As promised, today I’m going to be looking at five more classic runs from the archives of Marvel Comics, as featured in their Marvel Essentials collections and on the Marvel Unlimited app. There’s one bug about that I didn’t mention last time: every now and then, something (such as Avengers #291 or the first issue of the 1968 Sub-Mariner series, the only example they have of that run), will be represented by the wrong cover thumbnail. Most of the remaining glitches seem to be due to human error, about long runs being rushed through scanning, and as such aren’t systemic and can be tidied up. I hope someone’s in place who loves the archive aspect of the app as much as the Essentials editors evidently loved their work. Today we begin with the touchstone, the point of origin…
Fantastic Four
Marvel’s first super hero comic, the origin of the modern form, as a team of what previously would have been non-powered scientific adventurers gain super powers, which are, again an original idea, not entirely a blessing, and return to live in, another revelation, a realistically-portrayed real city. I’m currently up to #235 of the first run on Unlimited, a couple of issues into John Byrne’s run as writer and artist, which is reputed to be amazing stuff, but which so far seems a bit slow. The first 207 issues are available in 9 Essentials volumes. Unlimited has pretty good coverage, with some odd gaps (#159, #227, #300, #309-#311, #313-#315,#321, #323, #325-#326#328-#329, #331, #379, #384, #402, and #216 has #261 in its slot instead). On two occasions I was fortunate enough to have a mate who’s an editor (and fanboy) at Marvel chuck me a PDF so I could keep going. The first 102 issues are all by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and represent the first classic run, the classic run against which all others are measured. To read it in order is to watch two mature men (Lee was on the edge of his 40th birthday, Kirby in his mid-forties) both war veterans letting their imaginations off the leash and seeing how far they could push each other. The results are an explosion of creativity. Almost everything they created has stood the test of time, a continuity being built on their imaginings. Lee would talk through the initial idea with Kirby, who would plot it out and design it in pencils, then Lee would dialogue the results. It’s been said by Lee’s detractors (who I have no time for) that to call Lee the writer does down Kirby. I’d say that Lee’s always been transparent about the nature of this process, and that he stops calling himself the writer on FF pretty swiftly, the credits box instead saying ‘a Lee/Kirby production’ or giving them a shared ‘storytellers’ credit. I also think that while the quality of Kirby’s invention remains unparalleled, it’s Lee’s detail work that gives the characters lasting life. Kirby’s responsible for Galactus looking and behaving like this, but it’s Lee that gets him to say…
Like Lennon and McCartney, here are two huge talents given wings by each other, and also like those two, I don’t think the falling out of two friends, or their subsequent reconciliation, is something the fandom should take sides in. Kirby’s sudden escape to the West Coast leaves Lee with one issue of his partially-completed artwork which he uses in much-altered form as #108, crediting himself, and artist John Buscema and John Romita only with ‘last-minute revisions, deletions, and addenda’. If you want to play Lee/Kirby archaeology, that’s the place to start, once you’ve read that grand run, that is. After that, it takes a while for the title to get back on its feet. Roy Thomas, from #156, manages to bring a sense of importance back, and I have a lot of time for the issues where he and the regular writer that follows him, Len Wein (from #184) have art by George Perez and Joe Sinnott. Concepts such as Reed Richards, the intelectual leader of the team, having a Mr. Hyde-like alter ego called The Brute, the Thing being transformed back into a human being and deciding he still needs to be part of the team and so going around in an exoskeletal version of what once was his body, having been replaced previously by Power Man, this is all nicely disruptive stuff. There are some real depths, however, notably the Doug Moench/Bill Sienkiewicz run (#219-#231), the dullness of which must have surprised everyone at the time, this being the team hot off a wonderful run on Moon Knight (and I love almost everything else Moench did). I have high hopes for what Byrne is said to have accomplished.
Thor
The Norse god of Thunder, as initially incarnated on earth as physician Don Blake. Right now, I’m at #386, just past the end of Walt Simonson’s epic, definitive run, but more about that when I get there. Thor continues the numbering from Journey Into Mystery, the first issue in which the character appears being #83 (Unlimited is only missing #89). Initially, as written by Stan Lee’s brother Larry Lieber, then Robert Bernstein, Thor is the only Marvel hero who hasn’t got the message about the modern age of comics. Everyone knows of and likes Thor, the happy protector of the city, in just as dull a fashion as Superman’s adventures of the time. This all changes with #97, which announces the arrival of Lee and Kirby on the cover (the readership needed to be told the title was going to join the revolution, Kirby having already penciled the first few issues with little effect on the content). Also on the cover of that issue is announced a new back-up strip, Tales of Asgard, stories of Thor’s boyhood which let Kirby’s design sense and Lee’s cod Shakesperian dialogue go wild. These continue to #125, at which point the title becomes The Mighty Thor. (The Essentials put together everything in 9 volumes, up to #271. Unlimited has every issue.) To my mind, there are three great runs of Thor. First up, as with FF, is Lee/Kirby’s awesome groundwork, which carries on until #177, with Kirby’s last appearance being #179. That run lays down the principles upon which Thor has run ever since: the son of Odin, Lord of Asgard, is torn between grandiose mythical sagas in his home dimension and fighting super hero battles on the planet Earth. There’s a continual tension between the two formats, with the awkward question of why Thor bothers going back to Earth and becoming physician Don Blake… and, given that they’re obviously different people, who even think differently, what exactly does it mean when Thor magically transforms into his alter ego? Blake is in love with nurse Jane Foster, Thor and goddess Sif seem to have romantic tension. Also, what is Asgard, exactly? Who are all these gods? Are they actually, you know, god gods? Wonderfully, Stan Lee doesn’t explain, he just treats the material as an existing mythology that everyone should know about, as if he was writing Robin Hood, when actually there’s very little Norse content here, and most of this stuff has erupted from his brain and Kirby’s pencil. Thor is the title where Kirby’s art gets truly huge and grand, as he pushes for Ragnarok, while Lee tries to hold him back from ending their comic and presumably, the Marvel Universe.
In #137 Thor opts (quite suddenly) for Sif over Jane, a late version of Lee’s ability to ruthlessly change his formats when something isn’t working. In #158, we find out Don Blake is just a creation of Odin (which doesn’t stop Thor wanting to be him). There are cosmic journeys to confront Ego the Living Planet (#132) and Galactus (#160), the visuals and grand opera of which make all these comics worth finding. After Lee and Kirby leave there’s a very long drought (though I quite like Gerry Conway’s (from #193) and Len Wein’s (from #242) space quests, particularly when penciled by John Buscema, who tries for character-based splash pages of similar impact to Kirby’s. There are two great runs, however, which both seek to explain and understanding the concepts underlying the series. First arrives Roy Thomas (in #272), whose mission in comics has always been (generally in an entertaining way) to solve continuity issues. He seems to regard Thor as one giant maze of them, and immediately has a whole bunch of female Asgardians, Sif and one friend of hers previously being the only ones we’ve seen, arrive, having been in exile, you see. Odin attempts, quite sensibly, to make all the prophecies of Ragnarok that we’ve seen in many previous issues, come true, but in a managed way, and succeeds, taking the curse, literally, off the title. (Though the idea of Ragnarok was to recur, and happen for real, much later.) Thomas then uses concepts from Kirby’s solo comic The Eternals to explain the whole history of ‘gods’ on Earth, including how different the Asgardians of myth are from the current versions. So much thought has gone into this that when we see a previous Asgard consumed by the flames of its own Ragnarok, and pull out to see that fire in the sky above Bethlehem, it feels metaphorically apt, not cheesy. That’s one hell of a balancing act. Thomas then connects the Asgardian legends with Wagner’s Ring Cycle, in a literal lecture that does go on a bit (and, rather disappointingly, gets mocked and undermined in Simonson’s run), but that which ends (a couple of issues after Thomas has left, possibly under duress, but clearly being the completion of his plot) with a thundering confrontation between the massed power of Odin and Kirby’s Celestials, a super hero finale in the best tradition of the form, that’s been worked up to for literally years beforehand, and, given the context of having read everything beforehand, is incredibly exciting, making the whole run of Thor to that point into one immense completed story. The next great run begins in #337, when Walt Simonson takes over both art and writing duties, drawing in a radical new minimalist style that’s more Frank Miller than Kirby. Simonson’s aim is similar to Thomas’, but he takes Thor on from the point of view of character rather than continuity. He gives the thunder god a new civilian identity that’s more Scandanavian, gives Asgard a daily life and politics, and makes it clear that, whatever we heard before, these are the gods of Norse legend, with life and detail to them taken from the original texts. He lets others lift Thor’s hammer and, as the inscription says, if they are worthy, become Thor, including the alien Beta Ray Bill and, for three glorious issues (#364-#366) a heroic frog battling rats in central park, a Watership Down of super hero comics that demonstrates the universality of the concept. He has Thor raid the afterlife to rescue the dead, and grow a beard to hide injuries sustained in the attack, then don a whole new suit of much more authentic armour in order to hold his cursed bones together. (These hard-to-draw-by-anyone-else additions are reversed almost immediately on his departure.) Every issue of Thor by Simonson (and the Balder the Brave mini-series) feels confident of its purpose, planned, apt. The run also has a merry, even twee sense of humour. Simonson offhandedly makes villains the Enchantress and the Executioner into interesting, multi-faceted people, working seemingly on the basis that none of the gods of myth are exactly boy scouts, and that fascinating is better than good. Sal Buscema apes Simonson’s art style from #368 as Simonson continues to write, and he clearly ends where he wants to, with the major themes of his run complete, the climax being Thor’s battle with the Midgard Serpent (#379), told entirely in splash pages. Simonson departs in #382. It’s one of the great runs that’s the easiest to pick up a single issue of and understand immediately what the fuss is about.
The Incredible Hulk
The tormented and misunderstood man/monster. I’ve only just started to read the Hulk on Unlimited, having never bought the character’s Essentials (7 volumes, to #248 of the second run). I’ve now gotten to #102 of that run, which has only just continued the numbering from the Hulk’s appearances in Tales to Astonish (starting from #60, initially sharing the title with Ant Man, then Giant Man, then the Sub-Mariner, finishing with #101). Before then, the Hulk had appeared in six issues of the first run of his own title, which was Marvel’s first failure. Unlimited misses out #200, #204, #211, #253, #264, #269, #270, #272-#299, #382-#383, #403, #405, #430 of the second run, which it bundles with the first, and a couple of things are in the wrong order in the numerical view.) Honestly, I couldn’t recommend anything in particular from as far as I’ve read. The crucial missing factor is that right up until near the end of Astonish, and sporadically after that, the Bruce Banner changes into the Hulk for a variety of reasons, not because he gets angry. It’s a rare case of Stan Lee wandering all over the map and never finding the goldmine. The art chores wander erratically too, between Kirby, Ditko, Heck, anyone. The Hulk is clearly meant to be Marvel’s answer to Superman, not just ‘flying’ in the same way as the Kryptonian did in his earliest appearances, via prodigious leaps (which defy physics, in one case the Hulk managing to use sheer muscle power to change trajectory in mid-air and so avoid hitting a bridge, an art awkwardness which Lee obviously realises the impossibility of and tries to caption his way around), but also talking in that gangster style voice of rough justice that used to be the Man of Steel’s rather street-level style of communication. At the end of Astonish we still haven’t got to ‘Hulk smash!’
Yeah, I know, here’s a Hulk that’s not afraid to pack a pistol! The artwork of Marie Severin, from Astonish #92 to Incredible Hulk #106 have a satisfying European adventure strip style to them, and it’s a pity that she mainly worked on Marvel’s humour titles.
Iron Man
Tony Stark, industrialist, builds himself a suit of science armour. I’m currently at #170 on Unlimited, having read up to #87 in 5 volumes of Essentials. Before getting his own series, Iron Man featured in Tales of Suspense (from #39), and a single issue of Iron Man and Sub-Mariner (which bridged the gap to the respective titles). Unlimited has everything (though in numerical view some of the order of the issues is again scrambled.) Although Gene Colan’s art in Suspense is gorgeous, he first run I really enjoy is Mike Friedrich’s (from #59-#81, mainly drawn by George Tuska), which combines a hairy-chested medallion-wearing funky 1970s sensibility with the rather modern idea of super villain’s at war with each other, seeking territory rather than endless battles with heroes. (In #72, Iron Man attends the 1975 San Diego Comic Con, the issue providing a beautiful picture of how small the event was back then.) I’m aware, however, that this is a marginal taste. The defining run of Iron Man is, without doubt, #116-#158’s combination of David Michelinie writing, Bob Layton plotting and inking, and John Romita Jr. penciling. They make Stark International look gleaming and modern, with, suddenly, a large supporting cast of employees. Tony becomes the fun figure of the movies, with his serious girlfriend Beth guessing his secret identity and becoming a co-lead, alongside Tony’s friend and pilot Jim Rhodes.
(One of my favourite scenes is Tony and Beth at breakfast, obviously discussing the sex they had the night before, but in terms that could equally apply, for younger readers, to the super villain battle of the previous evening.) There’s a sly sense of humour and a knowledge of how business works in the real world, plus James Bond glamour locations and bodies. (Female readers start to appear in the letters pages talking about Tony, for one of the very few times in super hero comics, as being consciously drawn to be attractive to women.) This is the team that lead Tony into alcoholism, which he deals with in one issue (#128), but if you’ve been reading the lead-up that feels dramatically right, the important thing having been his realisation that he has a problem. (And it’s not as if he doesn’t relapse.) Since then, I’m afraid it’s all been downhill, but I’m looking forward to that team returning for another run.
Doctor Strange
The Sorceror Supreme, an arrogant surgeon who, in a moment of selflessness, turns his life around to study magic and protect the world. I’m up to #56 of his second run. He initially appears as a back-up in Strange Tales (from #115 to the end of its run, #168), then the first run of his own title continues that numbering, but only gets as far as #183. (All this is available on Unlimited until #178.) He then hops through Avengers #61, Sub-Mariner #22, Hulk #126, Marvel Feature #1 and Marvel Premiere #3-#14, then has a second run of his own title of 81 issues. (All the above are collected, to #56, in four volumes of Essentials, but on Unlimited there are only the Avengers, Hulk and the first Premiere issue, and #14 of that second run, filed as Dr. Strange rather than Doctor, beside a handful of issues from the third run.) As you might have gathered, getting enough sales together for him to hold onto a title is always tough. The initial Stan Lee run, drawn by Steve Ditko, is a thing of beauty, with Ditko’s art never more disturbing and surreal.
Especially involving are a series of adventures where Strange’s magician foes chase him around the world, which reads like one of those paranoid ‘magical battles’ that Aleister Crowley talked about, resulting from his traumatic first encounter with the Dread Dormammu (Tales #126-#146), the lord of another dimension with a head made out of fire, much more disturbing than in latter appearances. The weird atmosphere is maintained, as with Thor, by Lee refusing to explain the basis of the mythology, as if he’s channeling something real that everyone knows about. His gorgeous spells: ‘By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!’ ‘By the Rings of Raggaddor!’ suggest, and are later expanded to define, a whole other universe. Without Ditko, Gene Colan provides gorgeous, atmospheric pencils, but the title wanders. The next run of greatness begins in Marvel Premiere and continues as the second volume, with Steve Englehart writing and Frank Brunner drawing stories which seem to have a knowledge of genuine occultism. (In other words, the same move happens with this title as did with Thor, Lee imagining an original version which other hands then approach with research.) The leaps of imagination in this run including the entire universe being destroyed and then returned to normal (#10-#13). It’s deliberately a trip, a long way from super hero battles. Englehart continues to #18, with Gene Colan drawing, Brunner having left in #5. Strange battles Dracula, Satan and Dormammu once more, in perhaps their most satisfying encounter. Engelhart’s final plot has Strange and his girlfriend Clea travel back through American history. Their relationship has always been portrayed with an emotional maturity, and in Engelhart’s last issue, she decides Strange’s emotional distance allows her to choose an affair with, erm, Benjamin Franklin. Seriously. And played very well.
There are a few individual collections with also reward inspection. Warlock and Killraven in Essentials (with the central run of the former also on Unlimited) provide a wonderful glimpse of what made 1970s Marvel such a bizarre, all-ages and yet mature experience. The X-Men titles are a whole world of quality I haven’t dipped into here. I hope the Essentials continue, and I hope that the archive features of Unlimited continue to be curated. At any rate, I hope I’ve whetted your appetite. Cheers.