The All-Winners Squad!

This is one for the bucket list. With the purchase of the Marvel Masterwork volume above, I've fulfilled a longtime promise to myself. Since I first started reading and collecting comics, I've wanted to have handy readable copies of the All-Winners Squad canon, all two issues of it. I've talked about the impact of the All-Winners Squad on me before. All I can say is that I was mesmerized by this vintage team of heroes, even goofy blokes like The Whizzer. The team appeared in just two comics in their original form, issues nineteen and twenty-one of a comic called All Winners Comics. Before that the book had featured only single hero adventures, but this was something fresh, a team up of these classic characters, something DC had done quite successfully with the Justice Society of America long before.

In the first adventure they face ISBISA in the adventure called "The Crimes of the Century" written by Bill Finger. Finger was a writer who received virtually no credit for his contributions to comics during his career. That has been somewhat rectified by the creation of the Bill Finger Award given to top writers in the comics field at every Comi-Con since 2003. The art was by a who's who of the Timely Bullpen led by penciler Al Avison. 

In the second appearance they dealt with "The Riddle of the Demented Dwarf" battling Future Man and his ally Madame Death. This one was written by Otto Binder. Binder was a winner of the Bill Finger Award in 2010. Again a gaggle of artists handle the duties, this time behind Syd Shores. 

The first story was reprinted in the tenth issue of Fantasy Masterpieces.

The second adventure was reprinted in two parts in the seventeenth and eighteenth issues Marvel Super-Heroes, but with no true cover advertising.

Nearly twenty-five years ago Marvel reprinted the first adventure in full in a grand one-shot comic. Sadly, sales did not apparently justify a second issue reprinting for the first time under a single cover the second and final original All-Winners Squad adventure.

Now at long last I have them both in full, in an expensive but to me priceless tome. Sadly it wasn't discounted, but I wasn't going to walk away from this.  Sure it's pure nostalgia that drives me to these, but it's a warm experience to finally at long last have these vintage yarns in a sturdy permanent format.

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Okay Axis! It's Clobberin' Time!

One upon a time, when comics were more fun, there were splendid annual offerings which for a few more pennies (later nickels, dimes, and sadly even quarters) gave the reader an extra blast of excitement from their regular favorites. These were special events, king-size and once a year, something to look forward to and savor when they arrived. Among those wonderful annuals in 1976 were a two-part story and then some which took the Fantastic Four back into time to stifle the Third Reich from taking over the entire world.

Jack "King"  Kirby and "Joltin'"Joe Sinnott

It began in Fantastic Four Annual #11 by Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Sam Grainger. It seems that a sample of vibranium Reed had laying around was accidentally transported back into time, specifically the early years of World War II and that has caused time to change going forward with images of Nazis storming the streets of New York and Cleveland and more. The team is given a clue that there are big problems when the enigmatic and ever silent Watcher appears and glares at them until they take matters into their hands and using a replica of Doc Doom's infamous time machine head off back to 1942 to fix things up. They land smack dab into a strategy meeting of The Invaders and as is the wont when Marvel heroes first meet, they spend a few pages punching each other. Then cooler heads prevail and they work together to invade a German controlled French castle which has come to the attention of the Allies. The two teams work together to invade (properly enough) and find the hooded menace Baron Zemo in control. Cap ends up knocking over a vat of his Compound X and Zemo's hood is bonded to him for the rest of his days. The Nazis are using the vibranium to help control their rockets and one such rocket gets loose but the Thing is aboard and causes it to strike the castle. Seemingly the threat is over and the Fab 4 return to 1976 but then discover that only half the vibranium has been recovered. Reed Richards seems satisfied but Ben Grimm is curious.

Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott

His curiosity is sated when in the Marvel Two-In-One Annual #1 by Roy Thomas, Sal Buscema and Sam Grainger, the Watcher returns and is frowning still. Ben knows he has to head back again to 1942 and this time ends up in the United States alongside the Liberty Legion as they fend off a series of attacks on the homeland by the high-flying Skyshark, Master Man, and U-Man. The trio are stealing various high-tech elements and are confronted by various sub-teams of Legionnaires but they are only partially successful. The equipment they steal is combined by the Brain Drain (no one and no thing stays dead  in the Marvel Universe) to make a terrifying flying swastika which attacks the heart of New York City. The Thing who has been waiting for the Legion to return sees the attack and uses a flagpole to launch himself to the defense of the Big Apple.

The story slithers beyond the confines of the annual and continues in the twentieth issue of Marvel Two-in-One (again by the Roy,Sal, and Sammy team) as the Thing and the Legion join forces to foil the plot. Master Man and U-Man are ultimately defeated, but Skyshark and Brain Drain escape. (It's worth noting that Brain Drain is just a container with a brain and two eyes minus a human form this time out.) The Thing recovers the missing half of the vibranium and returns home to 1976 just in time to mystify his FF teammates. The Watcher disappears, seemingly pleased that the time stream has been fixed, for now.

Based on the plot there was little reason this story needed one more issue to end. It's a bonus sure, but the MTIO annual is really quite sumptuous enough for the story told here and Roy just seems sloppy not to have wrapped it up. That said, it's still a whopper of a tale, an unapologetic actioner with the Liberty Legion fully on display beating the dickens out of a few foes the Invaders had a rough time with individually.

Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia

One of the oddities of these issues for anyone not already keyed to the continuity of the time is the fact Ben Grimm is in his human mode and wearing a Thing-armor which replicates his classic look and gives him massive strength. It's weird to see him take off his head from time to time as the story develops. 

All three issues sport outstanding Jack Kirby covers with the two annual covers showcasing the inks of Joe Sinnott, one of the exceedingly rare times these two worked together on an Fab 4 image after Kirby left for DC years before.  The magic is clearly still evident in this wonderful combination.

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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.

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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 Invaders Versus The Battle-Axis!

The 90's were a raucous time in comic books. After nearly passing into the mists of time alongside the pulps of the 30's and the paperbacks of the 50's, the lowly comic book was given a reprieve when suddenly they became very very "hot". On the back of wild speculation, comics became highly collectible and suddenly everyone wanted a taste. This led to some really woeful comics, but also to some real surprises. Chief among the latter was the 1993 revival of The Invaders by Roy Thomas, this this time with artist Dave Hoover.

To his credit Roy picks up The Invaders saga soon after it had been left, only a few weeks have passed in the comic though it had been nearly fifteen years in the real world. The Invaders are back in the United States on a mission when they find themselves suddenly fighting a bunch of very colorful super-villains working for the Nazis. The tragic part being that these villains seemed to be all Americans who had axes to grind with their homeland and so had turned traitor.

Not wanting to use vintage Timely Golden Age heroes as Nazi turncoats, Roy trawled the vast sea of public domain heroes and found quite a colorful cache of potential agents to serve as his "Battle-Axis". 

Strongman is a vain playboy willing to sacrifice an already meager intellect for physical strength.  

Doctor Nemesis (renamed "Doctor Death" for the Invaders stories) is the nominal leader of the team and who has connections to the Human Torch.

Volton is the electrical villain with a deadly secret which even he does not know.

Spider-Woman is a villainous wench with a hate on for the Soviets who she regards as a more deadly threat than even Hitler's hordes.

And finally, Duke O'Dowd, The Human Meteor, bears a grudge against the British because of his Irish heritage.

The story itself is pretty simple. The Battle-Axis as they dubbed themselves are making for a location called the "Mojave Project" where it seems the Nazis have established a pretty elaborate subterranean base of operations. The idea is to attack the United States west coast with deadly gas and make it look like a natural disaster.

With the assistance of The Whizzer, Miss America along with new-to-the-series Golden Age heroes like Blazing Skull and Silver Scorpion and the mysterious Vision who is more enigmatic than helpful, the Invaders are able to repel the threat. But you knew that already. The Golem shows up too as well as the villainous Sky Shark. 

The best thing about this four-parter is the seamless way it picks up the storytelling from the end of the original series. I've never before read it just after completing the original run and it is very impressive. The writing was very much in keeping with what had come before. The artwork by Dave Hoover is perfectly adequate, but despite his many evident skills, I've always been cold to his work which does show clear connections to classic talents, but given that we were in the 90's was also forced to showcase many of the hyperbolic deficiencies of that era.

Tomorrow The Invaders take a drive in the country. 

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