Tag: apollo

PRELUDE: Venus #5

Her Perilous Quest!/Defeat!/The End of the Quest!

Featuring: Venus
Release: March 14, 1949
Cover: June 1949
10 cents
19 pages

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Nothing is as important as love.

No credits are given, save that of the editorial consultant to make sure it’s child-friendly.

We are reading this because it features Jupiter. I’m not actually interested in Jupiter. I’m interested in Zeus. Jupiter is a Roman god; Zeus a Greek god. But Roman mythology borrowed quite heavily from Greek mythology, and many of their stories are just the Greek stories with different names. The Roman Jupiter basically is Zeus with a different name.

I’m interested in the upcoming introduction of Hercules, whose father is Zeus. This is confusing, because Hercules is the name of a Roman demigod, modeled after the Greek demigod, Heracles. Heracles is the son of Zeus; Hercules the son of Jupiter.

In fact, the Hercules we met in Daring Mystery Comics #6 was the son of Jupiter.

This is confusing enough to make me think that in the Marvel Universe, Hercules and Heracles are the same person. So maybe Zeus and Jupiter are as well.

So let’s read this story about Jupiter.

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PRELUDE: Venus #1

Venus
Release: May 15, 1948
Cover: August 1948
10 cents
22 pages

No credits are given. Online sources uncertainly credit Lin Streeter with inks. The GCD once credited Ken Bald with pencils and George Klein with inks, but has removed those credits.

There are two chapters and perhaps two different stories here. But neither has a name, and they flow together well enough. Online sources refers to them as two stories with implicit titles “Venus Comes to Earth” and “The 10 Goddesses”. I don’t know where those titles come from.

Since we just met Thor, I figured we should look back at other mythological figures in the Marvel Universe. We’d already met Medusa, and I skipped an appearance of Zeus, which I am correcting. But the most mainstream I know of before Thor is Venus, goddess of love and beauty. Her series lasted 19 issues in the late ’40s and early ’50s.

Now, this isn’t a superhero comic. It’s aimed at women (though the ad on the last page is addressed to both fellows and girls), so about romance and fashion and such. But later writers will treat Venus as a superhero, and the story has some elements in common with Thor.

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