Deathlok the Demolisher: Origins

Another look at a series that is not touched by the Essentials.

Deathlok the Demolisher: Origins is a Panini pocketbook that reprints Astonishing Tales #25 to #28 & #30 to #35. The writing credits vary a bit but are mainly Rich Buckler with Doug Moench or Bill Mantlo scripting and/or co-plotting at times. The art on all issues is mainly by Buckler with additional contributions variously by Keith Pollard, Arvell Jones, Bob McLeod and "the whole blame Bullpen". Bonus material includes a two-page humour strip from issue #25 that was George Pérez's first published pencil work and various pencils and a 1976 watercolour by Buckler.

This is a strip with an interesting combination of themes that were prevalent back in the mid 1970s. There's a dystopian future in which familiar cities have become rundown hellholes whilst war has driven the military into an ever more powerful position. There are cyborgs as humans are reconstructed to be part machine and even more effective warriors than before. And there's the zombie fad adapted into science fiction with the lead character being a reanimated corpse.

Often an era's general cultural outlook is best reflected in the prevalent visions of the future. When the future is portrayed as a bold, pioneering vision of harmony it usually reflects on a present that may have big problems in the here and now but is confident of solving them. But there are times when such optimism is in rather short supply. The 1970s was a decade of cynicism in which many of the previous confidences had been dramatically shaken. It's unsurprising to find this future set strip takes place in such a grim and pessimistic environment. What is a shock though is the time. It's set in 1990, suggesting that nobody expected it to be still be read by that year or beyond. No doubt the pessimism about the future extended to the US comic industry, though 1990 would see it not only still going and in strong health at that, but also launching a new Deathlok series.

The fusion of cyborg and zombie produces a lead character with some unique characteristics. A dead soldier whose corpse has been kept in storage for five years, Luther Manning finds himself unexpectedly sentient again in a form that's part decayed corpse, part cybernetic addition. With a built in computer that he often converses with in private, Deathlok is set on a search to recover his humanity and seek revenge on Simon Ryker, the major who has yanked him from a noble death and brought him into this living hell as part of a wider scheme. Ryker is the main villain throughout the book though we also see the rise of his rival Hellinger amidst a wider development of cyborgs, military attacks on Deathlok and the cannibals who roam the streets of New York. Deathlok has some good character moments, especially when he turns up at his old home only for his wife and child to recoil in horror. Later he finds out that his best friend has married his wife.

But whilst the series may have some good concepts, the whole thing is let down by bad pacing. It suffers from "decompression" decades before the term was coined, with a rather simple storyline of Deathlok going rogue and seeking revenge on Ryker who in turn tries to neutralise him. This drags out over ten issues and although the individual chapters may generally hold up well the overall storyline feels excessive and somewhat dull. The series suffers a reprint fill-in, a truncated issue and an issue drawn by multiple hands, all signs of a series suffering troubles. Being very much an artist's pet project one might expect it to be all flashy art at the expense of plot but instead it's more character moments and smaller incidents that drag the whole thing out. The art is, however, quite good and does an especially effective job at portraying horror through reaction shots rather than showing it on panel. This is also notably a series without any interaction with the rest of the Marvel universe, instead taking place in its own time and thus a greater degree of creative freedom than was normally available in this era.

This edition lacks the final issue of Astonishing Tales but promises another Deathlok book is coming soon. It has yet to appear on Panini's schedules leaving the series on a slight cliffhanger though the main story of the struggle with Simon Ryker is completed here. Overall this edition shows a series that's very strong on ideas and individual moments but rather weak when collected together as a whole.

Essential Man-Thing volume 1

Hoh boy. This is the one that brings out all the sniggering.

So let's take this slowly. Essential Man-Thing volume 1 contains material from multiple titles including issues of Giant-Size Man-Thing.

Let's just pause for a moment to let everyone get the sniggering out of their system.

[Lengthy pause.]

All done? Because there won't be another break.

(But on an aside, did the term "man-thing" actually have such connotations in early 1970s America, or are the sniggers all down to latter-day use of the term or even transatlantic differences? A quick Google search is unhelpful, being dominated by the comic character, but then the term is far from the most common name for the... well you know.)

Now down to business.

Essential Man-Thing volume 1 contains the eponymous creature's earliest appearances and issues, consisting of material from Savage Tales #1, Ka-Zar's feature in Astonishing Tales #12-13, Adventure into Fear #10-19, Man-Thing #1-14, Giant-Size Man-Thing #1-2 and Monsters Unleashed #5 & #8-9. Most of these series were anthologies in either comic or magazine format, the latter not falling under the Comics Code Authority and allowing for less censored material. Adventures into Fear was previously a reprint series and then became another long-run try-out title before successful characters received a title in their own right. Bonus material includes Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for both the Man-Thing and Jennifer Kale. One notable omission is the cover to Savage Tales #1 but on investigation it seems that this is because the cover spotlights Conan the Barbarian and so presumably having lost the Conan licence Marvel are unable to reprint it even when accompanying a non-Conan story.

The Man-Thing's debut in the magazine Savage Tales is written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway and drawn by Gray Morrow. All contribute to subsequent tales which are written mainly by Steve Gerber, with contributions by Len Wein and Tony Isabella. The art is mostly by Val Mayerik and Mike Ploog with contributions by John Buscema, Neal Adams, Rich Buckler, Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, Alfredo Alcala, Vincente Alcazar and Pat Broderick. As this produces many labels, some have been placed in a separate post.

Reading through this volume I've felt as though I was stuck in a swamp myself. It has been a very long and slow read and, although a variety of real world events have intervened to contribute to that, the series itself has not proved very inspiring at times. At the heart of it the series suffers two major problems. One is the complete mindlessness of the title creature, resulting in no dialogue or character development at all and making it hard to get interested in what happens to him. The other is the swamp environment not lending itself to many obvious story types and the ones that are do get used fall into a mixture of stiltedness or just plain weirdness.

There's a long tradition of swamp monsters and it's now unknown just whether the inspiration for the Man-Thing or the Swamp Thing came first. But it takes more than just a walking mound of slime to create excitement. For the Man-Thing there's an attempt to create some tragedy through his origin as we see scientist Ted Sallis betrayed to spies by his assistant/girlfriend and having to take a serum to survive, only for it to interact with the swamp and turn him into a shambling monster. As origins go it's nice and self-contained but with openings that could be used to spin off multiple further adventures. Unfortunately not too much is done in this volume with that. The monster seemingly has no coherent thoughts or memories so can neither embark on a quest for vengeance nor try to find a cure for his condition. Ellen appears again only in a special story from Monsters Unleashed as she recovers from her burns and returns to the swamp to deal with the memories. In doing so she comes face to face with what Ted has become, leading to a memorable moment as she demonstrates no fear, but in the regular series she is forgotten. The organisation Ellen works for, later revealed as AIM, don't catch on to what has really happened to Ted and come after the monster again and again. And so all we're left with is the stumbling monster wandering the swamps and influenced by the emotions of those around it.

That said the Man-Thing does demonstrate some interesting ideas such as the ability to literally ooze through any small opening and a touch that burns whenever the recipient demonstrates fear. Visually he's also a good design, even in black and white, and so makes for a series of strong images though I generally prefer Val Mayerik's depiction to Mike Ploog's. However I'm not sure how he displayed in colour - the front cover shows some very similar shades of green being used for both the monster himself and the background swamp. Fortunately the back cover has found some more distinguishing variations of green.

The character took a while to take off, not helped by Savage Tales only publishing one issue for some years. But the following year, after an appearance in Ka-Zar's strip in Astonishing Tales, which isn't particularly memorable in its own right but which does serve to thrash out some of the details of the character, the Man-Thing soon got an ongoing title in the pre-existing Fear, albeit with the title expanded to Adventure into Fear. This series had previously reprinted many monster stories from Marvel's pre-superheroes era, and the choice of this title helped to place the Man-Thing within the sense of a restoration of the non-superhero monsters. This is also reflected in the guest stars that appear or rather don't.

Once we get past the guest appearance in Ka-Zar's strip, there are no further substantial guest appearances included in this volume (although there are some cameos). This is despite the period covering guest appearances in Avengers, Daredevil and Marvel Two-in-One which show that the Man-Thing wasn't completely isolated from the wider Marvel universe. Such a limited interaction as presented here can allow a character to strive and thrive on their own two feet without interruptions, but it can also leave their deficiencies heavily exposed with precious little to fall back on. It's very much the latter effect here and I feel the series could have seriously benefited from either some appearances by familiar faces or else a fully developed supporting cast who actually hang around long enough to make a big enough impact.

The swamp is located in the Everglades in Florida and comes with all the traditional contents of a swamp from fierce crocodiles to hillbillies, as well as being the site for a proposed airport. But it also contains some decidedly fantastical elements. There is a hidden civilisation based around a Fountain of Youth. And the swamp is the site of the Nexus of All Realities, a gateway that links it to many dimensions containing all manner of weird oddities. The Man-Thing has become the guardian of the Nexus, offering the ironic spectacle of such a great responsibility falling upon such a mindless beast.

There's a tendency for the supporting cast to only appear briefly before disappearing. The first notable case is Jennifer Kale, a young amateur witch who develops a psychic link with the Man-Thing but it is subsequently broken. Her brother Andy and their grandfather Joshua, the head of a cult that seek to defend the Earth from the demons found in the Nexus, also appear, as does Jennifer's boyfriend Jaxon, offering some broader mythology but it's not really developed here. However the Kale family would go on to be tied into the continuity of another of Marvel's horror heroes but when I last tried to read a summary of the family history all I could grasp was just how much my head hurt. Elsewhere are two distinctly strange beings who come through the Nexus - Korrek, a barbarian who arrives through a jar of peanut butter, and Howard the Duck. To my surprise Howard is killed off early on and doesn't come back within this volume but his popularity would take him to great heights elsewhere. Later on we meet Richard Rory, a perpetual loser who repeatedly finds himself in the swamp. More than once he seems to hit it off with a woman who is also lost there, only for things to go wrong. However he does land a spot as a night-time radio DJ. The first such woman is Ruth Hart, on the run from a gang, and it at first seems as though she may have staying power but it comes to nothing.

Villains range from the earthly to the fantastic. At the grounded level the Man-Thing's most persistent nemesis is F. A. Schist, an industrialist intent on building an airport in the swamp, which brings him into recurrent conflict with the Man-Thing, including bringing in the scientist Professor Slaughter. Eventually Schist's greed consumes him when he finds the Fountain of Youth and is destroyed by the Man-Thing, but his vengeance seeking widow later comes after the monster. Elsewhere is the first appearance of the serial killer called the Foolkiller, who is seemingly killed off in his first appearance but would later come back. There are also a string of one-off criminals who pass through the swamp and usually come to grief at the hands of the Man-Thing, though things aren't always great for the victims. There's an especially nasty case of this in a two-part text story from Monsters Unleashed where an unsuccessful writer flees after his girlfriend was killed by a mugger only to get caught between a mad father trying to kill his daughter. But things are not always as they seem, as shown early on when the Man-Thing encounters a black man on the run from a racist and jealous sheriff, only to discover disputing claims between them. The more fantastical foes include various magical beings from the Nexus such as Thog the Nether-Spawn, Dakimh the Enchanter and various one-off named and unnamed demons. Or there's the first appearance of the alien Wundarr, a parody of Superman and his origin. A rare trip away from the swamp bring an encounter with ghost pirates led by Captain Fate, doomed to never reach port due to a curse inflicted by a crewmember they abandoned.

Giant-Size Man-Thing may have a title that everyone laughs at, but the first two issues are straightforward serious content, with the only change from the regular series being an increased use of characters from the wider Marvel universe. The first issue sees the Man-Thing battle the Glob, previously seen in the Incredible Hulk, due to the influence of the Cult of Entropy. The second sees a bunch of cameos, most notably from Mister Fantastic, as the Man-Thing gets briefly transported to New York in a partial parody of King Kong. But otherwise these bigger issues are just expanded versions of the normal sort of story for the series, which has now settled into a pattern of some edginess and social commentary wrapped up around monster and magic tales.

Overall this volume may have some imagination to it but it's the execution that is the problem. Ultimately the central character just isn't sufficiently exciting and there's not enough going on around him to make this compelling stuff. Steve Gerber's issues do include a degree of commentary and satire, but this approach can either date all too easily or else sink if the reader does not have the cultural background to spot the targets. What we're left with is a title that begins as a latter-day monster story in the vein of an earlier generation of Marvel that gets crossed with fantasy and absurdity in the hope that something in this mix will congeal. But the result just doesn't work for me.

Essential Super-Villain Team-Up volume 1

Essential Super-Villain Team-Up volume 1 contains the Dr. Doom stories from Astonishing Tales #1-8, followed by Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up #1-2, Super-Villain Team-Up #1-14 & #16-17 (#15 reprinted Astonishing Tales #4-5), plus crossover storylines in Avengers #154-156 and Champions #16. Astonishing Tales was yet another anthology, this one from the early 1970s and its initial issues featured Dr. Doom and Ka-Zar. The Champions was a brief lived superhero team of the mid 1970s that teamed up the likes of the Angel, Ice-Man, the Black Widow, Hercules, Ghost Rider and Darkstar. Bonus material includes the cover of Marvel Super-Heroes #20 (an anthology series which combined try-out new material with reprints from the Golden Age) and a two-page spread omitted from that issue's story when it was reused in Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up #1.

The Astonishing Tales stories are written by Roy Thomas, Larry Lieber and Gerry Conway, and drawn by Wally Wood, George Tuska and Gene Colan. Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up is written by Roy Thomas and Larry Lieber, and drawn by John Buscema, Larry Lieber, Frank Giacoia and Mike Sekowsky. The regular size Super-Villain Team-Up is written by Tony Isabella, Jim Shooter, Bill Mantlo, Steve Englehart and Peter Gillis, and drawn by George Tuska, Bill Everett, George Evans, Sal Buscema, Herb Trimpe, Keith Giffen, Jim Shooter, Bob Hall, Carmine Infantino, and Arvell Jones. The Avengers issues are written by Conway and Shooter, and drawn by George Pérez and Sal Buscema. The Champions issue is written by Mantlo and drawn by Hall. That's an awful lot of creators, not helped by the first issue of the regular size series having three pencillers on a single issue. The first issue of the Giant-Size is also complicated by incorporating amended reprints of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner #20 and Marvel Super-Heroes #20 into the actual narrative. Because of this long list some of the labels have been placed in a separate post.

The Astonishing Tales stories come from an attempted revival of the double feature book in the early 1970s, but I don't know if there were any other series of the type at the time. Within these eight issues we get a number of stories with the oddity of the lead character being a villain, yet we don't get many defeats. Instead we see Doom first face off an attempted overthrowal by the pretender to the throne of Latveria with the aid of an alien, whilst also facing an experiment going wrong and releasing an android with his own mind patterns on the country. Subsequent issues see Doom facing off an invasion of Latveria by the Red Skull and his allies the Exiles, a group of ex-soldiers from all the Axis powers seeking to establish the Fourth Reich, or trying to raid vibranium from Wakanda only to be seen off by the Black Panther. But even this latter story leaves open the question of which ruler has won - Doom who escapes unharmed or T'Challa whose kingdom is devastated by an earthquake caused by Doom's mining. The final issue sees Doom attempt to rescue his mother's soul from the clutches of the Devil but fails to defeat her captor's champion. (At this stage Marvel tended to portray various demons, most obviously Mephisto, as being the actual Devil/Satan without always depicting him consistently across series. In later years they'd back away from this idea but at the cost of sowing chaos across some characters' continuity - Ghost Rider can be particularly tricky.)

The series is brief but manages to fill out most of the details about Doom such as why he wears the mask, his past relationship with Valeria, his seizure of the throne of Latveria and the fate of his mother. We don't get an actual flashback to the infamous accident that scarred his face or a reminder of his quest for power but this is probably to the advantage as the details we are given come woven into ongoing stories, rather than taking up the first issue with loads of details a good chunk of the readership would already know. With only eight issues and each instalment just ten pages long there isn't much time to explore things in too much dept, but Doom emerges with his dignity and power intact. That said it's hard to deny that this strip's appearance here is largely filler material to make up the page count as Doom doesn't actually team up with any other super-villains in these stories. Issues #4-5 may have been reprinted in Super-Villain Team-Up #15 but the issues show a confrontation not an alliance between Doom and the Red Skull. Still without their appearance here we probably wouldn't have got to see these stories at all.

Onto Super-Villain Team-Up itself. As ever with a team-up title here's a list of the banner stars in each issue, though formally naming them on the cover doesn't start until issue #3 and the earlier issues have the stars at the top of the intro pages.

Giant-Size 1. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
Giant-Size 2. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
1. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
2. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
3. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
4. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
5. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
6. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
7. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
8. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
9. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
10. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
11. Doctor Doom and the Red Skull
12. Doctor Doom and the Red Skull
13. Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner
14. Doctor Doom and Magneto
(15. Doctor Doom and the Red Skull - reprinting Astonishing Tales #4-5)
16. The Red Skull and the Hate-Monger
17. The Red Skull and the Hate-Monger

As can be seen from this list the overall approach to the series was rather different from the format of Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One where the guest stars rotated virtually every issue. Instead the first half or so of the run is about the only time in the Bronze Age that I'm aware of when Marvel successfully launched a "buddy book" title of two pre-existing characters. (Marvel Team-Up was initially going to be a regular Spider-Man and the Human Torch series but rapidly switched to the rotating format, which was then adopted from the outset for Marvel Two-in-One. The Champions was originally going to be a duo of the Angel and Ice-Man, but during conception it morphed into a more general team title, albeit one that selected characters to fill various boxes.)

However it's quickly clear that this series wasn't exactly a conventional teaming. Neither the Red Skull nor Magneto actually team-up with Doom in the issues in question but instead battle with him, and much of the rest of the first sixteen issues (including the Giant-Size) are devoted to the strained relations between Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner as the former tries to recruit the latter to his scheme to conquer the world, rather than actually showing the two engaged in this plan. Part of the problem, as Doom eventually realises, is that the Sub-Mariner is primarily an anti-hero seeking the advancement of his undersea kingdom and only attacks the surface world in anger for perceived actions against Atlantis. Back in the early issues of Fantastic Four the Sub-Mariner was a wandering loner whose kingdom had disappeared and he did take on a more villainous role, even teaming up with Doctor Doom to take on the Fantastic Four. But the character had come a long way since then and a series that tries to recapture the spirit of Fantastic Four #6 just isn't going to work without major alterations to at least one of the characters. That's probably why new directions are announced for both issues #4 & #10, and then issue #14 brings another, though the end of the issue announces it's the end of the series. I'll come back to that claim in a bit. In the meantime the main bond forced between Doom and the Sub-Mariner are the-then recent alterations to the latter's body chemistry making it impossible for him to last out of water, especially when the life support suit he's wearing in the early issues begins to fail. Doom's supply of a cure results in Namor being honourbound but it's an uneasy process.

In the course of the alliance Doom and Namor face a number of both heroes and other villains, most of whom have previously clashed with at least one of them before. Early on they clash with Andro, the android from Astonishing Tales, and later on the Latverian legitimist pretender and the Red Skull. Namor's past conflicts soon bring Attuma, Tiger Shark and Dr. Dorcas, then later Krang. We also get a brief visit to Latveria by the Circus of Crime. The Fantastic Four also come into conflict with Doom over attempts to save the Sub-Mariner from being honourbound into the alliance. The Avengers crossover involves further conflict with Attuma but also brings a couple of encounters for what I think are the first time in the modern era - Namor and the Whizzer, and a fight between Doom and Iron Man. Finally in the original run we get a clash with both Magneto and the Champions. This brief team has often been mocked in hindsight for its unlikely combination and being located in Los Angeles - a famous line by the Angel in later years was "Do you know how hard it is to find supervillains in Los Angeles?" - but here they come across as reasonably competent, if beset by personality disputes. The more surprising portrayal is Magneto who initially seeks an alliance with Doom, proclaiming them to both be "homo superior". It's a reminder that Magneto hasn't always been the militant mutant superiority fighter he's best known as, and for many years was a more generic would-be world conqueror.

We get a few new creations such as the Symbionic Man, but the most significant is the Shroud. A mysterious figure in a dark costume with an origin that combines elements of Batman's (young boy sees his parents shot by a street criminal, vows vengeance on all crime and trains himself accordingly) and Doom's (makes his way to a Himalayan cult where he learns more but has his face burned in the process). It seems Steve Englehart wanted to write Batman but at this point he was at the wrong company, though all that would change the following year. Apparently he was actually drawing on the Shadow rather than Doom, but then again rather a lot of fictional characters have acquired special skills and magic from near mythical places in the Himalayas.

Issue #3 has a particularly dramatic moment when Betty Dean, Namor's original romantic interest, sacrifices herself to save Namor from being shot by Dr. Dorcas. Given the character's long term significance, she's dispatched rather suddenly even if she had only made a dozen or so new appearances since the 1960s revival of the Sub-Mariner. There are some other odd moments relating to women. We're occasionally reminded of Doom's loss of Valeria, but a really odd moment comes in issue #7 when he goes to a peasant's house and asserts droit de seigneur ("right of the lord") - which isn't fully spelt out here (Doom merely states he has "absolute right to the company of any woman in the land") but it was the purported feudal right of lords to bed virgins on the estate. There's no historical evidence that such a custom existed in medieval Europe but that wouldn't necessarily stop Doom. However it seems completely out of character for him to be pursuing such lust with any random woman and feels like a clumsy attempt to reinforce the character's wickedness. But Doom doesn't need to be shown asserting such rights to achieve that.

More curious is a moment in issue #6 where it's revealed that Doom has conducted a peace treaty with the United States that gives him greater protection from US based heroes who are now at risk of causing international incidents. The treaty is personally concluded with none other than Henry Kissinger. I presume that in the mid 1970s there weren't Republican watch groups who would pounce on portrayals in media and publicly attack companies for "misrepresenting" their side. But the whole incident feels a little clumsy again as it leads to rants by the Fantastic Four about appeasement and Kissinger's realpolitik. It's hard to escape the conclusion that these issues (#6-7), published in early 1976, was being used by Englehart for naked political soapboxing. It's also amazing that he could get away with it, but 1976 was the Year of The Three Editor-in-Chiefs at Marvel and amidst such turbulance oversight standards were presumably not the best.

Overall the initial run of the title takes a rather bizarre concept and does its best to try and make it work. Some of the issues have ambiguous endings and Doom sometimes triumphs over other foes. But in general it's very hard to base a series around villains and even harder to do so when one of them doesn't easily slot into the role the title implies. The series came out in a period when the length of regular sized Marvel comics shrank from nineteen to eighteen and then seventeen pages per issue so the stories fly pretty fast. But it's hard to escape the idea this series never really had a clear idea of what it was for or where it was going, hence the two new directions and the eventual shift away from the Doom/Sub-Mariner relationship to a more general Doom and a rotating guest star title. However it was too little too late and it's easy to see why issue #14 ends with "This is the last issue of Super-Villain Team-Up".

Yet somehow despite the series announcing its ending in 1977, three more issues came out, one per each of the following years. I'm not sure why this was but as issue #15 is a reprint, it's probable it was a rush job. Maybe it was a fill-in to take the place of a delayed title at the printers at a time when publishers were fined if the presses went empty. Alternatively the issue was on sale in August 1978 which seems to be the exact month the effect of the "DC Implosion" hit the newsstands with a dramatic cutback of the number of DC titles - was Marvel rushing some extra books into print to capitalise on the released marketshare? Presumably the issue sold well enough for someone to give the title another chance, but this time going for a more general team-up of villains. So six months later issue #16 appeared in early 1979... and then nothing for over a year before the story was concluded with the publication of issue #17. Was this a monumental production delay, was the revived series never properly scheduled or was it just being printed as and when gaps in printing were looming?

The final two issues tell a brief story that seems to be motivated more by tying up an obscure part of Marvel continuity than with actually doing anything major with the Red Skull. We get the tale of how the Skull and the Hate Monger are running a Nazi island in the Caribbean - it makes a difference from the Latin American jungle I guess - where they're using technology to create a new Cosmic Cube whilst fending off the interference by agents of Mossad and SHIELD. However there's a twist as the Hate Monger is none other than Adolf Hitler.

Part of the story's purpose is to tidy up Marvel continuity with the revelation that Hitler is occupying a clone of his original body with his mind having been projected out when he was "killed" in the Berlin bunker at the end of the Second World War by the original Human Torch. In the 1950s Marvel had created this alternate take on Hitler's death and it may have seemed a great idea at the time but it now seems rather crass. They then made an alternative version of this crassness in 1963 when a Fantastic Four issue ended with the revelation the defeated and dead Hate Monger had been... Adolf Hitler. At the time the idea of Hitler having survived the war was a fairly popular idea in fiction (and Marvel was ignoring its 1950s stories altogether) but again it can seem to trivialise one of the most evil men real history has thrown up. It would probably have best to have just dismissed the original Hate Monger as one of Hitler's doubles. But instead we now get a tale teaming up Marvel's most prominent Nazi with the real world's greatest Nazi. The story itself is tame, show how the Skull fends off the attack but also out double-crosses the Hate Monger, trapping the latter inside the new Cosmic Cube which is in fact merely a prison.

The story allows the Red Skull to put Hitler the man behind him whilst still pursuing Hitler's goals and philosophy. But the Skull didn't need such a moment - Hitler could have been left dead and the Hate Monger dismissed as an old double of Hitler. If a confrontation and continuity tidy was needed, this would have allowed the Skull to establish himself as the supreme heir to Nazidom without the crass treatment of the founder. Overall this story is rather dissatisfying and a pretty low ending for the series. It had never really found a direction and by this point it was just Super-Villain Team-Up in name only.