Captain America: A Man Out of Time

CAPTAIN AMERICA was one of the first Marvel Comics heroes I discovered back in the hazy days of 1965. I'm not sure what it was that fascinated me about the character - his star-spangled costume, his embodiment of the American Dream, the fact that he was not Super but just an ordinary man.

Even in the mid-Sixties, we were exposed to a great deal of American culture here in the UK, through movies, television and our reading matter. My feeling was that home-grown comic papers like Beano and Beezer were for small children, but the brash and colourful US imports were for older kids like myself. And of course, they were more expensive which, like designer goods today, made them more aspirational.

These early Marvels would have first been on sale in the UK in mid-1965, around the time of my eleventh birthday. Compared to the straight-arrow Justice League of America the Marvel characters seemed wilder and just a little more dangerous.

I've covered my earliest encounters with the fledgling Marvel comics in earlier blog entries, but it's worth mentioning again that the character that first caught my eye in those formative years was Captain America. And in the summer of 1965, I resolved that I was going to save (we didn't call it "collecting" back then) all the Captain America comics I could get my hands on. But as it was quite a while back now, I can't really remember now what order I found these issues in, so as with my recent Spider-Man coverage, I'll just examine each issue of Tales of Suspense in order.

HOW MUCH SUSPENSE CAN YOU MANAGE?

After the Battle issue of Tales of Suspense 58 (Oct 1964), the first issue of Suspense to feature Captain America in his own strip was issue 59 (Nov 1964). This was one of the Marvels caught up in the great Thorpe & Porter import snafu of late-1964 that I reported on in an earlier blog. So the issue didn't make it into UK newsagents, at least not so as you'd notice. So I wouldn't get my hands on a copy of this comic until sometime in the 1970s.

Marvel used the idea of a Battle Issue to introduce the incoming superhero strip in the anthology titles - so Iron Man battled Captain America in Tales of Suspense 58, though Don Heck's Cap was only adequate. A couple of months earlier, Giant Man had battled The Incredible Hulk in preparation for ol' Greenskin's solo series which would begin in Astonish 60.

Looking back on ToS59 now, the Captain America story feels very much like it was was plotted and drawn by Jack Kirby, then handed to Stan for dialoguing. The reason I think this is that there's no characterisation going on and next to no motivation for the bad guys to invade the Avengers Mansion. The closest we get to seeing Cap depicted as a real person is when he has a flick through an old scrapbook of his wartime exploits with Bucky - though trying to imagine Captain America sitting down with a pot of paste and a stack of newspaper clippings is pretty difficult. When did he make the scrapbook? Was it frozen in the ice-block with him? Or did he put in a safe-deposit box against the time he was thawed out? This kind of detail wouldn't have been neglected if Stan had been plotting the story, so that's why I'm blaming this on Kirby's storytelling carelessness.

When the Captain America solo strip kicked off in Tales of Suspense 59, the artwork by Kirby was outstanding, but the story felt very thin on the ground. Some gangsters invade the Avengers mansion and have a big fight with Cap. That's it.

The following issue wasn't a massive improvement. The Captain America story, again pencilled by Kirby with great inks by Chic Stone, featured essentially the same plot. This time the antagonists are a group of assassins despatched to kill Cap while he's giving a demonstration of his fighting skill to an invited audience, but once again - in a great Kirby action sequence - the "weakest" Avenger mops them up with ease. Rick Jones also gets a little ass-whupping action, as a sort of substitute Bucky, but without the wisecracks. It's worth mentioning here that Cap is still using the magnetically-powered shield given to him by Iron Man in Avengers 6 (July 1964).

In Tales of Suspense 60, the Captain America strip was more of an incident than a story. A group of thugs sent by Baron Zemo takes the place of Cap's sparring partners during a public demonstration and get their asses kicked. That's it.

Tales of Suspense 61 was a bit of a change of pace. Captain America shows up in Vietnam to rescue a POW, Jim Baker, the younger brother of a soldier who'd once saved Cap's life in Europe during WW2. The Viet-Cong are led by The General, a huge sumo wrestler. Aside from the fact that sumos are Japanese, it's a better story for Cap than what we've seen so far in this title. But it still lacks a bit of substance.

Even though the Captain America section of Suspense 61 featured a change of locale - Vietnam, in this case - it was still just an incident, where Cap shows up, kicks some commie butt and departs.

The same month that ToS61 came out, Captain America guest-starred in Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos 13 (Dec 1964), one of my favourite comics of the Silver Age. Looking back on it now, it's not hard to see why. Behind a great Kirby/Stone cover, there's a neat little scene at the beginning of the story where Nick Fury and Pamela Hawley are enjoying tea in a pub (yes, it seems unlikely, and even less likely that a pub would have uniformed waitresses, but Stan's still an American, despite professing to being an Anglo-phile and actually being married to a Brit). One of Fury's fellow tea-sippers is Pvt Steve Rogers. When platoon bully Sgt Bull McGiveney shows up, he picks on Rogers and pushes him around a little, before Fury intervenes.

As soon as I saw this comic advertised in the Marvel house ads, I just knew I had to track it down. Captain America. Bucky. Fighting alongside Sgt Fury. In World War II. How could it not be brilliant?

Later on in the story, Fury and Rogers meet again on a Nazi train transporting slave workers to help dig a tunnel to Britain (so, probably in France, then). When Fury and the Howlers start to bust up the Nazis' project, Captain America and Bucky show up and pitch in. There's a couple of great pages of Kirby/Ayers action (the first Kirby Fury since issue 7) before the heroes make their escape and we're treated to a fun epilogue with Fury recuperating in one hospital room while unknown to him Steve Rogers/Captain America recovers in the very next room.

Sgt Fury 13 certainly felt a lot more substantial than the 10-pagers that were running in Suspense at the same time. With a whopping 23 pages to play with here Lee and Kirby were able to craft a much more satisfying tale, despite Cap having to share the stage with Fury and his Howling Wotsits.

Kirby's art is superb here. The big frame with Captain America being held by the convicts at the top of a page 4 perfectly captures the controlled power of Cap ... only Kirby could have pulled this off so effectively.

But after the widescreen spectacle of Sgt Fury 13, the return to 10-page incidents in Tales of Suspense 62 felt like a bit of a let-down. In this episode, Cap is giving (yet) another demonstration of his fighting prowess, this time inside a prison. What he doesn't realise is that the "warden" is actually the leader of a bunch of escaped convicts that have taken over the penitentiary - and they want to use the electronics in Cap's shield to open the complex outer doors. Of course, a big fight breaks out and Cap gives the convict horde a severe slapping. By the time reinforcements show up, Captain America has the situation safely in hand. The epilogue has Cap revealing that he's taken the electronics out of the shield because they upset its delicate balance, and the real warden telling Cap that the outer doors can be opened by simply speaking the words, "Captain America".

Looking back on it now, this seems about the lamest tale of the bunch so far. It's like neither Stan nor Jack actually knew what to do with the character. But then Stan must have realised that too, because at the very tail end of the letters page, we're told that Captain America strip is taking a new direction ... "It's gonna be a new type of tale, the first of a new series". It was, as well.

The origin of Captain America has been retrofitted a few times in the years since 1965, but this version is the most straightforward telling of the tale, if a little wordy, and as a bonus, we get the origin of Bucky, as well.

I remember seeing Tales of Suspense 63 for the first time - a fairly tatty copy in a second-hand shop - sometime in early 1966, I think. My first thought was that I would finally find out how Captain America could be a young man both in the 1940s and in the 1960s. (Remember, I'd seen ToS64 a year or more earlier and I was already aware of Cap's adventures as an Avenger). Part of me was a little disappointed when all I got was a ten-page origin story set in the forties with art by Jack Kirby and quite a lot of scripting from Stan. No explanation of how Cap had weathered the twenty years from 1944-1964 without ageing. That was annoying.

As far as the plot points are concerned, the origin of Captain America in Tales of Suspense 63 is identical to the original origin, way back in Captain America Comics 1.

That said, it's a rattling good read and actually two-and-a-half pages longer than the original story from Captain America Comics 1 (Mar 1941), though that's mostly because it tacks on an incident at the end showing Cap and Bucky busting up a bunch of Nazi saboteurs landing from a submarine, then destroying the sub (and presumably the crew inside it) with the saboteurs' own explosives. The final caption pledges that "each following issue of Suspense will feature a new adventures of Cap and Bucky based on their World War Two exploits." But that wouldn't be quite true ...

I mentioned Tales of Suspense 64 in the very first entry of this blog ... it was one of the first Marvel Comics I ever saw. It's hard to describe how I looked upon Iron Man versus Hawkeye and the Black Widow and the rather eerie tale of Captain America and Bucky battling clairvoyant Nazis at the time. I'd been used to the clean-cut adventures of the DC super-heroes up till that point and this new approach was an entirely different experience. As Nick Caputo pointed out in one of his first blog posts, the Marvel tales felt altogether grimier, and closer to real life than the artificial and squeaky-clean landscapes that Flash and Green Lantern inhabited. For me this made the Marvel landscape seem all the more familiar to me, despite New York being three thousand miles away from the south-east London district I was living in at the time. DC's suburban backdrops, all manicured and neat, seemed a long way away from where I lived.

The Captain America story from Tales of Suspense 64 was a straight re-telling of a story from the very first issue of the 1941 Captain America comic ... Stan added the explanation of Sando's crystal ball which was missing from the original version.

But about those promised all-new stories of Captain America set during WWII ... they may have been new to me at the time, but as The Kid reminded me in response to an earlier post, the Sando and Omar story was a re-telling of the second tale, by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, in the now legendary Captain America Comics 1. So similar are the two that Stan probably shouldn't have taken a "writer" credit on the re-telling.

The plot has a couple of variety performers, Sando and his mute "psychic" assistant Omar, predicting disasters from a theatre stage to bewildered audiences. Each of their predictions comes true ... hardly surprising as they are simply part of a nest of Nazi saboteurs. Presumably, the theatrical performances are intended to demoralise the American public. Captain America and Bucky investigate, discover the secret behind the plot and break up the gang with the help of government operative, identified as Betty Ross in the 1941 version, but Agent Thirteen in the 1964 story. Confusingly, there would be an Agent Thirteen in Cap's 1960s life, but that's a story for another time.

The original version of the tale, which appeared in Captain America Comics 1, was scripted and drawn by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, one of their first jobs as the in-house creative team of Timely comics, as Marty Goodman tried to wean himself off depending on Funnies Inc for his supply on new comics material.

The Special Announcements Section at the end of the Tales of Suspense 64 letter page told us next issue we could expect "the most famous villain Captain America ever fought - a villain whom the older readers will remember, and who is just a legendary name to our younger fans." Not to me, he wasn't. I'd never heard of The Red Skull.

When I did eventually find a copy of Tales of Suspense 65, I was more excited about the prospect of the old golden-armoured Iron Man fighting the newer red-and-yellow version ... but once I got to the Red Skull story, it turned out to be a lot better than I expected. It all begins when a high-ranking army officer is murdered by a weird Nazi agent in a red skull mask. Police are baffled about the cause of death and Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes decide to take a hand as Captain America and Bucky. Cap rescues Bucky and demolishes the Skull's henchmen, but the Skull himself escapes. Next day, Rogers and Barnes are on guard detail during a demonstration of a new plane designed by the head of the Maxon Aircraft Corp. Right under the noses of the military, the plane is sabotaged. That evening the General Curtis is murdered by the Red Skull. But the fracas attracts the attention of Captain America and he manages to defeat the Skull. Pulling the mask from the Nazi agent he's shocked to see the face of aircraft designer Maxon. Taking advantage of Cap's surprise, Maxon makes his escape.

The re-introduction of The Red Skull in ToS65 was a pretty big deal, thought I didn't know it at the time. The character would go on to eclipse Baron Zemo, who'd started out as Cap's main nemesis during the 1960s.

The storytelling here is a bit confused. Is the fake "Maxon" actually The Red Skull? Doesn't seem likely, because Cap says that "Maxon was eliminated by the Nazis and replaced with a lookalike, which indicates that this was the Maxon lookalike, disguised as The Skull. Yet, as he escapes, "Maxon" shouts, "The Red Skull is never without a waiting escape route.

The likeliest explanation is that Kirby plotted and drew the tale, using the original comic as a reference, then handed it over to Stan for scripting, who in turn, struggled to make sense of Jack's ramshackle plot. Not even Chic Stone's smooth inking helped. And when we look at the Red Skull story from Captain America Comics 1, it turns out that The Red Skull - who dies at the end of the tale - actually is Maxon, a man turned traitor for the promise of the post of Minister of Industry when Hitler conquers the USA. Yet, Simon and Kirby would revive the character in issue 7, indicating that Maxon was only an impersonator, though that plot point really isn't made clear in Suspense 65.

The earlier telling of the story seemed to work a bit better, probably because Simon & Kirby hadn't originally intended using the character again and were happy to have him revealed as Maxon, then killed off at the end of the tale. The popularity of the character must have caught them by surprise.

Tales of Suspense 66 strayed from the re-telling of old stories from Captain America Comics 1. Stan and Jack gave us the all-new Origin of the Red Skull. I might be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that the character's beginnings were never portrayed in the original 1940s Captain America comics. It's not a bad tale, either. The story begins with Captain America bound and at the mercy of The Red Skull. As the Skull gloats over his helpless foe, we learn how an un-named nebbish chances to be in the same room with Adolph Hitler one day at the beginning of WWII. Hitler capriciously decides that he can make the perfect Nazi out of this nobody and gives him the mask and costume. The Red Skull quickly takes to his new role as Hitler's Head of Terror and pretty soon starts getting ambitions of his own. The story ends with Captain America, in a drug-induced trance, under the full control of his arch-enemy.

With Cap captured and Bucky missing, The Red Skull reveals the secret of how he rose to prominence in Hitler's Nazi Party. The story ended with a brainwashed Captain America prepared to assassinate, the leader of the Allied Forces in Europe.

The ten-page story seems to hang together better than the adaptations from Captain America Comics 1 in Suspense 63-65 do. Perhaps that's because it's not an adaptation. Further, perhaps it's because with ToS66, Stan was actually plotting the stories instead of (I'm guessing) leaving Jack to revise the plots from the older stories by himself, then just adding the dialogue afterwards. The next issue would continue in this direction.

Tales of Suspense 67 has The Red Skull gloatingly deliver the mind-controlled Captain America to the Fuehrer. Hitler orders The Red Skull to have Cap carry out his "mission" then kill him. So, leading a squad of Nazi commandos, Cap parachutes into London and breaks into the home of the highest ranking US general in the European Theatre of Operations ... and apparently pulls the trigger.

The Red Skull introduces Adolph Hitler to his new BFF - Captain America. The Nazis then have Cap assassinate the highest ranking US Commander in Europe. We can only watch, horrified, as Cap pulls the trigger of his borrowed Luger.

As with the previous episode, the storytelling here is a lot smoother that the Golden Age adaptation had been. Lee's script and Kirby's art seem to mesh more fully, and the inking of Frank Giacoia (under the fake name "Frankie Ray" - he was still working for DC at the time) is almost as perfect as Chic Stone's.

Just like the old cliffhanger serials, Tales of Suspense 68 began with a resolution to the dreadful situation at the end of the previous episode. It was a bit of a cop-out, to be honest. A kind of, "with one bound, Cap was free." Stan and Jack ask us to believe that the brainwashing of Captain America was complete - but not complete enough. At the crucial final reckoning, Cap is unable to pull the trigger on the general. Then the story veers off in a different direction, with Cap chasing down a Nazi agent who manages to get his hands on an allied secret weapon, "Project Vanish", and the plotline becomes a little conventional again in the process.

Oh, wait a minute ... seems like Captain America had second thoughts about shooting the general at the behest of his Nazi controllers and switches back to the side of the good guys at the last moment. Not Stan and Jack's finest moment in their long partnership.

The final WWII era story, that began in Tales of Suspense 69, was never one of my favourites. A drawn-out three parter, the first episode was drawn by Kirby/Ayers and the final two by George Tuska over Jack Kirby layouts. I know Tuska is highly regarded in some quarters and certainly his long track record is worthy of respect, but then, as now, his artwork never really rose above the "slightly cartoony" and for that reason, never appealed to me. So this is the point that I lost a bit of my enthusiasm, at least for Cap's solo stories.

George Tuska continued on the Captain America strip until Tales of Suspense 74, and as a result my interest in the title waned in direct proportion. The Iron Man stories benefited from the introduction of a new penciller, "Adam Austin", who brought a modern, metallic sheen to the character. There were a couple of fill-in stories in ToS 77-78, drawn by John Romita just before he picked up the reins on The Amazing Spider-Man, then Kirby was back and kicking some serious butt in Tales of Suspense 79, and Captain America began his long association with Nick Fury and SHIELD ... but that's a story for another time.

Next: Leading the Avengers

From Horrors to Heroes

AS THE DAYS of Marty Goodman's Atlas Comics drew to a close in the late 1950s, the publisher was casting around for the Next Big Thing. Locked in to a draconian distribution contract with arch rivals DC Comics, Goodman was limited to a tight eight titles per month and if he needed to launch a new title, he was forced to cancel an existing one. So, feeling that mystery and science fiction was the coming trend Goodman decided to launch three new comics to complement the existing Journey into Mystery, World of Fantasy and Strange Tales titles. The new books were Strange Worlds, beginning in December 1958 and replacing the cancelled Navy Combat, and Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, both debuting in January 1959, replacing the cancelled Homer the Happy Ghost and Miss America.

Journey into Mystery and Strange Tales had been around since the twilight of the Golden Age and changed in content according to Martin Goodman's take on his customers' tastes. So they began as horror titles, then briefly transformed into science fiction books. World of Fantasy was a 1956 late-comer.

The first few issues of these new books mined the same science fiction vein as their predecessors - flying saucers, alien invasions and men in spacesuits - probably because Martin Goodman had noticed the sudden wave of science fiction movies - from Destination Moon (1950) to Forbidden Planet (1956) - that proliferated during the "Atomic Age", and finally in 1958 decided to do something about it. 

The new titles, Strange Worlds, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish began during Martin Goodman's brief infatuation with science fiction themed stories. Suspense 1 had spacemen on the cover and Astonish 1 lifted a scene from King Kong. Not sure where the Strange Worlds cover is coming from ...

But within a few months, Goodman did a bit of an about-face and decreed that all their mystery/sf comics should feature giant monsters on the covers, monsters that looked as much like Godzilla as possible. This meant that, starting with the August and September 1959 issues, the six Marvel fantasy anthology titles began their runs of creature features - though Strange Worlds and World of Fantasy were cancelled as of the August 1959 issues.

Strange Tales was the first of the Marvel Comics to go Monster, with the August 1959 issue. The following month, Journey into Mystery also went down the giant creature route.

For the next couple of years, Stan had Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko churn out uninspired copies of the Japanese Toho monster characters like Mothra and Rodan. So generic was this type of comic that even as late as 1966, kids at my school were referring to Marvel's superhero books as "monster comics".

And the same month Journey into Mystery cover started cover-featuring monsters, so did Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. Small world, isn't it?

Yet, these titles must have been selling fairly well as, in mid-1961, Goodman decreed that the line should have another monster title and Two-Gun Kid went on hiatus to allow Stan to slip the monthly Amazing Adventures into the schedule. While this new book may have looked like another monster book, the one new wrinkle was that Stan and Jack craftily introduced a continuing magician character called Dr Droom, whose adventures ran until issue 6, when he disappeared without explanation, and the title of the book became Amazing Adult Fantasy.

Goodman was limited to just eight books a month. He increased his reach by publishing 16 bi-monthly comics. Still, when he wanted to launch a new title, he was forced to cancel an existing one. So with the debut of Amazing Adventures, western fans had to say goodbye to Two-Gun Kid. At least temporarily, until it was reinstated 18 months later.

At the end of 1960, Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales and Tales to Astonish became monthlies, with Tales of Suspense also going monthly in January 1961, effectively increasing Marvel's line to 10 books a month. Then in September, Goodman added Linda Carter, Student Nurse to the line without cancelling anything. Either Goodman had renegotiated his contract with DC's Independent News, or they didn't notice. So he followed up by launching Fantastic Four as a bi-monthly in November 1961, making Marvel's output 11 comics per month, a total of 17 different titles.

Linda Carter 2 came out the same month as Fantastic Four 1. The only comic I have from November 1961 is Gunsmoke Western 67, which I paid £3.50 for on eBay last year. Doubt I could get an FF1 for that price, eh?

Reader reaction to Fantastic Four 1 was immediate and loud. Realising they were on to something, Goodman gave Stan the greenlight to add more superheroes, put The Incredible Hulk on the schedule and published issue 1 in May 1962, though it looked for all the world like just another Marvel monster book. This was followed just a couple of months later by the first appearances of Spider-Man (in Amazing Fantasy 15, Aug 1962) and Thor (in Journey into Mystery 83, Aug 1962). But Stan was only just beginning his roll.

At machine-gun pace, Stan brought out these new super-heroes right on the heels of Fantastic Four. Goodman responded by immediately cancelling Amazing Fantasy. Within a year The Hulk would also be cancelled.

There must have still been some kind of Independent News cap on how many titles Marvel could publish, because the company didn't put all of these new characters in their own books straight away. Between spring and autumn of 1962, someone must have put the brakes on because after The Incredible Hulk, all new characters were appearing in the lead slots of the existing fantasy comics. It's a trend that would continue in the latter half of '62.

Earlier in the year, Stan had noticed a particularly strong reader reaction to a fantasy story he'd published in an issue of the company's best-selling fantasy book,Tales to Astonish. The story was "The Man in the Ant Hill" (Astonish 27, Jan1962). Stan thought there was something there. Coincidently, he'd do a similar story in a later Tales of Suspense, "The Man in the Beehive" (Suspense 32, Aug1962). In later tellings of the Marvel legend, Stan and others have claimed that both stories were try-outs for a new insect hero to see which readers preferred, but given the gap between the publication dates of the stories and the fact that Ant Man appeared in costume the month after the "Bee-Man" tale, that now looks like a case of revising history to make for a better back-story.

Legend has it that Stan tried two different takes on an insect man style hero - Ant Man and Bee Man. But looking at the timings of these, that doesn't look so likely as the publication of the first costumed Ant Man tale was right on the heels of the alleged Bee Man trial ... and we know the comics must have had at least six weeks between press day and on sale.

A couple of months later, the same month that Fantastic Four 7 came out, The Human Torch was awarded a solo series in Strange Tales, starting with issue 101 (Oct 1962).

The addition of Human Torch solo stories to Strange Tales was probably Marty Goodman's idea, as he'd always wanted Stan to revive the class Golden Age Timely heroes. Stan resisted for the most part, but had to throw Marty a bone occasionally.

The line-up was expanded early the following year when, bowing to reader reaction, Goodman reinstated Spider-Man, awarding him his own title and, the same month, Stan added Iron Man to Tales of Suspense.

Realising his mistake, Goodman had Stan rustle up the Amazing Spider-Man as a new book, first using up the left-over stories from the cancelled Amazing Fantasy. Then the last of the fantasy books was taken over by superheroes when Iron Man debuted in Tales of Suspense 39.

Then, with the sudden and swift cancellation of The Incredible Hulk, a new slot opened up, so Stan and Jack whipped up Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos, and put the series out under its own title in May 1963, as there was no generic war book left in the Marvel Line to be hijacked.

The Hulk's own book was cancelled in March 1963, but just six months later he was back as The Avengers' most unstable member. The character lasted just three issues before he was replaced with a revived Captain America. By comparison, The X-Men struggled as a title for over ten years until it took off after a makeover by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum in 1975.

It only remained for Stan to give Marty what he'd wanted right at the start - a Marvel version of DC's Justice League of America - by banding all the existing solo Marvel characters together into a super-group, The Avengers, and throwing in another complementary team-book featuring all-new character The X-Men and the Marvel line was pretty much set.

Stan and Jack - with a little help from Steve Ditko - would refine the mix over the next eighteen months or so, but the basic structure was in place ...

THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN AMERICA

As I noted in an earlier post on this blog, one of the first Marvels I ever saw was Tales of Suspense 64 (Apr 1965). Though I quite enjoyed the Iron Man story with the Golden Avenger battling Hawkeye and the Black Widow (again, apparently), it was Captain America that really captured my youthful imagination. The first aspect that amazed me was that there were superheroes during World War 2. At that time I had no inkling of the "Golden Age" of comics and had assumed that superheroes had started some time in the early 1960s, just a year or two before I started reading them. It hadn't occurred to me that Action Comics was up to issue 323 by this time and that that would have taken, oh, at least 27 years to notch up that number of monthly comics. But then I was only ten.

The key difference between these two comics that came out the same month is that in the first, both Iron Man and Captain America are in clear and present danger. With the Superman cover, the big Blue Cheese is in no danger at all, facing merely the minor inconvenience of having to change his secret identity ... a bit like moving house for the rest of us.

The next thing that impressed the daylights out me was that Cap didn't actually have any super-powers. Granted, he was like an Olympic athlete and then some, but he was still just an ordinary human being, who couldn't fly or bounce bullets off his chest. Even at the age of ten, I could understand the concept of courage. It was around then that I resolved to be a non-powered superhero, too.

And while I was waiting for that ambition to come to fruition, I began to track down as many comics with Captain America in them as I could. But it wasn't until quite a bit later that the whole picture of Cap's life came into focus.

As I say, I had no inkling of the comics that Marvel and DC published during the 1940s, so it came as a bit of a shock when I learned later that Captain America actually had been around during WW2. But his first "appearance" in the 1960s had been as a kind of tryout in an early issue of Strange Tales, featuring the Human Torch of Fantastic Four fame.

The Captain America in Strange Tales turned out to be The Human Torch's old enemy, The Acrobat in disguise. But reader reaction must've been positive, because Stan lined up the real Captain America for his own slot in Tales of Suspense by guest-starring him in issue 58.

Granted, I didn't see this comic till a little later, but it kind of supports my theory that while Stan, Jack and Steve were trying to create a whole new approach to superhero comics, Marty was there in the background asking why Stan wasn't using The Sub-Mariner, The Human Torch and Captain America as lead characters.

I didn't see any copies of Tales of Suspense 58 or 59 around during my youth, as these were victims of the great Marvel / Thorpe & Porter dispute at the end of 1964, which resulted in the October and November Marvels not being distributed through newsagents in the UK, though I did catch up with them later.

When I did finally track down copies of these issues, I found the battle issue a little disappointing. I'd enjoyed Don Heck's art on earlier Iron Man stories just fine, but I wasn't mad on his version of Captain America. However, Tales of Suspense 59 made up for all that. Here was Cap, in all his Kirby-esque glory.

Captain America! In Tales of Suspense! Drawn by Jack Kirby! It was the best thing
that had happened in my life up to that point.

The other big change for the Marvel books that month was that Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales along with Suspense and Astonish, all gained letters pages. But I hardly noticed. All I could care about was my newfound obsession with Captain America and that I now had a source of Kirby-drawn stories. Imagine how I felt when I discovered that Cap was also in The Avengers, also drawn by Kirby. But I'll talk more about that next time.

Next: Captain America in the House (of Marvel)

... Look out, Here Comes the Spider-Man

LAST TIME, I looked at the first few Spider-Man stories and how they set the agenda for the whole of the character's future. But it wasn't until issue 3, when the full-length stories began, that Amazing Spider-Man really took off as a title.

The Doctor Octopus in ASM3 story was reprinted in MCIC1 just two and a half years after it first appeared. This may well have been in response to the volume of letters the Bullpen was receiving asking for back issues of the Marvel titles. 

The first time I would have come across the story from ASM3 would have been in reprint form in Marvel Collectors' Item Classics 1 in late 1965, or possibly early 1966. "The Strangest Foe of All Time - Doctor Octopus" was a genuine milestone for the character, as the increased page count opened up story opportunities that hadn't been possible in the earlier 14- and ten-page episodes. 

The first page of the story (this is the reprint from Marvel Collectors' Item Classics 1), acts as a second cover, letting the reader know that Human Torch is also inside.

Even though there was only the one story in ASM3, Ditko still kicked off with a second-cover style splash page that acted as a kind of poster for the rest of the story. I've noted this Ditko foible in previous blogs, but I cannot figure out why Ditko continued to pursue this. If it had been based on some industry wisdom of the time -"Give the kids an additional big selling image once they pick the comic up in the store and open it" - then it might have made sense. But during the first three or four years of Marvel's rise, the practice was abandoned pretty quickly in the rest of the line. Other artists, notably Kirby, used the opening splash as the first scene of the story, and I'd have thought (based on my few years as a comics editor) that that would have been more effective at converting a browser into a customer.

But once we're past that, the story kicks off at breakneck pace. Spidey foils some run-of-the-mill burglars heisting safe, and ponders that it was too easy. If only he had a foe that really tested his mettle. In the next two pages we're introduced to brilliant nuclear scientist Dr Otto Octavius (called Doctor Octopus behind his back by co-workers), see him injured in a laboratory explosion and diagnosed in hospital as having brain damage and his uncanny mechanical arms fused to his body. And we're only on page 4.

It takes just one page for Dr Otto Octavius to go from hapless victim to scowling supervillain. Lee and Ditko sure knew how to move a story along.

Pretty soon, the now-deranged Octavius is entertaining thoughts of busting out of his secure hospital room, while elsewhere J. Jonah Jameson is assigning Peter Parker to get pictures of the injured scientist. But it's Spider-Man that gains access to the medical facility and witnesses Doc Ock threatening the staff.

Overconfident, Spidey wades in, thinking to teach the crazy guy a lesson, but doesn't reckon with the super-strong mechanical arms of Doctor Octopus. In a one-sided battle, Doc Ock snaps Spidey's webbing, slaps him around and flings him out a window. And to add insult to injury, he calls him "Super-Man" during the fight.

Of course, Doc Ock has no way of knowing how Spider-Man got his powers ... but Spidey's abilities are also "born of the atom", and of the hapless arachnid that was bombarded with radiation before it bit Peter Parker.

This is the first time that Spider-Man has been roundly and comprehensively beaten. Sure, the Vulture dropped him in a water tower in ASM2, but that was hardly a death trap and Spidey escaped that with ease. But with the longer page count, Stan and Steve have the space to add a little more depth to the story and allow Spidey to lose the first battle to build the dramatic tension.

No one does misery like Steve Ditko, right? Given his immature years and the fact Peter's never been beaten as Spider-Man before, we can understand how he feels. And Ditko puts it across beautifully.

And not unnaturally, Spidey feels pretty sorry for himself. But, while Peter's wondering if there's any point in going on, Doctor Octopus is taking control of an atomic research facility to "give the world a demonstration of my strength".

But even as a kid reading this, I knew that it wasn't really the end of Spider-Man. And help comes in the unlikely guise of The Human Torch. Visiting Peter's high school, Johnny Storm gives the students a lecture on how they must stick to their goals no matter what obstacles life puts in front of them. "Ability alone isn't enough," he says. "Even the Fantastic Four have had defeats -- but we always come back."

As it would many times in Spider-Man's future, Peter's knowledge of lab work helps him defeat a far stronger foe. The image of Doc Ock, blinded by Spider-Man's webbing is an absolute classic and powerfully memorable.

Newly energised, Peter realises what he has to do. Using Peter's scientific know-how, he first builds a simple weapon he can use against Doc Ock. Then with his Spider abilities, he easily gains access to the nuclear facility and, even though the super-villain knows Spidey's there, Peter's powers allow him to easily evade Doc Ock's attack and fuse two of Octopus' arms together with his crude acid bolo.

Spidey defeats the scary super-villain and Ditko gives a couple of strong images of Spidey being heroic. The epilogue with Spidey thanking a puzzled Human Torch for all his help is a nice touch, and feels like a trademark Stan Lee moment.

From there, it's not so difficult to squirt web over Doctor Octopus' specs then biff him into unconsciousness with a good old-fashioned right-cross. Then, with Octopus safely trussed up and delivered into the arms of the waiting military, it only remains for Spider-Man to look up The Human Torch and thank him for all his help.

When I break it down like this, the story might sound formulaic and a little trite, but it's important to stress that this sort of thing just didn't happen over at DC Comics. The Flash never had a crisis of confidence after such a minor defeat. And Green Lantern never heard a pep talk in his civilian identity that made him realise what a twonk he was being. Only Stan had the savvy to realise that giving his heroes such human traits wouldn't make his readers look down on them. Quite the opposite. We could all identify what it felt like to fail. Twelve years olds face failure on a regular basis. It's all part of growing up.

The original Marvel trademark corner boxes were designed by Steve Ditko. So it kind of makes sense that a giant version would be included on the Amazing Spider-Man letters page as an advertisement.

Amazing Spider-Man 3 also featured the first "Spider's Web" letters page, with readers' reactions to issue 1. Though the letters were a little on the dull side - readers hadn't really cottoned on to Stan's informal style at this point - the comments were positive and showed how involved readers' were in the storyline. And I liked the giant Marvel trademark on the second page. 

Amazing Spider-Man 4 introduced a major villain into the Marvel canon - The Sandman. Flint Marko would quickly ascend the super-villain league table, eventually defeating the Fantastic Four as a member of the Frightful Four just a few short years later.

As with Amazing Spider-Man 3, I would have first seen ASM4 (Aug 1963) as a reprint in Marvel Collector's Item Classic 2 (Apr 1966), which would have reached the UK in the late summer of that same year. The story introduced one of Marvel's most enduring super-villains, The Sandman, a career criminal who is (you guessed it) exposed to radiation while escaping from prison over a beach. The radiation fused the sand molecules to his body and suddenly Flint Marko is able to transform his body into sand at will.

Right after Ditko's trademark "second cover" splash page, Spider-Man tries to foil a robbery, only to have the criminals accuse him of assault and call for a cop.

Stan Lee continues to stress the story elements that will become trademark components of the Spider-Man myth. Right there on the first page, Spider-Man is unable to stop a crime because the criminals claim he's victimising them, due in part to J. Jonah Jameson's ongoing tabloid attacks on Spider-Man.

In their first encounter, The Sandman manages to defeat Spider-Man by accidentally tearing his mask, so Spidey has to retreat lest his identity become known. 

Then, Spider-Man is defeated by the Sandman because of dumb bad luck, when his mask is torn from his face during the scrap. And on returning to his civilian identity of Peter Parker, his Aunt May treats him like he's a six-year-old with the sniffles. Then, teed off at JJJ, Spider-Man drops a gloop of sticky webbing on his office chair so that Jonah sticks to the seat. It just the kind of thing Peter's classmates would do to him, so it's hardly surprising that this prank would appeal to Peter. It's all kind of funny and tragic at the same time.

I really liked the way Stan and Steve portrayed the principal as a heroic figure, standing up to the scary Sandman and trying to delay the villain so his students can escape.

Finally, there's a cathartic showdown with The Sandman at Peter Parker's high school, with the brave principal first putting himself between the pupils and the villain, then Spidey bounding in to save the day. There's a nice post-fight bit when Spidey realises he didn't take pictures of the fight for JJJ, so he fakes the fight by punching handfuls of sand from a handy fire bucket. All in all a pretty cool issue that further cements the elements of the Spider-Man legend in the readers' heads.

Not one of my favourite Spider-Man issues, ASM5's cover was a little weak. And I was never much taken with Ditko's version of either the Fantastic Four nor their premier foe Doctor Doom.

Amazing Spider-Man 5 (Oct 1963) was never one of my favourite stories. It was reprinted in Amazing Spider-Man Annual 2, along with a couple of the shorter tales from ASM1 and ASM2 (see last month's post). I think pitting Spider-Man against Doctor Doom would have been Stan's way of trying to bring Marvel's First Family into Spidey's storyline, perhaps as some kind of circulation booster, though Stan was already heavily featuring the Marvel characters in each other's books by this time as a matter of course. But for me, Doom wasn't the sort of villain that Spider-Man should be battling. That said, the story had a couple of fine moments. For example, Stan brings Flash Thompson's admiration of Spidey to the fore in a sequence that begins with Flash disguising himself as Spider-Man to give Peter Parker the scare of his life. Of course, it goes horribly wrong when Doctor Doom, searching for Spider-Man, gasses and kidnaps Flash by mistake.

Flash Thompson's practical joke backfires on him when Doctor Doom takes him for the real Spider-Man. Lucky for Flash that Spidey saves the day long before the FF turn up.

Peter realises what's going on when Doom demands a ransom from the FF for the captured "Spider-Man" over the airwaves and sets out to rescue the bogus superhero. The fight with Doom was designed to be epic, but I felt it just went on too long. I was much more interested in Peter's civilian life and the first hints that JJJ's secretary, Betty Brant, was romantically interested in Peter. And Stan uses the final caption box to announce that Amazing Spider-Man is going monthly from the next issue.

I already covered ASM6 in a previous blog so I won't repeat myself here.

Amazing Spider-Man 7 (Jan 1964) featured the return of The Vulture. Now I always thought that The Vulture was a bit of a creepy villain. The character, Adrian Toomes, was clearly a much older man and shouldn't have been able, by any account, to offer any kind of threat to the super-powerful Spider-Man. There have been attempts by other writers to retrofix this and offer "plausible" explanations of why this should be so (his flying harness gives him super-strength and increased lifespan ... Huh?), but I prefer it was never explained and we just accept that this weird-looking old guy is somehow strong enough and wily enough to give Spider-Man pause for thought.

I wouldn't have seen Amazing Spider-Man 7 as it came out before I knew about Marvel Comics, but I would have certainly read the story when it was reprinted in Marvel Tales 4 (Sep 1966).

In his opening battle with The Vulture in this issue, Spider-Man foolishly relies on beating his foe the same way he had in ASM2, with an electronic jamming device, not realising that Toomes had modified his flying harness so that Spider-Man's "Invertor" would be ineffective. Spidey is knocked from a rooftop and lands heavily on his shoulder, injuring his right arm.

Over-confident and inexperienced, Spider-Man believes he's going to beat The Vulture the same way a second time. The mistake costs Spider-Man another defeat and an injured arm into the bargain.

With his arm in a sling, Peter has to take a bit of razzing from his classmates at school. And then there's the knotty problem of how he's going to fight the Vulture with just one arm. But, while visiting JJJ's offices, Peter Parker is witness to The Vulture trying to steal the Daily Bugle's payroll. While JJJ is trying to talk the villain out of robbing him, Peter ducks out and changes to Spider-Man. The ensuing battle trashes the Bugle's offices, but not before Spider-Man defeats the Vulture by webbing his wings together and floating him to earth gently on a webbing parachute.

Spider-Man defeats the Vulture and saves JJJ's payroll and what thanks does he get - just more threats and invective from the greedy, ungrateful newspaper publisher. But Peter does get to dally for a short while with Jameson's comely secretary, Betty Brant.

The Issue closes with JJJ holding Spider-Man responsible for the damage to him premises and Spider-Man silencing JJJ in his own inimitable way, then Peter and Betty share a quiet romantic moment amid the wreckage left in the wake of the battle. All in all a satisfying conclusion to a good battle issue.

I think the "Special Tribute-to-Teen-Agers" cover line was Stan's way of trying to reach readers beyond the traditional 8-12 year old audience for comic books. Perhaps he felt it made Amazing Spider-Man more of an aspirational read.

I'm not really sure what Stan Lee was trying to do with issue 8 of Amazing Spider-Man. It was a return to the two story format, but not in the same way that ASM1 and ASM2 were two story. ASM8 has one 17-page story and a short six-page backup - drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Ditko - featuring the Human Torch.

I suspect putting Peter Parker in spectacles was Ditko's idea. He wore similar spectacles himself at the time. So I also believe that getting rid of the glasses was Stan's decision, which Steve may not have agreed with. Certainly, when Steve left the title Stan seized his opportunity to have John Romita make Peter much more rugged and heroic than Ditko's portrayal. Just speculating, though ...

I wouldn't have see the second story till later, as it wasn't reprinted in Marvel Tales in 1966. The main draw for me in that first story - and for Stan who cover-featured it - was the boxing match (the result of an incident where Flash breaks Peter's glasses) in which Peter batters Flash senseless. I'm sure just about every kid reading that wanted to do that to the school bully. I know I did. And I'm betting Steve Ditko did, too. The main plot, featuring Spider-Man's battle with a giant computer on wheels was pretty unmemorable, and very much had the feeling of a filler.

Stan never gave a reason, at the time, for having a second (Kirby-drawn) Spider-Man tale in the issue, aside from mentioning at the end of the letters column that it was intended as a "change of pace". The only reason I can think of is that it may have originally been drawn as a filler story for Fantastic Four Annual 1, but then replaced with the six-page "FF meet Spidey" story that actually saw print there. Then Stan would have had to write a shorter Spidey tale for ASM8 to accommodate the inventory strip, which meant that because of the space constraints, "The Terrible Threat of the Living Brain" was a bit *meh*.

"Spider-Man Tackles the Human Torch" was the third time the pair had met (they'd encountered each other before in ASM1 and Strange Tales Annual 2 - Spidey's appearance in FF Annual 1, which came out a month after the Strange Tales Annual appearance, is just a re-telling of the incident from ASM1), and up till this point, their relationship had always been friendly. Admittedly, it's more interesting dramatically to have Spider-Man and Torch feuding, but it's not clear why (if I'm right) Stan decided to delay the onset of the feud until ASM8. The next time the pair would meet would be in ASM17, where their feud continued.

The defeat of Spider-Man - again. Despite the very goofy costume, I really liked Electro as a villain. Ditko always managed to imbue Spidey's earliest villains with an air of thuggishness, and Electro is no different.

Amazing Spider-Man 9 was, for me, a bit of a return to form, with the introduction of a cracking - indeed, crackling - super-villain in the shape of Electro and the first of Aunt May's major health scares, when she's hospitalised for an operation. 

There was no National Health Service in the States back in 1964, so Peter would have to raise a large amount of money quickly to pay for Aunt May's treatment, something that wouldn't be a worry for us in the UK. Luckily - or perhaps not - there's a new villain on the scene and there's a reward for his capture.

Aunt May's illness is what motivates Peter to try to raise the $1000 he needed for her medical bills. First he tries to borrow the money from Jameson, but Peter knows, as we do, that that will never work. So he resolves to capture Electro for the reward money. When that doesn't work out so well, he sells Jameson photographic "proof" that Electro and Spider-Man are the same person. It's not Peter Parker's finest moment, and though he might tell himself he's saving his aunt's life, it's just another example of how Stan was pursuing greater realism by making his heroes morally ambiguous.

Spider-Man's defeat of Electro is simplicity itself. Spidey short-circuits him with a handy firehose. And in the closing scene with JJJ, Peter is able to redeem himself by giving the publisher pictures of Spider-Man's battle with Electro.

But when Electro frees all the prisoners in a local penitentiary, Spider-Man has to leave the now-recovering Aunt May and go battle the electrical menace. It also provides Peter with the opportunity to do the right thing and make it up to Jameson for the dodgy pictures he sold him with a fresh (and genuine) batch showing the defeat of Electro. 

It's a bitter-sweet moment, and I'm sure that Stan and Steve had this difficult relationship planned right from the beginning. It's hard to identify where this is coming from, but I suspect the sentiments are Ditko's and the words are Lee's.

All that remains if for Peter to have a poignant scene with Betty to close out this extra-length 22-page story, certainly one of the better issues of the early Amazing Spider-Mans.

Even better, in my opinion, was Amazing Spider-Man 10 ... this issue introduced a sinister new villain, The Big Man. While he didn't have super-powers himself, his three henchmen, The Enforcers, did have skills. Fancy Dan was a master martial artist, Montana had traditional cowboy abilities and used a lasso as his weapon of choice, the The Ox was just big and very strong. With his keen intellect and his Enforcers as muscle, The Big Man sets out to take control of all organised crime in New York.

The cover to Amazing Spider-Man 10 was a strange composite. GCD credits the Spidey figure to Jack Kirby and The Enforcers in the background to Steve Ditko. On the right is the original - rejected - cover for this issue. My guess is that Ditko redrew the cover art, but Stan still wasn't satisfied with the result and had Kirby redraw the Spidey figure in the final version.

Meanwhile Aunt May is still recovering from the operation she underwent in ASM9, and now requires a blood transfusion to help her recover her strength. When the doctor asks Peter about his blood type, Peter is fearful is radioactive blood might harm his aunt. But of course he can't admit to that and reluctantly allows the medical staff to use his blood.

Steve Ditko manages to cram so much story into his pages though, even at nine frames a page, it never feels crowded or rushed. Same with Stan's captions and dialogue balloons - there may be lots of them, but they serve the story well and the plot moves along at quite a clip.

After that, Peter needs to rest as it's likely his powers have been weakened by the transfusion. However, when The Enforcers threaten Betty Brant, Peter decides that Spider-Man needs to get involved. Spider-Man scares a small-time hoodlum into revealing where he can find The Enforcers, then sets out after them. But they find him first and a skirmish ensues. Weakened from the earlier blood transfusion, Spidey realises he's not strong enough yet to take them all on, so he douses the lights and makes his escape. Outside he sees J. Jonah Jameson passing and develops a suspicion that JJJ's the Big Man, thinking that might explain why Jonah's accusing Spider-Man of being the Big Man.

I really like the way Ditko placed the Big Man squarely in the centre of page 13, while the "plight" of Peter Parker unfolds around him. And the fight with The Enforcers and the gang-thugs is both thrilling and fun, as Spidey brings a bit of playfulness to his beating-up of the gangsters.

So to get to the bottom of things, Peter resolves to boast that he's figured out the Big Man's true identity, hoping the underworld hears about it and brings him before the Big Man. Interestingly, Flash pulls Peter aside and warns him that, if he continues, the The Enforcers will be coming for him, not realising that's exactly what Peter wants. Even this early on, it seems like Stan and Steve were intent on softening Flash's character. Predictably, The Enforcers show up, grab Peter and lock him in a storeroom. Though Spidey quickly escapes, he's spotted by the mobsters and an epic battle kicks off. The fight choreography is some of Ditko's most imaginative to date, full of clever touches. Responding to the Spider signal, the police show up to round up the gangsters, while the Big Man makes his escape.

But Spider-Man, thinks he knows where the Big Man is going and heads for the office of the Daily Bugle. Watching from outside he sees the police show up and arrest ... Frederick Foswell, a timid columnist on Jameson's staff.

Busted ... The Big Man turns out to be not J. Jonah Jameson, but ...Frederick Foswell. And the final scene of a snuffling Betty Brant is setting up the next story where we discover just what a pain in the nether-regions this girl turns out to be ...

The final scene where J. Jonah Jameson explains to an empty room just why it is that he hates Spider-Man so much never rang true with me as a kid, and even less so now. Even this early in the series, Jameson has never at any point demonstrated even the slightest level of self-awareness, so for him to arrive at this epiphany of self-realisation shrieks of "author's message". Now it may be that Stan was getting loads of letters from readers asking just why it is that Jonah has this unreasoning hatred for Spider-Man, and in all fairness, perhaps Stan thought it would be a good idea to try to offer up some motivation. I just think he offered up the wrong motivation.

I've never really liked this scene. I'd prefer to think Jameson isn't this much of a hypocrit. I'd actually think the character would be more interesting and sympathetic if he actually believes Spider-Man is a menace and does more harm that good.

I was discussing this very point recently with a work colleague, Philip de Sausmarez, and he came up with a much more insightful explanation. J. Jonah Jameson, he reasons, is typical of the Great American Dream ... a man who, through his own ability and tireless hard work, has dragged himself up to the very top of his chosen profession. He's the owner and editor-in-chief of a big metropolitan newspaper, and he has little time for people he considers shirkers or those he thinks want something for free. He's worked hard for everything he's got and, by golly, so should everyone else.

Then along comes Spider-Man - a much younger man - who appears to have had everything handed to him on a plate. He has super-powers, gained by some happy accident, and is admired by many. And that's something JJJ just can't stomach.

These scenes from earlier Amazing Spider-Man issues are a true reflection of what Jameson thinks. To have him reveal in ASM10 that actually, all this time, he hasn't actually believed his own oft-stated views just seems plain wrong.

Time and again, in these early issues of Amazing Spider-Man, you'll see Jameson railing against the younger generation and how they all want something for nothing, and how nobody but he knows the value of hard work. So Philip's take on this is, for me, so much more plausible than that awkward monologue Stan and Steve put in the mouth of J. Jonah Jameson on the final page of Amazing Spider-Man 10.

By now, anyone reading this blog has probably heard enough about Spider-Man for a while, so I want to take a look at the Marvel anthology titles of the mix-Sixties, with a special focus on my all-time favourite superhero, Captain America.

Next: America, America!