The Result of the Most Famous Battle in Comic Magazines Featuring: Human Torch and Sub-Mariner Release: June 15, 1940 Cover: August 1940 10 cents Credits: Bill Everett, Carl Burgos, and John Compton 1 page
No credits appear on the page. The art reminds me most of Burgos’ style. I borrowed the credits from the previous issue; the GCD agrees.
The finale of the epic is a single page. A single page.
That’s it?!?
Betty Dean finally gets her way and convinces Torch and Namor to call a truce. It makes sense for the fight to end in a draw, to disappoint neither set of fans. But letting Namor go is entirely unsatisfying. He crashed a train, flooded a tunnel. Who knows how many people died on his rampage?
The Battle of the Comic Century! Featuring: Human Torch vs. Sub-Mariner Release: May 17, 1940 Cover: July 1940 10 cents Credits: Bill Everett, Carl Burgos, and John Compton 22 pages
It’s not quite clear how Everett and Burgos split up the art duties. I’m sure they both pulled their weight, though most of the issue reminds me of Everett’s work.
Very classy title page
John Compton is most likely on hand to assist with scripting. I don’t know my Golden Age creators well, so can’t tell you much about John Compton. And Google at a glance doesn’t know much more than me.
One thing to note about the very fancy title page is the phrase, “Marvel Comics Presents”. Almost seems anachronistic, as the company wasn’t yet called Marvel Comics (it still isn’t necessarily, even in 1963; every cover has that “MC” on it, but the word Marvel isn’t evident). Though it was the name of the first issue of this series, before the word “Mystery” was inserted. But it’s a very prescient phrase.
As I reflect, that title is a bit hard to parse. “The Battle of the Comic Century”. “Comic Century”. I might think they mean that this is the battle of the century told in comic form, or perhaps that this is the battle of the century, at least within comics. But it doesn’t really say either of these things. Perhaps they mean that the 20th century is the century of comics. Or perhaps that of the current century the comics are depicting, this is the great battle.
The Marvel Universe starts to take shape as two of its greatest champions meet in battle.
The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner meet!!! Featuring: Sub-Mariner Release: April 24, 1940 Cover: June 1940 10 cents Story and art: Bill Everett (uncredited) 10 pages
Hard to believe something as significant as Human Torch meeting Sub-Mariner didn’t even get top billing on the cover. I guess Angel battling some monster was more exciting.
Usually, Bill Everett’s signature appears on the first page of each Sub-Mariner story, but I’m not finding it here.
“…for having attempted to electrocute him after he had promised to lend his powers to his cause…” I guess you can see why he might be miffed.
It really all begins here. Eight months after the respective debuts of Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, the characters meet in conflict. The Marvel Comics series becomes more than independent stories in an anthology. The seeds of a universe sprout. So it is that 23 years later, Sub-Mariner can battle the Fantastic Four with a new Human Torch, while that same Fantastic Four battle Hulk and Spider-Man in other stories. So it is that 80 years later, a movie studio can throw dozens of superheroes up on the big screen in a epic big-budget battle.
I think this is one of the most significant pages in Marvel history.
The highlight of the story, the reason we’re here, is short. The final 2 pages of a 10-page story tell of the meeting between Human Torch and Namor. The Torch quickly gains the upper hand and Namor retreats.
The surface world will feel Namor’s vengeful wrath.
Featuring: Sub-Mariner Release: March 20, 1940 Cover: May 1940 10 cents Credits: Bill Everett 10 pages
While The Human Torch stories have been very episodic, the Sub-Mariner stories have formed one continuing saga. Thus there’s no way to jump into them without feeling like we’re missing something. Nonetheless, I’m not looking to review every Golden Age Sub-Mariner story here. Just a couple to give us some context for the Marvel Age stories we are reading.
In this blog, we last saw Namor beginning a war against the surface world for crimes against his people. He’s cooled off and befriended Policewoman Betty Dean. He grew concerned about the war ravaging the surface world, and decided to take part. Sometimes, he seemed sympathetic to the Allied cause and sometimes merely to the cause of peace. He decided to try his hand at being a superhero, to convince the surface world of his good intentions.
He made a deal with the police commissioner to do some good works, but the commissioner still insisted he stand trial for his crimes. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Well, the electric chair did not kill him… it just made him angry. So his war against the surface will begin anew. That’s where this issue opens.
Namor informs his Emperor of his plans to destroy the entire continent after conquering New York. The Emperor offers the entire Sub-Mariner army, but Namor says he can handle it himself for now, as his vendetta is personal.
I read this comic in Marvel Masterpieces Golden Age Marvel Comics vol. 1. My copy of the book is filled with printing errors: pages missing or repeated; and, the copy seems off. The colors and inks seem pretty blurred, compared to scans I’m finding online. The coloring wasn’t great in those days to begin with, so it’s hard to tell without seeing the comic what it actually looks like, as reproductions vary widely. It’s particularly tricky as Everett wanted to make the undersea scenes murky.
This story is the beginning of a serial and doesn’t reach a satisfying conclusion in and of itself. It concerns Namor of the race of Sub-Mariners, recently come of age. He learns from his mother Fen of the ravages done to their people by the experiments of the surface dwellers, (who the comic refers to as the “white men”) and leads a crusade against the surface. His first step is to destroy a lighthouse. We’ll have to tune in next issue to see more.
The surface world will never recover from the destruction of the lighthouse; they may as well surrender now.
It begins in a familiar fashion, from the viewpoints of ordinary sailors, leaving the Sub-Mariner as a mystery in the background. Namor will become the point-of-view character soon, but first we learn who he is in snatches, as the humans do. An undersea diver notices oddities, like evidence that somebody had recently been there, even though they are the only ship in the area. It’s a mystery to investigate, a deadly one as it will turn out. It’s a technique we’ve seen frequently in superhero films (plus many a movie before them). Famously, when Batman first dons the suit in Batman Begins, the movie shifts its point-of-view to that of criminals. They only know something strange is happening, that they see out of the corner of their eye and hear above them– and that their numbers are thinning. This comic gives us a similar scene with divers.
