashed into attacking his own commanders, the Master of Menace felt smug enough to reveal his own rise to power after which ‘Lest Tyranny Triumph!’ and ‘The Sentinel and the Spy!’ (both inked by Giacoia) combined espionage with stunning combat and sinister subversion with mad science as the plot to murder the head of Allied Command segued into a battle with a German infiltrator who had stolen Britain’s latest secret super-weapon.

The heroic duo stayed in England for ‘Midnight in Greymoor Castle!’ (with art by Dick Ayers over Kirby’s) as English and Nazi collaborator scientist Cedric Rawlings captured Bucky whist Ranger Steve Rogers participated on an Army raid in France. The second part ‘If This be Treason!’ had Golden Age veteran and Buck Rogers newspaper strip artist George Tuska perform the same function as the hero deserts his comrades to rush back to Young Ally’s rescue before the final part (and last wartime adventure) ‘When You Lie Down with Dogs…!’ neatly wrapped up the saga, with Joe Sinnott inking a rousing conclusion involving repentant traitors, military madmen and handy terror weapons…

These mini-masterpieces of tension, action and suspense perfectly demonstrated the indomitable nature of this perfect American hero and I suppose in the final reckoning how you come to the material is largely irrelevant as long as you do, but I’m certain that different people are receptive to different modes of transmission and we should endeavour to keep all those avenues open…
© 1979 Marvel Comics Group, a division of Cadence Industries Corporation. All rights reserved.

Swamp Thing


By Len Wein & Berni Wrightson (Tor/DC Comics)
ISBN: 0-523-49012-7

In my perpetual quest to highlight the rare and odd (or “show off” as my mum used to call it) I’ve unearthed a few more nostalgically tangential and “comicbook-adjacent” little gems that will gradually make their way into these reviews whenever I’m feeling a little bit halcyon or backwards-looking.

Take this little treat from 1982, released to coincide with the then still-Big-News of a movie based on a comic book character…

The first fan-sensation of the modern age of comics (or perhaps the last of the true Silver Age?), Swamp Thing had powerful popular fiction antecedents and in 1972 when the character first appeared, was seemingly a concept whose time had come again. Prime evidence was the fact that Marvel were also working on a man-into-mucky, muddy mess character at the very same time.

Both Swampy and Man-Thing were thematic revisions of Theodore Sturgeon’s classic novella It and bore strong resemblances to the immensely popular Hillman character The Heap, who slushed his way through the back of Airboy Comics (née Air Fighters) from1943; bridging the first death of superheroes and rise of horror and crime comics.

My fan-boy radar suspects that Roy Thomas’ marsh-monster the Glob (from Incredible Hulk #121 and #129 (November 1969 and June 1970) either inspired both DC and Marvel’s creative teams, or was part of that same zeitgeist. Skywald, a minor player patterned on Warren Comics monochrome magazine hits Eerie and Creepy, released a new black-&-white title The Heap in the Autumn of 1971.

For whatever reason, by the end of the 1960s superhero comics had started another steep sales decline, once again making way for a horror/mystery boom: a sea-change facilitated by a swift rewriting of the Comics Code Authority. At DC, House of Mystery and its sister title House of Secrets returned to short story anthology formats and gothic mystery scenarios, taking a lead from such TV successes as Twilight Zone and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery with EC veteran Joe Orlando as editor.

The twelfth anthology issue of House of Secrets cemented the genre into place as the industry leader. In it writer Len Wein and Berni Wrightson produced a throwaway gothic thriller set at the turn of the 19th century, wherein gentleman scientist Alex Olsen was murdered by his best friend and his body dumped in a swamp. Years later his beloved bride, now the unsuspecting wife of the murderer, was stalked by a shambling, disgusting beast that seemed to be composed of mud and muck…

‘Swamp Thing’ (cover-featured in HoS #92, June/July 1971) struck an immediate chord with the buying public. The issue was the top-selling DC title of that month and reader response was fervent and persistent. By all accounts the only reason there wasn’t an immediate sequel or spin-off was that the creative team didn’t want to produce one.

Eventually however, bowing to interminable pressure and with the sensible suggestion of transplanting the concept to contemporary America, the first issue of Swamp Thing appeared on newsstands in the Spring of 1972.

It was a magnificent hit and an instant classic.

Wein and Wrightson together produced ten issues, crafting an extended, multi-chaptered tale of justice/vengeance that was at once philosophically typical of the time and a prototype for the story-arc and mini-series formats which dominate modern comicbook production. They also used each issue/chapter to pay tribute to a specific sub-genre of timeless horror story whilst advancing the major plot.

This nifty little monochrome digest reprints their first three collaborations from the solo title and begins with the revamped origin of a contemporary mire-monster in ‘Dark Genesis’ as husband and wife biologists Alec and Linda Holland move deep into the Bayou Country, working on a “bio-restorative formula” that would revolutionise World Farming. Working in isolation, they were guarded by Secret Service agent Matt Cable.

When representatives of an organisation called The Conclave demanded that they sell their research to them – or else – the patriotic pair refused and the die was cast. When the lab was bombed. Alec, showered with his own formula and blazing like a torch, hurtled to a watery grave in the swamp.

He did not die.

Hideously altered by the formula (and remember, please, that this is prior to Alan Moore’s landmark re-imagining of the character) he was transformed into a gigantic man-shaped horror; immensely strong, unable to speak and seemingly made from living plant matter. Cable and Linda, misinterpreting the evidence, believed that the big mossy ogre killed Alec…

Whilst the G-Man hunted the mossy beast through the swamp Conclave agents returned and attempted to force the secret from Linda. When the monster doubled back he found her body and exacted a terrible vengeance on her killers…

Cable, having failed twice over, determines to hunt the Swamp Thing to the ends of the Earth…

The second tale ‘The Man Who Wanted Forever’ introduced diabolical sorcerer Anton Arcane and his artificial homunculi, The Un-Men (subject of their own Vertigo series in recent years); an aged, seemingly benevolent savant who shanghaied Swamp Thing to the doom-laden Balkans and offered to cure Holland’s vegetable state. However the mage had his own ghastly plans for the vacated green body and Alec had to make a tragic choice to save the world…

As Cable tracked down the plant pariah and began an obsessive vendetta, this stunning collection concludes with the powerfully moving ‘Patchwork Man’ which introduced romantic interest Abigail Arcane and her tragic Frankensteinian father Gregori: the thwarted sorcerer’s dead brother and his earliest experiment in extending life beyond medical and moral limits…

The mini-revolution in the “Camp-superhero” crazed 1960s saw four-colour comicbook material migrate briefly from flimsy pamphlet to the stiffened covers and relative respectability of the paperback bookshelves and the nostalgic wonderment these mostly forgotten fancies still afford long ago showed that there was a proven market for such items beyond the brief attention spans of bored kids.

This terrific little black and white tome, part of National Periodical Publications’ decades-long efforts to reach wider reading audiences, is particularly appealing as Swamp Thing is one of the most sensitively reformatted books of its type and Wrightson’s art – like the work of Steve Ditko – is actually enhanced by the removal of the standard comicbook colouring.

Hard to find but definitely worth it…
© 1982 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved. Swamp Thing is a Trademark of DC Comics Inc