Black Panther: Panther's Rage

One of many dynamic pages from Graham and McGregor

Black Panther: Panther's Rage (Marvel Epic Collection Volume 1) (1966, 1973-1976; collected 2015): written by Don McGregor; illustrated by Billy Graham, Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, Klaus Janson, and others: Jack Kirby and Stan Lee gave Black Panther life. Don McGregor and artists Rich Buckler and especially Billy Graham gave the character a soul. And note that the character predates the 1960's political movement of the same name by several months.

The recent Marvel movie used a number of elements from the McGregor-penned run included in this collection. Much is different, however. After reprinting the Black Panther's first two-issue appearance in Fantastic Four in 1966, this volume reprints McGregor's entire run on Black Panther from Marvel's Jungle Action comic book. What a ride it is!

The Lee/Kirby two-parter is fascinating insofar as it gives us an African superhero who rules over a seemingly backwater African nation that's actually a hive of super-technological sophistication. Beyond that, Black Panther is fairly boilerplate -- a noble fellow with a desire for revenge against white villain Ulysses Klaw. Still, the storyline is notable not only because the Black Panther is the first modern black superhero from a major comic-book company, but because Wyatt Wingfoot, a smart non-superhero Native American, saves the day in the first of the two Lee/Kirby issues. It's sort of a racial milestone for American superheroes.

McGregor's stuff is a whole different story. The mix of super-science and tradition remains in the Black Panther's country of Wakanda. McGregor's interests are such that Black Panther becomes a self-sacrificing, self-doubting character very early in the arc, with subsequent issues building on these attributes. 

This Black Panther had moved to America and joined the Avengers after his intro in FF; McGregor's work brings him back to a Wakanda that's grown turbulent in his absence. And Erik Killmonger (the villain of the movie as well) intends to wrest control of Wakanda from the Black Panther.

What follows is one of the longest sustained narratives in American superhero comic books to that point in the mid-1970's, one of the first true serialized graphic novels. Initial artist Rich Buckler does solid work. Once Billy Graham comes on board, the art really soars. And it's notable that Graham is one of the first African-American artists to work on a major publisher's superhero book.

Graham and McGregor are ambitious in their storytelling ambitions -- a variety of intriguing single and double-page compositions are just one way the art stands out. Graham is especially good at character work, faces and poses that make each character an individual. An issue inked by P. Craig Russell is especially fine as a horror story filled with grotesques.

The Black Panther's physical sufferings throughout McGregor's run, depicted and described in detail, cast him repeatedly in the role of a suffering Christ figure -- albeit a two-fisted Christ. I don't know that any mainstream superhero has had his suffering depicted in such detail. It ties into McGregor's ethos insofar as McGregor tempers the thrills of superheroics with repeated examinations of the physical and mental ramifications of Men in Tights walloping one another.

Erik Killmonger's plans ultimately occupy 13 (!) issues of Jungle Action. As Jungle Action was bimonthly, this first arc (titled Panther's Rage) went on for more than two years. Subsequently, McGregor and Graham send the Black Panther back to America to battle the KKK. Never let it be said that McGregor shied away from political and social issues. Alas, Marvel cancelled Jungle Action before the Klan storyline was over. It's still a bracing bit of storytelling. In all, highly recommended.

Black Panther (2018)

Black Panther (2018): based on characters and concepts created by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Don McGregor, Billy Graham, and others; written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole; directed by Ryan Coogler; starring Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther/ T'Challa), Michael B. Jordan (Erik 'Killmonger' Stevenson), Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia), Danal Gurira (Okoye), Martin Freeman (Everett Ross), Daniel Kaluuya (W'Kabi), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Winston Duke (M'Baku), Angela Bassett (Ramonda), Forest Whitaker (Zuri), and Andy Serkis (Ulysses Klaue):

Marvel's epic about its first African superhero is obviously a crowd-pleaser, based on its stunning box-office success. It's an enjoyable piece of work. Ryan Coogler and company do about as well as one can in these things when it comes to superhero characterization, and some of the early fight sequences are nicely staged without too many quick edits, especially a battle in a Korean casino.

We also get a good look at the high-tech kingdom of Wakanda in all its utopian, Afro-futuristic glory. Much of the visual design for the capital of Wakanda is thoroughly grounded in the work of writer-artist Jack Kirby, who co-created the Black Panther with Stan Lee in the pages of the Fantastic Four in the 1960's. Given the success of Black Panther and the even-more-Kirbyesque Thor: Ragnarok, Kirby's art still has some power to awe and delight.

I have my usual quibbles, some of them anyway. The final battle goes on forever and occurs on too many fronts to be dramatically satisfying. And changing the last name of sound- and vibranium-obsessed villain Ulysses Klaw (a spirited Andy Serkis, probably glad to be out of the motion-capture suit for once) to 'Klaue' is a hilarious moment in micro-managing "verisimilitude" in superhero movies.

For a rare moment, Marvel has a movie villain whose motivations make psychological sense in a serious way in Michael B. Jordan's inspired turn as Erik "Killmonger." He's about one personality change away from being a hero, which is what makes him so involving (well, that and Jordan's charismatic performance). He's almost a tragic hero, to the extent that one roots for him to "turn good."

Chadwick Boseman is terrific in the difficult role of the mostly saintly Black Panther. An all-star cast of women does great work as Black Panther/T'Challa's female honour guard, his teen-genius sister, his ex (a fun and funny Lupita Nyong'o) , and his mother, a regal Angela Bassett. Coogler and company even manage to navigate the potentially offensive Black Panther character known as Man-Ape, in part by never mentioning him by that name and instead making he and his people something other than antagonists. 

The tribal leader formerly known as Man-Ape (played by a solid Winston Duke) even gets some comic moments as he punctures the assumptions of Caucasian second-banana Bilbo, I mean, CIA agent Martin Freeman. Now that's good film-making! Highly recommended.

Spider-man: Homecoming (2017)

Spider-man: Homecoming (2017): based on characters and situations created by Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, and Don Heck; written by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Erik Sommers, Chris McKenna, Christopher Ford, and Jon Watts; starring Tom Holland (Peter Parker/ Spider-man), Michael Keaton (Adrian Toomes/ Vulture), Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/ Iron Man), Marisa Tomei (May Parker), Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan), Zendaya (Michelle), Jacob Batalon (Ned), Laura Harrier (Liz), and Chris Evans (Captain America): 

Spider-man: Homecoming because Spider-man: Prom lacked the metaphoric level of Spider-man's 'homecoming' to the Marvel Cinematic Universe after five movies in his own playground at Sony.

The movie is surprisingly funny and light on its feet. Spider-man: Homecoming gets Peter Parker's urgent need to save people just right. It also does the right thing by having Peter be an underclassman in high school. 

Tying Spider-man so thoroughly to Tony Stark/Avengers is a bit of a bummer, though. We're told repeatedly by assorted characters that Peter is "the smartest kid" they know. But the elements that made this true in the comics only remain in Peter's creation of his web-slinging fluid and web-shooters. And Tony Stark even improves on them. Peter doesn't have to create the finished version of the iconic costume, the Spider-Beacon, the Spider-tracer.... oh, well. The whole thing almost acts as metacommentary on Spider-man now being part of a vast, shared, corporate movie universe.

Tom Holland is good, as are most of the actors. As Spidey's newly minted best pal Ned, Jacob Batalon steals the show on several occasions while also demonstrating why maybe superheroes need to preserve their secret identities. He's definitely a plus. 

Peter Parker isn't the socially ostracized misfit of the comics, though, and that was always part of the point of Peter's high-school experiences: Spider-man is willing to help people who treat him badly. Here, socially awkward Peter has trouble asking a Senior girl to go to the Prom... sorry, Homecoming... but it turns out she has a huge crush on him! The angst and awkwardness of Peter Parker has been mostly muffled. It seems like Marvel missed a chance to use Spider-man to address issues of bullying et al. Spider-man's miserable high-school existence has been defanged.

So too his reciprocal, self-sacrificing pas de deux with Aunt May, who is now Marisa Tomei, her hotness much commented upon, her elderly comic-book nature replaced by a sort of hippie Earth Mother. I'm not sure Aunt May should turn out to be Stacy's Mom!

Still, it's a genial movie. Michael Keaton's Vulture is surprisingly low-key -- he's supposed to be a working-class joe who moved into high-tech after being screwed over on a contract he had to clean up some alien debris lying around after the Avengers' battle with the Chitauri invasion of New York that occurred at the end of Avengers (2012). As motivations go, it dovetails with the movie's treatment of Spider-man as a working-class hero who needs to give up his desire to join the Avengers full-time and save "the little people." Oh, those little people. Recommended.

All-American

Essential Captain America Volume 2 (1968-1970/ Collected 2004): written by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Jim Steranko; illustrated by Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, Gene Colan, John Romita, Joe Sinnott, Syd Shores, and others: The great transition period of Captain America begins here, as co-writer/penciller Jack Kirby gives way to Jim Steranko gives way to John Romita gives way, finally, to Gene Colan, who would stay on the book for a few years as penciller. 

Early red-giant-phase Stan Lee writes Steve Rogers, Captain America, as such an angsty bastard that the book occasionally shudders to a halt, bloated and inert and over-stuffed with bathetic self-pity. Redemptively, the art is good throughout, and Steranko's innovative lay-outs are such a  show-stopper that they've been collected and re-collected on numerous occasions. I don't know that the Gene Colan/Joe Sinnott art team ever entirely works for me -- Sinnott's inks normalize Colan's pencils a bit too much, make them a bit too smooth. 

It's 1968 when the collection begins, and Kirby and Stan Lee are clearly producing too much material at the time -- Lee's writing is well into its state of decay. Kirby is still great, but he's decreased the number of panels per page already, as he did on all of his Marvel books in the late 1960's. It makes for more interesting visual storytelling but also a real and notable decrease in content. Cap's African-American pal The Falcon makes his debut here. Once Kirby and Steranko leave, the new villains become ridiculous, as Lee flounders to create interesting villains and mostly fails. Recommended.

Doc Savage: The Spider's Web (2016/ Collected 2016): written by Chris Roberson; illustrated by Cezar Razek: Writer Chris Roberson nails venerable pulp hero Doc Savage much more effectively in his second go-round on the Man of Bronze's adventures for Dynamite Comics. Cezar Razek is a pleasant, straightforward cartoonist. I wish Dynamite would put an artist more, well, dynamic, on the new adventures of Doc Savage. So it goes. Any time Doc has to deal with an Earthquake Machine is all right with me. Recommended.

The Old and the New-Old

Batman (Detective Comics) Archives Volume 2 (1941-42/Collected 1991): written by Bill Finger and Don Cameron; illustrated by Jerry Robinson, George Roussos, Bob Kane, Fred Ray, and others: The Batman Mythos begins to mature with great rapidity in this second archive of stories from Detective Comics (where Batman premiered in 1939). Robin is part of the team, the Joker and the Riddler are recurring villains, and the origin of Two-Face appears here.

As Batman co-creator Bob Kane (with writer Bill Finger, finally being credited by DC in 2016, more than 40 years too late for the long-deceased Finger) doing less and less artwork, Batman's art gets progressively better because frankly, Bob Kane sort of sucked when he wasn't swiping other people's art. Jerry Robinson is on-board for the Joker, a character he co-created, while also supplying a much more pleasingly cartooned, detailed, and often funny Batman and Robin. George Roussos supplies his usually capable inks, complete with his ever-present giant moons.

The stories, most written by Finger, are at their best when they pit Batman against his growing rogue's gallery. Batman vs. mobsters is sort of boring. Batman vs. a mind-reading scientist, the Joker, or the Penguin is pretty great. One of the things to note about the early Batman is how text-heavy and panel-heavy it is. Kids were much faster readers in 1941! One wishes at times that the art was allowed to breath at times with fewer panels per page, but it would be years before this was true in the superhero comic book except in rare exceptions drawn by the Eisner or Simon&Kirby Studios. Recommended.

The Boy Commandos Volume 1 (1941-42/Collected 2010): written and illustrated by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby: Terrible, muddy colour reproduction caused by somebody who doesn't know how to use a colour scanner makes for some tough pages in this collection. Still, it's rewarding to read one of the first 'kid gang' comics. And what a gang! Co-writer-artists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby basically serve up Our Gang with Heavy Weaponry in the Boy Commandos, as a bunch of prepubescent boys run around Europe and Asia machine-gunning the crap out of the Axis powers. 

And they're sanctioned by the Allied military! 

The Boy Commandos are a multi-national group nominally led by adult Captain Rip Carter. Their adventures are wild and woolly, and a lot more fun than those of most adult WWII comic-book characters. One can see how the 'kid gang' comic became a popular one in the 1940's before fading out around the end of WWII. Recommended. Boy, this needs to be colour-adjusted, though.

Essential Fantastic Four Volume 2 (1963-1965/Collected 1995): written and illustrated by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; inked by Chic Stone, George Roussos, Vince Coletta, and Frank Giacoia: The Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four (the stretchable Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch, and super-strong Thing) starts to become a more recognizable, traditional superhero comic in this second collection of the FF's 1960's stories, in glorious B&W because this is an Essential B&W collection. They fight fewer monsters and more traditional super-villains. They also fight the Infant Terrible in a story that whoever wrote the Trelayne episode of  the original Star Trek may have prior to penning "The Squire of Gothos." 

The FF's goofiest, funniest enemies from their first volume of adventures -- the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes (!!!) -- do appear here in all their ridiculous glory. The Watcher, the Blue Area of the Moon, Doctor Doom, Prince Namor, the Super-Skrull, and the Mole Man return; Dragon Man, the Hate Monger, Mr. Gideon, the Frightful Four (including yet-to-be-revealed-as-Inhuman Medusa), and Franklin Storm debut. 

Team-ups with Doctor Strange, the Avengers, the X-Men, and a brief Peter Parker cameo sell the interconnectedness of the growing Marvel Universe to the reader. There are many stand-out stories here. Probably my favourite pits the mighty, wise-cracking Thing against a maddened, more-mighty Hulk for page after page of terrific superhero combat. The Thing's later pummeling of Dr. Doom is also a personal favourite, drawn with succinct power by Jack Kirby.

Stan Lee is typically bombastic and melodramatic throughout, with the slapstick antics of the eternally bickering Thing and Human Torch to add humour. The inking of Kirby's pencils starts off rough with George Roussos, who's a terrible fit with Kirby. It picks up with Chic Stone. Joe Sinnott's masterful inks of Kirby on the FF are still a year or so away by the end of this volume. Highly recommended.

Thor: Godstorm (2001-2002; collected 2011): written by Kurt Busiek; illustrated by Steve Rude and Mike Royer: Fun homage by Busiek, Rude, and late-career Jack Kirby inker Mike Royer to the sort of story normally found in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's run on The Mighty Thor in the 1960's. Thor's battle with the sentient thunderstorm Godstorm occurs in three different eras as depicted in the story. 

Busiek does that thing he does in which his writing is both homage (to Stan Lee) without being overly imitative of Lee's melodramatic verbiage. Steve Rude gives us his own action-packed, sometimes cartoony pencils, made to look just a bit more Kirbyesque than usual by Rude and inker Royer. My only complaint here would be that I'd like more of Busiek, Rude, and Royer's Thor. It's swell. Highly recommended.

The Inhuman Condition

The Inhumans: The Origin of the Inhumans: written by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; illustrated by Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott, and others (1965-68/ Collected 2013): Fun, 400-page collection of the first four years of Marvel appearances of the Inhumans by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. The mainstays of the Inhumans are here, the characters who would become the Royal Family of the group -- Black Bolt, Medusa, Gorgon, Karnak, Triton, Crystal, and super-giant-teleporting dog Lockjaw.

Medusa, with her crazy stretching prehensile hair, first appeared as a villain in Fantastic Four. Bigger things awaited, as she was eventually revealed to be an Inhuman and one of the good guys. What's an Inhuman? The result of an ancient attempt by the alien Kree Empire to mess with human genetics in the interest of... well, as presented here, simply because. Later retcons would make the Inhumans a weapons experiment, an idea that persisted on the TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this season. But here, the Kree are basically interested in the science of genetic engineering for its own sake,

So are born the Inhumans, who form a highly advanced society of super-powered beings while humanity still lives in caves. They'd eventually hide from the rest of humanity until they encountered the Fantastic Four and gradually came out of that hiding.

Ideas and characters come bursting out of Jack Kirby here, most of them still in use by Marvel today in comics and other media. Some issues of Fantastic Four have been carved up so that just the Inhumans sequences are reprinted. That's a good idea in this case -- in several cases, the Inhumans material is a B-plot that only gets a couple of pages in a comic.

Kirby's storytelling is action-packed and occasionally poignant. Two of the great under-rated Lee/Kirby superhero battles appear here, as the Fantastic Four battles two of the Kree, first the long-slumbering Sentry and then the 'public executioner,' Ronan the Accuser. Ronan got burned off in somewhat altered form in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Too bad -- he's a much more interesting character when he's not Cuckoo.

If one owns a collected Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four in some form, this volume isn't necessary (though it also includes Inhumans stories from the back pages of Thor). But even then, this is a pretty good way to encounter the Inhumans, who are sorta like mutants except that they're not. And as always with the Fantastic Four under Lee and Kirby's direction, there's a pleasing and almost unique blend of low comedy, soap opera, action, and cosmic moments. Highly recommended.

Fantastic Bore

Fantastic Four (2015): based on the comic book created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee; written by Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg, and Josh Trank; directed by Josh Trank; starring Miles Teller (Reed Richards/ Mr. Fantastic), Michael B. Jordan (Johnny Storm/ Human Torch), Kate Mara (Sue Storm/ Invisible Girl), Jamie Bell (Ben Grimm/ The Thing), Toby Kebbell (Victor Von Doom/ Doctor Doom), and Reg E. Cathey (Franklin Storm):

A truly misguided effort sucks all the fun out of Marvel's first family of superheroes. Writer-director Josh Trank got this gig on the basis of Chronicle, his found-footage film about teen-agers with super-powers gone horribly wrong. And there are moments in Fantastic Four that would make for a great superhero movie just so long as it wasn't about the Fantastic Four. Our heroes were some of the first whose origins were presented straightforwardly by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee as moments of Body Horror. Some of that remains here, and it's the best thing about the movie.

Unfortunately, the movie is slow, ponderous, and weighed down with characters who seem to have been written to be as annoying as possible. Following the lead of Marvel's revisionist Ultimate Fantastic Four comic book (not by Lee and Kirby), our heroes are all teen-agers now, while Doctor Doom is only a few years older. None of this helps. The actors, especially Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, do their best with the awful material. This isn't their fault. 

The movie pretty much throws away everything that made the original FF awesome, from the bickering, nearly soap-operatic melodrama to the low-comedy hi-jinks of The Thing and The Human Torch to the looming menace of Doctor Doom, here reduced to an angry crash-test dummy with ill-defined super-powers. The FF no longer get their powers by being heroic in a very early 1960's way (they want to beat the Soviets into manned orbit). Now they get drunk and take their goofy-ass transdimensional Stargate out for an ill-advised test drive. What larks, Pip!

It's all really pretty terrible, and as boring as Hell for long stretches. I think Josh Trank could do a great job on certain revisionist superhero properties -- or preferably on his own creations. This movie made me long for the goofy mediocrity of the early oughts FF movies. And I had to read 200 pages of classic Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four to get this movie out of my head. Also, whoever thought taking away The Thing's blue shorts was a good idea should be fired. Now. Forever. Not recommended.

1966

Batman '66 Volume 1: written by Jeff Parker; illustrated by Jonathan Case, Mike Allred, Ty Templeton, Joe Quinones, Sandy Jarrell, and others (2013-2014/Collected 2014): One of DC's first forays into Digital-first original comics is a jolly romp set in the universe of the 1960's live-action Batman series starring Adam West, Burt Ward, and several thousand 'Bams' and 'Pows.' It's fun and cheeky and campy. The art tends more to the cartoonish than the photo-representational, which was probably a good idea. And the cartoonists, like writer Jeff Parker, keep things light. Recommended.

Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD: written by Jim Steranko, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Roy Thomas; illustrated by Jim Steranko, Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Frank Giacoia, Joe Sinnott, and others (1966-68/ Collected 2000): Why Marvel didn't just complete the Jim Steranko Nick Fury run in this 2000 collection with the last 80 pages or so of Steranko's fun and innovative 1960's work on the company's master spy is a good question. They rectified that error 13 years later with a all-in-one volume, the one you should probably buy. But this was a remainder and cheap.

Writer-artist Jim Steranko managed to make the S.H.I.E.L.D. series into a groovy blast of science fiction, fantasy, and suspenseful super-heroics. He got traction as a comics artist and writer remarkably quickly, and his art background from beyond comics seemed to help motivate him to try innovative lay-outs and visual effects and combinations of photographic and drawn material. Many of the subsequent 'young turks' of comic-book art would follow in Steranko's footsteps, leading to the 1970's and its pantheon of young and exciting comic-book artists.

As Steranko gained more experience and confidence, the stories got wilder and weirder. A two-page spread that reveals the mastermind behind parodically stereotypical Asian super-criminal the Yellow Claw causes everything that comes before it to make a totally new, weird type of sense. It's as if Philip K. Dick had decided to write a superhero comic book -- and Steranko's ESP SHIELD Unit suggests, in its goals and its three-person composition, that Steranko was familiar with the Dick novella "The Minority Report." 

So too Dick's concerns with the nature of reality. There were already an awful lot of human-like robots running around the SHIELD series when Steranko came on board. That problem just multiplies, along with hidden bosses, mysterious traitors, and the occasional spot of interstellar travel and alien invasion. SHIELD's 1966 technology, and that of their evil counterparts AIM and Hydra, far surpasses that on the current TV show. So too the zippiness and the awesome weirdness of the scenarios.

It's the art and all its experiments that still sings, however, Steranko's occasional flatness when to came to the human form notwithstanding. Whether it's the photo-collage techniques he picked up from Kirby and refined on his own or the audacious four-page spread that required one to buy two copies of a SHIELD comic to see it in its entirety, the artwork showed a variety of ways that mainstream comics could be their own peculiar form of avant-garde Pop Art without a Lichtenstein to appropriate the images for the art world. Highly recommended.

But What of Kodos?

The Avengers/Kang: Time and Time Again: written by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, and Roger Stern; illustrated by Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Herb Trimpe, Tom Palmer, and others (1968-1986; collected 2005): Time-travelling super-villain Kang is probably the most fun villain Marvel's Avengers have ever had. He pops up all over the place. There are several thousand versions of him at one point. And he's also, probably, maybe, two other super-villains as well at different points in his timeline.

This too-slim volume presents Kang stories from a span of about 20 years, beginning with an encounter with Thor and ending with...well, actually the volume ends with a lengthy prose piece that explains Kang's twisted timeline from his first appearance in the late 1960's to the early 2000's. Along the way, Kang butts heads with the Avengers, and the Hulk and Thor in solo outings.

Among other things, Kang gave Marvel writer Roy Thomas a handy way to indulge his love of obscure characters, Marvel's 1940's superheroes, and homages to the characters of other comic-book companies. The Hulk teams up with the Phantom Eagle, a World War One flying ace in the Marvel universe with only one appearance previous to that team-up, to thwart Kang's plans. The Squadron Sinister, a riff on DC's Justice League, battles the Avengers. The Invaders, Marvel's World War Two superhero group, battles the Avengers. And so on, and so forth. Most importantly, Kang battles himself. Really, Kang's greatest enemy almost always turns out to be another version of Kang, while the Avengers look on in bemused fashion. He's the Man Who Scolded Himself.

The Roger Stern/John Buscema/Tom Palmer 1986 arc that ends the volume shows Stern at the top of his form as a writer, cleaning up continuity while also forging a fascinating story without over-indulging in nostalgia and minutiae in that Roy Thomas manner. The art throughout the volume ranges from competent in the sections pencilled by workhorse Sal Buscema to top-notch in the Jack Kirby-pencilled Thor outing and that concluding Stern arc, with Buscema and Palmer doing a fine job. Kang multiplies. He divides. I'd like an omnibus that contains all of his appearances. Would that be too much to ask? Recommended.

Super Powers!

Simon and Kirby: Superheroes: written and illustrated by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby with additional illustration by Mort Meskin, Gil Kane, and others; Introduction by Neil Gaiman; text pieces by Jim Simon (Original comic-book material 1940-1966; this edition 2010): Before and after there were Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, there were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Unlike Lee, Simon could draw, and the two writer-artists also ran a studio for some time in the 1950's. Britain's Titan Books have been doing a fine job of reprinting the work that Simon and Kirby still hold the copyright on, which is to say most of their work for comic-book companies other than Timely/Atlas/Marvel and NPP/DC.

This over-sized, lengthy collection brings together Simon and Kirby's superhero output from the 1940's and 1950's, along with some pages from a brief revival of Fighting American in the mid-1960's. It's both historically compelling and terrifically entertaining.

After a brief stop with a character (the Black Owl) Simon and Kirby didn't create, the volume takes us on a tour of the superhero genre during the time of its great decline. Without the debilitating censorship of the Comics Code Authority in the mid-1950's, it's entirely possible that American superhero comics would have been reduced to a tiny niche of a much larger marketplace with a much broader and more adult-focused comic book audience. Superheroes were already dying off before World War Two ended, and the post-war years only accelerated that decline.

With 1940's and 1950's characters that include Stunt-man and Fighting American, one can see Simon and Kirby striving to move the superhero genre into a different mode of comedy and satire. As Simon notes in his introduction, Fighting American didn't last long, but it did last longer than the proto-Marvel-company's attempt to revive Captain America in the 1950's (the Captain being one of Simon and Kirby's most popular creations).

Both Stunt-man and Fighting American play for the most part as comic takes on superheroes. Fighting American did begin as a serious comic in which the eponymous star-spangled hero fought assorted Communist menaces, but that approach rapidly went from straigghtforward to seriously loopy to intentionally ridiculous. By the time Fighting American and his sidekick Speedboy (!) battle a Communist villain whose superpowers derive from his body odour, we've pretty much left conventional superheroes behind for something a lot more like Mad magazine.

Simon and Kirby's art throughout is a lot of fun. Single- and double-page spreads abound, and there's a pleasing looseness and dynamism to the composition, which generally involved Kirby pencilling and Simon inking. Some of the later Fighting American material is clearly drawn by artists other than Simon and Kirby, but for the most part this is the Real Right Thing.

With the Silver Age underway at DC in the late 1950's, competing companies turned to more straightforward superhero comics again. The Shield and The Fly, both short-lived efforts for the Archie Comics superhero wing, remain satire-free while nonetheless continuing with an out-sized loopiness that's pure Silver Age.

The Shield, yet another star-spangled hero, has powers more like Superman's than Captain America's. The Fly's origin is completely nuts. Benevolent aliens who look like flies (and indeed sometimes are flies) invest the title character with the power of the Fly in order to fight evil. None of this involves eating crap, much less possessing a penis several times longer than his own body. Well, there was a Comics Code.

Other stories include the use of 3-D glasses (in Captain 3-D, natch) and an experiment with an anomalous three-person crime-fighting team. Uncompleted stories, unused covers, and some solid historical essays from Jim Simon round out the volume. It's an outstanding piece of entertainment and scholarship, with remastered art that often looks much better than what the big boys at Marvel and DC have managed with their reprints. Highly recommended.

Those Hard-Talking Commandos!

Marvel Masterworks: Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos Volume 1: written by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Dick Ayers; illustrated by Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, and George Roussos (aka George Bell) (1963-64; collected 2001): Early Marvel's first (and really only) semi-successful war book was a distinctly Marvelesque effort. Unlike DC's earlier Sgt. Rock, Sgt. Fury clearly took place in the same universe as the company's superhero books (Sgt. Rock would only be folded into DC continuity more than a decade after his first appearance). In the first 13 issues collected here, Reed Richards (later of the Fantastic Four in the book's chronology, as Fury was set during WWII) appears, as does Captain America villain Baron Zemo, along with Captain America and his partner Bucky Barnes.

The other Marvelization came with the decision to centre the action on a small squad of commandos, rather than all of Easy Company, as with Sgt. Rock. The Howling Commandos could thus appear anywhere in any of the theatres of WWII from issue to issue. And boy, do they! One month they're in the Japanese theatre, the next they're going after Rommel, and the next they're teaming up with Captain America to halt a Nazi effort to build a tunnel under the English Channel. They also thwart saboteurs in England. They're everywhere.

The whole thing goes down smoothly, with terrific art from Jack Kirby and, inking and then pencilling the title, the perennially under-rated Dick Ayers. There's a lot of action, much of it improbable (never have tanks been taken out so easily by soldiers armed only with guns! never have massive fortifications been overwhelmed by so few wise-cracking commandos!), all of it enjoyable so long as you didn't come here looking for realism.

Sgt. Fury also provides an early example of one of the delights with Marvel books down the ages -- the sometimes comic gaps between what the art clearly shows and what the dialogue writer tells you is happening. Again and again, the commandos clearly kill people by the score, but to satisfy the Comics Code Authority, Stan Lee's dialogue tells us that the Nazis escaped or got knocked unconscious off-'camera.' It's a forerunner to all those mysteriously surviving criminals in crashed helicopters and cars on The A-Team (which itself owes a clear debt to Sgt. Fury). Never have so many Nazis been knocked unconscious off-page by flame throwers, grenades, plunges off cliffs, and endless streams of bullets!

Unlike Sgt. Rock. Sgt. Fury makes no attempt towards even a gesture towards realism. This is early Marvel superhero action, enjoyably drawn and often hilariously over-written. As in real life, Stan Lee never knew when to shut up on the page, at least with Sgt. Fury. The dialogue comes so thick and heavy at times that some word balloons have been coloured so the reader doesn't get confused. Sgt. Fury and His Chatty Commandos, anyone? Recommended.

Zero

Fantastic Four 1234, written by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Jae Lee (2001; collected 2004): Scottish comics writer Grant Morrison has always seemed much more comfortable at DC than Marvel, despite the sales success of his 4-year run on Marvel's flagship X-Men title in the early oughts. This miniseries about the Fantastic Four is something of an abomination, though that isn't all Morrison's fault -- hyperreal artist Jae Lee, very good on a lot of Marvel titles, is a terrible fit for the Fantastic Four.

Basically, Dr. Doom gets up to some shenanigans, the members of the FF start acting wonky, and then the reasons for their wonkiness are revealed. This may be the most 'decompressed' Morrison writing ever -- it certainly seems a piece with its era of Marvel comics, as 20 pages of plot gets spread out over 100 pages. This cuts against one of Morrison's strengths -- namely, his hyper-dense, Silver-Age-influenced plotting. What one gets is a four-issue miniseries that takes less time to read than any issue of Morrison's JLA.

Lee's art is solid but ill-used in this case -- as with a lot of other contemporary Marvel artists, he tends to make The Thing look like a burn victim, which I'd say is pretty much the last place to go with this character. Applying a certain level of realism to Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards results in another grotesquerie. The Fantastic Four really shouldn't look like people you'd run screaming from if you met them on the street (well, OK, a little with The Thing sometimes, but he still works best as a tragicomic lug and loveable proto-Hellboy monster).

The centrepiece of Doom's latest evil plan gets tossed off in a couple of sentences -- with some development, it might have at least been an interesting idea, but as is it just sits there unconvincingly. Not recommended.

Of Inhuman Bondage

Marvel Masterworks: The Inhumans Volume 2, written by Doug Moench, Scott Edelman and Marv Wolfman, illustrated by George Perez, Gil Kane, Keith Pollard, Al Milgrom, Bob Hall, Terry Austin and others (1975-78; collected 2010): Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created the Inhumans during their long and essential run on their Fantastic Four title in the 1960's.

The product of genetic experiments by the mighty, interstellar Kree Empire intended to create biological weapons, the Inhumans are basically a race of super-heroes. Led by the ever-silent Black Bolt (who can destroy things by whispering, much less talking) and the rest of his royal family (wife Medusa and cousins Crystal, Gorgon, Triton and Karnak), the Inhumans avoid contact with humans while they hide away in their Himalayan city of Attilan.

They're great supporting characters. As the leads in their own book, they've never been much of a success. This volume collects the entire run (all 12 issues) of their first standalone, continuing series from the mid-1970's, along with other appearances from that time period.

Doug Moench struggles mightily to invest these ciphers with defining characteristics beyond the simplistic (Black Bolt is noble! Gorgon complains all the time!) while also situating them within a much more blatantly science-fictional universe than that surrounding most other Marvel characters. Genetic engineering and space travel yield a number of productive storylines, as does the internal and external politics of the Kree Empire. Black Bolt's nobility is put to the test again and again. Everybody, human and alien, seems to either despise the Inhumans or want a piece of them. They're like mutants in the Marvel Universe, only moreso.

As Moench notes in his introduction, Kirby and Lee were playing with Chariots of the Gods material when they originally created the Inhumans -- aliens tampering with human evolution and human history. The names of many of the Inhumans are drawn from human mythology, suggesting that they may be the source of certain myths. And of course there's the city of Attilan, its name echoing Atlantis, which once was an island on the ocean until the Inhumans moved it to the Himalayas. Jack Kirby would further indulge his Space-gods ideas in the New Gods and the Eternals; in the Inhumans we find more of a rough draft, still more tortured mutants than gods (I'm assuming that's mostly the work of Lee).

The great George Perez pencilled several issues of the continuing series, giving the reader solid superhero work that already shows flashes of the top-end superhero artist he would fully become by the early 1980's. Gil Kane and the always solid Keith Pollard also pencil some issues. The whole thing doesn't really go anywhere, but the ride is enjoyable. Recommended.

Stan Lee, Immortal Douchebag

Captain America: The First Avenger, created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, based on comic-book stories by Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Mark Gruenwald, Steve Engelhart, Steve Gerber, Jim Steranko and others, directed by Joe Johnston, starring Chris Evans (Captain America/Steve Rogers), Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter), Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes), Hugo Weaving (Schmidt/The Red Skull), Dominic Cooper (Howard Stark), Stanley Tucci (Dr. Erskine), Toby Jones (Arnim Zola) and Tommy Lee Jones (Colonel Philips) (2011): Director Joe Johnston won an Oscar for his effects work on Raiders of the Lost Ark and directed the flawed but period-detail-rich superhero movie The Rocketeer; those two things seem to have informed this Marvel movie, which is flawed but rich in period detail, mostly old-fashioned in a good way, and possessed of a villain with a supernatural weapon that rivals the Ark of the Covenant. Raiders even gets alluded to early on in the movie.

Steve Rogers is a 4F orphan repeatedly rejected for U.S. military service in the early days of America's entry into WWII. He's idealistic, tough, and hopelessly weak of body, though strong and loyal of heart. Dr. Erskine, working on a U.S. supersoldier program to counteract Nazi Germany's super-scientific Hydra organization, picks Rogers to be the first of America's super-soldiers because Erskine, who escaped Nazi Germany after accidentally creating a super-soldier for Hitler, wants to see super-strength in the hands of someone with a good heart.

And after various complications, Captain America is born and unleashed on the world...to sell War Bonds and entertain the troops. There's only one super-soldier, and the military brass don't want him getting killed. As this isn't actually a subversive comedy, Cap soon demonstrates his astonishing combat and tactical abilities and, with a Nick-Furyless group of Howling Commandos, takes on Hydra so that the rest of the Allied military can concentrate on the parts of WWII that actually occurred in 'our' history. Given that Hydra actually seems to be at war with the Axis as well as the Allies, I'm assuming Victory-Europe Day in this universe involved everyone celebrating the defeat of Hydra.

The movie is actually fun, and some of the period (or pseudo-period) stuff is pretty neat -- we get a flying wing, and we get those destroyer-sized Hydra super-tanks that the villainous Red Skull loved so much in Marvel Comics of the 1960's. Hugo Weaving plays the ambitious Nazi super-soldier -- he's the Red Skull but never actually called that in the movie -- who basically declaares war on everybody in 1943 thanks to the occultish power source that resembles the Cosmic Cube of the comic books but is actually some sort of tie-in to the earlier Thor movie and the upcoming Avengers movie. Weaving is great, the supporting cast is solid, and Chris Evans surprises as Captain America. He's still not big enough to be Cap, but he does a good job with the earnest, straightforward heroics of the role.

Some have complained that Cap doesn't really fight Nazis in the movie, which is pretty much true -- Hydra goes rogue pretty early and operates as its own entity. In this, the movie parallels the Captain America comics of the 1960's, which had Hydra galore and in which Hitler generally seemed to be working for the Red Skull, rather than the more (vaguely) historical Cap comics of the 1940's, in which Captain America battled saboteurs, Nazis, Bundists, and the Japanese empire. And vampires and werewolves working for the Axis. Oh, real history, why are you so boring even when you're occuring?

Captain America was, of course, created by writer/artists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and not by some faceless monolith named Marvel or, even more egregiously, by Stan Lee, though Stan may have been sharpening pencils in the office when the first pages of Captain America showed up at the (then) Timely Comics. One of the great ironies of many iconic mainstream superheroes is that they fight for truth, justice and the little guy while themselves being concepts stolen from their actual creators to make enormous amounts of money for businessmen, gigantic corporations, and the apparently immortal Stan Lee, who cameos here as a general. Will Stan Lee ever die? How much life force did he steal from everyone who worked with him?

The script for this movie was assembled from the comics work of a lot of fine writers and artists, and I'm sure the screenwriters made more for cannibalizing those writers than all of those writers and artists made from their entire careers at Marvel. Welcome to the American Dream, True Believers! Excelsior! Nonetheless, recommended, though if you want to avoid shitting any more money into Marvel's coffers, by all means find a bootleg copy of the movie.

Angry, Dizzy Hulk

Marvel Masterworks: The Incredible Hulk Volume 1, written by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko; illustrated by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Paul Reinman and Dick Ayers (1962-1963): Of all the classic Marvel characters created in the early 1960's, the Hulk was the least fully realized in his early appearances. He started off grey and surly and possessed of a full, albeit thuggish, vocabulary.

Over the course of the six issues collected here, the Hulk turns green, changes from Dr. Bruce Banner to Hulk only at night, can't change back into Banner at all, is briefly mind-controlled by teen sidekick Rick Jones, changes between Hulk and Banner only when bombarded with gamma radiation, and gets cancelled with issue 6. Whew!

Banner is clearly the hero in most of these issues, with the Hulk playing a supporting role that alternates between grumpy menace to humanity and two-fisted saviour of humanity. Indeed, Banner and not the Hulk saves the entire Earth from the invading space armada of the Toad People, and it's Banner and not the Hulk who convinces misguided Communist super-scientist the Gargoyle to turn against his Commie masters in the Hulk's first issue. Banner's mind also (sort of) controls the Hulk for a couple of issues, though growing more surly and (early) Hulk-like by the panel.

The first few issues are a lot of fun partially because of the protean nature of the Hulk: it's like reading Lee and Kirby workshopping what would eventually become a very popular character, trying stuff out and discarding that stuff almost as quickly. Two of the most defining traits of the Hulk in the broader popular imagination -- his child-like personality and Banner's transformation into the Hulk when under emotional stress -- wouldn't appear until the Hulk was brought back from cancellation to star in his own stories in Tales to Astonish a couple of years after the stories collected here. Lee, Kirby and Ditko do their usual fine early-1960's work. As a bonus, Ditko inks Kirby on a couple of issues here, a penciller/inker combo as rare as it is awesome. Highly recommended.