Team-ups, temporary alliances and unlikely partnerships

The 1970s were the golden age of team-up books. DC had already been showcasing Batman in The Brave and the Bold, teaming up with various other heroes, for some years. In 1978, they added DC Comics Presents, featuring team ups with Superman. Over at Marvel, Marvel Team-up, almost always with Spider Man, started in 1972. Marvel Two-in-One with Ben Grimm (the Thing from the Fantastic Four) started a year or so later.

Why use these specific characters to headline the team-up books? Well, at DC, the decision was obviously based on popularity. Superman and Batman were their hottest properties, so books featuring them would sell well. And it was fairly believable that they would team up often with other heroes. Superman was so powerful you would often wonder why he needed help, but his Boy Scout personality meant he could work smoothly with most DC good guys. Batman in the late Silver Age was scary to the bad guys, but perfectly capable of making friends—or at least allies—with other heroes.

At Marvel, popularity was probably the determining factor as well. But Spider Man and Ben Grimm both also have qualities that make them ideal for starring in team-up stories. Both have strong personalities and senses of humor. Both characters “play well” with others and aren’t overshadowed by more physically powerful allies.

Another strength of the team-up books was that their storylines were always separate from the regular Superman/Batman/Spidey/FF books. Nothing in them violated continuity, but you could read any of these books independent of the main titles and still get a complete story. Regardless of what multi-part epics might be taking place in Detective, Action or Amazing Spider Man, the team-up books would remain a world of their own. Since most of the plots were wrapped up in a single issue, they gave you a nice little superhero fix whenever you needed it.

Marvel Two-and-One #24, for instance, opens with the Thing at Stark Industries West Coast facility, helping scientist Bill (Black Goliath) Foster test some new equipment. (Ben, of course, is the guinea pig—tossed into a pressure chamber to see how well a new space suit design works). When a thief floods the facility with knock out gas in order to loot valuable technology, Ben and Goliath work together to thwart him. They end up fighting the villain’s deadly “crime tank.”

The story, written by Bill Mantlo and Jim Shooter and drawn by Sal Buscema, isn’t groundbreaking in any way. But it tells the story well and gives Ben some nifty one-liners. It’s fun to read, which is all that is expected of it.

The same can be said for Marvel Team-up #13. Spider Man stumbles across Captain America fighting a horde of AIM agents. Spidey jumps in to help, but as soon as the battle ends, the two heroes are teleported up to the SHIELD helicarrier. Bringing up Spidey along with Cap was an accident and a rookie SHIELD agent tries to arrest the webslinger. Nick Fury puts a stop to that, allowing Spider Man and Cap to work together in stopping the Grey Gargoyle from sabotaging a guided missile test at Cape Kennedy.

This one was written by Len Wein and featured the always wonderful art of Gil Kane. Once again, there’s nothing particularly special about the issue other than it was just plain entertaining. The bit where the overeager SHIELD guy tries to arrest Spidey is priceless, as is a scene a few pages later where Nick Fury lays a patriotic guilt trip on Spidey to get him to agree to help. The action is well-handled and it’s all perfectly satisfying.

Over at DC, Batman and Green Lantern work both against each other and together in The Brave and the Bold #155. An earthquake rocks Gotham City and Batman soon deduces an alien criminal is responsible. Meanwhile, Green Lantern is assigned by the Guardians to capture the same crook for trial before the Guardians. This puts the two heroes at odds—Batman wants the villain to face Earth justice, while GL is determined to bring him to Oa. There’s some detective work that takes them both to another planet and it all leads up to a nice twist at the end involving the crook’s possible innocence.

Written by Bob Haney and with Jim Aparo’s dynamic artwork, this is once again a story that is simply fun to read.

Finally, we come to a story written by Cary Bates and drawn by Joe Stanton. In DC Comic Presents #10, Superman is thrown back in time by an enormous explosion while saving Paris from a terrorist threat. He ends up in World War II. Suffering from amnesia and unaware he has superpowers, Superman hooks up with Sgt. Rock and Easy Company. At first, Rock and the others suspect he might be a Nazi infiltrator, but he eventually regains his memory in time to secretly use his powers to save his new friends. Then, after faking his death to explain his sudden disappearance, he returns to the present.

The plot here is a little contrived—it’s hard to do an “amnesia” plot without obvious contrivance. But tossing Superman and Sgt. Rock together is a nifty enough idea to cause us to forgive this. Once again—at the risk of sounding like a broken record—it’s a just plain fun issue.

So that’s the simple truth—the various team-up books of that decade were not ground-breaking. They didn’t introduce innovative storytelling techniques. They didn’t change the face of the industry. They just used the established characters and backgrounds of their respective universes to tell enjoyable stories. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.

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."

Splash Panel Magic

There is a moment most regular comic book readers encounter from time to time that is pretty much unique to that storytelling medium. It comes when you are engrossed in a good story, turn the page and catch your breath at the sight of a particularly beautiful panel of art. It’s when we’ve encountered a piece of visual perfection that both moves the story along and just plain looks cool on its own.


Such a moment is what Batman #237 (December 1971) and Our Army at War #255 (May 1973) have in common. In most other ways, the two comics don’t share many communal traits. One is telling a superhero story; the other is telling a war story. One is a mystery; the other is an action tale. One has a strong plot running through the entire story; the other is episodic, involving several different incidents linked together thematically.



The Batman tale, written by Denny O’Neil and drawn by Neil Adams, involves a killer called the Reaper. Dressed in the traditional garb of Death and armed with a scythe, he has committed several murders. Batman and Robin investigate, discovering that the Reaper is a World War II death camp survivor whose primary target is the former commander of that camp. It’s a wonderful, tightly-plotted mystery with tragic ending that deals with the futility of revenge.


It would have been a great story anyways, but the “catch your breath” moment adds to its greatness exponentially. It comes about a third of the way through the tale, when Robin is looking for clues in the woods after finding a murder victim. He notices a shadow spreading over him and looks up in shock. We turn the page and there it is—our first look at the Reaper in a full page splash panel as he swings his scythe at the Boy Wonder. There’s no dialogue—just Adams’ perfect imagery. It’s a moment that’s important to the story as a whole. But it’s also by itself worth the price of admission.




Our Army at War, featuring Sgt. Rock in a story by Bob Kanigher and art by the great Russ Heath, begins with Rock reporting to bespectacled clerk Sgt. Egbert to get his latest orders. Egbert is constantly talking about how boring it is at headquarters and how lucky the front line troops are to be in on all the action.


Easy Company is ordered to march to a nearby river and help a lieutenant pull his jeep out of the mud. But once at the river, they’re ambushed. Several men are killed before the Germans are driven off. After the fight, they find the lieutenant is already dead—it’s all been for nothing. Later, Egbert sends them out to fix some road signs that have been turned the wrong way. A stray bomb kills two of Rock’s men before this job is done.


Finally, Egbert gives Rock orders to find a lost dog—the mutt is a general’s mascot and has to be found. Rock goes out on this job alone, running into some Germans along the way. He brings back the dog along with several bullet wounds.


The “catch your breath” moment in this story comes in the very last panel. Another Easy Company trooper stops by headquarters to tell Egbert the job is done. Egbert is wiping his glasses clean and he holds them up to see if he’s missed a spot, all the while commenting that Rock is probably picking up donuts and coffee at the PX.




The last panel, taking up half the page, is the view through Egbert’s glasses as he holds them up, looking out through a window into the street—where Rock is being carried along in a stretcher, bandaged and bloody. Heath’s strong art had held the story together—now it provided it with a jarring, effective conclusion. Once again, it was a single image that is both a necessary part of the story and a masterpiece of comic art all on its own.