cleopatra – Coke & Comics

Strange Tales #124, Story B

The Lady from Nowhere!

Featuring: Dr. Strange
Release: June 9, 1964
Cover: September 1964
12 cents
Written inside a haunted house by: Stan Lee
Illustrated inside a gypsy’s tent by: Steve Ditko
Inked inside a hidden cave by: Geo. Bell
Lettered inside… because it was raining outside by: S. Rosen
9 pages

Dr. Strange gets more than his usual amount of cover real estate. Some 15% of the page devoted to his story. Enough to actually depict the story within. The second time that’s happened. Strange’s day will come.

For the second of three issues, we have to put up with George Roussos finishing Ditko’s art. There’s a payoff that makes it all worth it, though. When Ditko resumes the full art duties in two issues, he’ll give us 20 of the best comics ever made.

The first page asks, “Can you guess the identity of the Lady from Nowhere??” This puts me in a bind I’ve been in before. The issue reveals her identity on the final page. I’m not a fan of spoilers and don’t want to spoil things for you. That said, this comic is over 55 years old, so it’s not like you haven’t had ample time to read it.

Even if I don’t spoil the ending in my write-up, I do like to give a listing of all the characters in this issue afterward, which would reveal who the Lady is. Tell you what. I’ll give you some hints and see if you can guess before we reach the character listing below. This is her second Marvel Age appearance, after the Iron Man story in Tales of Suspense #44. (Clicking the link will probably give away the answer.)

We’d actually already met her in one of our PRELUDE posts, when we read Venus #1. It’s not absolutely clear how or if these three versions of the character are related.

Tales of Suspense #44

The Mad Pharaoh!

Featuring: Iron Man
Release: May 9, 1963
Cover: August 1963
12 cents
Plot: Stan Lee
Script: R. Berns
Art: Don Heck
13 pages

I read this story in The Invincible Iron Man Omnibus vol. 1.

In June 1963, a Cleopatra film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton debuted.

One month earlier, perhaps in an attempt to ride a marketing tail, Iron Man meets Cleopatra!

While there are certainly lots of things Iron Man can do that may seem like sorcery to Cleopatra, having wheels is not one of them.

The comic does end with Iron Man attending the Cleopatra film premiere, to make this a very specific nod.

Now, Anthony Stark is already famously a ladies’ man. And a reporter earlier in the issue asks him about how he’d fare if he met her. It turns out very well. She is smitten with him despite never seeing his face. He wears bulky Iron Man armor the entire time.

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.