Essential Hulk volume 1

Essential Hulk volume 1 contains, in the original edition, all six issues of the original Incredible Hulk series and then the Hulk strips from issues #60-91 of Tales to Astonish (the anthology series that also starred Ant-Man/Giant Man and which later featured Namor the Sub-Mariner). Everything in the volume is written by Stan Lee. Jack Kirby draws the first five issues before being succeeded by Steve Ditko who carries on into the early Tales to Astonish stories. Kirby then returns for a few issues before switching to do layouts which are finished by a mix of "Mickey Demeo" (Mike Esposito moonlighting whilst at DC), Bob Powell, Scott Edward, John Romita and Bill Everett, then issue #84 is credited to "Almost the whole blamed Bullpen". After this (and probably not coincidentally) we get full pencils from John Buscema and Gil Kane. Later editions have added the Hulk's guest appearance in the Giant-Man strip in Tales to Astonish #59 (written by Stan Lee and drawn by Dick Ayers) which served as a trailer for the Hulk's own strip. (This strip can also be found in Essential Ant-Man volume 1.)

This is literally a volume of two halves albeit unequal ones. The first consists of the original Incredible Hulk series that lasted just six issues back in 1962-1963. Reports are divided as to whether it actually a poor seller or if it was just a victim of Marvel's limited number of titles due to its distribution deal and displaced by Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos. But either way the result was that the Hulk soon lost his own title and was relegated to wandering through the pages of other books such as the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and even the Amazing Spider-Man. Then after about a year and a half without his own feature, he was given a slot in Tales to Astonish.

This disjoint in the early years has often affected how they've been viewed. The original six issues have been reprinted many times - a pocketbook reprint lent to me by a friend many yeas ago was the first time I read any Silver Age Marvel stories (but I honestly can't remember what colour the Hulk was in the first issue) - but there's been much less attention given to the Tales to Astonish strips. Indeed a note at the start of the original edition of this volume specifically states that many of them hadn't been reprinted "since... well, even Stan Lee can't remember when!" (The Masterworks didn't start on them until a few years later.) It's apologising for the variation in reprint quality due to the nature of the archival material, but it's also a reminder that the Hulk entered his first forgotten era earlier than almost any of his contemporaries.

(The reprint quality is more than passable though. Indeed the worst looking page in my edition is actually one with 1990s artwork! It's a divider page between the two series with the front and back cover art on either side. Unfortunately one side seems to have the images overlaid on each other, like a double exposure. Later editions have better reproduction and lack the note.)

The Hulk's origin story is mostly timeless but there's one element that has bcome dated. Scientist Bruce Banner develops a powerful bomb emitting a special kind of radiation but gets caught in the blast of an undelayed test whilst saving a teenager who has wandered onto the site for a bet, and the resulting energy causes him to change into a monster - that's pretty easy to map to any era. Yes there's a bit of silly science about the effect of the rays. The arms race may have been a more prominent factor of the Cold War but even today nuclear weapons are a live and argued issue and it doesn't matter if it fits current US weapons testing policies. It's the presence of a Communist agent amongst the test staff and the interest of the Soviets that makes the first issue a little dated, though one could reasonably airbrush Igor into being a generic foreign spy of an unnamed or fictitious country. (Making him an alien infiltrator in disguise might be simultaneously timeless and also true to the spirit of some of the era's science fiction but... well... "Yeeesh!") The origin is retold in issue #3, for no real purpose (unless it was to fill up the page count), but with all the spy elements removed.

There are some other aspects to the series that show the silliness of the time, most obviously the way that Bruce is able to obtain a lot of scientific equipment on the sly and easily assemble everything from a gamma machine to the door to the Hulk's underground prison, with a ten foot thick concrete slab held in place by a steel rod. Later on Rick Jones is able to obtain and install a replacement rod with no-one noticing. And there's one issue where Rick is able to charter a private plane at only a few minutes' notice to fly him and the Hulk to confront the latest villain.

One thing rapidly becomes clear that there didn't seem to be a strong sense of direction for the series. At first we get the tale of a man who transforms into a brutish monster at night - a latter day take on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or at least the popular impression of it. But this doesn't last and soon we shift towards the scenario of the Hulk being a mistrusted hero and Bruce controlling the transformation through a gamma ray machine. However issue #6 shows signs that the control is beginning to break down with delayed and incomplete transformations and then signs that the change can be brought on by extreme aggression. Issue #6 also sees the Hulk granted a Presidential pardon, suggesting a further shift in direction but the run ends before we can see where it goes. The Hulk's personality is initially that of a simple giant but midway through Bruce gains control of the monstrous form. However there are signs that either Bruce is losing control to the Hulk's personality or else he is changing with the power, as the Hulk becomes ever more brutish.

We also see the debut of the most prominent of the Hulk's supporting cast, with all of them introduced on the first few pages of the original issue. Rick Jones is a carefree orphaned teenager who sneaked onto the test site for a bet, but he rapidly becomes loyal to Bruce for saving his life. Rick is about the only teen sidekick in the early Silver Age Marvels - teenagers are otherwise the stars, full members of teams or absent altogether. But unlike many DC sidekicks, Rick largely helps away from fights, looking after Banner/the Hulk, obtaining equipment for him and so forth. At one stage a second accident temporarily results in the Hulk being under Rick's control, a very different arrangement from the norm. At the end of the series Rick and friends form the "Teen Brigade" (well it was 1963) of amateur radio operators across the country to help when needed. The slang was probably dated even at the time but it's good to see some independent organisational initiative. However the main romantic interest is a bit of a washout. Betty Ross at this stage is a rather weak Daddy's Girl who has fallen for Bruce and will defend him against her father's criticisms but otherwise seems to spend most of her time pining for Bruce, being scared by the Hulk or serving as a damsel in distress to be rescued. It's only in the very last few panels that she and Bruce step out together.

Betty's father becomes the Hulk's main foe. General "Thunderbolt" Ross rapidly decides the Hulk is a menace, in part because of Betty's fear of him. Most issues see him trying to capture or destroy the Hulk and sometimes the former is achieved but not for long. Although other military officers are shown with a sceptical view of the Hulk's attempts to do good, Ross believes the worst at all times and thinks others are tricked. The result is a tense backdrop as the Hulk is often on the run and in hiding.

The Hulk battles several other foes in these tales but it's surprising how obscure most of them have remained. The first issue features the Gargoyle, a man deformed by bomb tests who is now a genius working for the Soviets but wishing only to be normal again. He gets his wish in the issue and dies at the end. Death isn't normally an obstacle for a Marvel villain but as far as I'm aware he's never returned outside flashbacks. Issue #2 has that traditional type of enemy, an alien race seeking to invade Earth, though with the Toad Men we actually get an entire invasion armada, rather than just an advanced scoutship as is more normally the case. Issue #3 sees the first big name villains in the form of the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime. And at this stage it's amazing they can get away with their trick - they turn up in a small town, hold a circus performance where they hypnotise the audience and make them hand over all their valuables before going round the rest of the town to do the same to the handful of inhabitants who didn't come. Then they leave for another. It's little surprise that the FBI soon spot the connection. Issue #4 sees an attack by Mongu "the Gladiator from Outer Space!" but he's just a Soviet agent in a giant suit trying to catch the Hulk and I don't think he's been seen since. The following issue introduces General Fang, a Chinese warlord, and Tyrannus, another underground ruler. Finally issue #6 sees the debut of the Metal Master, an alien with the power to control and change the atoms of all metal. Oddly, despite the tendency of Marvel to leave few ideas unmined, very few of these foes have made many return appearances. The Ringmaster and the Circus of Crime and Tyrannus are about the only ones who've popped up a lot but the rest have made few to none.

These early issues show a series in flux, not really sure whether it wants to be a monster saga or a superhero series. Elements of both genres are present but without a firm sense of direction and at some points such as issue #3 it feels as though the intention is to start again, retelling the origin and transforming the Hulk. Whereas later eras of the Hulk would make a virtue out of constant change, here it feels more like uncertainty. The result is a weak series that deserved a break and a chance to try again later.

Tales to Astonish #59 has been added to later editions and at the time it would have served as a mini recap of the Hulk's status quo. Giant-Man and the Wasp head to New Mexico in the hope of convincing the Hulk to rejoin the Avengers but interference by the Human Top results in Giant-Man and the Hulk battling it out. It's interesting to see some minor changes in the Hulk from his portrayal in his original series - now Bruce Banner changes when he gets stressed and the Hulk doesn't seem to have any of Bruce's mind in control (although he retains the memory that Giant-Man is after him). We're on the Hulk's initial stomping ground and both Betty and Thunderbolt Ross are reintroduced (Rick, however, is now hanging out with the Avengers and Captain America). It's a fairly straightforward tale that could be forgotten.

The revived series in Tales to Astonish picks up largely where things were left off, although Rick is initially away with the Avengers. Early on, we're introduced to the military base's new security chief Major Glenn Talbot, a further antagonist for both the Hulk and Bruce, and a rival for Betty's affections. Talbot is rather unlikeable for much of the run but towards the end he has temptation dropped in his lap when he takes a call clearing the Hulk and could delay relaying the news until it's too late, thus giving him a chance with Betty, but instead realises his duty is to pass on the message immediately.

Once the strip is restored, it rapidly establishes that Bruce transforms into the Hulk at moments of extreme stress and anger, the best known cause of change between the characters. Curiously it's also used to change him back to Bruce until issue #67 when calmness and rest now achieve this. Up until issue #66 the Hulk talks fluently, albeit in a slightly "gangster" manner, but then he starts speaking in the more primitive "Hulk smash!" speech pattern best associated with the character. Issue #70 sees Bruce's mind once more controlling the Hulk but steadily the latter's brutish nature takes over.

Issue #64 sees Rick confessing Bruce's secret to the President (not shown, either because the issue came out near election time or nobody wanted to repeat a notorious mistake Action Comics made when an issue went on sale featuring John F. Kennedy just after his assassination), feeling he will never betray it and can give help. From a modern perspective it's odd to see such reverence given to a mere elected politician. From at least Richard Nixon onwards the phrase "If you can't trust the President of the United States, who can you trust?" has had a very different meaning. The President makes a few further appearances with less reluctance to show him as Lyndon Johnson, but an executive order giving Ross the power to grant the Hulk an amnesty comes too late. Later on when the Hulk is believed to have been destroyed, Rick confesses the secret to Talbot in the hope of clearing Bruce of charges of being a traitor to his country. This has the effect of changing the long term dynamics of the series as Bruce will be ever more a fugitive, though at this stage he's able to hold off the army and prove his worth.

One reason why many of the stories appear to have had few reprints is the continuous serial nature of them. With only ten pages an issue the strip opted to tell an ongoing epic with each issue flowing into the next from issues #60 through to #79. This suits a continuous reprint format series perfectly, but isn't so good for pick 'n mix collections which is probably half the reason why so few had had recent reprints when this volume first came out. The early issues focus on an epic story involving the Leader, another human exposed to gamma rays but on this occasion his brain has been enhanced instead of his strength. The Leader has developed much technology, including his "Humanoid" minions, an artificial lifeform especially grown, and he is seeking to steal various forms of further technology to advance his goals and spots the potential for using the Hulk. This ultimately leads to his sending the Hulk to the home of the Watcher to obtain the "Ultimate Machine" - something that looks like a goldfish bowl but contains all the knowledge of the universe. Here the Leader's intelligence is his own downfall as the machine overloads his mind and kills him.

The Leader is by far the biggest foe introduced in these issues, though in the last few issues we also see the debut of the Abomination. Otherwise the new foes introduced are comparatively minor players for the Hulk, though some have played bigger parts elsewhere - the Amphibian, the Secret Empire and the Boomerang. We also get a handful of foes from other series including the Chameleon, the Executioner, the Mole Man and the Stranger. It's interesting to see a number of themes that would appear again during Peter David's epic run on the character. As well as a Hulk who seemingly fuses both his and Bruce's personalities, there's a trip to a dystopian future, and conflict between different sub-surface rulers (also a step towards tidying up some of the duplication in the early Marvel universe). In a way it suggests the Hulk was taken back to his roots, even if those roots were pretty obscure.

Towards the end of the volume there appear to be signs of the series meandering with some abrupt changes of direction. Issue #81 introduces the Secret Empire, a shadowy criminal organisation, and over the next few issues there's considerable build-up as we see the start of a power struggle. But then the Secret Empire abruptly disappears from the strip and the only acknowledgement comes a few issues later when Boomerang comments on how they've now been "smashed". Possibly this is a consequence of the art chaos as the crucial issue would have presumably been #84 which is drawn by "Almost the whole blamed Bullpen", suggesting a rush job to get the issue to the presses in which key plot points were lost. (Actually the Secret Empire was picked up in the other half of Tales to Astonish in the Sub-Mariner strip but there's nothing here to actually tell the reader of this.) Later on there's a report of an attempt on Betty's life but we never see it. The art situation also results in the last four issues here being some of the worst art in the entire volume. Gil Kane drew many great comics in his career but all artists can have their off moments and this is one of his. The art is far too cartoony, with both the Hulk and the Abomination looking especially silly, and it detracts from a crucial moment as for the first time the Hulk battles a super strong foe that is the product of gamma rays. Often the best foes for a hero are those who offer a dark reflection of them and the Abomination is the obvious candidate to serve that role with the Hulk. Unfortunately we get a rather limited clash here before the Stranger takes the Abomination away, and the art just lets it down completely.

In general the Tales to Astonish strips aren't really anything spectacular. When read together they flow quite quickly, but readers at the time must have found the ongoing stories took forever to complete. Although we get a couple of new foes with strong potential, one is killed off in his first storyline and the other taken away from Earth. Neither of these necessarily restrict a villain's use in the future but they can leave the series in a weakened state in the meantime. The chaos surrounding the Secret Empire is a real let down, especially as all the issues have the same scripter. Add in the repeated pursuit and conflict with the military, which can eventually tire, and it's all a bit of a letdown. Consequently this era of the Hulk somewhat deserves its obscurity.

Overall this volume shows that the Hulk is a great idea on paper but very difficult to realise in practice. The original series shows a complete uncertainty about what to do with the character and when revived later on he's let down by very long storylines, repetition with the military and some artistic confusion. Perhaps the original series had a mercy killing and there's not a great deal in the rest of the volume to suggest the best direction for the Hulk had yet been found.

Essential Ant-Man volume 1

1962 saw Marvel launch more than one hero based on an arthropod (arachnids are technically not insects). But whilst one soared to great fame, the other wandered along, went through multiple identities and ultimately has remained a minor player in the Marvel Universe. That hero was Ant-Man.

If you ever find yourself on QI and are asked "Which was the second Marvel superhero strip of the Silver Age?" think very, very carefully before risking an answer.

(For those unfamiliar with it, QI is a British television comedy quiz show devoted to obscure trivia and pedantry. Often the questions asked have a seemingly obvious answer that is in fact wrong and giving this answer sets off a klaxon and loses you points.)

"The Man in the Ant Hill!" from Tales to Astonish #27 is part of another, now obscure genre - the science fiction/fantasy and monster stories that Marvel had been telling prior to the superhero revival. It's the all too common tale of a scorned scientist seeking fame but finding his invention backfires on him, as Henry Pym's shrinking formula reduces his body in size too quickly, and he has to find a way to get to the growth formula with the complication of facing down ants. This is really part of the old genre rather than the new, although the divide between the two is far more blurred than is often assumed. There are no real signs of the traits of the superhero era that was growing - there's no costume, no real villain and no great characterisation of Pym beyond being a stock fame-seeking scientist. It wasn't until issue #35 in September 1962 that he became a regular feature and a costumed hero. So his claim to be the second hero feature after the Fantastic Four is contentious (as are some of the other claimants' but let's not go into those now).

As for Tales to Astonish itself, this was another of the various Marvel anthology series that morphed into a superhero title and is best known for carrying the Incredible Hulk from issue #60 onwards, eventually transforming into the Hulk's own title. The later issues would also carry Namor the Sub-Mariner, who took over Ant-Man's slot. We'll look to see why a vacancy opened. Essential Ant-Man volume 1 carries the Ant-Man/Giant-Man strips from Tales to Astonish #27 & #35-69, including the various back-up strips featuring the Wasp either solo or telling a story. All but a couple of the issues are plotted by Stan Lee who also scripts many, with others scripted by Larry Lieber or H.E. Huntley. The other two issues are written by Leon Lazarus and Al Hartley. The art sees runs by the likes of Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, Carl Burgos and Bob Powell, with Steve Ditko contributing one issue and Larry Lieber drawing all the Wasp features, which he also scripts over Stan Lee plots.

The publication of this volume was a landmark back in 2002. Up until this point the Essential series had only focused on the biggest name heroes and teams and the idea of an Essential Ant-Man was largely just idle speculation on Usenet. But Marvel took the plunge in bringing one of its more obscure heroes' series back into print and the success of the volume has led to many other Marvel series being rescued from the depths of obscurity and brought back into print, including the Human Torch in Strange Tales, The Man called Nova, Ms. Marvel, Dazzler, Godzilla and many more.

But the volumes has also revealed just why these adventures are so forgotten. Frankly this is a series that's never quite sure why it's there, which does little to develop the world around the hero and which sees motivations, costumes, powers and identities regularly changed. And few of these changes feel like natural developments but rather sudden alterations made in individual stories. The result is that the series never gets a clear identity for itself. Perhaps that’s appropriate given Hank Pym's subsequent career with yet more identities to the point that he’s never really been clearly identified with a single one.

On the face of it a man who can shrink to a tiny size and communicate with ants sounds plainly silly. But aren't some of the other Marvel heroes equally silly? A blind man with enhanced senses becoming an all action crime fighter is patently absurd. So's a teenager getting the powers of a spider. Or another teenager who can turn into living flame. Or a man who can stretch his body in all manner of ways. But we've already made those leaps of faith and it's how the concepts are handled that has determined whether or not such characters have durability. One could easily nit-pick the shortcomings in Ant-Man's powers or question some of the leaps of logic (such as how exactly does a man move around so quickly either flying on the back of an ant or by catapult?) but such silliness is part and parcel of the era and a good writer in a later generation could doubtlessly easily come up with explanations for some of that if it was deemed necessary.

The real problem stems from the limited scope and development in the series. Apart from the Wasp the only recurring supporting cast that I can spot is a US government agent who appears twice. Otherwise we're limited to just Hank Pym and, from issue #44 onwards, Janet van Dyne. And Hank's motivations for why he does what he does change a bit without clear explanation. In the initial story he's just a fame seeing scientist whose invention gets out of control and he destroys it. But then he becomes an ongoing series and suddenly his serum is back with no explanation for why he brought it back. Nor is it clear why he's switched from using it as a way to cut down storage and travel to becoming a crime fighter. Nor is it clear why a biochemist is suddenly able to discover the means by which ants communicate and devise artificial means to enter that conversation.

A change of tack comes in issue #44 when we suddenly learn a whole new element of Hank's backstory. Now we discover that he once married a Hungarian woman called Maria who had fled communism but choose to visit the country on their honeymoon, where she was recognised, kidnapped and executed. And so the widowed Hank was motivated into fighting crime back home. Some of that just doesn't add up, and after being introduced in this issue the whole point is then ignored for the rest of the series save one issue when he goes on a mission behind the Iron Curtain. And there's also the uncomfortable point that Janet looks very much like a younger Maria, a point explicitly remarked upon at the time. And this was nearly two decades before a similar plot point was used in X-Men.

With the introduction of the Wasp the series takes a shift but in no way is this a partnership of equals. The Wasp may be brave and resourceful in battle, but all too often she is otherwise presented as a silly, flighty girl who spends her time wishing Hank would be more romantic or worrying about clothes and the like. Between issues #51 & #58 she gets her own back-up feature but in nearly all of these stories she is just narrating various science fiction stories to either orphans or veterans. The early 1960s were not yet a time for enlightened women, but even compared to Marvel Girl over in the X-Men the Wasp is not the most advanced character of her era. And Hank's attitude to her may not be overtly sexist but he frequently doubts her word and makes comments that border on misogynistic. And there's a late development when Hank devises the means to change size merely by thinking commands into his headgear - and he also adds the ability to make Janet shrink down without having to do anything herself! I don't know how many young girls were reading Tales to Astonish at the time (or many women have picked up this volume) but I doubt many dreamed of growing up to be the Wasp.

Throughout the run there's a succession of changes in the way that Hank operates his shape-changing powers. At first he pours a serum on himself but later he switches to a gas, then later to pills and finally to some undefined method of incorporating the size-changing into both his and Janet's bodies and activating it by cybernetic enhanced thought. There are several times where the method of the day fails, either because Hank gets cut off from what he needs to change size or because a foe makes use of them instead, but it rarely directly leads to him looking for a new method that will prevent such repetition.

Issue #49 sees the big change when Hank now starts growing and takes on the identity of Giant-Man. (Very rarely is the "Gi-Ant Man" pun actually exercised within these pages.) Yet it's here that his identity problems begin. He retains his power to shrink and for some strange reason he continues to use the moniker "Ant-Man" when he shrinks down, despite the difference between Ant-Man and Giant-Man being merely one of size. There's no attempt to pretend that the two are in any way separate individuals so one has to wonder why he uses the two separate names instead of finding one that can cover multiple sizes. The problem is resolved in issue #68 when it's revealed that his encounter with the Hidden Man's sill absorbing rays in the previous issue has robbed him of the ability to shrink down to Ant-Man (a point that makes no sense as Hank can still shrink to human size, albeit with more difficulty now) but up to this point it has left the hero with an inconsistent confusing identity. The final issues also see Hank settling down into a single size for his Giant-Man form but it's another change to add to the mess. And the structure of the stories isn't one of a long, ongoing journey of development so this doesn't feel like a natural turning point but just one more change in a long line of them.

The stories are also inconsistent on some basic details. For example exactly what communication is received from the ants - is it just normal words or just pictures? Are Ant-Man/Giant-Man and the Wasp's identities meant to be secret or not? Several stories use them as a plot point but in others both are pretty free about taking off their helmets and masks, and Hank is not exactly hiding his connections to the giant hero. He is also quite easy to contact in an emergency, especially when various foes strike.

Quite a number of the villains introduced in these stories have made appearances elsewhere, including Comrade X, Egghead, the Scarlet Beetle, the Hijacker, the Voice (although here he's mainly identified by his real name, Jason Cragg), the Chiltarians, the Porcupine, the Living Eraser, Supremacy, the Human Top (who later underwent a name change to something less hilarious), El Toro and the Beasts of Berlin. We also get the Black Knight, a modern day descendent of a hero from the 1950s "Marvel" (I forget what they were called at each precise stage). However without checking every single subsequent appearance in databases, I'm not sure how many of the "returns" are in fact reprints or flashbacks or other features reliving these adventures. And I suspect if they have shown up in further issues, they've been selected precisely for their ultra obscurity. The villains who appear to have never been seen since include various generic Communists, the Protector (who is running, surprise, surprise, a protection racket), Kulla the ruler of an alien dimension (who, amazingly for an alien in an early Silver Age Marvel, isn't trying to conquer the Earth - but then this is Tales to Astonish), the Time Master, the Kosmosians, Trago, the Magician, Colossus (no relation to the X-Men member), Second-Story Sammy, the Wrecker (no relation to the Thor villain), Madame Macabre and the Hidden Man. Villains from other series are strictly limited to Attuma and hordes of Atlanteans, from the pages of Fantastic Four. So really there are only three villains of any lasting note in this volume - Egghead (a name that back then was the equivalent of "nerd" or "geek"), who is still very much Hank Pym's enemy whatever title he's in, the Human Top who is better known as Whirlwind, and the second Black Knight who didn't last long anyway before being replaced by his nephew as a hero, and in any case was a revamp of a 1950s character. Consequently, the most significant villain to exclusively come out of the pages of these issues is none other than Whirlwind. That says a lot about why these stories are so often overlooked.

As for the stories themselves, they are frankly not at the cutting edge of early Silver Age Marvel. Rather they feel very generic. The artwork is generally okay but suffers from a turnover of pencillers and even though several of them are amongst the biggest Marvel names of the early 1960s such as Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers or Don Heck, few seem to be giving their best. The writing is also rather pedestrian - other than his relationship with his partner the hero experiences no present day problems outside of his adventuring. There's no supporting cast to interact with. Some of the villains are hooded but usually only one suspect is presented - this is especially true of the Protector. Few present any real lasting threat. Nor does the hero face any problems with public adulation, beyond getting irritated by visits from his fan club. This series is very much a conventional superhero feature from a company that was elsewhere doing a lot to beak down the pre-existing conventions.

There are, however, a few signs of the Marvel changes breaking through in the later issues. We get a couple of stories with big name guest-stars, including a battle with Spider-Man that is probably the volume's best known tale, and a fight with the Hulk that set up the latter's transfer to Tales to Astonish. That was the first sign of Giant Man's popularity starting to collapse. Up until issue #59 his page count had steadily grown, even if some of the pages were devoted to the Wasp's stories (which aren't terribly memorable - in most the protagonist finds their cunning backfires on them), culminating in issue #59 containing an eighteen page story plus a five page feature reminding us of our heroes' powers. But then the Hulk took up residence in half the book from issue #60 onwards, forcing the Giant-Man feature to shrink to fourteen pages, then twelve, until finally issue #69 ends on an ambiguous note as Hank worries about the danger he has put Janet in, and she wonders if he's about to retire. Issue #70 saw the feature replaced by Namor the Sub-Mariner.

And it's hard to get upset about the fate. The series was not the most dynamic or ground-breaking being put out even at the time and little was being done to develop the characters. Instead we have a comic pot-boiler, produced by many great talents passing time between more amazing assignments. The result is a series that doesn't try to push against the conventions or really develop the lead character but instead wanders through a succession of generic situations. Ant-Man may have had outrageous powers but in themselves that should have been no impediment to doing something bold with the character. The Wasp is equally not the most developed sidekick and so neither of the characters is really given a strong core for later writers to build on. Many have complained that they've found it difficult to take Hank Pym to a point where his late lashing out at the Wasp is forgotten, but it's clear from the character's roots that there wasn't a lot to the character to fall back on. This volume is very much one for completists.

Essential Daredevil volume 1

Essential Daredevil volume 1 contains the first twenty-five issues from the series. Almost all issues are written by Stan Lee, bar one where Denny O’Neil scripts a Lee plot and another by Wallace Wood. The art was very unstable. The first issue is by Bill Everett, but due to time constraints he had assistance from Steve Ditko and the cover, recycled as a splash page, is by Jack Kirby. Then we get a succession of Joe Orlando, Wallace Wood, Bob Powell, Jack Kirby and John Romita, before issue #20 sees the arrival of Gene Colan who is initially announced as filling in for Romita but actually wound up holding the pencil for all but about five of the next eighty-one issues.

(The creation of Daredevil is also a little unclear though it hasn’t received the same level of attention as Spider-Man. Again there's scope for disagreement over what constitutes “creating” – the initial idea by Stan Lee or the fleshed out concept worked up in collaboration with Bill Everett - plus Jack Kirby contributed to the development but it’s unclear just how far, although Everett recalled Kirby came up with the billy club. I can’t recall if Daredevil was on the list of characters Kirby’s heirs unsuccessfully tried to claim the copyright on in recent years but even if he was the case didn’t get far enough to determine “creation”. Fortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a claim of an alternative source for the idea.)

The début issue is somewhat mixed, probably because of the limited link between the two strands of Matt Murdock gaining his enhanced senses and his father’s murder for failing to take a dive in a fixed wrestling match. This isn’t so much a tale of a lesson in responsibility or vengeance driving an ordinary person to do extraordinary things. Rather it’s a tale of a man’s murder that coincides with the son happening to have gained special abilities independently that he puts to use in seeking justice for his father. However, unlike Spider-Man’s origin, there isn’t a direct reason given at this point for why Daredevil continues to fight crime even after he’s dealt with the killers. (Although much later on in issue #25 Matt Murdock does comment to himself “I never realized Daredevil was so much a part of me! It’s like DD is my real identity – and I’m just play-acting as Matt Murdock!” It’s one of the earliest comics I can think of that even touches on the question of which identity is the “real” person and which is just a front.) Also unaddressed in the first issue and indeed through the volume is the seeming contradiction of a lawyer dedicated to the system of law and justice having a dual identity as a vigilante working outside the law – and on this occasion trying obtain a confession under duress. Some elements of the origin do still hold up quite well and have barely dated – match fixing remains an issue in wrestling to this day, whilst many children are under pressure to study hard from parents who want them to succeed. And even the chemical accident holds up quite well – the transportation of hazardous chemicals is often less than ideal and spillages can and do occur, permanently disabling people. Okay the idea of a radioactive chemical giving a person enhanced senses is a piece of comic book science, but it’s one simple leap of absurdity that we accept. In fact about the only point where the basic origin story now seems dated is the lack of any ambulance chasing injury lawyers.

Once past the first issue the series goes through a bit of a turbulent period before it really gets a clear idea of where its going. The situation is not helped by the early art being a bit of a mess and it’s not until John Romita arrives, doing finishes over Kirby’s layouts on issues #12 & #13 before doing full pencils from #14 onwards, that things start to settle. However no sooner had Romita settled in than he was whisked away over to the Amazing Spider-Man. Both he and Colan thought they were just doing fill-in assignments but each wound up staying on their respective books for quite some time. Perhaps most symbolic of all the changing artists are the alterations to Daredevil’s costume. There are a few minor changes made throughout the first six issues, most notably the chest initially sporting a “D” then a “DD”, or the brief use of a hood to carry his civilian clothes or the changing number of straps attaching the billy club holder to his leg. Then from issue #7 onwards Daredevil sports the all red outfit he’s best known for. It’s rare for a new costume to last but Daredevil pulls it off (to the point that there was a period when Marvel reprints of early Daredevil appearances were colour-“corrected” to change his yellow & black costume to the all-red version). It’s also astonishing that the new costume is introduced in a single panel that takes up about one twelfth of a page with a brief thought bubble to tell us Daredevil has worked on making it more comfortable and distinctive. In later years, entire issues would have been given over to such a change, but here the narrative flows relentlessly on.

Another area of inconsistency are Daredevil’s abilities and gadgets. The origin establishes that other than his senses he doesn’t actually have any super powers and has to rely entirely on his training and skills. Yet there’s nothing to indicate he has anything other than self-training but despite this his fighting skills are phenomenal. His billy club also gets all manner of gadgets installed in it, ranging from a very practical cable launcher to a mini-cassette recorder to a bizarre super powerful microphone with which he can use his enhanced hearing to listen to the entire city. It’s a strange addition that is only rarely used. Daredevil’s actual sense powers are also somewhat variable, serving the needs of the story at hand, with his power of hearing at times seeming almost overwhelming whereas at other times it seems little more than a normal blind person who has standard hearing but pays more attention to it than a sighted person. There are also times when it seems the radar sense might as well be sight as Daredevil is seemingly able to do just about everything a sighted person can without restraint. It reaches its silliest moment when he’s able to pilot a fighter plane by the vibrations on the read-outs and his radar sense.

The supporting cast is limited to just Matt’s law partner Foggy Nelson and their secretary Karen Page. There are strong bonds between all three, enhanced by a love triangle with Matt unable to realise Karen’s feelings for him and scared to make a move because of his blindness. In several ways the Karen-Matt situation is a mirror of the Donald Blake-Jane Foster situation over in Thor, albeit with an explicit rival thrown in to reinforce the tensions. Beyond romantic entanglements this set up does somewhat limit Matt’s world, with no supporting characters from outside his office let alone from beyond the legal profession. This limits the potential for situations and also for a proper exploration of questions relating to how lawyers operate. Consequently when the Owl seeks a lawyer in issue #3, this raises the question of whether lawyers should represent those they know to be guilty. It was a few years before comics would start exploring such ethical dilemmas so instead we get a “this is how it works” explanation from Daredevil as he rushes across town after taking the case despite Foggy’s initial rejection. Unfortunately with no non-legal workers in the cast, the task of raising this question is given over to Foggy and the way Daredevil summarises the issue doesn’t help to enhance his partner’s gravitas. Instead, Foggy is all too often treated as a figure of fun, especially when he tries to build himself up with Karen by pretending Spider-Man’s hunch is right and he really is “secretly” Daredevil, to the point of obtaining a costume and agreeing to what he thinks will be a staged fight with the Gladiator.

Karen is treated with more dignity and respect, but at this stage she is unable to escape the limitations of so many early Silver Age romantic interests. The Marvel ones seem to nearly all fall into one of two categories – either Daddy’s Girls largely defined by their fathers (e.g. Janet van Dyne, Betty Banner or Doris Evans) or young working women in jobs subordinate to men and infatuated with one of the men around their office (e.g. Pepper Potts, Betty Brant or Jane Foster). Karen fits the pattern of the second so neatly she might have been designed by computer. Just to add to the dismissive approach to women, she is frequently defined by her looks in ways that would be unthinkable barely a few years later. Was there a reluctance to be bolder with the character? Was it inconceivable to instead make her a partner in the firm and thus more of an equal to Matt? Alternatively, once the series got going, perhaps to have her training on the side to become a lawyer herself? But instead throughout this run she remains a disappointing cipher whose main developments revolve around being courted by Foggy but having feelings for the reluctant Matt.

Being the last of Marvel’s early Silver Age series to be launched, it was inevitable that there’d be guest appearances early on. The Thing shows up in the second issue but only to get Matt to check a lease. Ka-Zar pops up twice but on both occasions the series is stepping heavily beyond its basis in New York crime and instead briefly making Matt/Daredevil a travelling adventurer, a role that at this stage he just doesn’t seem suited for. But the most significant guest appearance is by Spider-Man. I’ve looked at his appearance in issue #16 & #17 once already, so won’t repeat myself too much other than to note that the plot follows what was fast becoming an overused formula of one hero being falsely accused, leading to the other fighting him until realising the truth and the two then team up against the real foe. But Spider-Man has a wider impact on the series, first by turning up at the office after using his Spider-Sense to track down Daredevil, and assuming he’s Foggy (leading to the latter playing along with this for a brief while in order to impress Karen before it all goes wrong), but also later on in issue #24. Spider-Man himself doesn’t appear in the issue, but he sends Matt Murdock a letter saying he knows the lawyer is Daredevil but won’t reveal the secret; however because Matt is missing Karen opens it. For Spider-Man it’s an utterly bizarre move to commit another hero’s identity to paper, and there’s also no indication as to how he’s reached this conclusion nor why he feels the need to do this. (The issue came out the same month as Amazing Spider-Man #45 but there’s nothing in that title from around that period that even mentions this, let alone explains it. Daredevil’s most recent appearance there had been Annual #3, where he gave a reference for Spidey to the Avengers, but didn’t actually meet the wallcrawler himself.) And without Spider-Man actually appearing, could the letter in fact have been sent by someone else? It’s a possibility that isn’t explored here. However the accusation forces Matt into a convoluted situation whereby he tells Karen and Foggy that Daredevil is in fact his previously never mentioned twin brother Mike Murdock and then once in the hole digs deeper by having to pose as said brother. Given the comic conventions of the era meant that even the flimsiest of disguises could fool one’s best friends and co-workers, it’s perhaps a little harsh to dismiss Foggy and Karen for not immediately seeing through this – indeed Foggy does at first doubt Matt’s claim. But it means the volume ends with a rather convoluted situation in which Matt has to juggle three separate identities and somehow undo the mess.

The other major development set down in the issues in this volume is the introduction of the core of Daredevil’s Rogues Gallery (although there are some big names on it who don’t show up until much later). A sizeable number of new villains are introduced in this run and they include: the Fixer, the Owl, the Purple Man, the Matador, Mr Fear, Stilt Man, Klaus Kruger, the Organizer and his Organization (no that really is what it’s called) including Cat Man, Ape Man, Bird Man and Frog Man (no relation to others who’ve gone by those names), the Plunderer (Parnival Plunder), Dr Karl Stragg, the Masked Marauder, the Gladiator, the Tri-Android (made up of the Brain, the Dancer and the Mangler) and finally the Leap Frog. There are also some villains from other series including Electro, the Ox, the Eel, Namor the Sub-Mariner and the Maggia. Whilst the first couple of issues are an inauspicious start, with his first foe, the Fixer, dying in their single encounter and the second issue seeing a clash with a Spider-Man foe breaking into the Fantastic Four’s headquarters, the series soon starts getting some on the bigger names set down. Daredevil is often accused of having a poor set of villains, especially when compared to Spider-Man, but there’s strong potential in many of them here, especially the Owl and the Masked Marauder who both bring strong levels of cunning and gravitas that make them credible as crime lords, or Mr Fear, the Purple Man or the Gladiator who in their very different ways each make credible solo threats. But it’s also true that some of them are very much products of their era and have not aged well, such as the Matador. There are also those who were probably good ideas but don’t quite work in practice – Stilt Man for instance is not the most manoeuvrable of villains when his stilts are extended. To the series’ credit Leap Frog is presented as being slightly silly from the outset. But there are some others who come out bizarre, particularly the Ox and Dr Karl Stragg who in one issue swap bodies only for each to find the other’s nature is slowly taking them over. The Ox hadn’t been a particularly well developed character up to this point and so any brutish mind in that body would have worked, but it’s still an awkward development that ultimately doesn’t offer much. It’s also one of the earliest cases of a foe established in one hero’s series (in this case Spider-Man’s) having major developments in another’s. When a character is permanently adopted by a new series (such as Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch joining the Avengers around this time) then it’s reasonable, but when they make a one-off appearance then such bold changes feel more illegitimate.

There are no real long term mystery villains in these twenty-five issues. The Masked Marauder may live up to his name, but there’s no teasing about his identity. The one mystery is in a two-part story that sees what I think is the earliest Marvel example of another often used plotline – politicians staging attacks on them to boost their crime fighting credentials. A two-part story sees Foggy recruited as a candidate for the Reform Party (nothing to do with the real life one created three decades later) which comes under attack from the mysterious “Organizer” who arranges a string of attacks to help poll ratings. There’s supposed to be a mystery over which of the candidates is the Organizer but it’s really quite obvious – so obvious in fact that when first reading it I assumed it was a double bluff but they didn’t do that sort of thing back then.

A core feature of Daredevil is his blindness, but even in the 1960s there were some successful cures. In the early issues of the series Karen repeatedly tries to persuade Matt to undergo surgery but he’s reluctant to, as he’s scared it will deprive him of his enhanced other senses. Issue #9 finally addresses the issue with the bizarre development that Klaus Kruger , a university contemporary of Matt and Foggy, is now the ruler of the small state of “Lichtenbad” who offers to arrange for Matt’s treatment by the leading eye specialist who now resides there, but it’s all a trick. In fact Kruger is a harsh ruler who has lured experts in many fields to build a robot army to conquer the world. Exactly why eye surgeons and lawyers are necessary for this is never explained, but the story serves its purpose in cutting off the prospect of Matt’s sight being restored and thus preserving the basis of the series. It was quite a bold move to have a superhero with a disability, even if the series in practice sometimes acts as though his radar sense is just as good as sight, and undoing that would have been a major mistake.

Overall this first volume of Daredevil is a mixed bag, with a number of good stories and developments, but also some weak stories, particularly all of the ones that take him away from New York. The art in the first half is also poor due to the rapid turnover of artists and some rush jobs, though the second half more than makes up for it. But it’s not the most ground breaking of series – by the time it came out many of the bold developments that the Marvel Silver Age brought had already come, and Daredevil was largely a consolidation of such practices. When compared to the equivalent issues of Amazing Spider-Man these ones seem significantly weaker, with the writing much more inconsistent and a reluctance to do too much bold stuff beyond the basic idea of the character. Daredevil has often suffered from being branded a second-tier character, both in his own stories and in the real world, and unfortunately his early issues do little to dispel that notion.

Essential Human Torch volume 1

The first of the “extra” volumes is Essential Human Torch volume 1, which reprints the Human Torch stories from Strange Tales #101-134 and Annual #2. As previously noted, Strange Tales was one of a number of anthology series produced by Marvel that carried various genres during its run and is best known for introducing Dr. Strange, then also running Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. But before that the Human Torch was given his own solo feature from issue #101 onwards. This was a boom time for Marvel - following the success of the Fantastic Four, the summer of 1962 saw four superhero strips launched in separate anthologies - as well as the Torch there was Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy (although it was cancelled after one issue), Thor in Journey into Mystery and Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish (reviving a character from a previous one-off science fiction story - if you’re ever on QI and get asked which was Marvel’s second superhero feature, think carefully before you risk an answer), all launched in June or July (cover dated August or September). But note that in the long run the only one of the strips to last was Thor, with Spider-Man seeing his anthology immediately cancelled whilst neither the Human Torch nor Ant-Man would last more than a few years. These last two strips languished in obscurity and the Human Torch became the very last of the early Silver Age Marvel superhero features to get an Essential volume, with this one not coming out until the start of 2004, just after a period when it seemed the Essentials had died. So was the obscurity deserved or unjust?

Both the writing and art in the series is a little turbulent. All but one issue is at least plotted by Stan Lee who takes over the full writing from Annual #2 and issue #114 onwards, bar #132 which is written by Larry Ivie. The earlier issues are scripted by Larry Lieber, Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart and “Joe Carter” who was a pseudonym for Jerry Siegel (yes that Jerry Siegel, the co-creator of Superman). Most of the art is by Jack Kirby or Dick Ayers, with one issue by Carl Burgos (the creator of the original Human Torch) and the last five by Bob Powell. This is quite an impressive line-up of creators, suggesting the strip wasn’t regarded as in any way disposable, though a more permanent creative team would have been helpful.

The “Marvel Age” saw comics doing things different from the norm. In place of the almost timeless adventures where characters went through much the same pattern over and over again, there was now a stronger emphasis of character growth and development. Heroes were no longer gods in mortal form, but instead real people with real problems. The public were no longer all accepting, all worshipping of their heroes. It was a very changed era in which the same old same old types of strips were superseded by something bold and dynamic.

But not everything reflected the changes. Some strips just presented heroes going through a string of adventures with no real developments, no serious obstacles in their personal lives, and few signs of the changes coming elsewhere. One such strip was the Human Torch.

Obscurity has been kind to these adventures. When compared to many of the contemporary Marvel offerings they feel highly disposable and inconsequential. At the same time Spider-Man was going from strength to strength, the Torch was going from forgettable villain to forgettable villain. In no way was the world being set on fire.

Now some of this could be the restraints of being a spin-off from the Fantastic Four, with the expectation that major developments for the Torch would happen there, leaving his own strip as a mere side offering. But the strip itself tried to offer a different perspective, with the focus being on the Torch’s hometown of Glenville rather than Manhattan and beyond as seen in the FF’s own book. However this volume does not show the setting being really built on. There are very few regular supporting characters and hardly any attempt to build on situations in Johnny Storm’s regular life. In the first twenty-two issues we get some appearances by the other members of the Fantastic Four and more rarely the Thing’s girlfriend Alicia Masters, but otherwise the supporting cast is limited to his girlfriend Doris Evans who appears from time to time (and it may just be the black & white, but there are a number of times when she and Susan Storm look so similar it’s easy to confuse them at a glance). And even she is underused, largely appearing only to berate Johnny for a constant string of broken dates, even though she knows perfectly well why he’s done so.

This is to my mind one of the biggest missed opportunities in the series. In the first few issues Johnny tries to maintain his secret identity, even to the point of staging elaborate gimmicks to disguise his going into action. Yet he’s living with his sister whose identity is publicly known as is the family nature of the Fantastic Four. Why precisely did Johnny ever think people wouldn’t realise he was the Torch? Issue #107 solves this with the revelation that in fact everybody knows Johnny is the Torch and was just respecting his privacy. Was it really the case that up to now his home life was never disturbed by eager fans, anti-fire busybodies, reporters or enemies? Was John F. Kennedy’s America really such a place where public figures were given such respect and privacy? (Okay the President himself may have been doing things in private, but elected politicians usually had the benefit of experience and actively took steps to guard themselves.) Once even Johnny knows he doesn’t have a secret identity, very little is done with this although the odd foe does know where to come looking. But there’s no real exploration of the impact in areas such as his school life. How does he cope with trying to be an ordinary student who has so many distractions? How do his fellow students react to having a celebrity in their midst? Do the school authorities try to capitalise on his celebrity status? Similarly whilst his sister may also have powers and protections, how do the neighbours react to having a superhero in the vicinity? Does he send house prices soaring through fame, or plummeting because of the perceived danger both from his powers and from the foes he might attract? The obvious point of contrast is with the early Spider-Man adventures where Peter Parker’s non-costumed life was quite prominent, especially his experience in school. It is a pity that such opportunities were missed.

The last dozen issues see a change of focus as the Thing is permanently added, turning the strip into a permanent team-up, predating the likes of Captain America and the Falcon, Daredevil and the Black Widow or Power Man and Iron Fist by several years. But there was already a regular team book featuring these two – Fantastic Four. And the similarity is compounded by an even greater use of foes from that title, as well as further appearances by Mr Fantastic and the Invisible Woman plus other supporting FF cast members such as Alicia Masters. Was it really necessary to have “Half the Fantastic Four” when the whole thing was available elsewhere? Indeed several of the stories could easily have been run in Fantastic Four, particularly “The Mystery Villain!” in issue #127, a mystery that is so hard to penetrate that the only reason it takes until page five to deduce is because the villain doesn’t appear as such until then. The very core idea of the Fantastic Four is that it a family of adventurers who all bring different elements to the reckoning. As a result it’s been very rare for any replacement members to actually last and the original line-up invariably reasserts itself. Having only half the team for an extended run just doesn’t generate the same magic, but nor does it offer the special focus that solo stories offer. This run straddles the two and misses the magic of both.

The stories contain a variety of villains who can be broken down into three categories – brand new creations, villains from Fantastic Four and villains from other series altogether. In the first category we have the Destroyer (unrelated to others of that name), the Wizard, Zemu, Paste-Pot Pete, the Acrobat, the Painter, the Sorcerer, Asbestos Man, the Eel, the Fox, Plantman, the Rabble Rouser, Captain Barracuda, the Beetle, “the Mystery Villain” and Professor Jack. You could perhaps add broadcaster Ted Braddock, who wages a J. Jonah Jameson style campaign against the Torch but it lasts less than an issue as he changes his mind, and publicly says so, when the Torch’s actions save his son. Overall this is quite an intense creative rate. But I’m willing to bet many of you are already copying and pasting some of these names into a search engine to find out who the heck they are. Only about four have really made a lasting impact – the Wizard, Paste-Pot Pete (albeit under a new name of “the Trapster”), the Eel and the Beetle. And none of these are remotely A-List villains – the Wizard may have been treated as the Torch’s arch enemy and gone on to be used quite a bit, but the truth is he hasn’t aged as well as some foes and his role in the “Acts of Vengeance” conspiracy was very much punching above his weight. The Beetle and the Eel have been at best third tier foes seeking greater recognition but never really making it, whilst the name “Paste-Pot Pete” has dogged the character and kept him as a figure of fun despite his attempts to become more serious (which begin here, though he doesn’t adopt his new name in this volume). Otherwise the originated foes are generally forgettable and most have only come back on a few occasions to reinforce their lowly status. The Destroyer is the obligatory Evil Communist Agent that many of the early Silver Age heroes fought – this particular one is trying to close tall rides at an amusement park because customers can see the quiet bay where a Communist submarine surfaces. Zemu is the ruler of the other cliché of the era, the alien race seeking to conquer Earth by bizarre methods – here they’re reaching Earth from another dimension by using a portal in a swamp and have to stop a housing estate being built next to it. The other foe who gets referenced quite a bit is the Acrobat, primarily for his second appearance in which he disguises himself as the long missing Captain America!

“The Human Torch meets Captain America” may have won the Alley Award for Best Short Story that year, but soon after it dropped off the radar such that it wasn’t until 1999 (real time) that any Captain America story dealt with the real Cap’s reaction to having been impersonated. Looking at it now it’s easy to see why as it’s actually very silly even by the standards of this volume as there are some major leaps of logic. After having disappeared for many years (precisely how long is never specified), the legend of World War II comes out of retirement to appear at an antique car fair! After an attempt to steal a priceless car fails, Captain America passes himself off as the hero to the acclaim of all but the Torch, then later frees his two accomplices. The henchmen set off in a Ferrari to lure all the cops and the Torch after them, whilst Captain America breaks into a small town banks and steals three bags of money, then retreating to his floating sky platform. When the Torch shows up, Cap escapes via a rocket but with the Torch in pursuit Cap steals an asbestos-lined lorry and traps the Torch inside it. However the Torch burns his flame to turn it into a compressed gas that explodes open the truck and he captures “Captain America” to unmask him as the Acrobat. Later the Torch looks at an old Captain America comic, which gives away his identity as Steve Rogers, and wonders what happened to the real Cap and will he ever return. (A caption confesses the story was a test to see if the readers wanted this. Looking back it’s surprising that Captain America took a few years to be revived, and had to be tested first, whilst the Human Torch was re-envisaged from the start and the Sub-Mariner revived much as before just a few months later.) The whole story just doesn’t work – does nobody see the silliness of Cap coming out of retirement for a car fair? And why does a man with all the resources to have a disposable Ferrari and a floating sky platform go to all this effort to steal a rather small amount of cash? Does nobody see through all this? And finally like so many other villains the Acrobat can get his hands on asbestos quite easily. It’s true that in 1963 asbestos did not have the reputation it does today (although the health and legal communities had been aware of it for some decades), but the number of villains who just happen to have this fire-proof material to hand, even when they weren’t expecting the Torch, strains credulity.

As well as the originated villains, the stories also see several from other series. The ones used from the pages of the Fantastic Four are the Sub-Mariner, Puppet Master, the Terrible Trio – Bull Brogin, Yogi Dakor and “Handsome Harry” Phillips – and the Mad Thinker. This is a more mixed bag as the Sub-Mariner was initially built up to be the main rival to Doctor Doom as the Four’s archenemy, but the Puppet Master and Mad Thinker are again foes who haven’t stood the test of time. And the Terrible Trio is a rather lame team of three villains with different skills. I guess with the Enforcers running about there wasn’t much room for a second version of that concept. Meanwhile villains from other series include the Sandman (from Amazing Spider-Man), Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (from the X-Men; this is when they were still part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) and Kang the Conqueror (from the Avengers). Their appearance here was one of the earliest to show Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch actually trying to escape from Magneto, but finding the wider world hostile, and helped to lay the foundations for their eventual reformation as part of the Avengers. Meanwhile the Sandman’s appearance sees the Torch almost force himself on a foe looking for revenge on Spider-Man, and started the process by which the Sandman became at least as much a Fantastic Four villain as a Spidey one, later becoming a member of the Frightful Four.

As well as the villains we get a few guest stars. The other Fantastic Four members show up in some stories and occasionally help the Torch. Then there are two of the other obvious teamings. Annual #2 guest-stars Spider-Man in his first ever guest appearance, in what seems to be the first ever Marvel story to employ the formula of one hero being mistakenly assumed to have gone bad, leading to the other fighting him before realising the truth and the two team up against the real villain. It’s an okay piece and shouldn’t be blamed for all its imitators, but the villain is the forgettable Fox. (It’s also let down by the worst reproduction in the volume; whilst all the regular issues look pretty good, the reproduction of the annual is far cruder.) Issue #120 features a team-up with Iceman that doesn’t involve a fight between the two heroes but instead sees them fighting crooks who raid a tourist boat, with each hero helping to deal with the other. More surprisingly is issue #130’s tale, “Meet the Beatles!” (a title which probably carries even more weight in the US where an album of that name was released) although the Fab Four only meet the members of the Fan Four very briefly as the Torch and Thing wind up missing the concert to chase crooks who steal the payroll. I wonder if the band’s brief appearance was licensed? (Though given some of the terrible deals made in this era, I doubt the Beetles themselves would have seen anything of it.)

The Torch’s powers in this volume are somewhat in flux, often adapting to suit the purposes of the plot. At times it seems as though he can manipulate fire as if it were a living safe energy like Green Lantern’s energy powers and create constructs such as cages and fake Torches out of fire with seemingly no fuel at all. At other times the Torch finds his flame exhausted, limiting his effectiveness for a while, but again this weakness only occurs when needed. There’s some weak comic book science about the flame becoming a gas in confined spaces that allows him to escape traps with pressure when needs be, but he doesn’t always use this. It’s another sign of how the strip was something of a throwback to the simpler sillier era when powers suited the convenience of the stories and development was rare.

The stories in this volume came out during a time of great change in superhero comics. However whilst the Fantastic Four was setting new standards for bold adventuring and the Amazing Spider-Man was offering developed, ongoing teen angst and soap, Strange Tales’s Human Torch stories were something of a throwback. There were a few brief signs of the changes with a hero who argued with his fellows, but otherwise this is a story of a teen hero who had no real problems that couldn’t be overcome in a single issue, who had next to no supporting cast of his own and who fought a series of largely forgettable villains. Whilst Spider-Man was taking the genre boldly forward, the Human Torch was very much parked at the rear. The comparison between the two strips could not be starker. It’s unsurprising that the Thing had to be brought in to shore up the strip or that it ultimately lasted less than three years and was then mostly forgotten. Marvel had a good string of hits in the early 1960s, but this was very definitely a miss.