Famous firsts

As I’ve mentioned before, both DC or Marvel were off their game as the Silver Age approached its end. DC’s trying anything and everything to make up for the sales slump post-Batman. Marvel publisher Martin Goodman tried averting a sales slump by dictating all stories wrap up in one issue, believing continued stories turned off younger readers.

Still, creative people gonna get creative. Several stories at the end of 1969 and the start of 1970 (going by cover dates) used ideas that would be reused over and over in the decades to come.

Captain America #121, for instance, is the first story in which someone tries to duplicate the super-soldier process that turned 4-F Steve Rogers into Captain America. In a nice touch, mad scientist Silas Cragg is aware he’s a D-lister, someone Cap wouldn’t even remember punching out back in the Big One. Having deduced the principles of Erskine’s super-soldier treatment, Cragg transforms pissed-off but muscular loser Bart Dietzel into the Man-Brute. Being stronger than Steve, he’s even stronger after the treatment. When Man-Brute discovers he’s unwittingly put his own kid at risk battling Cap, he sacrifices himself to destroy Cragg (as Blockbuster he returns to battle Omega a few years later).

It’s not a great story. I think the one-and-done decree threw Stan and Gene Colan off their game: the plotline has all the dramatic beats I’d expect but too rushed to give them any punch.

Next up we have Roy Thomas and Sal Buscema’s “Did You Hear the One About Scorpio?” in Avengers #72.

Scorpio first appeared in Jim Steranko’s Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. In Steranko’s final issue, Fury unmasks Scorpio but doesn’t identify him to us, nor do we see his face. Thomas’ story opens with a great splash panel by Buscema——after which Rick Jones tells the Avengers a highly edited version of his encounter with Scorpio. Edited because he can’t explain how Captain Marvel showed up to save him without explaining how he’s linked to Mar-Vell through the nega-bands.

Apparently nobody knows what Steranko had in mind for Scorpio but Thomas uses him as a springboard to introduce 11 more villains — Zodiac!(Minor grumble, neither Thomas nor most later writers put much thought into the team’s abilities. We have guys such as Capricorn, Leo and Cancer whose motif gives them obvious physical powers, plus members Virgo and Aquarius who have no powers at all. It always felt unbalanced).

Scorpio captures the Avengers, they break out, then midway through the big fight Scorpio pulls off his mask to show who he really is.

Yep, Nick Fury, supposedly dead in the last issue of his series. In hindsight, “it was an LMD” was as predictable as “It was a doombot” though the reveal the LMD had been subbing for Nick for most of the previous ten issues (thereby freeing Nick to go undercover as Scorpio) doesn’t make much sense.

But Dum-Dum, hiding the truth, gets a dramatic mourning scene. What an actor!

It’s a lively issue. The resurrection of Nick Fury, the debut of Zodiac and the reveal Scorpio is secretly Jake Fury, Nick’s failbrother. I’ve no idea if that was Steranko’s original intention and as a non-war comics reader the reveal would have baffled me had I read it when it came out. As we get no backstory on Jake, I might have figured he’s one of those relatives writers make up when a story calls for it.

What makes it a “first” is that it’s the first story I can think of where a team-book writer brings a character into the series to keep him from oblivion (though I suppose including the Hulk in the original Avengers team could count). Captain Marvel, which Roy had taken over, bit the dust earlier in 1969. This issue gave Roy a chance to introduce him to a wider audience.

After a two-issue return in mid-1970 (what was with that?), Mar-Vell would reunite with the Avengers to participate in the Kree-Skrull War, then eventually get his own book again. Roy’s strategy paid off, as it would for others: Steve Englehart bringing the Beast into the Avengers, Gerry Conway having Firestorm join the Justice League, Grant Morrison bringing his creation Aztek into the JLA (okay, that didn’t bring Aztek higher stardom but who cares?).

It also gives Roy a chance to give Rick some closure over being abruptly kicked out of Captain America after a short stint as Cap’s new partner. Though Rick never explains why he has to keep this a secret — you’d think he’d jump at the chance to show off his new status to his father-figure.

“The Replacement” by Archie Goodwin and George Tuska in Iron Man #21 is the first time Tony stepped down and let someone else wear the armor. I know it’s hard to get excited about that now — exactly how many people have taken up the mantle? — but it’s a cool story.

A few issues earlier, after a fight with a rogue LMD put Tony in the hospital (as I mentioned last week), his condition was so critical his doctor had to try something radical — an artificial heart. The good news is, the successful operation allows Tony to jettison his chestplate. The bad news is, too much exertion would kill him, like if he’s in a life-or-death battle wearing his armor. With the possibility of a normal life dangled in front of him, Tony begins thinking that maybe he’s spent enough time in the metal suit. Yet the world needs Iron Man — how can he walk away?

The title answers that, of course. Black boxer Eddie “Iron Man” March is a huge Shellhead fan and thrilled when he meets Tony Stark (Happy and Tony had a guys’ night out at the fights). Tony decides Eddie’s tough and gutsy enough to take up the Golden Avenger’s mantle and tells him the current Iron Man is looking to retire. He has no idea the boxer has a brain clot that puts him at risk of death if he’s hit too hard. Eddie takes up the mantle without admitting this, then winds up almost dying when he fights the Crimson Dynamo (not the original but another legacy wearing the armor). He doesn’t stay as Iron Man but he did stick around the book for a while.Incredible Hulk #123, “No More the Monster” (Roy Thomas, Herb Trimpe) marks two firsts. A joint effort by Reed Richards and Bruce Banner finally cures him of being the Hulk, the first cure that’s worked. Even if Johnny’s a little skeptical.

It’s also the first time Bruce has retained his personality and intelligence in the Hulk’s body. Which unfortunately leads to General Ross asking for help.
It turns out Banner-minded Hulk isn’t as stable as Bruce and Reed hoped; Bruce recovers control after his fight with the Leader but vows never, never, never again (three guesses what happens next issue. I doubt you’ll need more than one). I really like that scene with Ross above—late Silver Age Thunderbolt Ross showed a degree of decency and sense that vanished in the Bronze Age.

Switching to DC, “Snapper Carr — Super Traitor” in Justice League of America #77 (Denny O’Neil, Dick Dillin) is, I believe, the first case of someone leading an anti-superhero crusade. In the opening we see the followers of John Dough, the World’s Most Normal Man, take out their distaste for the JLA on Snapper, their honorary member.
Dough claims that superheroes set such an unattainable standard, they cheapen the experiences of ordinary men. The League divides on whether he has a point —

— and don’t come off well when they meet Dough in public debate. The emphasis on making everyone average makes me wonder if O’Neil had read Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” which has a similar theme.

In one of the most pointless reveals I’ve ever seen it turns out John Dough is the Joker, whipping up an anti-JLA campaign as a means to hurt Batman, then kill him. It’s about the least Jokerish idea I’ve ever seen — okay, given the past twenty years that’s no longer true, but it is pretty bad. Nor does Snapper make a lot of sense explaining his support for Dough, which includes exposing the location of the League’s secret base.

Dude, if you’re fed up, quit the team. Move somewhere where nobody knows you — it’s not like anyone outside Happy Harbor’s going to recognize you. I realize the point was to write Snapper out as O’Neil did with J’Onn J’Onzz, and to force the JLA to relocate but it’s still unconvincing.

That said, even though I grew up with the Secret Sanctuary, the move to the Satellite Sanctuary was one of O’Neil’s better ideas. Even more than the first base, it’s where “my” JLA hangs out — and no, the Watchtower and other space bases since then don’t do it for me the same way.

Aquaman #49, “As the Seas Dies,” by Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo has Aquaman investigate toxic-waste dumping that’s turning fish in the area violent. When this came out, environmental themes were catching on as the latest form of comic-book relevance. Green Lantern battled an oil spill last month —

— and the next two issues of JLA will focus on the deadly threat of pollution and give Green Arrow his first chance to rant about the moral cancers infecting America.

The Aquaman story is a first, however, because it gives us, as far as I know, comics first eco-terrorist. Along with the corporate fat cat saving money by dumping polluted wastes into the ocean, the bad guys include an oceanographer who’s blowing up the factories to save the oceans — and if he has to kill a night watchman or two in the process, well, the needs of the many and all that.

Over time, the eco-terrorist has become the dominant face of environmentalism in comic books. We have Poison Ivy, the post-Crisis Terra-Man and of course R’as al Ghul. I can’t think of any prominent environmentalists of justice to balance them out.

Outside of comics the Kingsman movie and James Rollins’ The Eighth Plague both have characters doing very bad things to end global warming. Have people become convinced protecting the environment is bad because it will inconvenience them somehow? Has corporate America’s long campaign to convince people regulation is bad born fruit?

Or are these characters in the long tradition of putting moral arguments into the mouths of the bad guys? For example. the 1930s film Fighting Youth, which makes familiar criticisms of college football (colleges make big bucks, players get nothing but a risk of serious injury) but puts them in the mouth of a communist schemer. No need to take Red arguments seriously, any more than we should listen to R’as al Ghul about what we’re doing to the world.

Art by Gene Colan, Sal Buscema x5, Herb Trimpe, Buscemax2, George Tuska, Trimpex3, then Dick Dillin (the JLA stuff). Nick Cardy, Gil Kane and Norm Breyfogle