The Mighty Avengers tackle the problem of health care insurance. Best line is from Wolverine: “I’ve got not much care for health care bub“. Captain America: “Because of your rapid healing powers? No, because I’m Canadian.” It’s the first in a series of so far four videos and whoever is doing them knows their Marvel.
Essential Captain America vol 02
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, Gene Colan and friends
Reprints: Captain America #103-126 and more (July 1968 – June 1970)
Get this for: Steranko and the old guard changeth — Four stars
Essential Captain America vol. 2 starts where the first volume left off: with slam bang action by Lee and Kirby. They put poor old Cap through his paces, fighting the Red Skull and his band of Nazi cutthroats, Batroc, the Swordsman and the Living Laser, a robot double of himself, the mighty Trapster and his own worst fears manipulated by Dr Faustus. Lee and Kirby fit a lot in every issue, but keep the subplots to a minimum, the only continuing storyline being the romance of Cap and Sharon Carter. You feel they have a formula here for old Cap that, while not as original as Fantastic Four or Spider-Man could be kept up indefinitely. But then everything changes with #110, when Jim Steranko comes aboard.
You could call Steranko the first Image artist, the first one to make his art more important than the story. If you look at Kirby, even his wildest experiments here or elsewhere are always in service to the plot, with even the splash pages determined by it. With Steranko this is no longer the case. In his just four issues of Captain America he has more splash pages almost than Kirby had over his entire previous run, all more concerned with the Rule of Cool than the demands of the story. In fact, in some cases they work actively against the story, as with the Big Reveal in his last issue. But damn if it doesn’t look gorgeous.
Steranko gets away with that sort of stuff because he’s such a good artist. You remember his covers and his splash pages, but his other pages are gorgeous too. Much more than Kirby or any other artist working back then he also consciously designs his pages and panel layout as a whole. So in the opening page of issue 113, he translates the recap of the previous issue into a television report on the death of Cap, with a page filling shot of the camera man and reporter, a line of inset panels in the shape of tv screens through the middle. Later on he has Madame Hydra recalling her origin, with one big panel at the top of the page showing her in control of HYDRA, followed by a quick succession of smaller panels closing up on details of her face as she looks at the horrifically scarred right hand side of her face (only hinted at), to explode in the last panel, short but wide, as we see she has shattered the mirror. Steranko is great at establishing mood this way, using cinametic influences on the comics page in a way that nobody else does at the time. It brings a grandeur to these somewhat silly stories not seen before or since.
Not that the artist coming after him are bad. There’s two fill in issues by John Romita and John Buscema respectively, before Gene Colan takes over, another great mood artist. He stays around for the rest of the issues reprinted here, which means he’s around for the introduction of the Falcon, another pioneering Black superhero and actually the first proper African-American superhero. He’s introduced here without fuzz, without calling out his Blackness, but just as an ally for Captain America at his very lowest, with the Red Skull holding the reality warping Cosmic Cube, having swapped bodies with him and dropped him back on Exile Island, where his old Nazi “friends” are itching to kill who they think is the Skull. Falcon rescues Cap, Cap returns the favour by training him into a superhero and together they defeat but the Nazis and the Skull…
On a certain level these stories are on the dumb side, pure entertainment without the sophistication of Marvel’s flagship titles. To me that’s part of their charm though. About the only thing that really annoys me here is Cap’s attitude to Sharon Carter, his love interest and SHIELD field agent, who he wants to give up her dangerous work to protect her from suffering the same fate at his old partner Bucky. Male chauvenist pig.
Essential Ms Marvel 01
Gerry Conway, Chris Claremont, Jim Mooney and friends
Reprints: Ms. Marvel 1-23 and more (January 1977 – April 1979)
Get this for: seventies feminist superheroics — Four stars
Now for a complete change of pace, from the heart of the Silver Age taking a giant leap forward into the Bronze Age, long after the people who had laid the foundations of the Marvel Universe had left (and had come back and left again) and some of the creativity and magic had gone out of it. The mid to late seventies were a rough patch for both Marvel and DC, as the old newsstand distribution networks were in upheaval, inflation and economic depression made comics expensive and there was little room to experiment with new titles. So what you get is attempts to play it safe, through either cashing in on some trend or by creating a spinoff — Ms. Marvel is a combination of both: a spinoff of Captain Marvel and an attempt to cash in on the resurgence of second wave feminism, as seen through a comics prism. Despite this the title would last barely two years, being canceled with #23 and with the last two issues, already prepared only seeing print two decades later, in the early nineties Marvel Super-Heroes Magazine.
I don’t know why M.s Marvel failed the first time around: perhaps it could never find an audience out on the newsstands, or people didn’t buy it because it featured a girl (Marvel never having had much luck with female headliners) or just because not enough newsstands stocked it. But one thing I know, quality couldn’t have been the issue. True, it took a couple of issues for Ms. Marvel to find its feet, but once Chris Claremont comes onboard with issue 3 it settled into a nice rhythm. I’ve certainly read much worse titles from that time which were much more succesful.
Ms. Marvel is Carol Danvers, an old supporting character from the sixties Marvel Captain Marvel series, reintroduced in Ms. Marvel as the eponymous superheroine, in the first three issues suffering from amnesia and not knowing she’s Carol. Carol meanwhile gets a job as the editor of Now Magazine, Jolly Jonah Jameson’s woman’s magazine. He wants the traditional subjects: cooking, fashion, gossip, she wants it to make a hardhitting, proper news magazine: soap opera gold, though as per usual with superhero jobs it plays second fiddle to Carol’s other career and its complications.
The whole amnesia/two people angle doesn’t really work and is quickly abandoned once Claremont takes over the writing. He does keep the conflict between Carol and Ms. Marvel however, each with a distinctive personality and not always liking the other that much. Personally I never like this sort of forced conflict or handicap so I’m glad to see this slowly disappearing over time here.
On the supervillain side of things, Conway introduces A.I.M. as a recurring foil and Claremont keeps them around, as well as adding MODOK to the mix. Other established villains, including the Scorpion, obscure X-Men foe Grotesk as well as a couple of badniks from the old Living Mummy series from Supernatural Thrillers also appear. Claremont had a knack for getting tough, physical threats for Ms. Marvel to actually beat with her fists like any other strong male hero would do, rather than the usual non-physical threats reserved for superheroines. There are few original creations here, with Deathbird introduced in #9 and Mystique from #16 the most significant, Claremont using both of them in Uncanny X-Men later on. For the most part however Ms. Marvel is mutant free.
But Claremont was leading Ms. Marvel into that territory though, through the long running subplot of some unknown enemy (which turned out to be Mystique) targeting both Carol Danvers and Ms. Marvel. However Ms. Marvel before that subplot reached fruition and it took Avengers Annual #10 two years later to tie up these loose ends. That one starts with Carol being thrown off the Golden Gate Bridge, rescued by Spider-Woman (who Claremont was also writing) and brought to Prof Xavier to be examined mentally. Meanwhile the Brotherhood of Evil, led by Mystique attack the Avengers and its newest member Rogue turns out to have stolen Carol’s powers.
Apart from housecleaning however and revealing the final fate of Ms. Marvel Claremont had an ulterior motive for writing this annual. Between the end of her own series and the annual Ms. Marvel had been a member of the Avengers and in a particularly bad storyline had been raped and impregnated (all off panel), gone through the full pregnancy and given birth in a day to a boy who turned out to be her rapist, using her to be able to live on Earth, but when this fails he takes her with her to Limbo, where they live happily ever after, or so the Avengers think, never having spent a minute to think things through. Claremont had done this, had gotten offended and used the final part of the story to spell it all out. It’s one of the best “fuck you” moments in comics I’ve read.
Claremont would return to Ms. Marvel even later, in the early nineties in the anthology title Marvel Super-Heroes, which reprinted both the final finished but never published issue, as well as a followup bridging the gap between her series and Avengers Annual #10. Here they’re presented in chronological order, before the annual.
The final verdict is that this was a perfectly enjoyable series, nothing much out of the ordinary, but never bad either. The art, first by John Buscema, followed by Jim Mooney, Keith Pollard, Sal Buscema, Carmine Infantino, Dave Cockrum and finally Mike Vosburg is decent to good, but with so many artists in such a relatively short period it’s hard to create a real style for Ms. Marvel. Essential Ms. Marvel vol 1 is a nice view of what a lesser title of the seventies looked like.
Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 2
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and friends
Reprints: Fantastic Four #21-40 and Annual 2 (December 1963 – July 1965)
Get this for: Lee and Kirby gathering steam — Five stars
The second volume of Essential Fantastic Four opens with a story that should not work, but does. The Fantastic Four fight a new villain, the Hate-Monger, who is stirring up race hatred, class hatred and religious hatred throughout the country and even manages to set our heroes against each other. Which is bad luck for Nick Fury, who needs them to stop the rebellion in San Gusto which the Hate-Monger is also behind, but with a bit of trickery he manages to get all the bickering members to the little South American country. Of course they manage to defeat the Hate-Monger in the end, overcome their differences and reveal who he really is: Adolf Hitler. Even in 1963 this was corny as hell, but somehow Jack and Stan manage to make it work.
It’s a good example of their growing power as storytellers both individually and as a team. In the first twenty issues of Fantastic Four they were finding out what did and did not work, with some misfires along the way and here they’re building on that foundation. The basics are in place, they know who the characters are, what they can and cannot let them do, how they react to a given situation. Was for e.g the Thing in the first volume still a figure of menace, somebody who could erupt at any moment and become a true monster rather than just looking like one, here he has mellowed to still grumpy but essential loveable, still inclined to lash out in anger, frustration or irritation but never with the intent to hurt anyone. Mr Fantastic in the same way has evolved from the brainy, detached scientist to somebody with deep seated passions normally kept hidden, who scares even his team mates and friends when these passions are unleashed.
Villains too get more multidimensional, with both Doctor Doom and the Submariner becoming more sympathetic in the process. The latter was always more an antihero than a real villain and his own moral code is developed further here, to the point where the Fantastic Four end up fighting alongside him against the menace of a real underwater tyrant, Attuma. Doom on the other hand never becomes an ally of the Fantastic Four, but is made a tragic figure through his origin, told in the second Fantastic Four Annual. It turns out he’s a gypsy, whose mother was killed when he was still a baby and whose father died fleeing for his life from a local baron when he was a small boy. He swears vengeance, starts studying the black arts of his mother, as well as educating himself into science (no finer distinction really necessary in an universe in which a biochemist can create a malevolent artificial intelligence from scratch), gets a scholarship at the same university as Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, tries to contact the netherworld and gets blown up, is thrown out, travels the world and ends up with a mysterious sect of monks in Tibet and becomes Dr Doom. Even the Skrulls when turning up again turn out not to be all bad.
The stories in this volume are in essence midway between the realive realism with which the Fantastic Four started out and the wild, unrestrained imagination Kirby especially would bring to the title in its more mature years. The stories are based around some supervillain or other menace threatening the team or the world or both and the Fantastic Four defeating it. There’s a healthy dose of soap opera as well, revolving around the Thing and his desire to become Ben Grimm again, become human again and his fear that this will mean losing Alica Masters, his girlfriend, as well as around Mr Fantastic and the Invisible Girl and the love they share but are afraid to speak out. The Invisible Girl at the same time also evolves both in power and personality, getting to be a somewhat less stereotypical comics girl, though still vulnerable to being a professional hostage at times.
On the art front, Kirby’s art gets wilder, more experimental, as he integrates photographic backgrounds in his art, develops ever more baroque looking weaponry, vehicles and scientific equipment. His figures and the way they stand and move gets more exagerrated too, underscoring the theatricality of many of Stan Lee’s scripts. The effect of reading a concentrated dose of Kirby art is, as I’ve mentioned before that I start seeing those Kirby Poses and Kirby Figures in real life. Watching sport is especially good for this…
As good as the first volume of Lee/Kirby Essential Fantastic Four was, this volume was better. One of those times when essential is no hyperbole, but the honest truth.
Essential Avengers Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck and friends
Reprints: Avengers 1-24 (September 1963- January 1966)
Get this for: Kang and Cap’s Kooky Quartet — three stars
The Avengers was one of the weaker Marvel Silver Age titles. Though created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, it’s neither’s strongest work and neither’s heart seems to be in it. Of course Stan Lee was running Marvel comics at the time as well as writing the other nine series they were then putting out, so it’s no wonder he would take it easy on certain titles. And whereas The Fantastic Four from the start had its own voice, The Avengers put together five heroes with their own titles and not that much in common as a somewhat belated Justice League of America knockoff. If you then have Kirby leaving after only eight issues to be replaced by an uninspired Don Heck you have a problem.
Which is why it was a bit of a slog getting through The Essential Avengers Vol. 1, as quite a few of the stories in here are dull. The origin story is an example. Loki is looking for a way to get back at Thor, spies the Hulk and manipulates him into smashing up a train bridge. Rick Jones and his Teen Brigade attempt to contact the Fantastic Four but Loki redirects their signals to Thor, but what he doesn’t know is that Iron Man, as well as Ant Man and the Wasp have received his message as well. Off they all head to New Mexico to find the Hulk, a big fight breaks out which ends as Thor reveals the real villain. As a story it doesn’t really gell and the Hulk never really fits in with the Avengers. His replacement by Captain America in #4 is a great improvement.
But even then the stories remain a bit dull. Having Rick Jones hang around isn’t helping, as he’s just annoying. Let’s not even mention the Teen Brigade. Then there are the villains. I’ve never liked Loki, the Space Phantom in #2 is alright but not spectacular, then there are two issues with Namor, followed by no less than three issues with Baron “Help my mask is glued to my face! Curse you Captain America!” Zemo. Or there are the Lava Men, yet another subterranean menace. Or the Red Menace threat of the Commissar, slightly later on. As threats, these are all strictly from dullesville.
All is forgiven however with the introduction of Kang the Conquoror in issue eight. Now there’s a real threat, with his mastery of future super science, so confident of his victory he receives the Avengers in a lounge chair. He completely overclasses them at first, defeating the Avengers with ease. He does get his comeuppance of course, but he’s one of the few villains here you could imagine winning. Another great early issue, the next issue in fact, is that which introduces Wonderman, another villain who seems to easily get the upper hand over the Avengers before he has a change of heart.
I felt that The Avengers only reached their stride once the original members had buggered off, leaving Captain America only with three novice heroes, each of which actually started out as a villain: Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Now that Lee only has to deal with one member with his own title, it gets much easier for him to get some character development going on. Granted, much of it is somewhat artificial as Lee squares off old square Cap against young hotheads Hawkeye and Quicksilver, which is again somewhat tedious. But on the whole much better than the first ten issues or so.
Artwise, while Kirby at this time was incapable of turning in bad stories, it didn’t compare favourably with his work on e.g. Fantastic Four. His replacement with Heck works in the title’s favour, once Heck has found his style. I like his slim, streamlined figures here, as well as the touch of glamour he brings to them, especially to the Scarlet Witch. In general Heck keeps improving over this volume.
Overall this volume shows a title that started out bad, got slightly better after Captain America joined, but only started really improving with “Cap’s Kooky Quartet”. This volume does not show the Avengers at their best, but ends just as they start getting better.