stan lee – Page 40 – Coke ⊕ Comics

Tales of Suspense #53, Story C

The Way It Began…

Featuring: Watcher
Release: February 11, 1964
Cover: May 1964
12 cents
Story plot by: Stan Lee
Script + art by: Larry Lieber
Inking by: Paul Reinman
Lettering by: Art Simek
5 pages

I learned this series existed relatively late in my Marvel reading. I’d gotten it into my head that I wanted every Marvel comic some 20 years ago and got to work. But it took time to even develop a good catalogue of what that meant. I had read the old Iron Man and Silver stories in the Essential volumes Marvel put out, but didn’t realize at the time about the Watcher backups not reprinted in those volumes.

As the internet took shape, and comic experts put forth their knowledge, I could borrow from that work to get a sense of the complete list. I meticulously studied the UHBMCC and MCP to find every Marvel Universe comic there was, including the oddities, like this short-lived series of Watcher tales.

My enthusiasm went through a bit of a roller coaster ride. I’d always loved the Watcher from his appearances in What If…? and was excited to learn he had solo adventures. Enthusiasm high. Then I learned the solo adventures were just a light wrapper around other stories he would narrate. Enthusiasm waned. Then I learned some of these stories were reprints of older stories with the Watcher parts added in. Further waning. But then I learned there were a few stories (like this one) which did feature the Watcher in his own adventures. Enthusiasm rising. And then I learned that we would learn the origin of the Watchers. Enthusiasm at its height.

What tragedy at the dawn of time caused this ancient race of immortals to take such a dark vow, to spend eternity observing the events of the cosmos without interference? I was excited to find out.

Then I read it. Enthusiasm has reached equilibrium. It doesn’t help to read so many of these Watcher stories and similar sci/fi tales in close proximity. A very large number of them have the moral that we should end the threat of nuclear war. While I agree, and appreciate that it was on people’s minds a lot back then, it really is overdone in these pages. And then to learn that’s the origin of the Watchers…

We begin with the Watcher making the choice he always makes, to watch a dying patient die and choose not to help, even though he could save the man’s life. He proceeds to explain why.

The Watcher refers to us as “lesser beings”. No offense taken.

His people once shared nuclear secrets with another race, who did with the knowledge what humanity has done and set on a path toward self-destruction.

Tales of Suspense #53

The Black Widow Strikes Again!

Featuring: Iron Man
Release: February 11, 1964
Cover: May 1964
12 cents
Story plot by: Stan Lee
Script by: N. Korok
Art by: Don Heck
13 pages

Iron Man takes a big step forward. Since his debut, he’s been the lead feature of Tales to Suspense, featured on the cover with his name somewhere prominently, and his visage in the little box up top. This issue, he gets a logo. Large font in a standard position atop the page reads, “The Power of Iron Man”. The comic is still “Tales of Suspense”, as noted at the top; yet, the comic’s title is the subordinate font. In big bold letters, we see clearly this is Iron Man’s comic. Marvel will do the same with Thor next month. For whatever reason, they seem less inclined to advertise Human Torch or Giant-Man so boldly.

While less impressive, it should be noted that The Watcher gets acknowledged on the cover in a text box. No other covers have or will mention his backup features. That coincides with a change in the Watcher tales. He will no longer be narrating other tales but starring in his own adventures.

Black Widow returns, now with black hair (though this time it looks red on the cover). Last issue, her only role was distraction by seduction. Here, she steals a powerful new Stark weapon, but we still don’t see her demonstrating many talents of her own.

Her plan largely hinges on Stark’s stupidity (which worked well for her last time). He shows her his new top secret super weapon, perhaps because he is smitten with her. She then steals the weapon. We learn Stark was not smitten, but pretending to trust her to learn her plans. There was no need for that. The events of last issue provide plenty of evidence she was a Soviet spy and an accomplice in the murder of Professor Vanko. There was no reason to learn her new plan. Just have her arrested.

Tales of Suspense #52, Story C

The Failure!

Featuring: Watcher
Release: January 10, 1964
Cover: April 1964
12 cents
Story plot: Stan Lee
Script + art: L.D. Lieber
Inking: P. Reinman
Lettering: S. Rosen
5 pages

With this story, we finally finish all the January comics, after some jumping around in time. We’d already ready some February books, but now we have officially reached February in our reading.

The Watcher has another tale for us, concerning the one man on Earth who was seen as a failure because he refused to pursue success in business. He and his lady end up rulers of a galactic empire. The Watcher asks: “Can any of us ever really know who is a failure and who is not?”

Tales of Suspense #52

The Crimson Dynamo Strikes Again!

Featuring: Iron Man
Release: January 10, 1964
Cover: April 1964
12 cents
Plot by: Stan Lee
Story by: N. Korok
Art by: Don Heck
Lettering by: S. Rosen
13 pages

N. Korok is an alias for Don Rico. Stan credits Rico with the story and himself with the plot. I would love to know what Stan thinks the difference between “plot” and “story” is. Rico had been working with comics, and Marvel Comics in particular, since 1939, as artist or writer or editor. By this time, he had mostly left comics behind and become a successful novelist– likely why he’s not using his real name on this comic work. Any comics work by Rico from this point forward will be quite uncommon.

Khrushchev decides it’s time to deal with the traitorous Crimson Dynamo. He sends for Russia’s best agents, Boris and Natasha.

No, not those two.

Fantastic Four #26

The Avengers Take Over!

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: February 11, 1964
Cover: May 1964
12 cents
Unforgettably written in the grand manner by: Stan Lee
Powerfully drawn in the heroic manner by: Jack Kirby
Inked by: George Bell
Lettered by: Art Simek
23 pages

Thing stands alone no longer.

The Avengers and Fantastic Four team up to battle the Hulk. If there’s a better issue that serves as a microcosm for what the Marvel Universe is all about, I don’t know what it is.

I think this is perhaps the best comic cover we have yet come across. It’s very atypical of the Kirby covers in a number of ways. Likely stemming from having to cram an atypical number of characters in. But we see the full figure of each character, each taking up a small amount of cover real estate. He usually likes characters on his covers to be bigger. He also shows less concern about perspective than usual, since we see neither the floor nor any overlapping characters. He allows the action to be basically 2-dimensional and each character to be small, while overlapping none of the characters. He wants us to be able to see each character and their pose clearly. I’m reminded more than anything of posing action figures.

The whole of the scene with its 11 characters still fills a small amount of the cover. Kirby gives a lot of top real estate to word balloons. He could have zoomed in more if he wanted to. He didn’t. He wanted what is probably the widest cover shot we’ve seen yet.

This concludes a two-part Fantastic Four story, the best Fantastic Four story yet, but it’s also part of a bigger saga. It’s been building since Hulk quit the Avengers in Avengers #2, carried over into the Avengers’ battles with Hulk and Namor in Avengers #3 and #4 and will have an epilogue in Avengers #5, where the Avengers have one last encounter with Hulk, at least for now.

Still, it doesn’t really end there. Events at the end of Avengers #5 lead directly into issue 6, which itself ties in with Sgt. Fury #8. And the Hulk’s story continues, with the toll these events have taken on him leading indirectly to his upcoming battles with Spider-Man and Giant-Man. These two issues are at the center of a giant interconnected web of stories, which revolve around Hulk being (justifiably) upset with how the world’s been treating him.

It’s all part of the long build-up to Hulk finally getting his solo adventures again. He was the first superhero of the new Marvel Age to have his title cancelled and will be the first to be revived.

Fantastic Four #25

The Hulk vs. The Thing

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: January 10, 1964
Cover: April 1964
12 cents
Sensational story by: Stan Lee
Astonishing art by: Jack Kirby
Incredible inking by: G. Bell
Lighthearted lettering by: S. Rosen
22 pages

I have no idea why it took us so long to get to something like this. It seems like such an obvious superhero story to me: a good old-fashioned slugfest. Take two very strong characters and just have them duke it out. Thing and Hulk are perfect for a brawl. They met before, but it wasn’t a brawl. There was a mystery and a Commie plot and all this stuff. This time, the rest of the team is quickly taken out of contention. And it’s up to Ben Grimm to hold his own against the Hulk.

Worth the wait.

We get some preamble. Hulk has returned to New Mexico with the Avengers in pursuit. Unbeknownst to them, he turned around suddenly and went to New York to find them. He read in the paper that Captain America had replaced him and thought Rick had betrayed him. He is off to finally destroy the Avengers. Of course, Rick never betrayed him. And the Avengers only replaced him because he quit.

Avengers #4

Captain America Joins… The Avengers!

Featuring: Avengers
Release: January 3, 1964
Cover: March 1964
12 cents
Gloriously written by: Stan Lee
Grandly illustrated by: Jack Kirby
Gallantly lettered by: Art Simek
23 pages

No inker is given in the credits for some reason. The GCD suggests the inker is George Roussos, who has been doing a lot of inking lately under the pseudonym George Bell. I don’t think we’ve yet seen a single comic where Kirby has done his own finishes. Probably because he’s drawing a half dozen comics each month.

There’s something that troubles me about these credits, and it’s the type of thing that makes Stan Lee a controversial character to this day. Look to the acknowledgement on this first page. Stan notes that Jack drew the original Captain America comics. That’s true and good to point out. But that massively understates Kirby’s contribution. Kirby and Simon created Captain America. The box should say. “Jack Kirby is one of the creators of Captain America.” Now, this may have been mere thoughtlessness on Stan’s part. Kirby used to draw Captain America and now is drawing him again; Stan used to write Captain America and now is writing him again. That may be the only point he wanted to make, and perhaps no other thoughts occurred to him. But the phrasing seems careful, and reflects the longtime legal stance of the many companies that have owned Marvel, that people don’t create characters, companies do. You can read an article from Brian Cronin on a piece Stan Lee had written in 1947 crediting publisher Martin Goodman with the idea for Captain America. The piece is basically fictional. Joe Simon came up with the character independently, and Kirby helped him flesh out the details. Stan’s failure to credit them for that goes back a long ways.

PRELUDE: USA Comics #1, Story F

Jack Frost

Featuring: Jack Frost
Release: April 20, 1941
Cover: August 1941
10 cents
Story by: Stan Lee
6 pages

A bit of an interlude from our run of old Captain America Comics.

I’ve gotten in the habit of reading these Golden Age superheroes when their namesakes were introduced, but I missed this one. Iron Man fought the new Jack Frost in Tales of Suspense #45. Perhaps that would have been a good time to introduce the Golden Age superhero of the same name. But we didn’t.

I’d say I didn’t have the idea of going back to look at namesakes in my head yet, but that’s clearly not true. Our second post goes back to 1939 to meet the original Human Torch for no reason other than we’d just introduced the new one in Fantastic Four #1. And then a couple posts later, the introduction of the new Gorilla Man gave us all the excuse we needed to meet the original gorilla men. I guess I should admit that I just forgot about Jack Frost.

I thought of him now because we just read Stan Lee’s first Marvel story, and this features Stan’s first superhero co-creation.

Stan created Jack Frost along with the uncredited Charles Nicholas.

Also, I wanted to read the Captain America story from USA Comics #6, which had me anyway looking at the first issue of USA Comics.

And, man if that dude left suspended in a block of ice isn’t good foreshadowing for what’s coming…

Maybe this is a fine time to read this story. Or maybe I should rearrange things to place it back alongside Tales of Suspense #45. Plenty of time to decide that, I guess.

For now, let’s look to the comic.

PRELUDE: Captain America Comics #3, Text Story

Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge

Featuring: Captain America
Release: March 17, 1941
Cover: May 1941
10 cents
By: Stan Lee
2 pages

Marvel comics up through the 1960s have often included short prose stories. We haven’t covered any yet in detail, as none have been sufficiently relevant. In the 1960s, they have been short one-off tales of science fiction or fantasy.

The first two Captain America comics also each featured a text story we did not cover. We have not even covered all the Captain America comic stories from those first two issues. We are just doing a brief scan of Captain America’s history prior to his return in 1964.

Why cover this particular text piece? The author is notable.

Tales to Astonish #55, Story B

The Gypsy’s Secret!

Featuring: Wasp
Release: February 4, 1964
Cover: May 1964
12 cents
Story plot: Stan Lee
Script and art: Larry Lieber
Inking: George Bell
Lettering: Sherigail
5 pages

This is the first lettering we’ve seen attributed to “Sherigail”, a pseudonym for Morrie Kuramoto. The name is a combination of both his wife and daughter’s names.

I originally attributed the lettering to Ray Holloway. Thanks to Nel Yomtov for the correction.

I recognize that “gypsy” is an outdated and offensive word, but it’s in the title of the comic, and it’s how the comic describes the strange alien visitor.

Though the era of weird tales is ending, through the Wasp’s stories we get two more in this title.