The Golden Derby - November 1966!

Fifty years ago this month big news hit Charlton as its signature superhero Captain Atom got a makeover. It was an attempt to make him less powerful, ,more in line with the "Action Hero" idea and also to spruce up his look which hadn't really been tampered with for nearly a decade. I personally love this rendition of the Captain, there's just something about it that's distinctive and sleek to my eye, but that might be nostalgia coloring my lenses. Also along for his second installment is the new Blue Beetle by Steve Ditko, the character who more than any defined this era of Charlton. Defining a fading period was the Fightin' 5 who have their penultimate issue this month, but it's a fine as the team goes up against another gang who uses anagrams to name themselves - The Agents of D.E.A.T.H. The F5 are the fading breed of espionage hero in a rockem' sockem' superhero world. Another issue of Ghostly Tales hits the stands as Charlton continues to make its mark in this particular genre. You'll note the Rocke Mastroserio had something to do with all but one of this month's covers, he was at height of his influence at Charlton. The other main man here is Dick Giordano who does the covers for both Love Diary and Wyatt Earp (the latter with Mastroserio inks). Charlton's dedication to romance books as well as westerns really helped the publisher stay distinctive in the superhero comic book realm. They wanted certainly to make their mark there and this month shows it, but they always seemed better able to find purchase with other brands of storytelling.

More next month.

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SHIELD - The Peril Of The Yellow Claw!

Following the epic war with Hydra, the SHIELD series was left with a problem -- how to top what had been a bravura performance. We had seen the series under the guidance of Steranko become a lithe and compelling visual spectacle. What could follow? Well it turns out he reached into the dim recesses of Marvel's own past to pull out a baddie worthy of Nick Fury's agents -- The Yellow Claw!

The story begins when Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, Jasper Sitwell and Laura Brown step away from the spotlight of the series for various reasons leaving Nick to find new allies. His first step is to go to the training center for SHIELD called UNIT and there he meets Sidney "The Gaff" Levine and Contessa Valentina Allegro De Fontaine.

Later he will meet the loquacious Clay Quartermain. He later battle trains with the inimitable Captain America.

This leads to the arrival of Jimmy Woo and then Nick tells the story of an event a few years earlier when New York City had famously gone dark. We learn that some mysterious armored soldiers had taken over Bedloe Island (home of the Statue of Liberty) and that Nick and Cap had fought them.

That battle ended up with the help of the Fantastic Four and an awesome battle which did indeed black out the city for a time. They never find out who was behind this scheme, but Jimmy Wood announces it was The Yellow Claw.

This leads Nick to confront the Yellow Claw directly and the mysterious Asian menace is able a few times to get Nick to fall into booby traps. He even manipulates SHIELD into gathering up the parts of a deadly death ray developed by Advanced Idea Mechanics.

Armed with this deadly device Yellow Claw and his forces take to the skies over NYC and prepare to destroy it when SHIELD is able to use the Helicarrier to attack and board the Claw's ship. Stalled but not defeated Yellow Claw withdraws to his hidden lair beneath the Hudson River.

But he is followed by Nick Fury and soon enough all of SHIELD as they wage a final and all-out war to stop the malignant forces of the Yellow Claw. The battle rages and seemingly the Claw's niece Suwan is killed but then a deadly secret is revealed that calls everything into question. I will not spoil one of the great hidden twists in Marvel lore.

Later after the battle, a weary Nick Fury dreams about what might happen if an alien descended and brought death and destruction to NYC. Fortunately it's a dream, but it's also the end of Strange Tales.

The series will become Doctor Strange and Nick Fury and his agents of SHIELD will get their own beautiful spanking brand new number one issue.

More on that next time.

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SHIELD - The Second Hydra War!

The SHIELD series enters its second phase with the arrival of Jim Steranko who took the perfectly decent super-spy series and fitted it with modern and sleek designs elevating it from a humble action adventure and making a pure unadulterated slice of pop culture.

The story begins though with the return of Hydra who are led by a dashing playboy named Don Cabellero. In a initial chapter drawn by John Buscema we meet Cabellero and learn that he is not exactly as he presents himself. Aside from the mystery of his true identity we learn of the Overkill Horn, a sonic weapon designed to activate the atomic stockpiles across the globe, creating an apocalypse after which Hydra will emerge and rule.

Jim Steranko arrives inking Jack Kirby's layouts in the first few stories as we meet Cabellero's second identity Emir Ali-Bey. Fury has been tricked into delivering the Overkill Horn on its deadly mission but discovers his error and takes extreme steps to end the threat.

With the Overkill Horn threat ended, the Supreme Hydra and his forces launch their next ploy, which calls upon the mysterious leader to become SHIELD agent Bronson and infiltrate the Hellicarrier headquarters of SHIELD itself. He is able to cause a great deal of trouble even throwing suspicion on Laura Brown, the daughter of the first Supreme Hydra.

But we learn that Fury is one step ahead and eventually the various attacks on the Hellicarrier by the deadly Dreadnought and later the powerful Z-Ray are defeated. But Bronson escapes with Brown in his clutches and heads to the secret Hydra base, the ultra high-tech Hydra Island.

Fury though has faked his own demise yet again and has hidden himself in the ship which carried them to the deadly base. He emerges and the final battle is on as Hydra threatens the world with a new and deadly threat of bacterial warfare with a bomb called the Death Spore supposedly hidden aboard the Helicarrier itself.

Eventually the true identity of the Supreme Hydra is revealed as Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, Fury's old arch-nemesis from World War II. The two battle ferociously, each using all the high-tech weapons at their command such the deadly Satan Claw. But in the end as you knew he would Fury prevails and bomb explodes but on the enclosed island, and he and girl escape as Hydra Island falls into the sea and Strucker himself seems destroyed once and for all. He of course gets better as these dandy villains almost always seem to do, but that's a story for another day.

During the course of this run, Steranko steps away from merely inking the King and becomes not only the main artist but also the writer. Roy Thomas helped with scripts on the first few, but soon Steranko is revealed in all his glory his techniques improving with each installment of the exciting story. Steranko's storytelling sometimes falls short, but is more than made up by his incendiary designs which dazzle the eye. The series becomes a visually exciting dance as the story propels itself along with a surprising amount of logic despite the never ending hair raising events.

More to come when a new villain appears to menace the world.

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SHIELD - Taking AIM At THEM!

The saga of SHIELD and Nick Fury takes a detour when Nick shows up at Avengers Mansion in Tales of Suspense #78 to have a chat with his old WWII comrade Captain America. The two of them come under attack by a deadly android from the DNA-rich vats of the super-science organization dubbed "THEM'. (I was reminded of "The Evil Factory" from the earliest issues of Kirby's Jimmy Olsen)This android can combine chemicals in his body to create all sorts of deadly effects but together Cap and Nick bring him down eventually. At the end Nick gives Cap a SHIELD security badge and we realize we haven't seen the last of him.

Over in Strange Tales #147 the battle continues as Nick and SHIELD track down where the android came from and discover an underwater laboratory lair occupied by two of THEM's agents. Previously he had learned that the attack of Mentallo and the Fixer had been at least partially financed by THEM. Dressed in the now familiar yellow radiation-suit inspired togs of A.I.M. these two scientists appear to be a criminal branch of A.I.M. which at that moment is represented by Count Bornag Royale as a legit think tank which is offering high-tech weapons to the world if they will remove Nick Fury as commander of SHIELD. So it seems that THEM and  A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics) are two arms of the same outfit, but it gets more complicated yet.

During a hearing to possibly remove Fury, he abruptly takes a header out of the window of the awesome helicarrier. Thought dead he then leads a counterattack against the forces of A.I.M. who have shown up in force at SHIELD headquarters to try and take control of LMD technology. The attack is foiled and eventually Count Royale is revealed. Followed by Jasper Sitwell, Royale appears to be killed when A.I.M.'s main secret base is exploded by forces unknown.

The long missing Gabe Jones reappears in the garb of the Secret Empire, as it was shown in the pages of Tales to Astonish where that secret criminal outfit had been giving both Hulk and Sub-Mariner problems. Infiltrating their ranks Jones was able to remove the threat for the moment. But now Fury and his agents begin to suspect that THEM, A.I.M. and The Secret Empire might all be merely "arms" of a larger and more deadly enemy - Hydra!

These are some fun issues and the shifting back and forth of the enemy does really have an espionage feel, though it does seem that the writers lost track of what they were all called. The artwork though suffers a bit as Odgen Whitney steps in to handle the pencils on the last chapter of the story, his work is developed but lacks that Marvel energy and punch. One notable event was that one chapter of his run was written by Jack Kirby (and credited as same) before Denny O'Neil stepped into take over from Stan.

The attempt to blend all of these secret organizations in sundry comics really amps up a feeling of paranoia and a larger world threat worthy of the heroes.

More next time when finally Hydra returns!

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The Dojo Review Of Marvel's Doctor Strange!

I finally got around to seeing Doctor Strange the other day. Taking some advice, I went to see the 3-D version of this movie and I'm glad I did, as this was perhaps the first movie I've seen which truly was made for the format and not simply a regular movie with a few novel sequences. The visual splendor here is immense and the other dimensions lived up to my expectations (for the most part) as wildly overdeveloped as those might have become over the years.

The tale of a self-absorbed and highly talented surgeon is all here. On display in particular was the charm of Stephen Strange right alongside the painful cruelty he could inflict. His rejection of his lover Christine when he is in the pit of his own self-pity made me wince. To my mind Cumberbatch did a masterful job and I for one completely forgot all about Sherlock. I liked pretty much all of this movie but there were some things I liked better than others and a tiny few things which did annoy me.

SPOILER ALERT IN PLACE.

The Good: The visual feast here is mighty indeed, though I will confess the running up and down and into constantly transforming buildings and such did become a little hazy in spots, but mostly it was just spectacular. Doctor Strange looked fantastic, I loved the film version of his costume and thought it worked all the way. The addition of the Eye of Agamotto and the Cloak of Levitation made the character visually complete and it all fell into place with a logic that worked, at least for the duration of the movie. The Cloak in particular was a real nifty source of humor in the movie, though I think they lingered on some of the scenes of its hi-jinks a bit too long.

The Bad: The villains were indeed quite bad, Mads Mikklesen is a favorite of mine and worthy. But there was a sameness to the sidekicks of the evil Kaecilius were merely drones and perhaps needed a bit more distinction, but of course I guess that was to some extent the point. As quirky as Tilda Swinton was as the "Ancient One" I had a bit of a hard time with this change up in the classic character. Liked Mordo, but kept waiting for him to turn bad. He does but you have to wait until the end of the credits of course.

The Ugly: Dormammu was a real letdown. I liked the glimpses early in the movie but when he comes into full reveal we get yet one more rather uninteresting giant face hidden in dark shadows. This failed rather completely in the second Fantastic Four (the Galactus cloud) movie and Green Lantern (the Parallax fog) several years ago and it was a real disappointment to see it repeated here. The encounter with Strange was nice and does evoke the classic Ditko confrontation, but the realization of the demon Dormammu required a more fully humanoid character.

SPOILER ALERT OVER.

Doctor Strange is an appropriate movie for Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. It's a story about a man who is overcome with grand gifts intellect, talent and skill, but who is so inside his own experience and so removed from his fellow man that he cannot ever be content nor appreciative of what has been given to him. This is a story about a man who learns to give and to understand that in service one finds truly that what we can be is more than what we often are.

Highly recommended.

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SHIELD - The Day Of The Druid!

The Druid is one of those missed opportunities. When the mysterious Satan Eggs show up and blow up a plane they seem to be a real threat and we quickly learn that they are the emissaries of a deadly cult which functions as a high-tech variation on the ancient druid cults of ancient times. They are lead by a distinctive looking character called the Druid.

But the threat is quickly tracked and quelled and the Druid proves to be far less impressive when he attempts to go one-on-one with Nick Fury. The Druid cult and their weird Satan Eggs are merely diversion in SHIELD's long war against villainous types.

These issues are probably most interesting in the long run for the debut of Jasper Sitwell, the top graduate of SHIELD's academy and a rather funny counter to Fury's shoot-from-the-hip style. Jasper has always been a fave of mine, a nerd who was capable of some true mayhem but easily discounted because of his precious appearance.

Don Heck does some pretty fine work over Kirby's layouts in these issues (with the help of inker "Mickey Demeo" - that's Mike Esposito actually), the two of them almost always delivering to my eye a handsome end product. Wished they'd worked more together. 

Next up is the threat of THEM.

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SHIELD - The Fixer And Mentallo Too!

The Fixer and Mentallo are two of my favorite Marvel baddies. This dastardly duo first get together following the downfall of Hydra and when we meet Mentallo, a former SHIELD technician who went astray and was removed from his position with the organization in the E.S.P. Division.

Mentallo wants to take revenge and to that end recruits the Fixer, breaking him out of jail. Mentallo's mind-reading abilities give him advantage, but Fixer's uncanny skill at making deadly equipment makes the pair something to reckon with.

The infiltrate SHIELD but are rebuffed and later kidnap Fury attacking him to a deadly atomic weapon. But eventually as it must they are defeated and sent off to jail once again. SHIELD's encounter with this deadly duo was a nice little triad of stories which served well to transition away from the heavy emphasis on Hydra.

Loved Kirby's designs in these issues especially the overall look of Fixer and Mentallo, two of Kirby's better designs. After casting about for an artistic direction Howard Purcell was brought in to tighten up Kirby's layouts for these few issues, though there's little doubt that Kirby's imagery is what makes these issues vivid.

One curiosity for me was the familiar look of the E.S.P. Division trio who are mostly seen in these stories hooked into the SHIELD equipment. They remind me mightily of New Gods characters Dave Lincoln, Claudia Shane and Victor Lanza who along with a fourth youngster named Harvey Lockman were saved from Darkseid by Orion in the debut issue of that series. 

When we first encounter that quartet, they are likewise hooked up to machines to explore their minds. 

More to come when the Satan Eggs fly.

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