PRELUDE: Young Allies #16, Story B

Battle of the Giants!

Featuring: Tommy Tyme
Release: May 16, 1945
Cover: Summer 1945
10 cents
5 pages

PreviousNext
Daring Mystery Comics #5, Story HPRELUDEVenus #5
Daredevil #9Reading orderJourney Into Mystery Annual 1

Geez! Am I dumb! Here am I wishin’ for sumpin’ right in me mits! Let’s go Clock! I’m gittin’ me a ringside seat!

That loin cloth better hold; this is a children’s comic.

No credits are visible. The GCD credits the art to Charles Nicholas and Al Bellman.

We’ve read two appearances of Marvel’s first characters named Hercules. We then sort of met the “real” Hercules in his reincarnated form as Marvel Boy. But now we meet the actual Hercules of myth.

I admit to trepidation when learning that his introduction was in Young Allies, and I was so relieved to learn I didn’t actually have to read the Young Allies story. Give me Tommy Tyme any day. Tempted to give extra points to this story for not being Young Allies.

This story adapts a famous Hercules legend, the defeat of Antaeus the Giant. In the classic story, Hercules’ labours were in the service of Eurytheus in penance for killing his own wife and children. On his quest to find golden apples, Hercules battled Antaeus. The comic leaves out these details and just shows the battle.

We sort of met Tommy Tyme once before. I’d wanted to see the original Marvel versions of Merlin and the Black Knight, though had been reluctant to bother to read the issue. So we talked about it here.

I’ve apparently since grown less picky about what Marvel stories to read. Little Hercules. Tommy Tyme. It’s all one big soup.

Tommy Tyme stories tend to have a similar structure. His “wonderful Clock of Ages” takes him back to some famous time and place to meet some famous people, like Robin Hood or Benjamin Franklin. Think of the series as a precursor to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Continue reading “PRELUDE: Young Allies #16, Story B”

PRELUDE: Black Knight #1

The Menace of Modred the Evil!

Featuring: Black Knight
Release: January 14, 1955
Cover: May 1955
10 cents
By: Stan Lee and Joe Maneely
10 pages

In the next post, we’ll be covering the battle of Giant-Man and the Wasp against a new super-villain, the Black Knight. That character will not be Marvel’s first or last Black Knight. The following iteration will be a superhero, and one of my all-time favorites.

We have already seen a version. A Merlin story in one of the fantasy backups, the ones we’ve mostly skipped, introduced a Black Knight that served Merlin, which turned out to be an empty suit of armor animated by magic. Merlin had created that Black Knight to combat the schemes of Sir Mogard.

We meet here Marvel’s original (with a caveat) Black Knight, Sir Percy of Scandia, recruited by Merlin to combat the schemes of Modred.

Continue reading “PRELUDE: Black Knight #1”