Thor - The Legend Years: Part 1

BACK WHEN THOR FIRST APPEARED IN 1963 he wasn't actually a god. Just a disabled American doctor who, through pure chance, acquired the powers of the mighty Norse god. And over the next twenty issues of the title, that concept would evolve as mortal Doctor Don Blake became Thor ... without any explanation as to how that happened. Those issues were covered in an earlier trio of entries in this blog, When did Don Blake become Thor?

Journey into Mystery 103 was the first for a while where Jack Kirby made a significant contribution. The two new villains, though Asgardians, are not figures we're familiar with from mythology.

Though Jack Kirby had been back on Journey into Mystery with issue 101 (Feb 1964), the two-part story in this and the following issue felt very much like a script that had been intended for Don Heck to draw. It wasn't until Journey into Mystery 103 (April 1964), that we really felt this was the Lee-Kirby machine back in action.

Chic Stone's exceptional inking over Kirby pencils works both ways - it does make for an uber-gorgeous Enchantress, but also gives us a polished, less-brutal version of The Executioner.

This was the issue that would introduce two of Thor's greatest foes - The Enchantress (later to be named Amora) and The Executioner (Skurge) - neither of whom were based on actual figures from the pantheon of Norse gods. And though both seek to harm Thor and Jane Foster is a variety of ways, we shouldn't forget that it's Odin, Thor's loving father, who signs off on the plan.

Beauty and The Beast: Loki drafts in The Enchantress to make Thor forget Jane Foster ... and The Enchantress brings on some muscle in case persuasion doesn't work.

It should come as no surprise that neither Don Blake nor his alter ego would be likely to fall for the wiles of a brazen hussy like The Enchantress. When her first plan fails, The Enchantress engages the services of The Executioner to abduct Jane Foster. Quite how this will help the sorceress to seduce Thor isn't made clear. But the Executioner isn't really to be trusted and happily brings back Jane from Limbo, where he's stashed her, in exchange for Thor's hammer. The Executioner's made two crucial blunders here. None who are unworthy can wield Mjolnir, so Thor's hammer is useless to him, and secondly, he's double-crossed The Enchantress, who doesn't take it well and turns him into a tree.

It's such ramshackle plotting that I sometimes wonder why certain sections of fandom argue endlessly over who plotted what in Silver Age Marvel comics. This isn't one I'd expect either Lee or Kirby to raise their hand to. But it's carried along by the exuberance of Lee's dialogue, which somehow sellotapes it all together and adds a veneer of credibility.

Loki recklessly releases Skagg the Storm Giant and Surtur the Fire Demon to attack Midgard. It doesn't occur to him that someone might notice.

The following month, Journey into Mystery 104 (May 1964) gave us an all-Asgard slug-fest, orchestrated through Loki's wily machinations. Following up on the idea that Thor is forbidden to love a mortal, Loki plants the idea that if Odin were to go to Midgard himself, he could soon sort out the unruly Thor. Odin thinks that's splendid idea and sets off for Earth, leaving Loki in charge of Asgard. And Loki's first order of business is to turn Skagg the Storm Giant and Surtur the Fire Demon loose on Midgard. But Heimdall senses the release of the evil beings and alerts Balder to travel to Earth to aid Odin and Thor. Odin temporarily transports the human race to "a dimension beyond the ken human mind" and the three Asgardians engage Skagg and Surtur in a five page battle. But for all the sound and fury, nothing is actually resolved, and Odin leaves his son on Earth to pursue his forlorn hope of marrying Jane Foster.

Like last issue, the plotting leaves some gaping holes unaddressed. Odin on Earth allows for a couple of comedy sequences, but that's about it. He could have just as easily summoned Thor to Asgard for a good telling off. And transporting humanity to a parallel dimension? Why not just a spell of forgetfulness? Then on the last page Don Blake thinks to himself "Of the billions of mortals, only I know what transpired here while time stood still." Except, Don, you're not a mortal, and time didn't stand still.

It's an enjoyable romp if you don't think about it too closely, but it doesn't compare with the later Asgard-based stories we'd see in issues like Journey into Mystery 116 (May 1965) a year later.

This issue of JiM would have been on sale at the same time as Avengers 5 (May 1964), so Stan wanted to promote the new team title by including a scene with the other Avengers at the start of the story.

Journey into Mystery 105 (Jun 1964) brought back to Midgard with a bump. Thor was facing not one but two villains from earlier adventures, The Cobra and Mr Hyde, introduced in Journey into Mystery 98 and 99 respectively. Both debuted during the Stan Lee-Don Heck era and very much have the feel of Lee baddies ... but under Kirby's expert pencil, they seem all the more menacing here.

Yup ... wasn't imagining it. Mr Hyde really did live in a castle, in Journey into Mystery 100 (Jan 1964).

After a two-page intro, establishing Thor as a member of The Mighty Avengers, the sneaky Cobra attacks the Thunder God as he flies past. But ploy fails and The Cobra flees the scene, entering the nearby apartment of scientist Calvin Zabo (didn't he used to live in a spooky old castle?). This is when The Cobra makes the second mistake of the day. Thinking a "mere scientist" easy pickings, the slithery villain is about to demand money when Zabo gulps down some of his serum and transforms into Mr Hyde. There's a two-page scuffle before the pair realise that they had both battled Thor recently and would do better working together. Fortunately, Mr Hyde has a plan and a Time Reversal Ray. He just need to point his invention at a victim and the device records that person's recent history.

Isn't it lucky that The Cobra and Mr Hyde aren't smart enough to figure out that if Thor can be seen leaving the office of Dr Don Blake via the window then he might just be Don Blake?

Staging a robbery to lure Thor out, Mr Hyde has his partner stationed nearby with the Ray. Thor's recent actions are recorded and the gloating pair watch as Thor flies backwards through the window of Dr Don Blake. Figuring there must be some sort of connection between Blake and Thor, they burst into Blake's surgery and demand he tell them where Thor is. Blake is able to transform into Thor, with the lightning flash blinding the villainous pair preventing them witnessing the transformation. Rather than fighting Thor, the duo just run away. Not much of a plan, really. But Hyde has another play. He leads Thor to an industrial machinery convention where the Cobra uses an "atomic-powered hydraulic hoist" to pluck Mjolnir from Thor's fingers. Which leads us into the cliff-hanger, in which Thor has sixty seconds to recover his hammer, or else.

This was the issue of Journey into Mystery where Stan jettisoned the five-page fantasy back-ups and expanded the main Thor feature to 18 pages. It definitely benefits from the extra space, and this story is a two-parter ... positively luxurious for Marvel series of this era.

The Treacherous Hyde allows his partner The Cobra to be captured by police, but that leaves him to battle Thor alone and it's pretty much a one-sided affair.

The leisurely pacing continues the following month where, in Journey into Mystery 106 (Jul 1964), Don Blake doesn't get his walking stick back until page 8. There's another four pages taken up with a hand-to-hand battle between Thor and Mr Hyde, but such an uneven contest isn't really worthy of the space given to it. It's almost like there wasn't enough story for the remaining 18 pages so Stan and Jack eked it out to fill the mag. Five pages could easily have been trimmed without hurting the tale one bit. But 18 pages was the length of the main Thor story now and Stan was committed.

It's worth noting as an aside that, after a revolving door of inkers since its start in Journey into Mystery 97, the back-up feature "Tales of Asgard" got a new regular inker Vince Colletta who would, for better or worse, become the principle inker on the backup and later the main strip until Kirby's last issue of Thor, 179 (Aug 1970).

The villain in Journey into Mystery 107 was a variation on the Gorgon legend of ancient Greece, whose look could turn a man to stone. It was a theme that Stan Lee had used many times in the pre-hero fantasy titles, so I'm inclined to attribute Stan the creator credit.

Journey into Mystery 107 (Aug 1964) gave us another enduring Thor villain, The Grey Gargoyle, whose odd power is to turn his victims to stone with just a touch (and to spell his name UK style, it seems). Another mad scientist, frenchman Paul Duval accidentally stumbles on a formula that turns anything to solid stone, even people. Fortunately for all, the effect wears off in 60 minutes. Why 60 minutes instead of 57 or 63? Who knows? And another mystery is why Duval himself can move about as The Grey Gargoyle but his victims become stiff as statues.

I wonder if the splash page to the story was created by Kirby well in advance of the other pages, as The Gargoyle's design is different here. Also, how do we feel about Don Blake - a doctor - apparently killing Thor's foe?

The villain's plan is to wrest Thor's hammer away so he can become immortal himself ... which kind of dissipates the suspense for the readers because we all know that's not going to work. And because he can't get within arm's length of The Gargoyle, Thor devises a convoluted plan to lure his foe to the docks using a motorcycle, a "TV 3-D-Type Projector" and his Don Blake identity. The lure works and The Gargoyle overshoots the end of the dock, plunges into the river where he presumably drowns.

Of course, The Grey Gargoyle would be back, when he's dredged up from the bottom of the river in a later issue ... but Don Blake doesn't know that.

The September 1964 issue of Journey into Mystery co-starred Marvel stablemate Doctor Strange, who would play a minor but pivotal role in this battle between Thor and his adopted brother Loki.

By contrast, Journey into Mystery 108 (Sep 1964) returns Thor to the more familiar battleground of immortal vs immortal, when Loki comes up with another plan to make his brother's life a misery. It has a neat guest-starring role for Doctor Strange and allows Thor's alter ego Dr Don Blake a moment to shine.

Bringing The Master of the Mystic Arts in to the story sort of sets up the resolution to the problem before we even see the problem. Thor receives a mental summons from an unknown source and follows it all the way to the sanctum of Doctor Strange in New York's Greenwich Village. There, he finds Strange barely conscious after a battle with his arch-enemy Baron Mordo. Thor has the injured mage rushed to hospital where he can be treated by Thor's mortal self. So focussed on saving Dr Strange is he, that Don Blake ignores a summons from Odin to aid Asgard in an imminent battle. Taking advantage of the confusion, Loki sneaks off to Midgard and once again menaces Blake and his love-interest/nurse Jane Foster.

Loki finds yet another way to part Thor from his hammer. It's not hugely original, but it does mean Don Blake has to ask Doctor Strange to find the walking stick for him.

Depriving Dr Blake of his walking cane (itself the mortal alter-ego of Thor's hammer), Loki is able to snatch Jane Foster and imprison her in Limbo - I think this is the second time Jane has visited that sinister dimension, and it won't be her last. Only Doctor Strange can help Blake now ... using his mystic powers, he is able to locate the missing walking stick and help Blake regain it. Once transformed into Thor, that's it for Loki's plan. In the past, Loki has always attacked Thor through proxies, or via wiles and machinations. This is the first time we've seen them actually fight. And though Loki boasts of his godly strength and speed, he is still no match for an angry Thunder God.

The scene bothers me a little. It seems out of character for Loki to attempt to fight Thor physically ... and anyway, hasn't it already been established that Loki is of Giant parentage, not Asgardian, and therefore not actually a god?

The story also includes a brief cameo with The Avengers, who offer to help Thor, but are rebuffed - quite rudely, in my opinion.

Stan also shoehorns The Avengers into the story by having them offer to help Thor battle Loki. It's an unnecessary scene that's there only to promote the The Avengers title (issue 8 would have been on sale the same month). Inexplicably Captain America is missing, despite the fact that in the following few weeks, he would be promoted to his own feature in Tales of Suspense 59 (Nov 1964).

I can't see any other reason to pit Thor against the severely out-matched Magneto, unless it's to plug The X-Men ... which Stan doesn't do.

Journey into Mystery 109 (Oct 1964) was another promo issue, though perhaps a little more low-key (no pun intended) than the preceding ones. This time, Thor was up against the X-Men's arch nemesis, Magneto. When you think about it, this is pretty much a no-contest. Magneto might be all big and tough in the mortal world but he is in no way a match for a god.

So, predictably, the fight is fairly brief, with Magneto having to resort to trickery and Thor inevitably being parted from his hammer once again.

Hey, where's my hammer? Thor loses his mallet and another villain wonders where the walking stick came from.

The X-Men almost make an appearance ... I'm not really sure why Stan was being so coy about showing them, as X-Men 7 would have been on sale at the same time as this issue. What's more, there's no plug from Editor Stan, not even a mention that "the X-Man can be seen in their own comic, on sale now". Weird.

JiM 109 also includes a new letters page, "The Hammer Strikes", which replaces the obligatory text stories Publisher Martin Goodman insisted on to allow his subscription copies to qualify for second-class postage rates.

With their powers boosted by the wily Loki, Mr Hyde and The Cobra are now more than a match for Thor. And with Jane Foster as their captive, Thor's future looks dark.

After what was pretty much a filler issue, Journey into Mystery took a turn for the darker, and pit Thor against Mr Hyde and The Cobra again ... only this time, they'd had their powers amplified by a suitably low-key Loki. Coincidentally, issue 110 was one that I missed at the time as it was caught up in the Great T&P Distribution Snafu of 1964. I came in during the second half of the adventure ... but more on that later.

Loki directs Hyde and The Cobra to seize Dr Don Blake's nurse, as this will be the key to defeating him. Though the pair don't understand, they obey their new mentor regardless.

How will Thor protect Jane and battle two dangerous foes whose strength has been boosted by his adopted brother and arch enemy, Loki? We'd have to wait a month to find out.

Thor returns to Asgard to confront Loki about his malevolent machinations, but the God of Mischief denies all knowledge of any plots against Thor and just as the argument is turning physical, Odin shows up and hurls Thor back to Earth, where he lands near the remote mansion where Jane Foster is captive and a devastating battle ensues, with Jane seriously injured in the melee. Thor's only recourse it to use the power of his hammer to set up a dimensional warp around the house, causing time to stand still, and preventing Jane's condition from deteriorating ... which is a heck of a cliffhanger to end on.

Interestingly, Stan (or possibly Martin Goodman) cut the story pages in Journey into Mystery 110 down to 16 from 18, which would be the new page count for the main story going forward. Still, there's a nice Kirby/Stone Thor pinup to end on, so it's not all bad news.

Straight from the get-go, we're in no doubt about the kind of pressure Thor is under in Journey into Mystery 111 - two hyper-powered foes, a house filled with deadly traps and an ailing Jane Foster to protect effectively convey an atmosphere of panic.

Even though I think Journey into Mystery 111 (Dec 1964) was one of the earliest - if not the earliest - issue of the title I remember having back in the 1960s, it's considered scarce in the UK. Coming into the midst of this breathless action knowing very little about the main character, it still didn't take me long to understand that Thor was deeply concerned for Jane Foster. But the single thing that caught my attention was the uncanny scene in which we see the effects of the time-warp that Thor placed around the house to keep Jane from dying while he battled on against Mr Hyde and The Cobra.

Stan and Jack make it pretty clear here that no one likes Loki and everyone likes Thor. It's these more human touches that separated Marvel from rivals DC during these formative years.

Bear in mind that this issue doesn't so much as mention Dr Don Blake, my introduction to Thor was as the actual God of Thunder, the son of Odin and heir-apparent to the throne of Asgard. The scene in which Odin relents and orders Loki to deliver a request for a remedy to Hardol the Healer was especially effective. The other Asgardians gather around and "relieve" Loki of his task, sending the far more trustworthy Balder to deliver the message instead.

Balder battles against spectacular challenges to reach the healer and deliver the cure for Jane's injuries to Thor, while Thor fights doggedly on against almost overwhelming odds. Of course, the cure is delivered, Jane survives and Thor emerges from the battle triumphant. But that wouldn't be the last we'd see of Loki ... and I'm not talking about the Marvel Masterwork Pinup that rounds out JiM 111.

In the second part of this look at the early adventures of Thor in Journey into Mystery, we'll look at how the stories become even more Asgard-based, and how the more earthly menaces like Mr Hyde and The Cobra become assigned to other Marvel heroes ...

Next: More Mythic Thor

Captain America: The Sixth Avenger

AROUND 1964 I discovered Marvel Comics and almost immediately abandoned the DC Superman, Green Lantern and Flash books I had been reading up till that point. In early 1965, I came across a copy of Tales of Suspense 64 (Apr 1965), which featured the wartime adventures of Captain America, a character who immediately became my all-time favourite superhero. Around the same time - probably the same month, given the cover dates - I found a copy of Avengers 15 (Apr 1965), which starred Captain America working with his fellow team members in a contemporary setting, looking not a day older. How was this possible? My ten-year-old brain was confused.

Much later, when I'd back-filled my small collection of Marvel Comics a little, I was able to figure out what was going on.

The revived and revised Human Torch appeared in the first issue of Fantastic Four. The Sub-Mariner made his Silver Age debut a few months later in FF4. Martin Goodman also had Stan spin The Human Torch off into his own series in Strange Tales, beginning with issue 101 (Oct 1962).

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had begun the Marvel Age of Superheroes by revamping one of Publisher Martin Goodman's 1940s properties, The Human Torch, and co-starring him with the rest of the Fantastic Four in the first issue of their self-titled magazine in November 1961. A few months later, in Fantastic Four 4 (May 1962), Lee and Kirby revived Prince Namor, The Sub-Mariner, as a villain for the FF to fight. It only remained for Stan to find a way to bring back Captain America and he'd put an end to Goodman's requests to revive all of the major 1940s Timely characters.

Stan was right to be wary. Captain America was very much a character for the time, born on the eve of America's involvement in the Second World War, Cap was depicted on the cover of his debut comic socking Hitler on the jaw. After the war drew to a close in 1945, the nation seemed to lose interest in patriotic superheroes - well, actually in all superheroes - and Captain America's sales declined quite rapidly. So finding a way to bring back a character that the comics-buying public had given up on in the late 1940s and who no longer had a purpose now that Nazi Germany was two decades in the past wasn't going to be easy.

The dying of Timely heroes was a sad affair. Captain America's own title turned into a horror comic that lasted one more issue. His final battle was against The Red Skull in Captain America's Weird Tales 74 (Oct 1949). The Human Torch's last appearance was in Marvel Mystery Comics 92 (Jun 1949), and Sub-Mariner's own title died with issue 32 the same month.

Casting around for somewhere to park Captain America, Stan figured that Strange Tales was the most appropriate place, but hedging his bets, had Jack Kirby draw up a tale for ST114 (Nov 1963) where one of Johnny Storm's old enemies, The Acrobat, disguises himself as Captain America and carries out robberies. Even the Torch is fooled right up till the last moment, when he yanks "Cap's" mask off.

Someone must've messed up, because Captain America is shown throughout the story wearing red panties, just like Superman. And if you look closely at the cover, you can see he was coloured that way there too. Stan must've blown a gasket when the cover proof came in and had someone patch over the erroneous pants on the blue film, resulting in purple pants (solid cyan over solid magenta) ... not quite as bad as red, but still wrong.

The final caption box owns up to the fact that Stan was trying out the character to see what readers thought. Fan reaction must've been positive because, a few months later, Captain America turned up in The Avengers 4 (Mar 1964), as a replacement for the increasingly unstable Hulk. It's actually a pretty good tale, and interestingly, uses the Sub-Mariner as the catalyst for Cap's return.

Behind the iconic cover is an epic 23-page tale that describes how Captain America came to be revived by The Sub-Mariner and inducted into The Avengers, who'd become his family for the next ten years.

Prince Namor escaped The Avengers at the end of issue 3, and now fetches up in the Arctic, where he needlessly bullies a band of Inuits who are minding their own business and worshipping their frozen god. The Sub-Mariner flings the idol into the sea, where it thaws out and is brought on board the pursuing sub of The Avengers. The idol turns out to be famous WWII hero, Captain America ... and he's still alive.

You can tell that Stan hasn't really got the measure of the character yet, as most of his dialogue sounds stilted and unnatural. "I am not lucky enough to forget forever ... to forget that I was once the man the world called ... Captain America!" he says moments after waking up from a coma. Of course, if he'd just woken up from a coma, and had no reason at this point to know that twenty years had passed, then his claim is slightly odd. And then, "I've no need of tricks!" intones Cap. "Test me! Try to conquer me!" He sounds more like a robot than a man of the 1940s.

Cap then reveals that, back in the final days of the war, he and Bucky were trying to stop a saboteur's explosives-laden drone plane taking off. The pair make a daring leap to the plane, but Cap loses his grip and the plane explodes, killing his young sidekick. That must've been some leap, because the heroes start somewhere in the European Theatre of Operations and Cap hits the water off the coast of Newfoundland. But why quibble? Cap sinks into the icy sea and the lowered temperature maintains him in a state of suspended animation until The Avengers fish him out in 1964.

Jack Kirby's action scenes in Avengers 4 are as dynamic as always, but you kind of get the impression that Stan's heart wasn't really in the scripting, or that he hadn't got a handle on the character at this point.

Then, there's a bit of shennanigans with an alien turning the Avengers to stone at the request of Namor, but they're rescued by Cap, and then the new Avengers finally tackle The Submariner who, yep, manages to escape again.

The idea of an alien who turns folks to stone and who has been mistaken for the legendary gorgon, Medusa, is a plot device right out of Lee's earlier fantasy stories - "Call Her ... Medusa" from Journey into Mystery 96 (Sep 1963) is just one example.

Interestingly, Namor doesn't seem to recognise Captain America, though you'd have thought that, given they were 1940s contemporaries, they'd have at least known about each other, even if they'd never met - but weren't they in the All-Winners Squad together (All-Winners Comics 19, Fall 1946)?

Captain America is the undoubted star of Avengers 4 and, as you might expect, he has the lion's share of the action. He's instrumental in figuring out what happened to the "missing" Avengers and in tracking down the sunglasses-wearing character who fired a strange weapon at his team-mates. Once the other Avengers are restored, the team goes after Namor and though each has a moment of combat with the Sub-Mariner, it is Cap who frees hostage Rick Jones moments before an earthquake forces Namor to return to the depths.

The inker's not credited on Avengers 4 ... I'd always assumed it was Paul Reinman, as that's who'd inked the issues on either side which didn't look much different, but the Grand Comicbook Database gives the inker as George Roussos. Either way, I wasn't that keen on the inks, thinking they looked rushed and messy. I'm sure George Roussos had his fans but I wasn't one of them.

Captain America's very next appearance was briefly in Fantastic Four 25 and more fully in FF26, where he and the Avengers found themselves in a scrap with the FF over who had first dibs on The Hulk.

These two comics were heavily advertised in the other Marvels of the day and were both on my "must-get" list. When I did manage to track down copies, I wasn't in the least disappointed.

The tale pretty much carries straight on from Avengers 4, and was probably more about Stan consolidating the Avengers and Captain America as part of the Marvel Universe. Strangely, the first contact between the Avengers and the FF is when The Human Torch and Captain America have the first skirmish on page 13, yet no mention is made of the pair's first "meeting" in Strange Tales 114. It seems odd that Stan missed the opportunity to have Cap speak a line like, "You're up against the real thing, this time, sonny!"

It really is a great Marvel event, featuring 80% of the company's main characters in one adventure. Giving the tale two issues meant that the storytelling felt uncramped and satisfying and it remains to this day one of my all time favourite Marvel tales. There are a couple of minor niggles. Stan still hadn't really found The Hulk's voice yet, and in many panels he talks a bit like The Thing. And the resolution, where Rick Jones drops an "emergency gamma-ray treated capsule which Banner gave me months ago" into the Hulk's mouth and the Hulk, transforming back to Banner, falls into the Hudson River does seem a bit unimaginative - or perhaps too imaginative - and seems like a Jack Kirby plot-point. Inking is once again by George Roussos (as "George Bell") and is, if nothing else, consistent with the previous Avengers issue.

Jack Kirby adds a montage of The Avengers with both The Hulk and Captain America present, even though up to this point they haven't appeared together in the team and it's even debatable whether Bruce Banner would be aware of Cap as an Avenger. But Kirby partially redeems himself with this fabulous two-thirds page panel of the living rock being forced up to the surface world by the Lava people.

Avengers 5 (May 1964), which came out the same month as FF26, continues The Hulk storyline and also brings back Molto the Lava Man and his underground race from the Thor tale in Journey into Mystery 97. The Lava Men are trying to get rid of a weird growing rock which threatens to engulf their subterranean kingdom by forcing it on the surface people. Thor's former enemy Molto counsels against this, but his people refuse to listen. And we all know where that's going to lead.

Iron Man enters the earth below the Living Rock and encounters the Lava People. He tries to reason with them, but they attack him. Thor intervenes and demands to speak to their ruler. But an impasse is reached when the Lava Men explain that Thor striking the Living Rock will only cause more damage. In the meantime another group of Lava Men attack Captain America triggering a further skirmish, with Iron Man and Giant Man getting involved.

Meanwhile, not far away Banner transforms into the Hulk, then comes across the Avengers and attacks them. Thor attempts to halt the Hulk with his hammer, but a sneak attack by the Lava Men's leader with a radioactive weapon causes Thor to transform back into Don Blake ... and now the Avengers no longer have the raw power to destroy the Living Rock. But the team find a way to taunt the Hulk, so that his massive fists strike the Rock in the exact spot to trigger an explosion that destroys it.

The issue also included a new letters column in which future comics artist and inker Alan Weiss writes to say how he prefers "George Bell's" inking over Paul Reinman's. So that shows how much I know.

As Cap bonds with his new team-mates and gets all depressed about the fate of Bucky, we're introduced to the villain responsible for the death of Cap's young partner. Zemo is a man given to walking all over his fellow man (literally) and immature temper tantrums. Already I dislike him.

Avengers 6 (Jul 1964) is a bit of a landmark, for two reasons. It's the first monthly issue, which means sales must have been very good right from the get-go, and it's the first time the Avengers face a team of super-foes. We open with Captain America demonstrating the transistor-powered magnets that Iron Man installed in his shield. This was probably an attempt to bring the character more "up-to-date", but the idea was quickly jettisoned, as revealed last time when I covered Tales of Suspense 62 (Feb 65, just seven months after Avengers 6).

This issue also introduces Baron Zemo and retrospectively adds him to Marvel history as a main foe for Captain America, and in Sgt Fury 8 (Jul 1964) as a wartime adversary for Fury and his Commandos. It's revealed that Zemo is the saboteur responsible for the exploding plane that killed Bucky and now, surviving in exile in the Amazonian jungles, the ex-Nazi is ready to bring the fight to Captain America once more.

Also in Avengers 6, we get the origin of (the masked) Baron Zemo and a return grudge match between Cap and the man responsible for the death of Bucky. The same month, Zemo turned up (twenty years earlier, sort of) in Sgt Fury 8 - without the magenta mask.

So the villain recruits a bunch of second-banana villains to help him battle his way through the Avengers to get to Cap, saying to his henchman, "You must find three people for me, if you value your life!!" though Stan doesn't explain how Zemo's henchman will be able to get them to work together. 

First to show his face is old Giant Man foe The Black Knight, who's flying around the city on his winged steed spraying Zemo's mysterious Adhesive X everywhere, bringing traffic to a halt and causing chaos. Next, defeated Iron Man villain The Melter does pretty much the same, but first melting the guns of any police nearby. Then Thor's old enemy Radioactive Man arrives, also squirting the nasty superglue all around. After a bit of pushing and shoving, The Avengers hit on the idea of asking Paste-Pot Pete for help, reasoning that his expertise in glues and adhesives might also extend to solvents. Pete strikes a deal for an early release and the Teen Brigade are dispatched to switch Zemo's Adhesive X for Pete's super-solvent.

But it's Captain America that comes up with the plan to defeat Zemo's super-powered allies. They'll simply switch foes. So Thor battles The Black Knight, Giant Man and the Wasp tackle Radioactive Man and Iron Man takes on The Melter ... oh, wait a minute ... that wasn't part of Cap's plan. It only remains for Captain America to give Zemo a pounding and the tale can draw to a close.

The inking here was by Chic Stone, one of my own personal Silver Age favourites. Though not quite as inspired as the work he was already doing on the Fantastic Four comic, notably issue 30, which came out the following month - probably because Stone was getting Marvel out of a deadline disaster here - the work is still crisp and fresh and in my opinion far better than the inking work we'd seen so far on this title.

However, Stan seems a lot more confident with Cap's voice in this story, and we already see the guilt-laden side of his personality, blaming himself for the death of Bucky and unable to move on from the trauma, yet motivated by a sense of duty to continue the fight regardless of his own feelings. It's a take on Cap that would continue for the next decade and a half and would be further explored by Roy Thomas in much later Avengers issues.

At the beginning of Avengers 7, the Executioner and The Enchantress get kicked out of Asgard for ganging up on Thor in Journey into Mystery 103. So they seek out their next career move with Baron Zemo, even though he's hardly an equal opportunities employer.

Of course, Zemo was back in Avengers 7 (Aug 1964), along with new allies The Executioner and The Enchantress who'd previously battled Thor in Journey into Mystery 103 four months earlier. Even though Zemo was supposed to have been tear-gassed in his escape craft and picked up by the police at the end of last issue (albeit, off-camera), here he is, back in his South American hideaway, abusing the natives like nothing ever happened.

The driving incident for the plot of this issue is when Thor is hypnotised into drinking a magic mind-control potion by the wiley Enchantress. You'd think Thor would be a little more cautious around that woman after The Last Time. But, no, in he blunders and gulps down the brain-altering brew like it was Vimto or something. With his head suitably re-arranged, Thor now sees his follow Avengers as demons and picks a fight.

After knocking back The Enchantress' Love Potion Number 9, Thor gets all discombobulated and thinks his Avengers pals are scary monsters and super-freaks ...

But though it's full of sound and fury, the battle between the Avengers seems a bit by-the-numbers, compared to the attention Stan and Jack lavish on Captain America this issue. No fewer than six pages - more than a quarter of the story - is taken up with establishing Cap's character and following his feud with Baron Zemo.

Once again, Captain America is driving the storyline of this issue of Avengers. There's a fun sequence at the beginning where Cap hires a bunch of wrestlers as sparring partners, then he has a mope about Bucky and snaps at Rick for trying on Bucky's old costume.

And is it just me, or is the splash page of this issue inked by someone other than Chic Stone? Looks more like Paul Reinman's inking. Of course we know that very often back in the day, Stan would want art re-drawn as it came in, so it's possible that the figure of Cap was redrawn, or even added in by another artist before press-day.

Looking back on this today, this doesn't look like Chic Stone work, particularly Giant Man's face and the inking on Cap's figure. Or maybe someone did a last-minute touch-up.

Avengers 8 (Sep 1964) is a change of pace. Stan and Jack leave Zemo alone for a moment and introduce a new menace, Kang, a diabolical scientific genius from the future who may or may not be either related to Dr Doom or actually be Dr Doom.

It's a little surprising that Stan didn't have this cover re-drawn. You'd think he'd argue that you can't see Kang clearly and The Avengers are crowded into a quarter of the cover. When he shows up inside, Kang looks a tad fey. And, interestingly, it's the Teen Brigade that save the day.

The character first appeared in the guise of Rama-Tut, the time-travelling antagonist from the story in Fantastic Four 19 (Oct 1963), and then turned up in the Fantastic Four Annual 2 (1964) where he rescues Dr Doom, floating in space after his last defeat by the FF. Trying to return to his own time, Kang overshoots by a few centuries and crashlands in a barbaric and desolate future. Quickly tiring of ruling a dying world, he decides to time travel to the 20th Century and conquer Earth ... which is when he runs in to The Avengers.

The team seems a bit chaotic in its battle against Kang. Their powers have little effect against him, then they're all captured, leaving only The Wasp and Rick Jones and his pals to free the others and defeat Kang.

It all seems a bit rushed and I wasn't wild about the Dick Ayers inking here, either. I get that Marvel was running to tight deadlines - goodness knows I've had my own share of producing strips to a deadline on the weekly comic 2000AD - but even so this issue does seem a bit ramshackle. That same month, Kirby had also drawn Fantastic Four 30 (a gorgeous art job with Chic Stone, covered in an earlier blog entry), Journey into Mystery 108, X-Men 7 and 37 pages of story plus five pinups in Fantastic Four Annual 2 (all also Stone, so no wonder he didn't have time for Avengers 8). And Dick Ayers also pencilled the 18-page epic Giant Man/Hulk battle in Tales to Astonish 59, so they were all probably stretched a little thin.

Though Avengers 9 dredged up Zemo once again, his new creation Wonder Man was an interesting, if short-lived, character. The machinery used to give Simon Williams "Wonder" powers would come up again in Marvel legend in the origin of long-time Avengers villain Power Man.

Avengers 9 (Oct 1964) was the first issue to be pencilled by Don Heck, who would go on to have a long association with the title, supplying most of the art up to issue 40. Here we again had Ayers on inks, unfortunately not the best fit for Heck's art. I always enjoyed Don Heck most when he inked his own pencils.

I wouldn't see this issue until quite some time after it was published as it was another of the books caught up in the big Marvel/Thorpe and Porter distribution snafu of late 1964. Zemo returns (again!) as the main villain, only this time, instead of finding allies to join him, he creates one. He offers convicted white collar criminal Simon Williams the opportunity to acquire super-powers and join him to get revenge on Tony Stark's "bodyguard" Iron Man and his Avengers team-mates. The catch is, the process that gives Williams "Powerman" powers will also kill him in days unless an antidote is administered. So, Zemo, Executioner and Enchantress stand by as Wonder Man infiltrates The Avengers and sets them up for betrayal. Of course, Williams has a change of heart at the last moment and sacrifices himself so The Avengers may live.

The Marvel house ad in Avengers 9 showed some of the other Marvel mags we weren't able to get in the UK because of the importers not distributing the October and November titles in the newsagents here.

But once Kirby was no longer supplying the art (and plotting or co-plotting, if indeed he was), then the Avengers stories became fairly routine. Avengers 9 was entertaining because of the unusual concept of Wonder Man as a villain-turned-hero, but otherwise, Jack Kirby was sorely missed.

Avengers 10 (Nov 1964) was also a difficult issue to find in the UK, and when I did finally track down a copy, it turned out to be not one of my favourites. The plot has Zemo (sigh) ally himself with another time-travelling tyrant, Immortus. This new fellow kidnaps Rick Jones and holds that over Captain America to force Cap to bring the other Avengers to him. He then pits them against warriors from different eras of history.

Between Thor's disappearing tights and the hokey ending where The Enchantress cancels the entire shameful episode out of existence, this was one of the weakest instalments of The Avengers of the early era.

The issue does bear the earmarks of having been rushed. Besides the plot not being the best-thought-out story in that run of early Avengers, there seems to be some problems with the colouring, as Thor's blue leggings come and go from page to page, and he's depicted more than a few times with bare legs. The ending is weak, as well ... with her team-mates facing certain defeat, The Enchantress turns back time so that the whole Immortus episode never happened.

Avengers 11 (Dec 1964) brought back Kang as the main villain. Fashioning a robot duplicate of Spider-Man using the technology of his ancestor Dr Doom, Kang sent it back in time to lure the Avengers into a trap. The cover art is misleading on way too many levels. For a start, Iron Man isn't in the story at all - he's busy trying to convince his supporting cast over in the same month's Tales of Suspense 60 that he didn't murder Tony Stark and has requested a leave of absence from The Avengers. And the "Co-starring Spider-Man" line isn't exactly true. The real Spider-Man appears for only a couple of pages at the tail end of the tale.

Avengers 11: Even with the addition of Chic Stone on inks, I didn't think Don Heck had really gotten a grip on the Marvel style of action. He wouldn't really come into his own as the definitive Avengers artist until after Thor, Iron Man and Giant Man left.

And there's definitely something weird going on with the cover art. Over on Nick Caputo's blog, there's a detailed examination of this cover and Nick explains his thinking behind the credits he assigns. But I also have a couple of thoughts to add to Nick's careful dissection. Nick thinks the Spider-Man figure is an addition, pencilled by Steve Ditko inked by Chic Stone, and he is very likely correct as Mr Caputo has a great eye for this kind of thing. To me it's certainly evident that, no matter how much I love Stone's inking, he really doesn't get Spider-Man at all. When you look at the Spider-Man figure in detail, there are many problems with it. The mask is drawn incorrectly. The border round the mask's eyes is left open for colour instead of being solid black, as is the Spider chest-emblem. Often pencillers will leave areas of black as outlines and just mark them with a small "X" to indicate to the inker to fill them in ... maybe the penciller (Ditko) forgot, or thought he would be inking it. But it's quite surprising that Stan's eagle eye didn't catch this snafu. And I'm not mad about the background webbing, either, where Chic Stone inked in the circular pencil guidelines when he should have erased them.

Here, I've taken the liberty of correcting the mistakes on the Spider-Man figure on the cover of Avengers 11. The eye detail on the mask has been blacked in (on the right), along with the chest emblem. And the weird blue highlight on the front of the mask has been recoloured yellow to match the other highlights on the costume. And I've gotten rid of some of the circular guide lines on the webbing in front of Spidey's face that Chic inked instead of erasing (If you look closely, you can see the compass hole in the centre of the webbing).
Click on the image to enlarge it.

The other small niggle is with Stan's scripting. Five month's earlier, in Tales to Astonish 57 Jul 1964), the villain Egghead had engineered a fight between Giant-Man and Spider-Man. In that story, there was quite a bit of dialogue around the idea of wasps and spiders being natural enemies, so Janet Van Dyne was quite hostile towards Spidey. In Avengers 11, there is much the same kind of conversation when "Spidey" shows up, yet no one mentions that Giant-Man and Spider-Man had battled months before, not something you'd think Hank Pym would easily forget. Perhaps this contributed to Stan's decision to remove the "heavy-hitters" from The Avengers ...

But in the end, because the plot basically "cheats" and doesn't really give us "Spider-Man meets The Avengers", what should have been a terrific issue ends up feeling a little bit "meh!". The whole concept of Spider-Man trying to join The Avengers - with this same line-up, even though Iron Man and Thor had been replaced by Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver by that point -  would be done a lot better two years later in Amazing Spider-Man Annual 3 (1966).

Avengers 12 (Jan 1965) gave us a break from the machinations of Kang. The story opens with Giant-Man getting an alert from his ants that there is great danger underground. Giant-Man summons the rest of the Avengers ... but his colleagues seem annoyed to be called in on the say-so of some ants. This is pretty unlikely, as these heroes have been through a lot together and you'd think by now they'd have learned to trust each other. So having Thor flouncing off in a huff because he has "more pressing matters to attend to" doesn't really ring true. I can't think what could be more important as Thor was between adventures, and in his own title that month was battling The Hulk in a flashback to the events of Avengers 3.

Behind the terrific Kirby and Stone cover is another odd tale which looks like Stan still didn't have a handle on how this comic should run. Weirdly, The Red Ghost shows up in the last act of the story for no good reason that I can see. And Thor's own title that month was a flashback to The Hulk battle in Avengers 3.

A few pages later, The Avengers have a change of heart, but before they can set off to find Hank Pym to see if he needs any help, they're attacked by a squad of The Mole Man's subterraneans. Just as The Avengers prevail, the subterraneans vanish in a wisp of smoke, and the Avengers set off to find Giant-Man. They invade the Mole Man's kingdom, free Giant Man and defeat the underground hordes. 

Captain America again had a couple of good scenes. It is he that tries to get Iron Man and Thor to listen to Giant-Man's warning, and it's Cap who prevents a robbery and retrieves vital components for Iron Man's burrowing device. But I'm still not sure what The Red Ghost was doing in there. 

Dick Ayers was back inking Don Heck for this issue, though I have to say, this was a much better job than he did on Avengers 9.

Jack Kirby (with the help of Chic Stone) shows everyone how it should be done, when The Avengers guest-star in X-Men 9 (Jan 1965).

The same month as Avengers 12, the team also make an appearance in X-Men 9, pencilled by Jack Kirby and inked by Chic Stone. Presumably, Stan was trying to goose the sales of the mutant book by including the more successful Avengers as guest stars. It's not much more than a walk-on, really, as The Avengers track some unknown evil to distant Bavaria. It turns out to be X-Men foe Lucifer and after the obligatory skirmish, The Avengers leave Prof Xavier's young heroes to fight their own battle with Lucifer.

The evil Count Nefaria (that's him on the cover, looking like a demented keyboard player) makes America believe The Avengers have turned traitor and soon they're hunted by the US military ...

Dick Ayers would return as inker on Avengers 13 (Feb 1965), an issue which at least gave us a new villain - Count Nefaria - and a new criminal organisation - The Maggia - as antagonists ... which may or may not have been influenced by James Bond's Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE. The smooth Count lures the Avengers to his castle under the pretext of a charity event, then produces holographic duplicates of the heroes, which he then sends to the Pentagon to declare war on the US. Now hunted as traitors, it doesn't take The Avengers too long to figure out who's behind the plot. So they take the battle to Nefaria. But in the final skirmish, The Wasp is wounded and the issue, unusually, ends on a cliffhanger, with Janet Van Dyne's life in the balance.

With Avengers 14, Stan brought back Jack Kirby to produce layouts for Don Heck to work over. This would continue for three issues until Stan was happy with the title's level of storytelling. The splash page straightaway looks better for Kirby's input.

I reckon Stan couldn't have been any more pleased with the last few issues of The Avengers than I was. Don Heck is a great artist, but on these early issues, he struggled to deliver his best work. So Stan got Jack Kirby to provide layouts for The Avengers 14 (Mar 1965). And in a bit of a departure, Lee credits himself with the plot, Kirby with layouts (underlining that this isn't a Jack Kirby story) and handed the scripting job off to brother Larry Leiber and the previously unknown "Paul Laiken", obviously a pen-name. There were probably reasons for the alias, but then Stan goes and gives it all away on the letters page by revealing that 14 pages of script were by Larry Leiber and Larry Ivie ... Ivie was perhaps better known as a writer for Jim Warren's Creepy and Eerie, though he contributed scripts to Tower Comics during the latter half of the 1960s as well.

The plot has Thor in a race against time to secure the services of Dr Svenson of Norway who is the only one who can save The Wasp's life. It's the least he can do after how mean he was to Giant-Man just two issues previously. But when Thor grabs the reluctant doctor and flies him back to America, it turns out that Svenson is an alien impersonator. The Avengers' only chance to save The Wasp is to find the rest of the aliens and, hopefully, the real Dr Svenson. Our heroes manage to track the Kallusians to their hidden base in the Arctic. It turns out the aliens are hiding from their enemies on Earth and Dr Svenson is helping them willingly. But The Avengers force the Kallusians to leave Earth and face their hunters in outer space so our planet is not destroyed in the inevitable war when the enemies of Kallu catch up with them. The Wasp is saved ... but we never find out what happened to the Kallusians.

The next few issues of The Avengers I covered in an earlier post. And I'll leave my favourite period of The Avengers - when the lineup changed to Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, lead by Captain America - for another time.

Next month I want to take a look at some of the earliest appearances of Marvel characters on television, starting with ... Captain America.

Next: Marvel Superheroes on TV!