Stealing Oil

cover artist unknown

 

Before he made it big with his Mike Hammer novels, Mickey Spillane's career as a writer included a stint with Marvel Comics. (Then called Timely Comics.) In All-Winners Comics #3 (Winter 1941-42), Spillane penned a nifty Human Torch story, with the art tentatively credited to Torch's creator Carl Burgos.

The story begins when the Torch and Toro hear a shot and then see the gunman running from a nearby building. They stop the guy, who commits suicide to avoid capture. He turns out to be part of a pro-Japanese society called the Black Dragons.

Inside the building is the body of an oil tycoon, who had recently sold a Texas oil well to someone else. The Torch's investigation of this convinces him to take a look at the oil well. Confirmation that he is on to something comes when, during the trip to Texas via train, a Black Dragon assassin tries to kill him.

The assassin is wearing an asbestos suit, so is able to escape. Upon arriving in Texas, the Torch takes a job at the oil well. He and Toro soon find out that the oil is being pumped from the well to the coast rather than to a legitimate location.

The two heroes are nearly blown to bits by land mines, but soon have the local Black Dragon goons on the run. They capture all but the leader, who escapes through the pipeline and boards a Japanese submarine that has been collecting the oil. 

The Torches catch the sub and burn a hole in its side, forcing it to surrender to a nearby American destroyer. So a plan by the Japanese government to steal oil is foiled.

It's a simple, fun story. Though the artist is uncredited, it looks like Burgos' style and has the same liveliness typical of his work. Spillane shows that, even early in his career, he knew how to move a story along at a brisk pace. Also, its always worthwhile to note that Marvel Comics was slamming the Axis forces before the U.S. officially entered the war. That always makes these early anti-fascist stories more fun to read.

Next week, we'll stay in the 1940s and visit Sgt. Rock.

Captain America Fought Zombies Before Zombies Were Cool!

I am not a fan of modern zombie fiction. In part, this is because of my distaste for graphic violence, which I think is one of the worst things that ever happened to the horror genre. It is also, in part, simply a matter of personal preference. Give me a dead guy raised by voodoo or because of a curse rather than a world-wide zombie plague and I'll then be okay with the story. The second episode of the 1974/75 TV series The Night Stalker involved a voodoo-created zombie and contains one of the purely scariest moments ever produced in fiction from any medium.

But there at least one Zombie Apocalypse story that I enjoy. We have to go back to All-Winners Comics #1 (Summer 1941) to find it, but by golly, it's there.

The comic contained five stories respectively featuring the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, the Black Marvel, the Angel and Captain America. It's Cap who has to deal with the Zombies.

These particular zombies are created by a Nazi mad scientist, who is kidnapping hobos, turning them into mindless killing machines that feel no pain, then having them rampage and destroy American military assets.

Joe Simon wrote the story and Jack Kirby illustrated it. It was a story that depends on really creepy images to work effectively and generate the appropriate horrific atmosphere. I think Kirby's best work as an artist came in the 1960s and 1970s, but he succeeds beautifully here in hitting that creepy vibe. The panels showing us the rampaging zombies put any thing from a George Romero movie to shame.

Anyway, Cap and Bucky go undercover as hobos, get kidnapped, and (after the villain conveniently explains his plan) beat up the bad guys and put a stop to this particular Zombie Apocalypse.

If you like modern zombie films and TV shows, then I have no problem with that. There's much of it I have never watched, so my opinion isn't a well-educated one and I freely admit it is based on personal preference. Just as I would hope no one would be dismissive of the fiction I can be passionate about, I hope that I would never be dismissive of someone else's tastes.

But for me, this Captain America story--published 27 years before Night of the Living Dead gave birth to modern Zombie movies--this is a story that shows us how to do such a story right.

Next week, we'll go on a mission with G.I. Robot as he takes on a Japanese Sumo-robot.

Dragon of Death

The very first issue of Captain America, published months before Pearl Harbor, showed us Cap punching out Hitler. Timely Comics (which would one day become Marvel Comics) was one of a small number of pop culture outlets that openly recognized that the Axis was evil and that we would one day have to confront them.

Captain America #5 was cover dated August 1941 and actually published on May 5 of that year. So once again, this is before we were in the war, but the story we're talking about today still shows the Axis as villains. This time, the villains are only identified as Asian, but they are clearly meant to be the Japanese. In fact, one of them openly admits to being a part of the "Axis Alliance." Avoiding the word "Japanese" might have been a concession to isolationist feelings for distributors or some readers (similar to what Milt Caniff was doing in his comic strip Terry and the Pirates), but nobody reading the story would miss the intention. Interestingly, the same issue had a story in which the Bund (American Nazis) are openly identified as the bad guys.

There is some racial stereotyping common to the era present, but all the same Timely Comics, along with Caniff, Warner Brothers studio, the Three Stooges and Charlie Chaplin deserve a lot of credit and praise for openly confronting the biggest evil in the world before it was in vogue to do so.

"The Gruesome Secret of the Dragon of Death" (by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby) opens with a whopping big dragon literally swallowing a Navy patrol ship off the coast of Hawaii. The dragon, though, turns out to be a whopping big Japanese submarine. (Well, I'm going to say "Japanese".) The commander of the Navy ship is tortured to get a password from him. The Japanese need the password to get some men ashore and plant dynamite in a volcano. The dynamite will cause the volcano to erupt and the lava flow would destroy the American fleet.

The commander refuses to talk, but is ready to break when his daughter is kidnapped and threatened. Fortunately for the these two, Captain America and Bucky had trailed the kidnapped girl to the Dragon sub and sneaked aboard.

It's at this point that we get a full-page cutaway of the sub. I love stuff like this. Give me a blue-print or cutaway of a make believe vehicle and I'll be set for the day while I examine it in detail.

What follows is an extended action sequence as Cap and Bucky take out most of the crew on the ship and rescue the captives before the officer gives away the password. In a bit of a storytelling glitch, the Japanese readily sneak their demolition crew ashore anyways and blow the volcano. But Cap manages to warn the fleet in time for them to get safely out of the bay.

When Bucky briefly thinks Cap was killed accomplishing this, he goes into a revenge-fueled rage blows up some of the surviving Japanese with the sub's deck gun. Don't tick off Bucky. It won't end well for you.

The action isn't as well choreographed as Kirby's action scenes would be in the 1960s and 1970s. At this early point in his career, his work was still largely excellent, but would be getting better as he gained more experience. But even with its flaws, the story is a good one.

Heck, it's got a cutaway image of a giant Dragon submarine. It can't help but be good.

Next week, we'll stop in and see what the Micronauts are up to in the second part of our review of their first twelve issues.

When Enemies Become Frie... Well, Not-Quite-Enemies

It's interesting to think what direction Timely (later Marvel) Comics would have gone in if not for the Second World War. Would Captain America be the icon he is today? Would he have been created at all? Would the Sub-Mariner have morphed from anti-villain into a more-or-less hero?

When we first meet him, Namor ruthlessly kills a couple of deep-sea divers and considers himself to be at war with the surface world. He and the original Human Torch are arch-enemies, tangling with each other within the pages of Marvel Mystery Comics.

But the war changed all that. In what is one of my favorite Golden Age stories, Namor and the Atlanteans fight off a Nazi invasion fleet. He becomes a de facto partner with the Allies--he might not like us annoying surface dwellers in general, but he's particularly displeased with the Axis.

This changes his dynamic with the other Timely superheroes, particularly the Human Torch. The two still openly disliked each other, but they were willing to fight together against the Germans and the Japanese.

Their first big team-up came in Marvel Mystery Comics #17 (March 1941). Like many other Timely stories, this one was published before Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into the war. One of the things that always impressed me about Timely is that they made no bones about being anti-Nazi early on, making no effort at all to tone things down to avoid annoying isolationists. (Though they weren't the only pop culture outlet to do this--Warner Brothers, Charlie Chaplin and the Three Stooges also deserve credit for slamming the Axis before it was politically correct to do so.)

In their first team-up, the Torch is surprised to get a message from Namor asking to meet. Though they do fight for a couple of panels, Namor finally manages to convince the Torch that he needs help fighting the real bad guys. (In a nice bit of continuity, Namor mentions that his Atlantean forces were badly decimated when the Germans attacked his homeland.)

Namor has information that the Axis are digging a tunnel across the Bering Strait to invade the U.S., something that confirms information the Torch had obtained in the previous month's issue. The two investigate and are soon tussling first with a U-Boat and then a torpedo boat.

They find an entrance into the tunnel through a volcano. What follows is an extended and very entertaining fight scene, with both the Torch and Namor getting chances to kick some Axis butt and earn their own individual Crowning Moments of Awesome. For the most part, the German and Japanese troops they encounter don't stand much of a chance, but the situation gets more dangerous

when an explosive and incapacitating gas leaks into the tunnel. Namor is knocked out on two different occasions and briefly captured once, but in the end the two heroes (with a little help from the remnants of the Atlantean fleet) manage to breach the tunnel walls and flood it, preventing the invasion.

When they find their way out of the tunnel, they end up in Juneau, Alaska, where Namor promptly annoys and then slugs a cop. But stopping an Axis invasion is an effective Get-Out-Of-Jail free card, so nothing comes of that.

Carl Burgos (the Torch's creator) did most of the pencil work, though Bill Everett drew his creation Namor. The shared art looks great, helping to move the story along at a fast-pace with one effective action scene after another.

And so Namor and the Torch, if they never really become friends, at least become allies. They fought together on the All-Winners Squad and were later retconned as teammates on the Invaders. So we'll never know what would have become of Namor had the Nazis not forced him to become a hero. Maybe the character would have been largely forgotten; maybe he'd be a major villain in the modern Marvel Universe. It's an interesting path for a character to take--from a killer in his first appearance to a hero before two years have passed.

How to take over an undersea civilization

Superman, of course, not only jump-started the superhero genre in comic books--his appearance also set off a frenzy of superhero creation that has been unmatched in comic book history.

Every month, comic book companies would be throwing new heroes at their young readers just to see who would stick. Timely Comics (the future Marvel Comics) did pretty well. The Sub-Mariner, the original Human Torch and Captain America all found readers and each of these characters was soon being featured in multiple comic books.

Then there were those who only appeared a few times before fading into obscurity. The recent trade paperback Marvel Firsts: WWII Superheroes gives us an interesting look at a lot of these guys. Some of them were pretty lame, but there were those that definitely had potential but just didn't happen to catch on.

Daring Mystery Comics #7 (April 1941) gave us the Fin. He was yet another undersea hero brought to us by Bill Everett, the creator of the Sub-Mariner. It's a fun story and the Fin definitely had potential.

The Fin is Pete Noble, a crewman on an American sub that rams a derelict and sinks. Noble manages to lock himself in an airtight room, then later puts on a breathing apparatus and cuts his way out with a blowtorch.

After confirming that the rest of the crew is dead, he finds he mysteriously can't swim to the surface. Also, the water pressure doesn't bother him.  He soon finds a cave and gets zipped up to a air-filled cavern by a whirlpool. Once there, he finds a race of bizarre flying fish people.

They attack him. He kills a couple of them, convincing them that he's an ancient hero called the Fin returning to them. So now he's the ruler of an undersea civilization. Who knew it would be that easy?

He returns to the wreck of the sub and makes himself a costume. And that's it for the first issue.

I looked the character up and discovered he was also in Daring Mystery Comics #8 and apparently Comedy Comics #9 (the same comic with its name changed). If the plot summaries I read are accurate, he fights a Nazi U-Boat commander named the Barracuda and finds a magic cutlass that can cut pretty much anything. He also discovers he has super strength while in the water, can swim at high speeds and can breath underwater on his own. As near as I can tell, no explanation for how he got his powers is ever given.

He did pop up again in a 2004 Invaders comic (in a version of the team set in modern day), in which he's called away from his kingdom and out of retirement from the Navy to command a high-tech battleship. That seems to be his last appearance.

Anyway, that first story is a lot of fun. I've always loved Bill Everett's kinetic art work--his imagery always has a snap to it that carries the story along with zest and efficiency. The design of the flying fish people is particularly entertaining.

The character's origin would have needed a little more fleshing out had he continued on, but all the elements of a great series was there. It's too bad the Fin didn't catch on.

Comics, Radio and the Prelude to War, Part 3

Like Warner Brothers, Timely Comics (the company that would eventually become Marvel Comics), made no concessions to isolationists at all. As far as they were concerned, the Nazis had to be fought and stopped--the sooner the better.

Captain America is the most overt example of this, as he and his teenage sidekick Bucky battled Nazi spies right from the get-go. (Cap's first issue was cover-dated March 1941, months before we entered the war.)

But other Timely characters did their share for freedom as well. The Sub-Mariner joined the fray when a fleet of German U-Boats attacked the undersea kingdom of Atlantis in Sub-Mariner #1. Namor, who until then had been an anti-hero, takes charge of the defense when his Emperor is apparently killed in the initial blitzkreig.

What follows is a well-told war story that covers the tactics Namor and his people use against the invaders. Small submersibles fight a desperate underwater dog fight with the U-Boats. When the German craft are driven to the surface, cannon mounted atop icebergs and inside artifical whales open fire on them. It's all very well crafted. Writer/artist Bill Everett presents the action effectively and comes up with some nifty designs for the both the German super U-Boats and the Atlantian craft. We understand the tactical situation perfectly as the battle progresses.

It's also interesting that Everett presents the Atlantians as having suffered huge casualties, including innocent civilians. He's giving us a fantasy version of warfare, of course, but he's not letting us forget the real-life cost of battle.

In the climax, a single U-Boat tries to escape. Namor pursues it alone. He fights hand-to-hand with some Germans in diving suits, damages the U-Boat severely and then finishes it off by pushing down below its crush depth. It was primarily a well-told science fiction/war story. But it was also one of many strong comments from a number of comic book artists and writers that there is indeed evil in the world and that evil must be confronted.

Other pre-war Timely comics also hammered at this theme. Namor even called a truce with his arch-enemy--the Human Torch--so that the two of them could team up to stop a German/Japanese invasion of Alaska (with the enemy using a tunnel to sneak their troops past the border.)

These issues aren't always as clear-cut as they were in 1941--today, people of good conscience argue both for and against our presence in Iraq. But the Timely World War II stories (with a little help from Superman, Milt Caniff, and Harry Warner) remind us that sometimes we have no choice but to fight for our freedom. As George Orwell once said: "We are free because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on our behalf."