Warning: In this post I talk about sexism and misogyny. I am against them, to be clear. I also use the phrase “child murder” several times in a vain attempt at black humor, but I promise no actual murder takes place. This also gets political, because everything is political, get used to it.
Best: 1355: Avengers (1963) #93
This entire arc by Roy Thomas from Avengers #89 to Avengers #97, was later christened The Kree-Skrull War, but it seems likely to me that it was not planned out as a “thing”. Thomas was just doing story after story, letting events meander where they seemed to want to meander. Its a good story! Action packed, with lots of drama and revelations. But its also confusing and overly complicated, too many moving parts occasionally grinding together.
It breaks out into brilliance territory when Neal Adams replaces Sal Buscema on the giant-size #93, and at the same time focuses for on a single character doing a single interesting thing; Hank Pym trying to save the Vision by entering into the Vision’s own android body, Fantastic Voyage style.
The Vision’s innards are…let’s just say weird.
Really weird…
But Adams does a good job with it, making the Vision seem like a vast and strange complex that Pym has to navigate. This is often despite Thomas’s writing, not because of it…
“Therein lies the only true superiority of the educated man…” ok, whatever Roy. But that’s a great panel.
And Adams knocks it out of the park in a sequence in the 2nd half of the book, where we see two simultaneous threads of Skrull battling action linked by the Skrull spaceship launch countdown…
SPOILER ALERT!!!
Its a really good sequence, Adams is using the space very effectively.
The real fun in this arc, though, is how much it brings in the entire Marvel Universe at that time. You have the Avengers (both then current team and the originals minus the Hulk). You have the Kree (Ronan! A Sentry!, the Supreme Intelligence!) and the Skrull (Super-Skrull!). The Inhumans get in on the action (at least Triton and Black Bolt) as do the Fantastic Four. Nick Fury is in the mix and Dum-Dum Dugan.
So, only one 5 star story, but a great and influential arc.
Also, an observation… During this period, Clint Barton is in his “Goliath” phase, using the growth formula. But I really worry about him, I fear it is an addiction. He is ALWAYS in giant form. Like here he is in Avengers #77 getting tea from Jarvis:
Here he is from the same book just chillin’ in the living room…
Here he is in #92, just comin’ back from a little work out in the gym, can’t even fit through the damn doors in the Avengers mansion…
But near the end of #92 is the point where it becomes truly obvious that Clint has a problem, here he is in giant form in front of a US Congressional Committee…
Like, what is he even sitting on?
He needs an intervention. Get that monkey off your back, Clint! Is there some kind of “Super Power Serum Addicts Anonymous” you can go to? It will be hard to be anonymous when you are always giant sized!
Worst: 1215: Iron Man (1968) #29
Here is the basic plot of this book. Tony Stark is on vacation in a yacht, because filthy rich, and comes across a rowboat filled with obvious revolutionaries. You can tell because they are all dressed in like Fidel Castro, but in brown (this is actually an important visual point, I’ll come back to it). Also, the beautiful lady revolutionary’s Fidel Castro uniform has a crop top because useless gendering of clothing. They tell Tony about how awful the oppression is on their island nation by something called the Overseer. Tony drops them off safe and sound.
Then, Tony, smitten by the lovely revolutionary and all fired up with zeal, decides to single-handedly invade a foreign nation. As one does, I guess. This is actually entirely within character for Tony Stark at this point; he has a slightly more cogent and reasonable trigger for regime change than the 2nd Bush Administration.
He flies over to this island, and discovers it seems to be ruled by a bunch of guys dressed like Fidel Castro, but in green, and by a giant goofy looking computer, the OVERSEER!
He battles this silly looking thing for several pages, then battles a kind of robotic avatar of it called Myrmidon.
Meanwhile outside the Castro-look alikes in green are having troubles with the local peasantry, and the computer defenses enact a bit of child murder (that’s right, you heard me). This is too much for the locals (all of who are dressed like a racist logo for a burrito restaurant) and they rise up in revolt.
Meanwhile, Iron Man has finally defeated the dumb-ass computer, and finds hiding within it, Wizard of Oz style, the chief Castro look alike in green. He takes him outside to face the justice of the oppressed, but of course, “There has been enough violence!”
Tony, its not your damn country in the first place. Honestly, the locals are making a pretty good case for some more violence. I say this as a Mennonite!
But its ok! Because there was no actual child murder! Little Santo is just fine.
Fair enough, I guess there will be no dictator murder today either.
Tony finally meets back up with the lovely revolutionary (who, by the way, never actually seems to be involved in the actual revolution, she is absent without leave for the whole thing) back in the States, and then muses…
Here is why I repeatedly mentioned the color of the uniforms above. Even though this is a book written in the ’70s ostensibly about revolutions against oppression, somehow Mimi Gold (the writer) gets through the entire book without making any political commentary whatsoever. Like, seriously, there is no ideology to be found here, simply the Castro look alikes in green with their weird computer and the Castro look alikes in brown who want to give them the boot. I mean, sure, no one wants to live in an Orwellian dystopia where machines maintain an oppressive regime. But I think it actually took skill to make it through this entire book without ever actually picking a side in the political struggles that were engulfing the world in 1970.
So yeah, Tony, I have no idea what cause you are fighting for either.
Best: 1552: Captain America (1968) #156
Also covers Captain America #153-#155.
This great arc by Steven Englehart and Sal Buscema/Frank McLaughlin gets going in #153 (4 stars), and starts off with a knock-down drag out between Nick Fury and Cap. Because…well, let Fury tell you…
Yikes, that’s some serious emotional stuff Fury is dealing with. They sort out it, though, like manly men, and also with the help of the Countess, who reads Fury appropriate riot act. Then some other stuff happens, just the connective tissue between the end of one story and the beginning of the next…the Falcon fights against the Real Captain America and Bucky!
I love that list of things in the lower left they claim to not be happening. And interestingly they are right, it is the real Captain America and Bucky! Which is part of why this arc is so interesting.
That leads into #154 (4 stars, but almost 5), which is essentially the Falcon’s first solo book. Its also good! Falcon takes on the weird (and racist) Real Cap and Bucky, with the help of a big chunk of Harlem…
The Falcon is great in this. He is clearly up against foes that are stronger and faster than he is, but he fights clever and he doesn’t say no to help. He proves that he is a real hero in this, not just Cap’s sidekick.
Did I mention the Real Cap and Bucky are racists? The story doubles down on that as it proceeds. Not in a very realistic way, I imagine they couldn’t get realistic racism through the Comics Code back then (although the language seems surprisingly strong at times). Englehart is making a point with this story, a point that sadly seems pretty fresh in 2022. The Real Cap and Bucky, to use a recent loaded phrase, want to Make America Great Again.
The Falcon does his best to stop them, but in the end the Real Cap and Bucky figure out where our Cap and Sharon are at; on an idylic beach vacation. That leads into #155 (4 stars), where we learn the origin of the Real Captain America and Bucky.
I think this might be the first place in Marvel where they dive into what might be called “secret history”. Its a theme Marvel will return to again and again, especially as the sliding timescale creates increasingly larger and larger gaps between the 1940s (where Captain America in WW2 anchors the timescale unalterably) and the current day. “Secret History” is when Marvel introduces some totally new thing, but squeezes it (sometimes seamlessly, sometimes creaking and groaning in pain) into these gaps. In this case, it turns out that the Real Captain America was the Captain America of the 1950s, the Commie Smasher one, who was actually in the comics from that time period. There is a backstory here that…well, it sort of makes sense?
That last panel is the kicker. Englehart is directly connecting a racist belief in a “pure” America with nostalgia for the 1950s when America was “great”, and using Captain America to do it, no less! Wouldn’t it be nice to read this and think “how far we have come? How stupid those old ideas seem, how archaic? Good thing that blind racist nostalgia isn’t still dominant in political disc *SCRREACHING RECORD SCRATCH*
Which brings us to the actual 5 star book, #156. This gets to 5 stars despite Sal Buscema. He gets a lot better in the late ’80s and into the ’90s, but at this point I just don’t like him much. Something about the way he draws mouths has always bugged me. Like this set of panels is a great story bit, but look at Falcon and Sharon’s mouths in the lower left panel, what is going on there? Why do they look like capital letter “D” laid over on its side?
All Sal Buscema’s mouths look that way. It bugs me. Its like he learned at some point “this is how comic book artists draw mouths” and then never expanded his horizons.
Even so, this issue is great not just because it has solid and emotional writing like that panel above, but also because of some great action. Sharon and the Falcon get to duke it out with the petty bigot Bucky, a smarmy bastard and I feel the poster child for the word “backpfeifengesicht”.
“We’ve got teamwork, sonny, and you’ve only got hate!” Other than Sharon weirdly calling a person about her age “sonny” like she was somebody’s grandmother, that’s a good line.
Which leaves Real Captain America and actual, heroic Captain America to mix it up. I think this is a very important moment in the overall arc of Captain America. I feel like this is the moment when Captain America ceases to be “simply” a national hero and transcends into something more. He represents something genuinely virtuous in the history and culture of the United States, an ideal about what the US should be, not what it has been and is. A generous spirit, a resistance to oppression in any form, an embrace of new ways of being American and becoming American. And he represents that ideal regardless of any force, internal or external, trying to take it away or poison it.
This is brought up in the last two pages of their fight…
This comic kills fascists.
Worst: 1360: Savage Tales (1971) #1 [B Story]
Plus 1362: Savage Tales (1971) #1 [E Story]
There are five black and white stories in this.
- A) Conan the Barbarian – “The Frost Giant’s Daughter”
- B) The Fury of the Femizons
- C) Man/Thing
- D) Black Brother
- E) Ka-Zar – “The Night of the Looter”
Two of them have incredible art (A and C), one is passable (D), and two are awful (B, E). Three are, at least by some standard, fairly well written (A, C, D).
What unites them all is a theme of misogyny and sexism. Every single story. The Man/Thing story is actually pretty good despite that; the art is fantastic, and the sexism is sort of run of the mill “dames will betray you, you know they will” noir-style writing, that would be recognizable to Dashiell Hammett. “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” is rightly regarded as a classic comic book sword and sorcery story, brilliantly retold by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith. It also cannot avoid being repulsive because it’s last third is Conan trying to rape someone and failing. “Black Brother” is, oh my lord, I don’t even know how to talk about it. If this exact story had been written by a highly skilled African American novelist at the same time it might have been a classic political novel. But written by Denny O’Neil (under a pseudonym) and Gene Colan its just ugly and racist. The Ka-Zar story is simply bad as well as sexist.
But “The Fury of the Femizons” may be the story I hate most in the CMRO from the ’70s. It is only included in the CMRO because it was later tangentially used as the backstory for Thundra (a character that I like a lot despite her writers). Its awful on every level. It’s about this world where women rule, and a princess finds a real man to love and…I just can’t even. I feel this last panel encapsulates its horror better than any prose I might write…
Stan Lee and John Romita did so many wonderful things together and separately, but man, the stench of “The Fury of the Femizons” follows them wherever they go.