Featuring: Dr. Strange Release: January 10, 1964 Cover: April 1964 12 cents Story conjured up by: Stan Lee Illustrated by the Strange Sorcery of: Steve Ditko Lettered at midnight by: Art Simek 8 pages
This issue is most notable for finally giving a name to Dr. Strange’s house servant. His name is Wong.
We had seen him twice before but without being named. Here he is in #110 and #116.
Here he is in the Dr. Strange film played by Benedict Wong. Is it coincidental that Wong is played by a Wong? A glimpse at Wikipedia tells me that over 7% of people in China have the surname Wong or a variant. So it’s not an astronomical coincidence.
Featuring: Human Torch Release: January 10, 1964 Cover: April 1964 12 cents Written by: Stan Lee Drawn by: Dick Ayers Lettered by: S. Rosen 13 pages
No picture this time, but at least the covers are now consistently mentioning that Dr. Strange exists.
The title of this story is, “The Torch Goes Wild!” Not quite sure what that leads me to expect. Maybe Johnny will take his top off, show a little skin.
Our more observant readers might be wondering if we completely forgot about Avengers #4. We did not. For various reasons about story flow and chronology and such, we will be waiting a bit to read it. I promise a future post that explains all these decisions in excruciating detail.
Our story begins with Johnny having a bad day. Perhaps the Rabble Rouser is to blame.
The entire staff here at Coke & Comics would like to wish a happy birthday to Spider-Man, created 58 years ago today, June 5 1962.
Of course, it was a big day for Marvel, as they also introduced Thor and Ant-Man the very same day.
We don’t celebrate their birthdays today because of technicalities. I did some research and it turns out the character of Thor was actually introduced many centuries earlier. It’s only Marvel’s well-known version that was introduced in 1962. And while Dr. Henry Pym first donned the Ant-Man costume on this date, he himself was introduced almost a year earlier, a scientist with a shrinking formula who hadn’t yet thought to become a superhero.
To celebrate this auspicious occasion, we invite you to look back on the posts we made over a year ago, discussing the introduction of Spider-Man. And sure, of Thor and Ant-Man as well.
Featuring: X-Men Release: January 3, 1964 Cover: March 1964 12 cents Sensational script by: Stan Lee Dynamic drawings by: Jack Kirby Imaginative inking by: Paul Reinman Legible lettering by: Art Simek 23 pages
The Scarlet Witch seems to be wearing green on the cover.
Pedantic notice. The title of this comic is “The X-Men”. After 3 issues, I decided I was tired of typing that. It’s easier to just call it “X-Men”. I will be doing that from now on. Same for “The Avengers”. I’d already been doing that for “The Amazing Spider-Man” without really thinking it through.
I should be paying more attention to the taglines. They are dubbed “X-Men: The most unusual teen-agers of all time!” Last issue had the same subheading. In #2, it was “the strangest super-heroes of all time. The covers of the first two issues dubbed them the “strangest super-heroes of all”.
I feel it should be pointed out that we’ve already met some pretty darn unusual teenagers, notably Human Torch and Spider-Man. So the tagline may be somewhat hyperbolic.
This issue introduces the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Not what I would name my group of mutants. And it’s not clear who, if anybody, named them that. The cover of the comic and the title of the comic call the group that, but the group is not named within the story.
Professor X calls them “evil mutants”, but he has often referred to “evil mutants”. I could never tell if he was speaking generically, or specifically referring to Magneto’s group. I still can’t.
Designation issues aside, introducing a team of villains to battle the X-Men is a good idea, since they themselves are a team. It’s hard to show a team always fighting against a single individual, even though that’s mostly what the Fantastic Four have done. It’s a bit surprising they are yet to come up with a team of villains for them. They’ve come close. Red Ghost had his Super Apes, and that was now four, er, members who could each match one member of the FF. But I have trouble counting that as a team since they are apes. Dr. Doom recruited the Terrible Trio, so again we had 4 people, each meant to face off with one FF member; but that was not so much a team of super-villains as it was Doom and three henchmen.
