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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Black Widow - The Golden Age!

The "Falcon", the "Vision", the "Angel", the "Whizzer", and even the "Human Torch". These are all names of vintage Golden Age Timely heroes who had their names lifted for Silver Age counterparts who were at times mostly different. (Following the model developed with great success by Julie Schwartz at DC.)  Another bygone name in this bunch was the "Black Widow", a strange, dour and grim character who dealt with the wicked of this world in service to Satan himself. 

Madame Claire Voyant is a medium who is murdered after she predicted the death of a woman in an accident. The woman's lover was miffed and took Voyant's life. But Satan himself shows up and snatches up Madame Voyant and takes her to Hell. There he imbues her with ghastly powers including a deathly touch so that she can go back to Earth and get vengeance on her murderer. She does so but then awaits further orders from her new master, Satan himself. It's a brisk and energetic story in the vintage Golden Age style. And for a long time the Black Widow was a forgotten character. 

She is revived so to speak in the limited series The Twelve in which she joined eleven other obscure Timely heroes, all given another chance at newsstand glory. It's pretty compelling storyby Michael Straczynski and Chris Weston. We learn that Claire had a sister Debbie and in this amended origin it is the murder of Debbie which causes her to seek supernatural assistance in gaining revenge on the murderer, a man deemed untouchable by society. 

There is even a "new" Black Widow story available right now in the trade Marvel featuring the work of Alex Ross among many others. One of those "others" is Ryan Heshka who provides a compelling version of the Golden Age Black Widow in a little four-page story from Marvel #3. 

You can find the debut story of the Golden Age Black Widow in Marvel Firsts: WWII Super Heroes. Marvel took the name but not the character and gave it new life in the Silver Age. More on that tomorrow. 

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Golden Age Girls!

One of the strange trends which struck the Golden Age Timely heroes in their waning years before cancellation was the sudden appearance in nearly all the comics of a comely girl.

In the case of The Human Torch it was a lass dubbed Sun Girl.

Sun Girl showed up as Torch's new partner and also was featured in three issues of her own comic before disappearing for several decades.

The girl on this cover is the villainous Lavender.

Captain America lost Bucky (who got shot, but not fatally -- it's damn hard to kill that kid) but gained Golden Girl.

Golden Girl was in fact Betsy Ross, a longtime cast member of the Cap storyline created by Cap's very own fathers Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

Namor, the Sub-Mariner found his time shared with another "Sub-Mariner", this one a statuesque young woman named Namora.

Namora it turns out was Namor's cousin and had all the same powers as he did. She also was awarded a three-issue run at the same time as she was co-starring with her cousin in his comic.

The question though is why all of sudden did all these dames show up in the pages of what had been for a very long time exclusively man country.

Well girls seemed to be a target audience for Timely in 1948 with titles like Millie the Model, Margie, Nellie, Rusty, Tessie the Typist, Hedy DeVine, Patsy Walker and several more in their line-up.

The Blonde Phantom had recently taken over the classic superhero series All Winners.

Venus by Bill Everett debuted the same year. 

So maybe it's just Martin Goodman's tendency to jump on very trend with dominating gusto. Also in 1948 the critics of comics were finding footing and comics were being famously burned here and there across these United States by kids prompted by adults who objected to the lurid content. A publisher's organization called the "Association of Comic Magazine Publishers" was put together to stem the tide of criticism from parents groups and experts like the wily Dr.Wertham who was starting his campaign against comics in Collier's magazine.

Maybe the idea of teenage sidekicks just struck everyone as dopey, so off they went to the hospital and limbo while the rugged male heroes got to pal around with a beautiful girl on the side.

It's hard to say, but just as quick as they came they went, but then so did the superheroes.

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Nice Work Cap!

All this talk about Captain America and his creators Jack Kirby and Joe Simon lit my fire to once again savor those classic Golden Age tales of the raucous Steve Rogers and his sidekick Bucky Barnes kicking the crap out of Nazis and other assorted hate-mongers across the World War II globe. For any fool to conflate the patriotic colors which adorn Cap's costume with the vile slagheap words and murderous actions of Adolph Hitler is the height of absurdity. These comics are not without philosophical flaw, but loving the race-baiting Jew-hating rhetoric of the Third Reich was not among them. Many will find fault with some ethnic presentations, typical in the heat of the day but egregious now for sure. But even so no one can say that these two men -- Kirby and Simon -- had anything good to suggest about history's most famous mass murderer. To suggest otherwise, either by direct comment or implication when manufacturing symbols, is the kind of thing which must be called out and rejected out of hand. 

This is some fine reading from a time not as long ago as we sometimes think. As these days fall from living memory we need to more than ever make certain that the ideas of madmen like Hitler and his cronies find no purchase in a country dedicated to the equality of all men and women. There's no space for saying otherwise and anyone who does properly deserves a clock on the chin, as Cap so eloquently demonstrated on his very first comic book cover appearance. As Bucky says in just the second of two word balloons to appear on these ten covers by the Simon and Kirby team -- "Nice Work Cap!"

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Made Men - I Call Him The Human Torch!

The first and foremost of the "Made Men" is Timely's The Human Torch. Debuting in the first issue of Marvel Comics (along with the Sub-Mariner of course) the Torch is an android created by Professor Horton. But he has a flaw, the artificial man bursts into flames on contact with the atmosphere and so after proving to be a menace is encased in concrete. But he breaks free and does in some villains and begins a career as a hero, a career which during the Golden Age paid little heed to his manufactured origins.

The Human Torch becomes a powerhouse for Timely, who alongside the Sub-Mariner and Captain America form the "Big Three" for the ferocious company, led by Martin Goodman who was more than eager to jump on any trend and suck the marrow out of it. When superheroes fell from favor, the Human Torch disappeared to be replaced by funny animals and bodacious models. When superheroes came back so did the Torch in the early Atom Age days. But it was when the character was totally revamped and made a true HUMAN Torch named Johnny Storm that the character found lasting power.

Eventually the original returned, though with  grumbling endurance, His brevity has been suggested to be because of the attempts by his creator Carl Burgos to gain some additional revenue from the character in court. But eventually "John Hammond" the Golden Age Human Torch does become a part of the Marvel mythology in an ongoing way, at first as part of the Vision's elaborate origin  and then later as himself.

But never has he been as compelling to my eye as when he was a monster, a creature beyond the control of man. His very existence the evidence of man's overreaching into the fabric of nature, a creature not at all unlike Frankenstein's.

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All-Winning Recreation!

I am a die-hard All-Winners Squad fan from the moment I ran across their second adventure reprinted in the pages of Marvel Super-Heroes. Timely Big Three of Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and Captain America to anchor a team of heroes back when such things were exceedingly rare indeed. Sadly the Squad only had a few missions, but those few left many a fanboy, like yours truly, hungry for more.

Bill Black must've been one of that number too. Here he recreates the work of Syd Shores from the cover  of All-Winners Comics #21. It's a pleasure to see him not attempt to update the characters but attempt to truly represent what was on the newsstands so many decades before.

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Girls! Girls! Girls!

One of the strange trends which struck the Golden Age Timely heroes in their waning years before cancellation was the sudden appearance in nearly all the comics of a comely girl.

In the case of The Human Torch it was a lass dubbed Sun Girl.

Sun Girl showed up as Torch's new partner and also was featured in three issues of her own comic before disappearing for several decades.

The girl on this cover is the villainous Lavender.

Captain America lost Bucky (who got shot, but not fatally -- it's damn hard to kill that kid) but gained Golden Girl.

Golden Girl was in fact Betsy Ross, a longtime cast member of the Cap storyline created by Cap's very own fathers Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

Namor, the Sub-Mariner found his time shared with another "Sub-Mariner", this one a statuesque young woman named Namora.

Namora it turns out was Namor's cousin and had all the same powers as he did. She also was awarded a three-issue run at the same time as she was co-starring with her cousin in his comic.

The question though is why all of sudden did all these dames show up in the pages of what had been for a very long time exclusively man country.

Well girls seemed to be a target audience for Timely in 1948 with titles like Millie the Model, Margie, Nellie, Rusty, Tessie the Typist, Hedy DeVine, Patsy Walker and several more in their line-up.

The Blonde Phantom had recently taken over the classic superhero series All Winners.

Venus by Bill Everett debuted the same year. 

So maybe it's just Martin Goodman's tendency to jump on very trend with dominating gusto. Also in 1948 the critics of comics were finding footing and comics were being famously burned here and there across these United States by kids prompted by adults who objected to the lurid content. A publisher's organization called the "Association of Comic Magazine Publishers" was put together to stem the tide of criticism from parents groups and experts like the wily Dr.Wertham who was starting his campaign against comics in Collier's magazine.

Maybe the idea of teenage sidekicks just struck everyone as dopey, so off they went to the hospital and limbo while the rugged male heroes got to pal around with a beautiful girl on the side.

It's hard to say, but just as quick as they came they went, but then so did the superheroes.

Rip Off