What If The Invaders Stayed Together After World War Two?

What If #4 is among my all-time favorite comic books. It dropped in the midst of The Invaders run by the same team which was then producing the comic, and unlike most all of the other stories in the series was intended from the get-go to be canonical. (It should be included in every collection, which it is in the most recent two-volume version I see.) It seeks to solve a problem only comic book nerds would perceive or feel needed a solution - specifically the timeline of Captain America. Being one of those aforementioned comic book nerds, I lapped it up with glee.

The problem began at the very beginning of Cap's Marvel career when the powers that were decided to reach into the freezer of legacy heroes and grab out a "Capsicle". The decision to have had Cap on ice (literally) since the end of World War II seemed straightforward enough for fans who because of their youth were unaware of the large tapestry of Timely-Atlas-Marvel which had featured the Living Legend off and on for a few decades. Stan and Jack had a great idea and its drama speaks to everyone, as Cap was made into a modern-day Rip Van Winkle so as to offset his noble but seemingly naive beliefs against the urbane modern world. If you think Cap is an utter fool, then perhaps your worldview is in need of adjustment.

But that aside, there was the problem of the Captain America of the 1950's when Atlas  wanted to revive its superheros. If Cap was on ice then how could he be a professor along with Bucky in 1953? The answer was devised and presented by Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema in Captain America #153-156, four of the best Cap stories I ever read in my life. My pulse quickened as this clash between the Caps unfolded.

But that solution left out the post-war Captain America seen in issues of his own self-titled comic and other places such as All Winners. In fact Cap and Bucky had been part of the All-Winners Squad with two documented adventures. How could that be?

What If #4 had the answer.

We begin with a scene first shown in Avengers #4 and later expanded in Avengers #56 in which Cap and Bucky confront the hooded Nazi, Baron Zemo.

Roy Thomas and John Buscema - Avengers #56 1968

Roy Thomas and Frank Robbins - What If #4 1977

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby - The Avengers #4 1964

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby - Captain America #112 1969

Bucky is killed while Cap disappears into the ocean to be later found by Eskimos and worshiped before being thrown into the ocean again by the Sub-Mariner and ending up in the hands of the Avengers.

Captain America I

We of course now know better, but at the time this was the story as it stood -- Cap lived, then disappeared and Bucky died.

Captain America II

With Cap's and Bucky's seeming deaths the new leader of the United States President Harry S. Truman decided a Captain America should remain at the side of The Invaders and to that end conscripted the hero The Spirit of 76 (last seen as part of the defunct Crusaders in Invaders #15) and Fred Davis, the bat boy for the New York Yankees to pitch hit for the seemingly deceased Star-Spangled duo. And that worked for a while as the team battled in the Pacific alongside the Union Jack and Spitfire.

Later, after the war the Liberty Legion disbands and Miss America and Whizzer join the ranks of the team which is renamed "The All-Winners Squad" since "The Invaders" makes even less sense than it did before. Later still the team breaks up and the members go their separate ways, no less committed to righting wrongs.

(Note the "No Strings" line. First time?)

Then came the threat of Adam II, the second android built by the highly intelligent but misguided Professor Phineas T. Horton, the man who'd given birth to the oddly named Human Torch a decade before. Adam II wanted to lead a cleansing of the human population of Earth and lead his fellow androids to control a brand new society. To that end he'd targeted an up and coming politician named John F. Kennedy for replacement by android. The Invaders try to stop the scheme.

Captain America III

But the second Captain America is killed in the process by Adam II, after nobly sending a signal from, of all places, the Old North Church of American Revolution fame. He is found and replaced by The Patriot, who had found his body and removed it.

Captain America IV

So it was first The Spirit of 76 and later The Patriot who filled in for Captain America during those years before the Commie-bashing and jingoistic Captain America concocted his scheme to imitate his hero.

This is whopper of tale, rendered with gusto and glee by Roy Thomas, Frank Robbins and Frank Springer. A story which kites through the years with aplomb and which opens up the history of the Marvel Universe in fresh and exciting ways.

What was a problem became an opportunity and What If #4 seized that opportunity.

Rip Off

The Invaders Fight For Freedom!

It is evident that Roy Thomas was a having a grand old time writing The Invaders, as the series seemed to constantly froth with the creation of new superheroes and revised superheroes. At times the "Big Three" of Cap, Subby and Torch seemed almost guest-stars in their own comic, fighting for pages as the cast grew and grew.

(Ron Wilson and Frank Giacoia)

Also, the pressures of actually creating the comic, along with some special side projects, began to tell as the "Dreaded Deadline Doom" became something of a chronic problem for the WWII saga. For instance the tenth issue of the comic was a few framing pages picking up the action as Cap and the others race to get Lord William Montgomery Falsworth and his daughter Jacqueline to hospital care after the battle with Baron Blood. 

Between those few pages is a vintage Captain America story with art by Al Avison and Al Gabrielle from Captain America Comics #22 about a Nazi rabble rouser dubbed the Reaper who works to undermine the war effort by lowering the morale of the workers.  Reading this vintage classic from Cap's Golden Age, I was tragically reminded of the current nonsensical mutterings Americans pay so much heed to. 

Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia

Then in the next issue the team finally get the Falsworths to care and that saves their lives but proves also quite deadly when the hospital itself comes under attack by the Blue Bullet, the creation of a Professor Gold.

Herbert Lawrence Block

Thomas makes an aside that the Blue Bullet looks like a political cartoon character and the only one that came to mind that fits the bill is Herblock's "Mr. Atom", an Atomic Bomb-like figure which appeared in many of his more memorable images. (See the example above.)

Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott

After fending off the threat of the Blue Bullet, the team is shocked to discover they have a new member Spitfire who of course is Jacqueline Falsworth herself. She got her speed powers when the Baron Blood bit blended with transfused blood from the android Human Torch, who did so because of his affection for Lady Falsworth. She for her part seems to dote on Cap creating a bit of tension among the team members.

Gil Kane

The team discover that Professor Gold only created his dangerous Blue Bullet because his brother Jacob was under threat by the Nazis back in the Jewish ghettos of Germany. The Invaders go into the Fatherland to rescue Jacob who refuses to return with them. The team is captured by the Nazis.

Jacob Gold then uses his mystical powers to raise the Golem, a creature of Jewish legend. But a well-timed lightning bolt (there are a lot of these in the Invader stories it seems) bonds Jacob with his creation and this new Golem rescues the Invaders from the Nazi commander "The Face".

Ernie Chan, Tony Dezuniga and John Romita

The Golem is a character Marvel really had a yen to do. Not only do we get a WWII rendition of the character with a distinctly Hulk-like vibe, there had been a brief series a few years before of the creature from a distinctly supernatural perspective in the revived Strange Tales. The aforementioned Hulk ran into a version also in his own magazine, maybe the same one.

Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott

The Invaders return to London just in time to meet the latest in the cavalcade of new superheroes, The Crusaders.

 The Crusaders are the Spirit of 76, Ghost Girl, Captain Wings, Thunder Fist, Johnny Lightning, and the diminutive Dyna-Mite.

Ernie Chan

This is one of those very fun unofficial crossovers the writers of Marvel and DC would do from time to time despite the constant newsstand war their bosses waged. The Crusaders are versions of DC's recently revived Freedom Fighters made up of Uncle Sam, Human Bomb, The Ray, Phantom Lady, Black Condor and Doll Man.

Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott

It turns out though that these new heroes are being run by the other side as the Nazis have concocted the Crusaders as an elaborate ruse to kill King George and undermine the English threat from within. The Crusaders have no knowledge of this though and reject the powers they are given (those that needed powers) when the truth is revealed.

Rich Buckler and Jack Abel

For their part DC then created dopplegangers of the Invaders also called "The Crusaders" and featured them in the pages of Freedom Fighters. That team consisted of  Americommando, Rusty, Barracuda, Fireball and Sparky. For more information on both teams of Crusaders check this out.

Alex Schomburg

Then comes one of the most peculiar and indulgent comic books Roy Thomas ever wrote. The first Invaders Annual is a complicated affair with a variety of purposes. For one thing, Roy wanted to write a story in longer form, similar to the original Giant-Size format the series began with, and for another he wanted to stories to be like the Golden Age team tales where they are in fact individual hero stories connected by a frame in which all the heroes appear. He does this introducing three new/old villains into the mix - The Shark, The Hyena, and a character who will be a bigger deal later --  Agent Axis. Roy then  gets veteran talent to draw his chapters. Frank Robbins and Frank Springer, the regular team handle the frame story, Alex Schomburg drew the Torch tale and supplied the awesome cover, Don Rico handled the Cap yarn, and Lee Elias rendered the Subby story. After those were done, the trio (minus Bucky and Toro left behind again) end up in the time-traveling clutches of the Grandmaster.

Sal Buscema and Sam Grainger

Because one other thing Roy wanted to do in this complex story was to showcase the battle between the Invaders (not yet called that) and three Avengers (Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and Vision) in the pages of The Avengers #71 some eight years previous. Not that anyone but he would care, but Roy wanted to explain why Cap had a triangular shield and why Namor's swim gear was different. (Roy really got pretty anal about this stuff sometimes.) Despite its ornery complications this is still a lark of a story and I like the callback of one my all-time favorite Avengers stories with great art by Sal Buscema and Sam Grainger.

Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott

Then we begin the longest Invaders story yet. Just after the Crusaders events, Spitfire and her father Lord Falsworth (formerly known as Union Jack) had departed with Dyna-Mite to find Lord Falsworth's estranged son Brian. It turns out Dyna-Mite was his best friend Roger and he had no idea how he'd gotten to be so small. The Invaders did not know any of this.

William "Biljo" White

Instead in a story drawn by fill-in artist Jim Mooney with Springer inks, they attempt to save a kidnapped G.I. named "Biljo White". Named for the real-life the William "Biljo" White fan artist and creator of one of my favorite superheroes The Eye, this Biljo was a comic artist who had drawn the story of Major Victory before his enlistment and in that story had told a tale similar to the origin of Cap himself.

Jim Mooney and Frank Springer

The Nazis thinking he knew some secrets wanted to find out and so kidnapped him, sending a beautiful Nazi agent to do so.

  Gil Kane and Joe Sinnott

The Invaders travel into Nazi territory again (living up their names for a change of pace) to rescue Biljo but get captured themselves by Master Man who is back up and punching. He'd recently had a run in with the Liberty Legion, but I'll get around to that later. It turns out Biljo did know something about Cap's origin, and the Nazi woman who kidnapped him uses that info to make herself into the super-strong "Warrior Woman".

Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia

Meanwhile Cap has escaped the clutches of the Nazis and has been helped by The Mighty Destroyer, a man who fights the Nazis behind enemy lines. Not too surprisingly, the Destroyer turns out to be Brian Falsworth who along with his buddy Roger Aubrey had fallen into Nazi hands some months before and had been used for propaganda purposes.

John Romita and Joe Sinnott

An attempt to rescue the Invaders goes awry and Cap is recaptured, and the lot are sent to Berlin for summary execution. Only the Destroyer can save them, but he seems to have been killed. Spitfire and her father have arrived in Berlin themselves by other means looking for Brian.

Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia

The stories in issues twenty and twenty-one of The Invaders are truncated ("Dreaded Deadline Doom" again) and really form a single piece.

Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia

In that finale the Union Jack reappears to save the day and rescue the Invaders who raise a ruckus in Berlin and almost capture Adolph Hitler himself before the dictator barely escapes. By the story's end, the reunited heroes return to London where hopefully Dyna-Mite can be cured, and where the Union Jack and Spitfire will join forces with The Invaders for good.

To see how this new version of The Invaders works together, check back tomorrow! 

Rip Off

The Coming Of The Invaders!

Never have I been so ready to consume a comic book than I was the debut issue of the The Invaders. The notion of the Timely "Big Three" (Captain America, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner) becoming a team (as they had done very briefly in the pages of All-Winners) was an idea I thought downright ripe and ready as 1975 rolled around. So, when Roy Thomas and Frank Robbins sprung The Invaders on us "Marvelites" of the time, I was aboard the Fortress Europa Express in a nanosecond. I love the concept so much I have all the originals, the paperback reprints and I've just added The Invaders Omnibus, which is what I'm reading the epic war saga in this time. 

(Gil Kane)

I had been made ready, eager, and willing by a host of forces. Fantasy Masterpieces was a potent comic in the late 60's, giving fans not just reprints of Marvel's vigorous Silver Age, but reaching back into the then not-so-distant mists of time to bring forth true-blue Golden Age stories of likes of Cap, Subby, and the Torch among others. The comic was a peephole into comic book lore, allowing a glimpse but little else of the sprawling vista the Golden Age had been. But it was enough.

(Sal Buscema and Sam Grainger)

The Golden Age heroes started popping up in actual comics, specifically those written by Roy such as The Avengers and The Uncanny X-Men. The mostly forgotten Red Raven flew into a single story with the high-flying Angel when the X-Men had gone their separate ways for a time. Golden Age heroes sprang from the mind of Rick Jones in the climax of the awesome space-spanning Kree-Skrull War. The Invaders themselves were presaged in earlier pages of that same comic when time-traveling Assemblers at the behest of Kang traveled to wartime Paris to battle the Timely trio. Former All-Winners Squad members Whizzer and Miss America had recently shown up in the back story of Marvel's mysterious mutant siblings Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. The Golden Age was bubbling up all over creating a heady brew indeed.

(Gil Kane and Bill Everett)

So, The Invaders were inevitable really, and when Roy "The Boy" Thomas relinquished the reins of Editor-in-Chief of the mighty Marvel Bullpen, he had a project he'd been born to write, a ret-conned history of Marvel's most vintage heroes. He created The Invaders, and made them "Giant-Size" to boot. 

(The original splash page by Frank Robbins was tweaked by John Romita and became the debut cover.)

Giant-Size Invaders was the original format for Marvel's WWII heroes, a format which was widespread and popular with yours truly. We got a new story of extended length along with a great Golden Age reprint, in this issue one starring Namor, the Sub-Mariner from his first self-titled comic way back in 1941 by his creator "Wild" Bill Everett.

(Frank Robbins created this splash which shows the scene on the cover from the reverse angle.)

The debut story assembles our disparate heroes as they all confront a threat on the high seas. The Nazis are trying to kill the Prime Minister Winston Churchill before he can come to the Americas to ask for aid for his afflicted country. To that end they kidnap a scientist who was a part of the creation of Cap himself and force him to assist them in the creation of their own ideal warrior dubbed "Master Man". Controlled by Colonel Kreighund the Master Man battles to destroy Churchill's ship but is stopped when Cap, Bucky, Torch, Toro and Namor combine forces to stop him. Afterwards Churchill himself suggests the heroes form a team to storm Fortress Europa itself, and dubs them "The Invaders".

(John Romita)

But that was the last Giant-Size issue for many decades. With the very next installment, that format was dropped and The Invaders went to a then-regular sized twenty-five cent comic, but that meant the next story originally developed for the larger size was shifted to two full issues. In those the newly assembled Invaders head to London where they confront the deadly Blitz and in the midst of that find a mysterious girl who seems to have a link to the rumored "Brain Drain" which was itself connected to the Master Man they'd defeated in their first adventure.

(John Romita)

They soon enough find sufficient reason to travel to into enemy territory where they find and battle three seeming gods from legend, but who turn out to be space travelers instead used by the Brain Drain, a scientist who has been transformed by their coming into a man with a brain encased in a glass dome. The girl turns out to be the fourth space traveler and they all decide since they are stranded here they are better off dead and the world is introduced to nuclear energy sooner than has been documented.

(Jack Kirby and John Romita)

(Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia)

Following that deadly struggle the heroes return to the United States for a time and run afoul of a new foe, one of the Sub-Mariner's own Atlantean minions named Merrano who has used his science to make himself into a super-powered soldier for the Reich calling himself "U-Man" after the deadly submarines which threatened the Eastern coast of the United States and all of the Atlantic at the time.

(Gil Kane)

The Invaders eventually put down the threat of the U-Man, but not before uncovering a mystery in the region we commonly call the Bermuda Triangle, an enigmatic area which seems to drag in the unsuspecting into a time warp to a deadly zone filled with prehistoric creatures, among other things. This is a shout out to another Marvel comic of the time, Skull the Slayer which explores the area in modern times.

(Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott)

The Invaders then begin one of their most important missions, one which finds them back home front hawking war bonds.

One offbeat note is a panel in which Bucky and Toro are seen reading the comics above, a reference to the Marvel Comics within the Marvel Universe in which they get many things different than "reality".  Sadly the heroes, save for Bucky who is deemed too weak to fool with, are captured by the Red Skull and turned into mind-controlled super-soldiers for the Third Reich, and turn their attention to destroying weapons plants.

(Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia)

Bucky left alone takes steps to assemble other superheroes of the time and creates the Liberty Legion made up the Patriot, the Whizzer, Red Raven, Miss America, the Blue Diamond, the Thin Man, and Jack Frost.

(Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott)

These heroes confront the Invaders as the latter attack different regions of the United States, but the battles are somewhat inconclusive, though Toro is captured.

(Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia)

Then eventually the tide turns, and the Liberty Legion is able to free the Invaders of the Skull's mind-control, which was made possible by use of technology developed by the now-dead Brain Drain. Afterwards it seems the Legion will stay together to defend the Homeland while the Invaders return to their primary mission to "invade" Fortress Europa.

For the record this story wove between two issues of The Invaders and two issues of Marvel Premiere which showcased the Liberty Legion drawn by Don Heck. Rich Buckler and Dick Ayers stepped in to handle one issue of the crossover, a springtime blockbuster of sorts. The name "Liberty Legion" was one Roy Thomas had created when he was a teenager and is now finally able to use.

(Jack Kirby, Frank Giacoia, and John Romita)

When the team returns to London, they find almost immediately that the Blitz continues. Amid that destruction they discover the supernatural in the form of Baron Blood, a for-real vampire.

(Neal Adams)

We eventually learn that Baron Blood was created by none other than Dracula himself, though this was of course decades before the Count's then modern adventures in the pages of The Tomb of Dracula.

(Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia)

The team also meets for the first time Union Jack, a British hero of the earlier World War I. He turns out to be Lord Falsworth and the secret of Baron Blood is closer to him than he realizes. We learn that Union Jack is one of several heroes from the "Great War" who formed a team not unlike The Invaders themselves. The Phantom Eagle was a colleague of the Union Jack. Also threatened by the deadly vampire is his daughter Jacqueline, a high-born but brave woman.

(Jack Kirby and Frank Springer)

The Invaders work together alongside Union Jack to defeat Baron Blood, despite injuries which prevent Lord Falsworth from being able to continue in his heroic role.

(Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia_

Worth noting is that with the ninth regular issue, original inker Vince Colletta gave way to Frank Springer who would be the regular for several years to come. Also, the return of Jack Kirby to Marvel was most important as he became a regular cover artist for the line for a while and some of his absolute best work is seen on these Invaders covers. 

(Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott)

But the stage is set for something new as the ranks of The Invaders is about to grow permanently.

The invasion continues. More tomorrow. 

Rip Off