Showcase Presents Doc Savage volume 1

It's time for a special side-step to look at a Marvel series collected in a black and white on cheap paper - but it's not quite an Essential.

Over the years Marvel have seen many licences come and go, often making it hard to reprint some adventures in later years - we've already seen issues of Giant-Size Spider-Man or Marvel Team-Up amongst other series that have had to be left out of the Essentials because of the guest stars involved. But often the terms of the original licence are more favourable for reprinting the character's own series, albeit in unusual places. Usually the rights to the stories end up being held by the characters' copyright owners and so later licensees can reprint the adventures. The likes of Marvel's Conan, Transformers, G.I. Joe and others have found their way back into publication under these terms (although joint adventures with Marvel's own characters can remain problematic). Doc Savage is another such series, with the rights held in recent years by DC.

Showcase Presents Doc Savage volume 1 reprints the eight issue magazine series Doc Savage from 1975-1977. Everything is written by Doug Moench, with plotting on one story by John Warner and John Whitmore. The art is by the likes of John Buscema, John Romita, Tony DeZuniga, Rico Rival, Marie Severin, Val Mayerik and Ernie Chan. The volume includes a number of pin-ups from the series but leaves out articles and interviews even though it only comes to 448 pages - Showcase Presents volumes have shown a much greater flexibility on page counts than Essentials.

Doc Savage first appeared in 1933 and has very much remained a man of his time. The amazing men - and they were invariably men - of the pulp magazines of the era are the direct ancestors of the superheroes who emerged at the end of the decade but often they haven't aged as well. Whereas the superheroes have been subject to a steady updating over the years, reflecting changing priorities and attitudes, the pulp action heroes and some of the contemporary comic strip characters have proved harder to adapt and update into complex and fallible characters struggling against the odds. As a result there are usually two latter day ways of presenting them - either in a self-mockery that extenuates the ridiculousness of the characters and the situation around them or else played straight in a reasonably accurate recreation of their original era give or take some the embellishments of the original stories. A lot of the movies of heroes of this era or homages to them just fall flat with only the Indiana Jones series really succeeding.

A movie version of Doc Savage was released in June 1975, but I've never seen it in full (and it's not had a conventional DVD release but rather a burn on demand one; a sign of a perceived limited market). Clips on YouTube suggest it was a rather campy take on the character and it frankly looks like it felt at least a decade old on its original release. The trailer is not the most enticing. But it's clear that there was an attempt to drum up interest in the character following the success of the republishing of the original pulp magazine stories as paperback books in the previous decade with James Bama's stylised covers forming the basis for the character's look in subsequent comics. Earlier in the 1970s Marvel had run an eight issue normal sized colour series and there was a both a Giant-Size reprint special and a team-up with Spider-Man in his own Giant-Size series in the first half of 1975. Then came this magazine series, which is a blatant tie in as the first issue came out the same month as the movie and both use the subtitle "The Man of Bronze" although the magazine's cover drops it from issue #3 onwards.

The man himself is not the most developed of characters, reflecting his pulp roots. Doc Savage has trained his body and mind to the ultimate perfection, making him super strong and super intelligent, with fast reflexes and the ability to solve any problem or situation with the utmost ease. He is highly disciplined with most stories showing him taking two hours each day to undertake a physical and mental workout to enhance himself. He is also focused - like many traditional heroes of serialised fiction he shows no interest in romance at all and is instead dedicated to the mission at hand. But here come the two problems with the character. He is too perfect with no substantial flaws that cause significant problems in his adventures. About the only flaw on display is his sexism towards both his cousin Pat and Monk's secretary Monica, declaring "Adventure is no place for a woman" (page 267) when brushing off the former. But even this flaw isn't used efficiently as Pat forces her way into going on the adventure with the regular team from the outset rather than coming in to the rescue. Beyond this Doc Savage is a know-all and do-all who can achieve just about anything and this makes it harder to get excited about such a hero. And at times he seems beyond human - indeed some of his foes explicitly shout this in frustration. On only one occasion do we hear of how he deals with captured criminals (most foes die in the climaxes) and it is to "perform certain surgical procedures upon your brains after which you will remember nothing of this -- nothing of what you did..." (page 389) In other words he will perform lobotomies on them. From a modern perspective the practice itself is horrifying but what's also concerning is the way in which Doc Savage feels he has the right to arbitrarily impose a punishment and literally change how people think. Given the characterisation and the era it is hard to avoid thinking of the concept of the übermensch, especially as that word has historically been translated as "superman".

Now Nietzsche's philosophy is generally unfamiliar to me and his own ideas have had their reputation damaged through association with the Nazis, so it's hard to judge just how far Doc Savage conforms to the übermensch model as originally conceived, though it's notable that Doc Savage's adventures often start out as the straightforward helping of others rather than proactively seeking to save the world and personally make history. But the perfect man is not a character concept that works well in this day and age. It didn't really in the 1960s & 1970s which is why so many film and TV adaptations went down the road of camp and self-mockery. But here we have a straight adaptation of the original pulps that is all too faithful to their 1930s sensibilities and outlook. And that just doesn't feel right.

To some extent Doc's aides, only once here called the "Famous Five", offer a more realistic approach. Several defy stereotypes in their appearance and characterisation but they are all experts in one way or another. They consist of:

• "Monk" aka Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair - expert in chemistry and owner of a pig called "Habeus Corpus" (sic - occasionally the correct spelling "Habeas Corpus" is used instead) who sometimes accompanies him on his adventures.
• "Ham" aka Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks - top attorney and stylish dresser
• "Renny" aka Colonel John Renwick - engineer
• "Long Tom" aka Major Thomas J. Roberts - electrical expert
• "Johnny" aka William Harper Littlejohn - archaeologist and geologist expert

What immediately dates this group is its composition, being all male and appearing to all be from the same ethnic and social background. Had the not been created until at least the 1960s then there would have almost certainly been a woman there and if created in the 1970s the group would have been multi-racial. The military ranks are mentioned on each introduction and raises questions as to how the first four, who all appear to be around their 30s, could have risen to such high ranks. None of them appear to be career soldiers but equally they seem a little young to have achieved these ranks as recruits in the First World War, especially given that the United States was only a belligerent for less than two years before the Armistice. The problem is slightly compounded by the adventures being given dates between 1933 and 1939, yet nobody seems to age in this time. It feels like these titles have been given to the characters just to enhance their standing as expert support for Savage. Monk and Ham get the most attention, with the two constantly bickering, fighting and playing practical jokes on each other. Ham fancies himself as a ladies' man, although women he flirts with do not always want the same outcome, but most of the team are attracted to at least one woman throughout the run, leaving Doc Savage above sexuality.

Issue #3 states it is starting a series of solo adventures for the five as back-up tales; however that issue's solo story of Monk is the only one to appear and subsequent issues revert to the format of full-length adventures. The story is set at the same time as the issue's main adventure, with Monk thus absent from it, and this restriction may have proved the feature's undoing.

The other character of note from the original pulps to appear here is Pat Savage, Doc's cousin who appears in just issue #5. There isn't room to fully explore her skills and strengths but she is similar to her cousin in many regards and more than a match for any of his aides as well as resourceful enough to force her way into an adventure to Loch Ness. Clearly a forerunner of the likes of Supergirl, she is rather underused and could have appeared more to provide balance in the series and help to pull it forward.

The adventures themselves are very much in the pulp tradition with lots of over the top villainy, some science fiction and fantasy, globe trotting, fancy gadgets and the resolution of matters with fists. There are monsters, mutants, deformed men in iron masks, secret bases, global conspiracies and more. It's all traditional adventuring that sticks to its roots. None of the villains are recurring and the dates given suggest the adventures may take place out of publication order. There's some sophistication, with problems to be solved and so providing a challenge beyond getting to a place and fighting a solution. Some of the puzzles are immensely complicated such as a pair of multi-levelled cryptic clues in the first issue that take nearly four whole pages for Doc Savage to unravel and seem almost impossible for any readers bar perhaps the most advanced crossword solvers. Yet the same issue features a blatant clue to the villain's identity in the form of his name, though notably this isn't remarked upon. Perhaps Doc Savage doesn't want to admit to being so complicated that he overlooked the obvious. On another occasion Savage is able to deduce that "Maison Blanche" is a translation from not English but Spanish and so the destination is not the White House but Casa Blanca.

The reproduction on this volume is quite good considering that the source material for the magazines is often in a worse state than the regular sized comics. A small note on the front page thanks Mark Waid "for loan of source material" suggesting that this volume has been compiled from original copies of the printed magazines themselves. If so then an excellent job has been done in remastering them. Unfortunately a few errors have crept in such as the inversion of pages 166 & 167. I don't know if that error was made in 2011 or 1975.

Overall this volume is of interest as a curiosity, being one of a surprisingly high number of times when one of Marvel's licensed titles has been reprinted by the current rights holder. Unfortunately the contents aren't that great. If you're a fan of the 1930s pulp adventures then this volume is a good homage to them. But if you're expecting something more sophisticated and reflecting the sensibilities of the 1970s then it's a disappointment. Both the character and the wider cast are very clearly dated and no real attempt has been made to update them in any way. That may have been an artistic decision or a restriction of the licence but the result is a fairly lightweight series that fails to hold up by even the standards of when it was first printed.

Essential Defenders volume 3 - creator labels

Yet again we have a volume with a lot of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

Essential Marvel Horror volume 2 - creator labels 1

We have a volume with a huge number of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

Essential Rampaging Hulk volume 1

Essential Rampaging Hulk volume 1 reprints the Hulk stories from the first fifteen issues of the Hulk's late 1970s black & white magazine series, entitled The Rampaging Hulk on the first nine issues and then The Hulk! from issue #10 onwards. A bonus is a short story from Incredible Hulk #269 which addresses the continuity of the magazines. All but one of the magazines' strip stories are written by Doug Moench; the exception is by John Warner. The art is mainly by Walter Simonson, Keith Pollard and Ron Wilson with other contributions by Jim Starlin, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema and Bill Sienkiewicz. Also included is a text story from issue #10 that is written by David Anthony Kraft & D[wight] Jon Zimmerman and drawn by Ernie Chan plus the Moon Knight back-up story from issue #15 that crosses over with the Hulk story, written by Moench and drawn by Sienkiewicz. The Incredible Hulk story is written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Sal Buscema.

Looking back at the period before the mid 1980s it's amazing just how restrained Marvel used to be about giving popular characters additional titles. Even when they did succumb to producing a second book it was significantly different in some way - a quarterly, a magazine or a team-up title instead of just a second ongoing solo book. The main exceptions that I can think of were Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man and A Date with Millie/Life with Millie/Modelling with Millie but otherwise everything was sufficiently different so as to not be interchangeable. It's unsurprising that the Hulk wound up getting an additional book at around the time when his TV series was gearing up to launch. Agents of SHIELD may now be challenging for the crown but up to now the Incredible Hulk is Marvel's only real success with live action television. But boldly this was a series that stood on its own, not only in a different format from the existing monthly but also taking place in a different era.

Adventures retroactively set earlier in the careers of established characters were still rare at this stage in Marvel's history. Some of the Second World War heroes had had a variety of wartime stories, most notably the Invaders, but otherwise Marvel's history was largely confined to reprints, What If?s and the occasional substantial flashback to prepare a modern story. And of course Marvel continuity has long had an ambiguous relationship with material printed before Fantastic Four #1, so even the Invaders and the wartime adventures of Captain America could be excused as replacement material. But now the Hulk was given his own retroactive series set during an obvious part of his career but using the setting in a less than obvious way.

Maybe it's because of the brevity of the original series but the Hulk's earliest adventures have attracted many latter day creators to them. Perhaps it's because the Hulk still had his secret identity and so the stories felt the most superheroey. It could be down to the various early cartoons also basing themselves on this period. Or it could just be the sense of a truly classic era, helped by brevity cutting it off at a clear point instead of fizzling out after several years. Whatever the reason creators have often returned to those days to add more tales. Unfortunately some have been more successful at reaching them than others and this is one of the less successful versions.

The first problem is that the series rapidly ditches the status quo of the Hulk circa 1963 in favour of a global epic that could frankly have been placed at almost any period in the character's history up to this point - and in fact, as I'll come to below, would be a better fit elsewhere. So there's very little of Bruce maintaining his secret around the Gamma Base or the classic dynamic with Betty and Thunderbolt Ross. Later on in the run there's an encounter with the Sub-Mariner who has just lost his people once more but again the character's history and personality is such that it doesn't take much to generate a fight with him at just about any point in his history. The last couple of issues in the sequence try to add something to the history of the Avengers by bringing the five founders together for the first time. Now it's probably true that there is no dialogue in the Avengers' history that explicitly says "And we had never come together before the battle with Loki" but this encounter still feels like a very awkward addition to the team's history, undermining the dynamics seen in the first issue because there was little reason to have discovered they could form a team on the second meeting if they hadn't done so the first time round. Also the series is nominally set in 1963, being one of the last times I'm aware of when Marvel time explicitly matched publication time. However this series doesn't feel like a nostalgia piece, if that's possible at a gap of only fourteen years (which seems a rather small gap but a lot of classic literature was set about as many years before publication) and instead it just feels like an alternate modern take on the Hulk. Indeed at times the series actually forgets it's set in the past, such as when Namor is searching Rome for the "Main Command" and gets told the war ended "thirty years ago" - approximately accurate for 1977 but not 1963. And although the main ongoing plotline about the alien Krylorians trying to invade Earth, including using shapeshifting to disguise themselves amongst us, may reflect some of the paranoid "they walk amongst us" science fiction of the original era, the execution feels much more late 1970s than early 1960s. The same is true of Bereet, a renegade female Krylorian who befriends the Hulk and Rick and helps them fight her race, complete with her many special gadgets. The character is quite well depicted as an advanced, liberated woman but again doesn't feel like someone who would have appeared in such a story in 1963, even if the author was making an effort to have a strong female role like Marvel Girl in the contemporary X-Men or Wonder Woman.

But the biggest problem is the Hulk himself. The "Savage Hulk" is the main personality written in the first nine issues, although the art varies between the classic "Savage" look and the original short haired neater look. Furthermore at this stage of the Hulk's history the transformation to and from Bruce Banner was controlled by exposure to gamma rays, albeit with some bodily resistance creeping in. But here we get a Bruce who changes into the Hulk when stressed and whose only control over the process is to deliberately work himself up into a tense state. Now only a very small handful of the original Hulk stories were reprinted in the 1970s so it's possible Doug Moench assumed he could just depict the more familiar version of the character with nobody noticing. However when reprinted the original stories were also back in print, courtesy of both the Essentials and the Omnibuses, and so the discontinuity stands out the more. The whole thing feels like a bad exercise in nostalgia. And it seems these problems were noticed at the time, leading to a shift in direction from issue #10 onwards and then a later story set out to tidy up the mess.

"Not a hoax, not a dream, not an imaginary story...so what IS it?" proclaims the volume's back cover. It turns out the first nine issues were a metafiction, a film made by Bereet for the inhabitants of Krylor, who are rather more tame and isolationist than their depiction suggests. In the space of five pages Bill Mantlo writes off the entire of the first nine issues, possibly in response to years of questions in the letter columns about how the adventures could have taken place. It's a blunt solution to the problem, though not unprecedented (Marvel had already used metafiction to write off the adventures of the original Two-Gun Kid). Maybe another writer could have produced a multi-part tale that managed to preserve the issues within continuity whilst explaining away the fundamental anachronisms but it would probably have taken too long after so many years. Instead, we get a simple five-page hand wave and that is it.

With issue #10 the magazine undergoes a transformation. The stories are now in full colour, though that doesn't make much difference here as it seems in both the 1970s and the 2000s the respective black and white pages were produced with colour "burned in" to create an greyscale effect. But the series has also shifted to the present, though there's none of the Hulk's status quo from his regular comic and these tales could in fact take place at almost any point in the history of the Savage Hulk. The series has taken its cue from the television series but doesn't want to contradict the comic. So we still have Bruce Banner with his classic look (instead of "David Banner" drawn like Bill Bixby) transforming into a talking Hulk, but rather than interacting with his usual supporting cast, fighting monsters and being pursued by the military we instead have Banner travelling the world alone, seeking both peace and a cure and getting involved with a succession of localised problems. There's the occasional discreet acknowledgement of the television series, most notably in issue #14 when Bruce uses the alias "David Bixby".

The foes are generally one-off non-powered ones of the type who could have easily stepped out of the television series. We get a mixture of unscrupulous businessmen of one kind or another, carnival thugs, terrorists, immoral scientists and fanatical military types. A scientist's experiments with gamma radiation accidentally turn him into a monster who fights the Hulk whilst the military are developing "Cybortrons" - robots mentally controlled from afar by soldiers - but that's the extent of the more fantastic. But in general this feels like an attempt to draw television viewers into the comic character without all the wider elements that would be unfamiliar to those who'd only seen the screen version.

The stories themselves don't pull their punches with some quite brutal deaths, including the casual gunning down of first a reporter infiltrating a mine and later an ill woman who tries to get help when a hijacked aeroplane crashes. Issue #11 focuses on an unfortunate boy who is being routinely beaten by his father. Elsewhere there's racism on the streets of Chicago, paranoia amongst scientists and the military and thugs attacking the isolated. Once again the magazine format shows how to tell strong stories free from the constraints of the Comics Code Authority but without getting gratuitous for the sake of it.

The artwork throughout the volume is generally good but the showcase nature of the assignments can undermine visual continuity. And occasionally there are some unfortunate results - Walt Simonson's pencils on issue #2 are inked by Alfredo Alcala but the printed result feels like a pencil and crayon effect. Perhaps they were aiming for something stylish but it just doesn't come off. But on a better note are the painted covers. They don't always reproduce so well in black and white, and I'm not persuaded the best choices of issues #1 & #9 were made for the volume's front and back covers, but they are an impressive set of mainly standalone images. A decade later several of these were used for the early issues of the Marvel UK series The Incredible Hulk Presents and they proved highly striking on the newsstands as they must have been on the original magazines a decade earlier.

As can often happen with the Essentials, this is a volume of two halves and it's more obvious than most. The first stage is a retro-based epic that totally fails to evoke nostalgia for the original era or exploit its setting and it's easily forgotten, with the retcon to hand wave it away proving surprisingly effective. After that we get a stand alone series of present day tales that could almost have come from the television series and which prove surprisingly effective. There's a real determination to offer something more than just standard Hulk stories in a different format publication, and on the second attempt the series achieves this. It's not the most essential of Essentials but it gives the old magazine series a good revisiting.

Essential Captain America volume 5

Essential Captain America volume 5 comprises Captain America and the Falcon #187-205 plus Annual #3 and the Marvel Treasury Edition special Captain America's Bicentennial Battles. The early issues see writing by John Warner, Tony Isabella, Frank Robbins, Bill Mantlo and Marv Wolfman, and art by Frank Robbins and Sal Buscema. Then from issue #193 onwards everything, including the annual and special, is written and drawn by Cap's co-creator Jack Kirby in his mid 1970s return to Marvel. Bonus material includes Kirby's original pencils for the covers of issues #197, #198 & #199.

The first six issues show the book in a state of extreme creative mess. Frank Robbins's artwork is poor and at times veers into caricature, whilst the high turnover of writers results in no clear direction. Just to add to the mess the issues are trying to mop up after the ridiculous revelations about the Falcon at the end of the last volume that showed him to have been a gangster transformed by the Red Skull into the ultimate sleeper agent. Following a rather unusual form of shock therapy the result is that he remembers both his gangster and hero days but he feels as though he is two persons in a single body. The exact ramifications of this are not explored as well as they should be, so it's unclear just whether he now has a split personality or else the two personas have somehow merged or if one has triumphed over the other but retained both sets of memories. The result is an awkward and unsatisfactory arrangement that's at risk of falling into a mess with future writers unfamiliar with what's planned or just how Sam has reconciled the two sets of memories. His criminal status is addressed more head on with a trial that gives him a suspended sentence with Nick Fury serving as his parole officer. Given the turnover of writers it's hard to identify just who took the wrong decisions but even the option of dismissing the Red Skull's claims as false is dangled yet rather than take such a natural way out of this mess the series instead decides to go with them. But the result is deeply unsatisfactory and shows the dangers of changing writers too quickly at a critical point for the series.

The foes in these issues aren't too memorable either. There's the Druid, previously seen in the S.H.I.E.L.D. strip in Strange Tales, who has Cap whisked away to an arena for no particular reason but it helps to mark time. Back at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters acting director Jeff Cochren forces Cap to take pat in a weird fight designed to snap the Falcon out of his comatose state; it turns out to be a plot by Nightshade to take control of S.H.I.E.L.D. and conquer the world. Subsequently the Falcon's trial is interrupted by an assassination contract undertaken by old Daredevil foe Stilt-Man. Then in a fill-in issue Dr. Faustus plots to steal millions from New York City; the issue is notable as the first ever appearance of Karla Sofen, the future Moonstone, but here she's little more than a gangster's mole. It is possible that John Warner thought he had been assigned the series for the long run rather than the fill-ins he wound up doing, and Tony Isabella seems to have fallen into the same trap whilst Marv Wolfman's issue has all the signs of a one-off fill-in and there's also artist Frank Robbins contributing to the writing plus Bill Mantlo scripting the last of Isabella's plots, but this really is a classic example of how too many cooks really can spoil the broth.

"King Kirby is BACK -- and greater than ever!" proclaims the cover of issue #193, though the effect is somewhat lost here because both the annual and the Treasury edition are placed before it. This was the start of Kirby's return to Marvel after an absence of about five years. Or perhaps a partial return. Over the next few years Kirby would produce a number of titles including The Eternals, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur, Black Panther and this one, but only the last two were pre-existing series (and even then Black Panther was renumbered with "Jungle Action" dropped from the title). And there was very little interaction with either the wider Marvel universe or what had come before. Indeed The Eternals was even intended to be in its own continuity, years before such standalone projects became widespread. As I've noted before, Kirby's Black Panther feels somewhat like a 1970s version of Heroes Reborn, such is the disconnect from what had come before. With Captain America and the Falcon the jump is less jarring but it still feels like a big side step.

Part of this comes from the very limited use of pre-existing supporting characters and villains. Captain America and the Falcon may have worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. a lot, but it was a generic S.H.I.E.L.D. shorn of all its most familiar agents. Sharon is only seen twice in this run of issues, but seems to have been reduced to a generic superhero girlfriend who knows her boyfriend's identity but is tired him always going off on missions. This doesn't feel like the ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who not only knows the score from her own experience but has often been the absent one herself. Other than the two leads, the only pre-existing character to make any significant appearance is the Falcon's girlfriend Leila, and she's a pale shadow of her former self with little of her fire and determination on display. Beyond that Captain America's Bicentennial Battles features brief appearances by Bucky and the Red Skull, plus some historical figures, but that's about it. Was Kirby, whether consciously or unconsciously, trying to cut out as much of the influence of Stan Lee as possible? Or was he just aiming for as much creative control over the series as possible? And using as few characters originated by others as possible was one way of doing this.

One of the most obvious practical consequences is a total failure to sort out the mess with the Falcon's personality and memories. Instead the whole plot point is completely ignored at the precise moment it needed tidying and the character is presented somewhat generically. Now I'd be perfectly happy to get to a situation where the whole mess is never mentioned ever again, but it's not helpful in the long term to be continuously wondering about the character and/or successive writers taking different approaches to how his past is presented. It needs a straightforward resolution that clearly establishes just who the Falcon now is and so he can easily go forward with the whole mess forgotten. Instead it's bypassed, just adding to the sense of reboot. Oddly, given the Heroes Reborn comparisons flying around, the situation feels rather like that of Iron Man who, just before the reboot, was revealed to be a long term sleeper agent of an old foe and whose resultant new status quo and background was never fully addressed before Onslaught and Heroes Reborn, and indeed for some years afterwards a traditional take on the character was presented without covering his two different pasts.

Also noticeable by its absence is any particular sense of political influence on the series. Henry Kissinger pops up at the end of issue #193 (although in accordance with a semi-observed Marvel tradition of not explicitly identifying politicians he's not actually named on panel bar telling the duo they can call him "Henny") to brief the duo but he could be any senior government figure to emphasise the severity of the situation - indeed it's more of a surprise that it's the Secretary of State rather than the President. The 200th anniversary of American independence was marked by both the Treasury Edition Captain America's Bicentennial Battles and the regular series in a storyline conveniently culminating in issue #200, but without wading into contemporary debate about just what the United States stands for or the country's role in the world; questions that were much debated in that post Vietnam era. It seems clear that, unlike Steve Engelhart or some of the series's later writers, Jack Kirby had no particular desire to use Captain America to explore contemporary questions about patriotism and politics, let alone take an actual side in such debates, but rather presented him as a figure who served all of his country, a unifying figure on a par with Uncle Sam. Indeed the final page of the Treasury Special depicts Captain America shaking hands with Uncle Sam in front of a birthday cake.

Captain America's Bicentennial Battles is itself rather inconsequential, but as the equivalent of a graphic novel that's for the best. It introduces the dubiously named "Mister Buda", a sorcerer who has since been renamed "the Contemplator", one of the various Elders of the Universe. Mister Buda sends Cap on a trip throughout American history, including the future, so as to see what America is all about. Cap sees a succession of incidents both at home and abroad, but grasps the fundamental underlying point that all are striving no matter the odds. As he explains to a group of children at the end:

That's America! A place of stubborn confidence -- where both young and old can hope and dream, and wade through disappointment, despair and the crunch of events -- with the chance of making life meaningful!

It may seem twee but then most attempts to sum up a country's civic national identity often wide up producing such general concepts that can frankly be found to work in many other countries (just think of the various attempts to bottle and distil "Britishness" that get tied in knots on this). But it's a good way to take Cap on a tour of American history as part of the general celebrations. At the Treasury Edition size the artwork must really look amazing but even in reduced form it shows Kirby's talent immensely.

Whilst the special is about celebrating what makes America, the regular series shows Cap protecting it. The Madbomb storyline is frankly a few chapters too long and somewhat unfocused. I don't actually find Kirby's dialogue as clunky as many others do, but it often seems more routine than spectacular and can dull the effect of an extended storyline. The tale takes Cap and the Falcon on an extended trip, including a visit to the hidden world of the Elite, a group of aristocrats seeking to overturn the American Revolution and install themselves in power. The climax comes as the Elite's leader, William Taurey, aims to detonate a giant "madbomb" to send the country into chaos, but there's also a personal element that he's smarting over his ancestor's defeat in a duel with an ancestor of Steve Rogers. The ideas are good but the execution isn't the best, making the showdown less amazing than it might otherwise have been.

The other adventures in this volume are also a little underwhelming. The annual is placed as the first Kirby created issue but is a total one-off tale of Cap getting caught up with two groups of aliens as an escaped prisoner is pursued and crashes on Earth; it has the revelation that Cap has backed the wrong side but is a little too black and white for the era rather than a more nuanced presentation that shows both sides with shades of grey. Meanwhile in the last few regular issues the Falcon and Leila get captured and brainwashed by the Night People, the inmates who have taken over an asylum in another dimension. Once back on Earth Cap manages to cure the Falcon through battling a corpse animated by a being from the future, though by the volume's end there's no sign of Leila having been cured.

All in all these adventures feel rather generic and awkward. Apart from the bicentennial celebrations they could frankly feature any superheroes for all the difference it makes. Captain America may have been under the full control of one of his co-creators but the result just doesn't feel as special as it was made out to be. This was one of the first times Marvel trumpeted the presence of an individual creator and so invariably expectations rise in such circumstances. But the result feels as though the baby was thrown out with the bath water, cutting out nearly all the pre-existing elements beyond the title characters, and the result is almost its own universe of rather generic characters and villains. The issues immediately before Kirby's return showed what a mess the title had already descended into so he was actually an improvement and brought stability but the result is less than exciting and not the series at its best.

Essential Captain America volume 4

Essential Captain America volume 4 consists of Captain America and the Falcon #157-186. The writing covers most of Steve Englehart's run and just touches on the start of John Warner's brief one with scattered contributions by Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, Tony Isabella and Mike Friedrich. The art covers the bulk of Sal Buscema's run, the start of Frank Robbins's and individual issues by Alan Weiss and Herb Trimpe.

This volume sees the series go on an uptick, having finally found a strong writer for the long run who directly tackles a number of problems and criticisms related to the character. A common jibe is that Captain America is physically not the most powerful of heroes; an early issue here sees him gain super strength when the Super Soldier Serum in his blood reacts with the venom of the original Viper. The result is an incredibly powerful Cap, though as time passes the strength is shown and referenced less and less. His gaining enhanced strength puts another strain on his partnership with the Falcon, who feels an inferior costumed athlete as a result. This leads to some soul searching, during which he finally gets together with Leila albeit in his costumed identity (though he seems to have revealed his identity to her, albeit it's not explicitly clear that she knows until much later), and a search for enhanced abilities that leads him to Wakanda where the Black Panther gives him his wings. Meanwhile Cap goes through some major soul searching in this volume as he faces a series of events that force him to reconsider some of his world views. Early on comes the revelation that a police officer is crooked, a sign of how corruption can be found even in places not traditionally expected, but worse is to come.

The highlight of the volume comes in the middle section with the Secret Empire storyline. In this Cap faces challenges on many fronts, starting when he's depicted as a dangerous vigilante by a hostile advertising campaign run by the Viper and Quentin Hardeman of the Committee to Regain America's Principles. Next he's framed for the murder of the Tumbler and faces being replaced by new hero Moonstone (later Nefarius), actually an agent of the Committee. Cap is arrested and seems all alone, with the Falcon away in Africa getting his wings and taking on the mobster Stoneface. However help comes in the form of "America's Sanitation Unit" of high tech vigilantes who break into his cell. This forces Cap to decide whether to break the law or turn down the only chance to clear his name, though the decision gets made or him when he's overwhelmed by the Unit's gas and taken away. Discovering that they too are agents of the conspiracy against him. With the Falcon now returned to the States and branded an accomplice, he and Cap are forced to go on the run in search of the clues to clear their names, and get attacked by the Banshee, still a foe rather than an ally of the X-Men. This brings another reversal of fortunes as they wind up allying with the handful of the X-Men who haven't been captured by the conspiracy. (This appearance came a year before the X-Men's relaunch and seems to have been designed to wrap up loose plot threads from the Beast's solo series in Amazing Adventures.) The group clashes with S.H.I.E.L.D., before learning the true foe is the shadowy organisation called the Secret Empire. Once more Steve and Sam are forced to take action they wouldn't normally do by stealing a device in order to gain the confidence of the Secret Empire in their civilian guises. This brings them to the heat of the operation where the organisation is planning to conquer America, using the ever growing popularity of Moonstone as a way to convince the people to surrender when the Secret Empire's flying saucer, powered by the brainwaves of captured mutants(!) , lands in Washington. However in the climax Cap and the others manage to escape execution thanks to the inside help of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Gabriel Jones and Peggy Carter, and they destroy the equipment then take down Moonstone who confesses to the whole conspiracy. All the living members of the conspiracy are soon arrested, though Number One flees and commits suicide.

At a distance of some decades it's not always easy to spot the targets of some of the more overt political satire. To some the Committee to Regain America's Principles is merely a shock that Marvel would print such a name or a source of hilarity for the acronym "CRAP". But the name was clearly based on the Committee to RE-Elect the President; similarly Quentin Hardeman's name is evocative of Nixon's first Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman. This tale of a secret conspiracy to take over the country by destroying confidence in existing institutions and systems and replacing them with the creations of political propaganda was reflective of the turbulent times the story was written in, but it also makes Cap face a changing world.

More so than any previous storyline, the Secret Empire tale forces Captain America to face up to the conflict between his ideals and loyalties. As he finds his reputation damaged and his actions bringing conflict with the police, he's left with little choice but to go beyond the law, even if this vindicates the attack campaign that portrays him as a vigilante. Up until now, Captain America has always been a hero of the establishment, acting for authority that was assumed inherently benign and having no doubt about what "serving my country" means. But now he finds himself in a much greyer world, where established symbols, positions and systems can't always be trusted, where venerated figures can turn out to be crooks, where public opinion can quickly turn against a dedicated symbol and where sometimes the only way to achieve results is to go outside the law. 1974 was the year in which both the Punisher and Wolverine debuted and, whilst neither may have been intended to go on to become major stars at the time, they both symbolised the way in which the presentation of morality in superhero comics was changing away from the simplicity of the Golden and Silver Ages. It was inevitable that Captain America would have to face the blast of change. And it comes in one of the most dramatic, and potentially libellous, ways imaginable. On the final page of issue #175 Captain America pursues Number One into the White House and unmasks him in the Oval Office, recognising the face beneath. We're not shown the face but dialogue states he holds "high political office" but "my power was still too constrained by legalities!" Could there be any doubt who it was meant to be? Perhaps this famous South Park dialogue could have been applied:

I knew it was you all along, Richard Nixon!

So Marvel in the summer of 1974 all but named the President of the United States as a crook. Who would have thought that Richard Nixon could be anything but squeaky-clean? I'm amazed that something so daringly libellous could have been put out and got away with. Today there would no doubt have been an outrage.

However, this may not have always been the plan. In the preceding issue Number One mentions "the fortuitous Watergate scandal! Ah, if only we'd known that was coming! How much simpler it has made our work." True it could be a red herring but it also might indicate how last minute the revelation was decided upon. It's not the only revelation that doesn't quite fit with what's come before, with Sergeant Muldoon turning out to be the Cowled Commander, trying to whip up public opinion to reform the police force on tougher lines. This sits uneasily with his actions after suspension in which he investigated Steve and seemed to believe the rookie cop was the Commander. It's not the only sudden revelation that comes out of nowhere in this volume.

But regardless of how far in advance the shock ending was planned, it leads to a dramatic follow-up as for a whole issue Cap fights no foes but reflects upon how he came to be, how the world has changed since the Second World War and how he can no longer serve an America that is much changed and where the government has been shown to be self-serving. His friends and allies try to dissuade him, but he decides to abandon the costume. And he doesn't quickly resume it.

For the next seven issues we have a world in which Steve Rogers is no longer Captain America. At first this pushes the Falcon into centre stage, but it becomes increasingly clear that Steve can't stay out of the action, much to both the Falcon and Sharon's annoyance, and Hawkeye forces the point by posing as the Golden Archer and attacking him, so Steve eventually adopts a new costumed identity as Nomad - the Man without a Country. Meanwhile a succession of other men decide they have what it takes to be the next Captain America, but each soon learns they don't. Eventually one is killed by the Red Skull and this brings a catharsis as Steve realises the things he fights for are not out of date. He fights not for a government but for the "American Dream" and against all threats to it, whether from without or within. As a result he resumes the costume. It's amazing that he was kept out of it for so long but by the end it's become clear - Captain America is not just a costume that anyone can put on; he is far, far more. He is not an agent of the US government but a servant of the whole country, dedicated to a set of ideals. It's a powerful storyline and statement that gets to the heart of the character and defines him for the long run.

Elsewhere this run finally resolves the loose ends relating to Cap's wartime sweetheart whose name he hasn't even known until now. Having lived in shock for three decades, Peggy Carter is a more personal reminder of how much the world has grown and changed since the Second World War, being now a middle aged woman who has suffered amnesia and been kept in isolation until the intervention of Dr Faustus causes her to relive events and come to her senses. I wonder just how much research into psychiatric issues was actually undertaken for this storyline. The reunion is touching, but Steve and Sharon deliberately try to avoid telling Peggy that the man she has waited so long for is now with her sister, resulting in some awkward dancing round the point. Although it's not addressed directly here, this does raise a question about Sharon's ethics and conduct in keeping Peggy and Cap in the dark about each other whilst taking up with the latter. Over time Peggy comes to realise what she and Cap had is long gone and instead she and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Gabriel Jones are drawn to each other. One irritation I find with Peggy's return is the inability to decide if her hair is light or dark, with it changing across issues.

Outside of the Secret Empire and Nomad sagas, the villains in the volume are somewhat limited, with the original Viper fairly prominent in the early run, at first working for the Cowled Commander both solo and in combination with other foes as the group "Crime Wave" which also contains the Porcupine, the Eel, the Scarecrow and Plantman. The Viper and the Eel then form the Serpent Squad with the Cobra; later on they are joined by both Princess Python and Madame Hydra, with the latter killing the Viper and taking his name before putting the group into an alliance with the Atlantean warlord Krang. Elsewhere there are return appearances by Dr Faustus and the Harlem crimelord Morgan and from the X-Men comes Lucifer. The Yellow Claw also clashes with Cap and the Falcon for the first time, allied with new foe, the female scientist Nightshade. Unfortunately her impact is somewhat diminished when her serum temporarily turns the Falcon into a were-wolf. Equally weak is Solarr, who has the power to absorb and discharge solar energy. Another new foe who initially seems to be a mere one-off is the Phoenix, the vengeance seeking son of Baron Zemo. Coming in an outlandish costume and falling into a vat of corrosive chemicals, not to mention being in a fill-in issue with a different writing team, it's surprising that anyone would or could bring him back, but he's gone on to do many things as Baron Zemo II.

The very end of the volume sees the quality take a sudden nosedive thanks to three separate developments. Frank Robbins takes over on the art but his style feels completely wrong for the series and just looks awful. The Red Skull returns but there is a shift in his aims away from seeking to conquer the world and more towards spreading fear and destruction. Unfortunately this turns him into a Joker clone and at times he's practically chewing the scenery. And there's a very awkward retcon about the Falcon, changing his past completely to make him a crook and pimp who had crashed on the island where Cap first met him. The Red Skull had used the Cosmic Cube to completely change his personality, memories and the world around him in order to provide the perfect partner for Cap, then eventually use the Falcon as a sleeper agent in reserve in case other plans failed. For this he has enhanced Sam with mental powers to communicate with the falcon Redwing (resulting in the brief assumption that the Falcon is a mutant, a point that would curiously dog the character for many years to come) and also made him completely responsive to the Skull's orders, no matter how humiliating the command. The whole thing appears to be motivated by a desire to paper over the previous backstory of ex-Axis agents hiding on a seemingly deserted island advertising for a falconer who arrived by regular freighter, but rather than just shrugging off a bit of Silver Age silliness the Falcon is instead twisted into becoming a cliché, as though no black in America can be allowed to be free of crime. It's also absurd long-term planning by the Skull - and at this point in 1975 the series was still setting events in real time so Cap had been revived in 1964 and known the Falcon for six years - and a very bizarre use for the Cosmic Cube. All in all this feels like a 1970s version of the Avengers saga "The Crossing".

It's unfortunate that the volume should end on such a mess when so much of it has been so bold and memorable. By taking on the main problems both the series and the main character have had, not to mention the changing attitudes to "America" and patriotism, the result is a bold uptick that makes this a strong and decisive volume. There are some odd moments but overall a lot of development has been done. Although the Falcon has taken steps both forwards and back, Captain America is much the stronger character as a result.

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