Invasions - Total Wood!

Total War is a Gold Key comic which like most of the stuff of Gold Key was well crafted. Underneath the George Wilson painted covers the reader will find some prime Wally Wood studio artwork. This stuff was done at the same time more or less as the THUNDER Agents material for Tower Comics and it's exceedingly similar in tone and content. The whole world comes under mysterious attack by a well-armed secret army and the M.A.R.S. unit is mobilized to meet that threat.

M.A.R.S. stands for Marine Attack Rescue Service. During the 60's it was di reiqueur for teams to have clever acronyms for proper dramatic purposes. The team we follow in the first two issues titled Total War is made of four men who bravely lead the counter attacks against the enigmatic new enemies. The four men are Lt. Adams (jet pilot - yellow), Cpl. Stacey (weapons expert - blue), Sgt. Styker (demolitions - red) and Sgt. Hiro (frogman - green). All four have multiple talents and are neatly color coded for our reading comfort.

The enemy they remains a mystery in the issues done by the Wood studio, though the name of the comic itself is changed to M.A.R.S. Patrol - Total War with the third issue. The series continues for several more episodes with other artists but those I don't have.

Dark Horse collected up the three Wally Wood issues some years back and I keep them right next to my THUNDER Agents reprints. They read to me like a somewhat more realistic variation of the THUNDER Agents premise and in some ways a superior one. The notion of a world under savage attack from an enemy it can barely understand was part of Mars Attacks and perhaps Wally Wood was inspired by that word to make this and by this to make the THUNDER Agents. It's an intriguing notion if there's little evidence to support it.

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The Adventures Of Captain Nice!

I watched Captain Nice on television when it was tumbling through its single season of fifteen episodes in the early part of 1967. Superheroes were the rage and NBC wanted a piece of the pie that ABC had baked with the dominate Batman TV show. The show was the brainchild of Buck Henry who had turned a similar trick of parody with Get Smart on the spy-craze. So as was the wont with comic book outsiders, they went ironic and created a situation comedy superhero show. Captain Nice, played by William Daniels, was a well-meaning but bumbling and inept superhero.

That aspect is captured in the single comic book from Gold Key drawn by Joe Certa. (To read some of this singular outing check out this link and this one too.) The ineptitude is also neatly captured in four comic strips prepared by Wally Wood for possible syndication. Nothing beyond these exist as the show sank quickly and the demand for more was clearly not evident. That doesn't mean they aren't nifty to look at though.

Along with Wood, the great Jack "King" Kirby was tagged to create some Captain Nice artwork and it has all the energetic bombast and free-wheeling techno-pop that Kirby could deliver. Captain Nice lasted almost no time at all, but still it's brief existence is fondly remembered by those of use who got the chance to catch a glimpse.

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