propaganda – Coke & Comics

Tales to Astonish #65, Story B

On the Rampage Against the Reds!

Featuring: Hulk
Release: December 3, 1964
Cover: March 1965
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee (our faithful writer!)
Drawn by: Steve Ditko (our reliable artist!)
Inked by: Dick Ayers (our dependable inker!)
Lettered by: S. Rosen (our other letterer!)
10 pages

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Our saga continues. Stan offers a recap. Hulk and Talbot are on Astra Isle with a new nuclear device of Dr. Banner’s. Hulk is fighting the Leader’s humanoids and a Marine task force is closing in.

We know now that strain triggers the transformation. When Dr. Banner feels strain, he turns into the Hulk. And when the Hulk feels too much strain, he turns back into Dr. Banner.

Now that Roussos has moved on, Ditko will have rotating inkers to finish off his run on the Hulk. Of course, Ditko’s work looks its best when he inks himself.

The cliffhanger of last issue resolves by page 2 as Hulk and the Humanoids fall into the ocean.

This leads to the actual plot of this issue. Banner is rescued by a Soviet sub and taken to an unnamed Soviet country as a prisoner.

PRELUDE: Captain America #76

The Betrayers

Featuring: Captain America
Release: January 18, 1954
Cover: May 1954
10 cents
6 pages

Credits aren’t evident. My copy of the Marvel Masterworks claims John Romita is the artist, but I don’t think that’s correct. The GCD offers a different interpretation, citing the same Marvel Masterworks volume I am looking at. Perhaps they have a newer edition. I am anyways assured the GCD credits are correct by no less an expert than Michael Vassallo, and that this story is the work of Bill Benulis and Jack Abel, not John Romita. It is possible Romita touched up some of the faces.

It’s 1954. The publisher once known as Timely is now known as Atlas. It will eventually be best known as Marvel.

We last checked in with Captain America in 1948, when an injured Bucky was replaced as Cap’s partner by Betsy Ross, the Golden Girl. Let’s briefly review his publishing history in the interim.

Bucky recovered in issue 71 for a couple more adventures. Captain America Comics continued until issue 73, published in 1949. Golden Girl remained his occasional partner until the end.

With issue 74, the series changed its name to Captain America’s Weird Tales. We saw one final battle between Captain America and Red Skull along with a handful of horror short stories. This was the end of Marvel’s time publishing superhero comics. For the next several years, they would focus on romance, humor, horror, crime, and western tales. The final Sub-Mariner story had been published 4 months earlier, with the final Human Torch and Blonde Phantom stories 3 months before that.

Captain America’s Weird Tales #75 (1949) did not feature Captain America at all. His name adorned the comic’s cover, but he was nowhere to be found amongst the horror stories within. With that, the series ended. A somewhat ignoble end to the comic career of America’s favorite superhero.

Jump forward to August 1953. Young Men #24 gave us the return of Captain America, Human Torch, and Sub-Mariner. We already reviewed that issue’s Sub-Mariner story. In that issue, we learned Steve Rogers had retired from being Captain America, but was still teaching at the Lee School, except it now seems to be a college. Bucky was now a college student, though he didn’t look any older. The Red Skull’s return convinces Captain America and Bucky to come out of retirement.

I plan to do a survey of Red Skull’s history separately, so am purposely not covering that story in any more detail now.

We turn now to Captain America #76. The numbering picks up where Captain America’s Weird Tales left off, but Captain America reclaims the book’s interior.

For 3 issues.

Journey Into Mystery #87

Prisoner of the Reds!
Featuring: Thor
Release: October 2, 1962
Cover: December 1962
12 cents
Plot: Stan Lee
Script: Larry Lieber
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
10 pages

It seems overly sanctimonious to sit here almost 60 years later and dismiss comics like this as propaganda, though it’s evident that’s what it is. Thor, God of Thunder, refers to a Soviet stronghold as a “citadel of evil” and calls upon Odin to smite it. No, it’s a military facility, just like the ones the US has. And the Russian citizens depicted are sympathetic to America and its cause of freedom. That part at least allows it to rise above the propaganda comics of the ’40s, as it demonizes the enemy’s government and military, but not its people.

Why does Thor need Odin’s help to summon a storm?

But really it’s just a story of its time. Stan and Jack are looking for enemies. Twenty years earlier, during the last wave of superhero comics, the Nazis made convenient targets. In 1962, the Soviets seem a natural extension. I think it was a scary time in America, with nuclear war a barely understood but terrifyingly likely reality. Moreover, it’s October of 1962. This comic reached the shelves just 2 weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis.