Made Men - Behold The Vision!

Artificial life has long been a staple of imaginative fiction. Robots populate hundreds if not thousands of science fiction stories, both those in print and on the screen. The most famous of these, Adam Link created by "Eando Binder", had many a story and then has been adapted to comics several times and to the small screen a few. Bozo the Iron Man was created in the Golden Age. And the most successful of the artificial lifeforms must've been The Human Torch from Timely, who alongside The Sub-Mariner and Captain America formed the focus of the companies output. 

The first artificial man who made a strong impression on me is a close call between DC's Red Tornado (more about him tomorrow) and Marvel's The Vision. When the Vision emerged from the shadows in the pages of The Avengers #57 it rocked my world more than a tiny bit. I'd been an Avengers fan for no more than year, and solidly so since the arrival of the Black Panther. But this character, with a grim red face and a spectacular array of powers was simply magnetic. 

He was yet another revised revival from Marvel's Golden Age Timely days like Ka-Zar, the Black Knight, and others. That Vision had been a creation of the famous Simon and Kirby team. 

This Vision was the perfect fusion of a character and an artist as no one has ever drawn The Vision as well as "Big" John Buscema. In a couple of issues of The Avengers we see The Vision attack the team and by the end become a member, the first original character the book had seen do so. And despite a cold demeanor he became in many ways the heart of the title with his concerns and challenges often form the basis for stories. The fact that he was fashioned by Ultron-5, an Avengers foe who himself had been built by the always troubled Hank Pym didn't hurt. Here was a character whose very existence drilled to the epicenter of the team. 

Eventually we'd see The Vision battle to become "normal" and he would fall in love and marry and even have children of a sort. He like so many other heroes has become a part of the Marvel movie universe. Every step toward this typicality robbed him of some of his mystique, a mystique birthed from the very first panel of his existence in print. 

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The Mad Master Of The Murder Maze!

"The Mad Master of the Murder Maze" is the story that in many way was my first introduction to the horror of the holocaust. While I might've come across the info at school, there's little doubt the emotional power of this Gil Kane drawn comic was lacking. Written by Roy "The Boy" Thomas, this one felt different from the other collaborations he did with Kane on Captain Marvel and he says that Kane (real name Eli Katz born in a Latvian Jewish family) was the impetus that made this one hum. It has a power other comics lack, and that comes from the visceral reality of the background.

Rick Jones, at the time the inter-dimensional partner of Captain Marvel (formerly of the Kree Empire) finds himself in need of a living situation and finds an apartment in Minos Towers which seems to good to be true. And it is, as we discover a madman has assembled a carefully balanced population inside the towers so that he can at his discretion conduct weird and deadly experiments on them, measuring their psychological responses. He regards his tenants as lab rats and that dehumanization connects his work to that of the Nazis years before. It takes the bravery of a former Aushwitz prisoner to end the threat.

It's a story not directly about the Nazis, but more importantly really about the dehumanizing attitudes which allowed them to flourish, attitudes which are very much with us in the modern day.

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Snakes In The Glass!

These are two of my all-time favorite comic books. Underneath the Marie Severin cover above we find an Avengers team drawn by veteran inker Frank Giacoia. Apparently Giacoia didn't like to pencil, but preferred what he considered the less onerous task of inking.

But as the page above showcases, he's pretty dang good.  With Sam Grainger on inks his is a very handsome issue with some nifty panel designs. But when it comes to artwork the next issue is the absolute gem.

If you waterboarded me and forced me to pick only one cover as my favorite this one might be it. Outstanding and dramatic composition by John Buscema with sterling inks by Tom Palmer. If I could only have one art team they are the team. The Avengers have never (and I include George Perez in this) looked better than when Buscema and Palmer busted out for an amazing sequence of comics.

Now I haven't said much about the story so far. But in this one we meet for the first time Monica Lynne, the lady who will become a romantic interest for the Black Panther. The story stars the Panther as he takes on a new incarnation of the Sons of the Serpent. The story revolves around to TV hosts, one white and one black  but both vituperative and more than willing to stoke the racial animus which percolates at all times in American society. Roy Thomas says quite a bit and says it quite well about the power of mass media to move attitudes and form opinion. Something we need to pay more attention to even in our own time. Oh the Avengers win, but you knew that.

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Marvel Super-Heroes - The Demon And Doom!

Doctor Doom was a villain who got above his station, demanding and actually getting the treatment usually reserved for respected heroes. Doom, a complex character intricately linked into the saga of the Fantastic Four time and again, but always failed to finish them off. And despite being thought dead himself, always managed to survive and turn up to threaten the world all over again. A master of science in Marvel Super-Heroes #20 we encounter Doom's supernatural roots by way of his Romany ancestry.

This comic produced by Stan Lee's stalwart brother Larry Lieber with help from Roy Thomas and Frank Giacoia and inker Vinny Colletta features Doc Doom facing off against another Fab 4 enemy -- Diablo. The deadly alchemist from days gone by seeks Doom's assistance in taking control of Earth's satellites giving the deadly duo power over all of the planet. To woo Doom's help Diablo presents him with a lovely woman from Doom's past named Valeria. But in the end Doom defeats Diablo and loses Valeria too when she rejects him for becoming the villain he is.

This is the finale of Marvel Super-Heroes brief one year (or thereabouts) run as a "showcase" for Marvel. Despite the promise of a story about an intriguing hero called "Starhawk" by Dan Adkins, he'd have to wait for Marvel's prozine Marvelmania Magazine to get published some years later.

The next issue of Marvel Super-Heroes would be all reprint, and awesome reprints too, in what I've always considered one of Marvel's single finest individual issues.

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Marvel Super-Heroes - The Darker Knight!

The Black Knight is one of my favorite heroes. I fell in love with the 1950's incarnation drawn so magnificently by Joe Maneely and even found the villainous 1960's rendition pretty fascinating. But when Dane Whitman took the role it all came into place for this modern warrior for justice.

This "new" Black Knight debuted in The Avengers #48, taking the lance atop Aragorn his gentically bred white and winged stallions. At first  Dane Whitman took the tools and weapons of his late villainous uncle and helped out the Avengers, but soon in the pages of Marvel Super-Heroes #17 we discover the mystical side of the Black Knight. This comic written by scribe Roy Thomas and drawn by Howard Purcell and Dan Adkins looks pretty, if it does feel a little like Steranko-lite on certain pages.

Visiting the Whitman homestead and castle back in the merry England Dane is visited by the ghost of his predecessor, the original Black Knight as well as Merlin and they convince him through mystic shenanigans that he is the true heir to the ebony blade crafted from a fallen star centuries before and that he must stand against the ancient threat of Mordred. Dane accepts this mantle while in London a man called Sabre is visited by the aforementioned Mordred and given powers and a living stone gargoyle to oppose this new knight. These two mystic knights battle in the skies over London and the Black Knight emerges triumphant for the time being. But you get the clear sense that while this battle was won, the war is far from over.

When he's next seen, the Black Knight will bring his ebony sword to help the Avengers and join that team.

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Marvel Super-Heroes - Captain Marvel Attacks!

Marvel Super-Heroes, freshly converted to showcasing new heroes in addition to vintage reprints, continued the saga of "Marvel's Space-Born Super-Hero", the doughty but often confused Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell to his friends). After stumbling around the planet Earth for a teensy bit, he tries (under the hand of new writer Roy Thomas though Gene Colan still pencils with new man Paul Reinman on inks) to get his act together a bit. He takes his ray gun and makes wrist ray-gun out of it and adjusts his hip rockets so he looks like he's flying instead of playing leap frog. But that doesn't mean his troubles with his boss, the vile Colonel Yon-Rogg are over.

Mar-Vell needs to meet up with his comrades to get more breathing potion but Yon-Rogg plots to kill him and claim an accident but in a real accident the plane of Dr. Walter Lawson flies in the way and the ray meant for Mar-Vell gets him. That works out great for our good Captain since he takes Lawson's identity and uses it to investigate "The Cape", the local rocket base. (The utter lack of planning in this escapade is stunning really.) On the Cape he finds the lovely Carol Danvers, head of security who immediately and correctly suspects him of being up to no good, and Sentry #459. It was the supposed demise of the Sentry which triggered the recent Kree interest in Earth . But now Mar-Vell sees the robot is in the hands of the Earthmen. Unfortunately Yon-Rogg sees it too and activates the Sentry and as the story wraps Captain Marvel is about to do battle with what would seem to be his ally.

We would have to wait for the debut of Marvel's Space-Born Super-Hero Captain Marvel #1 to find out what happens. The art team is Gene "The Dean" Colan and newcomer Vince "The Prince" Colletta who will guide CM through his first several issues and writer on his own for the first time is Roy "The Boy" Thomas. In this first issue of a new comic the action is in progress as Cap is fighting Sentry #459, which has a grown a bit since it encountered the Fantastic Four. The two battle back and forth with the Sentry supremely confident that his indestructible nature will win out. But Captain Marvel (called that by a soldier for the first time in this issue) uses his understanding of Kree technology and the improvements he's made to his own equipment to eventually bring the Sentry down. He is thanked profusely the military and especially by Carol Danvers who got mixed up in the fight as pretty much a damsel in distress. As Cap flies off we are informed that his next nemesis will be the Super-Skrull. Yum yum.

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