The Invaders Take A Drive In The Country!

The Invaders fight to save Winston Churchill once again as he leaves the United States bound for England. This is a follow-up to the debut story. This sixteen-page yarn was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Lee Weeks. FDR is present in this story as well. It's a nifty 2005 shout-out to the 1975 classic that started it all. 

Not included in The Invaders Omnibus is the wonderful story of the team which appeared in the short-lived Marvel Universe series. But I want to include that story in this series of remembrances of the classic Marvel series. 

Carlos Pacheco

Marvel Universe was one of the best ideas Roger Stern ever had. The book only lasted for a few story arcs, was to be an anthology of sorts which didn't focus on any one hero but rather used the whole splendid canvas of the Marvel timeline for source material. Roger Stern with outstanding artwork by Steve Epting and Al Williamson for the first three issues gives us a humdinger of an Invaders story.

Dick Ayers and Syd Shores

What this story is really is one more installment of the secret history of Hydra, the secret organization which was sparked by Baron Wolfgang Strucker out of the ashes of the Nazi cause which he saw as doomed to failure. One of the greatest yarns ever spun at Marvel focused on Hydra's World War II roots and ran in the first four issues of the largely forgotten Captain Savage and the Leatherneck Raiders way back in 1968. This newer Stern story uses that nigh-forgotten classic as a launching point for getting the Invaders involved.

Stern reaches back to the Golden Age of comics, specifically those of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby when he plunders the third issue of Captain America Comics for the enormous and deadly Dragon submarine used by the Japanese. This mammoth undersea device serves well as the over-the-top spectacle a good superhero story requires.

John Byrne

The story begins with intros to our heroes the Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch, and Captain America. The sidekicks have been...ahem...kicked to the curb for this particular storyline.  We get some fairly clever reprises of the origins of these classic heroes as the U.S. government conducts some security checks, and we find a man named Bob Frank acting as advisor.

Dave Gibbons - Alternate Cover

We learn that Baron Strucker sees the end coming for the Nazis and has taken measures to see that the dream of world conquest does not die with Hitler, seen by Strucker as an imperfect leader at best. To that end he's funded the secret organization called Hydra who are seeking one of the war's biggest secrets, the atomic bomb. He operates with knowledge of the future stolen when he observed and followed a mysterious man who turned out to be Doctor Doom, and made use of his time machine. This is a great little call back to a vintage Invaders story and answers some curious questions that story created in the Marvel timeline.

Paul Smith

The Invaders are called upon with the assistance of The Whizzer (Bob Frank of course) to keep the atomic secrets from falling into Strucker's vile mitts. They succeed, no secret, but the getting there is a whiz-bang frolic and highly enjoyable super heroic action romp.

Roger Stern is writing on all cylinders here, creating a story which balances the nostalgia with then-modern comic styling very effectively. Steve Epting is a fantastic artistic storyteller with a handsome classic style, and having a supreme pro like Al Williamson on the inks only adds a luster to the proceedings.

This is a damned fine Invaders story, one of the best I've ever read and highly recommended. For the record the next storyline in Marvel Universe was a four-part story about a group called the "Monster Hunters" and it was a ton of fun too, though not quite as stellar as the Invaders trilogy. Marvel Universe did not find sales success and ended after only seven issues, a pity and a shame.

But the full run of the series did get collected in The Invaders -Eve of Destruction. Back to The Invaders Omnibus tomorrow. 

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The Marvels Project!

I am very very late to this party, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it when I finally arrived. The Marvels Project by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting is a really good story and I'm glad I finally got hold of a copy of it to enjoy. Brubaker is a writer who has a strong reputation, though I confess I've read very little of his work since I abandoned most of Marvel before he became a fixture there, but Steve Epting is an artist I've admired since his very first stint on The Avengers way back in the 90's. Epting's artwork then was a powerful antidote to the clumsy nonsense which dominated the field at the time and he's only ever gotten better over the years. Now since this is a limited series from 2009 I have no idea what if anything is left of these continuity details, but I've always rather enjoyed WWII stories and this one is well above average.

We have here the story of one of Marvel's most overlooked champions, The Angel. Not the X-Man, but the original Angel, a crime fighter from Marvel's earliest days who charged into battle against crime sans any discernible superpowers. What have here is a look behind the scenes of the beginnings of the Timely heroes from a point of view which has some insights but also a very potent everyman perspective which adds a fresh aspect to tales we've seen many many times.

We get to experience, as if for the first time in many ways. the stories of how the Human Torch is created and how he finds a role in society, how the Sub-Mariner wages his war against humanity before finding the true enemy, how Captain America is born and begins his fight against the Nazis. We also meet many of Timely's lesser heroes such as Phantom Bullet, Ferret, and one I was totally unaware of named John Steele. The latter was apparently made into a big deal in the modern Marvel Universe by Brubaker, though I've never read any of those stories.

All in all a great little story and when I found this trade for a mere five bucks, I figured the gamble was worth the chance. I was right and now at long last I've caught up a bit.

Below are some of the covers for this series, which for the most part I have to say are pretty unremarkable. The final one, a wraparound by Alan Davis is easily the best of the lot.

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The Invaders - Eve Of Destruction!

Carlos Pacheco

Marvel Universe was one of the best ideas Roger Stern ever had. The book only lasted for a few story arcs, was to be an anthology of sorts which didn't focus on any one hero but rather used the whole splendid canvas of the Marvel timeline for source material. Roger Stern with outstanding artwork by Steve Epting and Al Williamson for the first three issues gives us a humdinger of an Invaders story.

What this story is really is one more installment of the secret history of Hydra, the secret organization which was sparked by Baron Wolfgang Strucker out of the ashes of the Nazi cause which he saw as doomed to failure. One of the greatest yarns ever spun at Marvel focused on Hydra's World War II roots and ran in the first four issues of the largely forgotten Captain Savage and the Leatherneck Raiders way back in 1968. This newer Stern story uses that nigh-forgotten classic as a launching point for getting the Invaders involved.

Also Stern reaches back to the Golden Age of comics, specifically those of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby when he plunders the third issue of Captain America Comics for the enormous and deadly Dragon submarine used by the Japanese. This mammoth undersea device serves well as the over-the-top spectacle a good superhero story requires.

John Byrne

The story begins with intros to our heroes the Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch, and Captain America. The sidekicks have been...ahem...kicked to the curb for this particular storyline.  We get some fairly clever reprises of the origins of these classic heroes as the U.S. government conducts some security checks and we find a man named Bob Frank acting as a liason.

Dave Gibbons - Alternate Cover

We learn that Baron Strucker sees the end coming for the Nazis and has taken measures to see that the dream of world conquest does not die with Hitler, seen by Strucker as an imperfect leader at best. To that end he's funded the secret organization called Hydra who are seeking one of the war's biggest secrets, the atomic bomb. He operates with knowledge of the future stolen when he observed and followed a mysterious man who turned out to be Doctor Doom, and made use of his time machine. This is a great little call back to a vintage Invaders story and answers some curious questions that story created in the Marvel timeline.

Paul Smith

The Invaders are called upon with the assistance of The Whizzer (Bob Frank of course) to keep the atomic secrets from falling into Strucker's vile mitts. They succeed, no secret, but the getting there is a whiz-bang frolic and highly enjoyable super heroic action romp.

Roger Stern is writing on all cylinders here, creating a story which balances the nostalgia with then-modern comic styling very effectively. Steve Epting is a fantastic artistic storyteller with a handsome classic style, and having a supreme pro like Al Williamson on the inks only adds a luster to the proceedings.

This is a damned fine Invaders story, one of the best I've ever read and highly recommended. For the record the next storyline in Marvel Universe was a four-part story about a group called the "Monster Hunters" and it was a ton of fun too, though not quite as stellar as the Invaders trilogy. Marvel Universe did not find sales success and ended after only seven issues, a pity and a shame.

Rip Off