Floating Heads--OK, Axis, Here We Come!!

You know what we haven't done for awhile? Floating Heads!!

This time out--The Invaders!!

All right, 2 demerits for just plugging the generic John Romita Cap head there...and the generic Torch head. At least Subby is reacting to the scene!

Look--Bucky!!

Frank Robbins floating heads? BONUS!!

SPOILER ALERT: Namor wasn't doomed.

I probably shouldn't count this because of the hands...but we have so few floating heads covers. I'll let it slide.

And then we jump nearly 4 decades ahead...

Man, All-New Invaders was such a good series...

NEXT: We'll hop over to DC!

Manic Monday--The Invaders Diss The Competition!!

The Invaders were the big guns during WWII...but what did they think of all of the other costumed heroes traipsing around?

The lads start by critiquing their comic book depictions...

Yeah, but what about those other heroes?

Oooh, snarky, Namor!

The Invaders--they're A #1, and brook no competition!!

Still, this story did feature those "pallid imitations" saving the Invaders from the Red Skull, and led to the formation of the Liberty Legion to protect the homeland.

Sadly, I don't believe Cap & Miss America ever held hands while singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

From Invaders #5 (1976)

Tales From The Quarter Bin--DC's Lost Generation!

Would you like to know the difference between DC and Marvel right now?

Take a gander at this double-page spread (which I am too incompetent to present properly...) from DC Sampler #1 (1983):

Holy schnikes! What a wonderful collection of characters!! Through their own creations and their Borg-like assimilation of the characters from other comic companies, DC boasts one of the deepest rosters of super-heroes imaginable! Hell, even that stunning tableau is only a tiny percentage of the classic heroes DC has available:

But how many of them "exist" today?!? How much of their heritage has DC flushed away in an attempt to be modern?

DC has altered their timeline so that now, no heroes fought in WWII. There are no legacy heroes. For some reason, that would be distracting or confusing. Nope, no heroes until 5 minutes years ago. No history. No legacy.

And even the ones they've "revived" for Earth-2 are in another dimension, and are even younger than Earth-Prime's heroes, and a few of them they've even made villains, because that's cooler or something. These guys even let their homeworld be blown up, so, hardly the Justice Society there.

Meanwhile, there's Marvel:

Man, I'll never get tired of that cover...

Marvel also had a buncha characters who battled in WWII. But you know what?

Instead of putting these characters out to pasture, they're still here, still fighting.

Yeah, it defies all sense of probability and logic that pretty much all of the Invaders would still be alive today. But really, isn't it better that way?

Some characters have been updated, there's some legacy heroes, but they're basically the same heroic group as in the past. And you know what? Marvel didn't see fit to pretend that their history never happened, that all of these characters didn't fight the Nazis.

Modernization without denying/eliminating the past?? Someone please tell DC that's still possible.

I'm not sure exactly when DC became ashamed of their past. Or when they decided that the public would hate and fear their heroes, so they couldn't have them do anything that might make make them popular, like, oh, I dunno, punching Hitler in the jaw?!?

Man, whoever thought that Marvel would become better at legacy heroes than DC?

Same Fight, Different Artists

Some of you are old enough to remember this story...

...where, as part of a game, the Grandmaster And Kang were sending some of the Avengers bopping through time and space to fight other folks, so the villains could resolve a wager.

And The Vision, Yellowjacket and the Black Panther ended up in 1941, fighting Namor, The original Human Torch, and a much younger Captain America!!

That story was written by Roy Thomas, and 8 years later, he was writing the Invaders! So he decided to re-present that fight, from the Invaders' point of view!! It's good to be Roy!

So, this creates the perfect opportunity to compare and contrast the styles of different artists depicting the same scenes!

I'll  present several scenes from the tussle. The first panels from each scene are from Avengers #71 (1969), drawn by Sal Buscema and inked by Sam Grainger. Those will be followed by the same scene from Invaders Annual #1 (1977), as drawn by Frank Robbins and inked by Frank Springer!

Enjoy!!

1969

1977

1969

1977

1969

1977

1969

1977

1969

1977

1969

1977

1969

1977

Well, that should be a help to someone's art history doctoral thesis, right?

The Best Covers That haven't Been Published Yet!

Check out the cover to November's All-New Invaders #12:

That cover is by Michael Komark. The story?

"In 1917, what brought together UNION JACK, IRON FIST, and FREEDOM’S FIVE? Would you believe…invading MARTIANS?!"

Yeah, I'm all over that. FYI, if you're curious about Freedom's Five, here's their bio. That's why I love what James Robinson is doing on this book...he's taking a one-panel throwaway idea by Roy Thomas and blowing it up into it's own thing---which is exactly the same thing that Roy Thomas himself did to other throw-away long-forgotten characters/concepts.

And then there's this:

That's the cover of Constantine #19, by Juan Ferreyra. The solicit, sadly, seems to have little to do with this image--the story is something about him going to Earth-2, because I guess pulling John Constantine from Vertigo means you embroil him in stupid crossovers.

Still, that's one heck of a bitching cover!

Art That Was Bad For Your Heart

When you get to be my age, you learn to love the unusual.

But I can't tell a lie--when I was a kid, Frank Robbins' art freaked me out!!

This come to mind because on Monday, I reprinted a few panels from an old Invaders story, and there were a couple of commenters who were surprised by the goofy angles and obtuse anatomy drawn therein.

Which made me realize that a lot of people out there today don't know Frank Robbins' work...which is a damn shame, and which I am to correct.

First a few more panels from that Invaders story:




It's like nothing you've seen before or since--it's insane!!

Now let's be clear--I'm most certainly not dissing on Robbins at all. The man was a great artist, a prodigy. He was winning art scholarships before he was 10. He's had his paintings featured in museum showings. He did tons of promotional and advertising work. He was working in comic books back in the Golden Age, and his syndicated newspaper adventure strip, Johnny Hazard, ran for 33 years.

So when I say his 1970s Marvel work was terrifically insane, I mean that with the highest regard and respect.

Click on this link for a look at some of his 1970s DC work--trust me, if you haven't seen it before, his Batman will freak you out, too.

Robbins started doing mostly Marvel work in the late 1970s, and is best known for his Invaders and Captain America and Human Fly work.

His work was pretty controversial among fans at the time. Fandom wasn't as organized back then, and there was no internet to ruin everything good about comics. But based on my anecdotal experiences, Robbins' was sort of the Rob Liefeld of his day, at least in the strength of the reactions (often polar opposite reactions) among readers. Love him or loathe him, and there was no in-between.

How to describe his work? I'm pretty illiterate when it comes to artistic talk...let's just say that, in my limited art vocabulary, he work always struck me as sort of a hybridization of Kirby and Colan, only with both hopped up on speed.

Every character in his books, in every panel, was constantly in tension, ready to explode, practically vibrating with an energy that leapt off the page and made your heart race like you'd just washed down 20 Pixie Stix with a couple of cans of Jolt. Check out some panels form What If #4 (1977):


Special fun: The original Human Torch fries Hitler:

Even the Watcher, just sitting there narrating, looks like he's ready to jump off the page and go 5 rounds with you:

His characters were human speed lines, always moving, even when just sitting still. Check out some Nomad action:




It's a style that is unlike anything that was going on in super-hero comics at the time, far cartoonier, far less concerned with formal anatomy--in many ways the antithesis of the modern "photorealistic" approach taken by many pencillers today.

But it's not that Robbins' didn't know or couldn't draw "normal" anatomy--look at his newspaper work. This was a choice, a style he wanted for the super-human action of super-hero books. Robbins' wasn't concerned with how "accurate" his style was; he was more concerned with the energy and emotion it conveyed, and in boosting the adrenaline with action ACTION ACTION.

Not to say that cartooniness meant no accurate anatomy--as far as I know, Frank Robbins was the only one to depict Captain America's package on page:

(Plus, just look at the way everyone on that splash is vibrating, even when standing still. Even comatose Falcon looks like he's going to jump up and smack someone!)

Plus, Robbins could give you a Cap ass-shot that would make Hal Jordan jealous:

Seriously--when you were an 11 year old kid in 1975, reading a Frank Robbins drawn book was like mainlining 8 or 10 Red Bulls--after the comics was done you were jittery and excited and disturbed and you weren't sure why.

So look up some 1975 Captain America (where all the Cap and Nomad panels are from) or almost any issue of the 1970s Invaders or those absolutely nutty Detective Comics Batman stories (which Robbins wrote, as well as drew). Just make sure you cut down on your daily caffeine intake first...