Essential Captain America, Vol. 1

And after a brief delay, here we go...

First up is Essential Captain America, vol. 1.

A little background before we begin...

Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941, published by Marvel's predecessor Timely Comics.

With the dawn of WW II Cap was not alone in the patriotic style heroes who graced the pages of various comics from various publishers and, like most of those heroes, he didn't survive much past the end of the war -- disappearing by the early 1950's.  There was a brief revival of the character in 1953, refashioned into a patriotic Commie Basher to try to appeal to the 'Red Scare' days but this not only didn't work it provided a hiccup in the character's history which Marvel eventually had to deal with... but that is for another day.

In 1964 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby dusted the character off and gave him a prominent place with Marvel's still-rather-young superteam The Avengers.  With Cap seemingly catching on with readers it was time to give him his own title... sort of... which is also where we come in with this volume.

Cap actually began appearing in a title called Tales of Suspense which was a kind of two-in-one comic at that time.  Half of the comic was devoted to stories featuring Iron Man and the other half to Captain America stories.  The two heroes traded off monthly on getting the cover image and lead position in the comic.  Eventually, both Cap and Iron Man proved popular enough to be launched into their own series'.  The stories in this volume cover the years 1964-1968 and cover the transition from Tales of  Suspense to Cap's solo title with all of them being written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby.

So how is it actually?

Not bad.  There are a lot of Silver Age conventions here -- villains who give big monologuing speeches and insist on keeping the hero alive and around in order to 'gloat over their victory', clunky dialogue, and really, really, seriously bad pseudo-science (really).  At the same time, the stories are action-packed and move along at breakneck speed without any padding or long, drawn out, story arcs. 

On the flip side, that breakneck speed doesn't really allow for too much character development -- particularly for the villains.  The villains are villainous and we may get an origin story for them but they don't really become fully rounded characters here.

The other thing that sets these stories apart is a clear view of what was called "the Marvel style" at that time.  Marvel is credited with giving it's heroes faults, failings, and foibles and also with giving them soap opera style stories in the Silver Age.  With Cap this is manifest by him brooding about being a "man out of time", and feeling responsible for the death of his partner, Bucky, and also losing the love of his life in WW II and then in the modern era being drawn to a woman who resembled his lost love only for them to be kept apart due to him being a superhero and her being a S.H.E.I.L.D. Agent.

The problem is that, to a modern reader, these elements are a bit overdone.  Cap remarks on his "age" and how he should be an "old man" like other WW II vets are but at the time this comic was written WW II was only about 20 years in the rear view mirror!  The "old men" who were his fellow vets were likely only in their early 40's through their early 50's!  About half the cast of the recent Avengers movie were over 40 and I doubt any of those actors would have thought of themselves as "old men"!  Modern, changed attitudes about age have made a lot of Cap's meditations on the subject seem whiny.

And speaking of whiny... Cap's brooding about his past probably seemed novel and invoked sympathy in readers of the time but here the dialogue comes across as kind of emo.  This is exacerbated by the fact that, in the 1960's, comic books were almost exclusively sold at newspaper stands and on drugstore spinner racks.  As such, comic book fandom was seen as a bit more casual thing and writers felt like they couldn't take it for granted that a reader picking up a comic book may be that familiar with Cap's backstory.  As such, the issue of Cap's lost partner, Bucky, had to be brought up again, and again, and again.  This makes Cap seem as though he's wallowing in the tragedy... particularly if one reads a big block of these stories in one sitting. 

I will say this, though -- when Lee and Kirby began writing Captain America stories in the Silver Age they set those stories during WW II -- allowing them to write all-new tales of Cap and Bucky as a team for readers who were probably not old enough to have read the original stories in the 1940's.  This had the benefit of allowing readers to get to know the character of Bucky and thereby possibly feel the tragedy of his death a bit more.

Interestingly, in reading through this Essential volume you see Lee and Kirby dropping the WW II era stories suddenly in favor of writing stories of Cap's adventures set in the 'modern era'.  In fact, they drop this right in the middle of a story arc and simply hand wave away the end of the arc.  Apparently the WW II era stories were not striking a chord with readers and Marvel was receiving requests that they write stories about Cap in the then current time.  To a modern reader this change is kind of jarring and not extremely well done.

And any discussion of this thick tome would not be complete without a discussion of the artwork.  Jack Kirby was not nicknamed "the King" for nothing.  His artistic style would become justifiably famous and would go on to influence any number of other artists.  With the color stripped out of the Essential line it allows us to see and appreciate Kirby's line work.  Unfortunately, this volume features Kirby's work before he had quite reached the apex of his style.  You can see an evolution throughout the four years of comics backed into this volume but by the end he's still not quite where he would be.  Also, the more prosaic, superhero-style stories do not give him much chance to cut loose with some of his more imaginative designs.

As you can see in the panel above, taken from towards the end of the volume, Kirby is starting to branch out and the dynamism of his figural work is growing as well, but he's not quite there yet.  Wait till we get to the Thor stories... Kirby's work is gonna blow your socks off...

So, after this long, rambling post what's the final verdict?

If you want to see the roots of Captain America this is a pretty good place to start.  Since Marvel has never really had a company-wide reboot as DC Comics has most of these stories are all still in continuity with only a few little changes over the years. 

The WW II era stories are interesting but I have to admit that the modern era stories have a bit more weight as they start moving Cap forward in character development.  The tales, however, tend to be kind of bog-standard superhero fare with nothing terribly groundbreaking... yet.  The 'soap-opera' elements are also a bit clunky and corny by modern standards.  One can also use the volume to trace the evolution of Jack Kirby's influential art style.

On the whole, if you can tolerate some old-fashioned comic book writing styles and some ludicrous pseudo-science there are some good things to be gained from Essential Captain America, vol. 1.  Although I would, perhaps, recommend that you read it in bite-sized chunks rather than in marathon reading sessions.  I think some of the problems of plotting and writing do not become as annoying that way.  And hey, if nothing else, it's over 300 pages of comics for $20.  That's a pretty good bargain for several weeks' worth or more of reading entertainment.

The Chicago Comic Books: The Avengers Marvel Masterworks, vol. 1

So another thing I picked up at Chicago.... (note: not actual cover. I couldn't find a decent copy of the cover to the Masterworks edition to use here)

A few things out of the way first. The Marvel Masterworks series was Marvel's equivalent to DC's Archives editions. The Masterworks were originally published as hardcovers and consisted of, usually, an entire year's worth of comics from one title. The comics had been scanned from the original pages, cleaned up, color corrected and printed on glossy, high-quality paper stock. The bad thing about both the Masterworks and Archives lines is that they tended to be very expensive... like about $50 a throw.

In recent years, though, both DC and Marvel have realized that they would do better with some more affordable options and so DC has started offering the Chronicles line -- issues of the comics, in publication order, in color, and with a paperback cover instead of a hard one. Marvel just moved their Masterworks into a paperback format.

The Avengers were and oftentimes stil are Marvel's premire superteam -- their answer to DC's Justice League of America. In the beginning the team consisted of Iron Man, Thor, Ant Man, Wasp and the Hulk. Needless to say the Hulk didn't last long as a team member and was soon replaced by Captain America.

Just as an aside, though, to me Marvel's Avengers aren't the real Avengers. No, the real Avengers are British and consist of John Steed, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and, in a pinch, Dr. Richard Keel, Venus Smith, and Tara King. After all, they had the name first and they have been roundly more entertaining, stylish and witty.

So, this Marvel Masterworks Avengers volume collects the first year or so of issues of the comic book. It introduces the basic idea and introduces all the team members for those who hadn't been following them in their individual titles. It will be interesting for Hulk fans to learn that in these early days the Hulk wasn't quite the brainless smash machine he would become later and also Bruce Banner could just "Hulk out" at any time -- it wasn't necessarily tied to his emotions. He could also be changed from the Hulk back to Banner with the application of a Gamma ray beam.

On the whole, though, I have to say that I didn't like this. It isn't the fact that it's Silver Age and therefore contains some of the goofiest comic book science you will ever see. It isn't the fact that, being Silver Age, is also contains attempts at "hip" language which is simply painful. It isn't the fact that, as Silver Age, it also contains some of the weirdest, most nonsenical villains. Nope. All of that I can deal with. Unlike some people I actually like a lot of Silver Age stuff. I find quite a bit of it charming and entertaining and the goofier aspects are just laugh-out-loud silly which is fun... even if the original writers didn't intend to make you laugh. It's like MST3K -- the entertainment is in making good-natured fun of the stuff.

No, the problem I have with The Avengers is that the stories are actually kind of boring, there are holes in the plot where is feels like there are panels of action missing, and in the writers' attempts to add angsty, soap opera elements to the team the Avengers end up coming off as people who tend to overreact at best and who are whiney babies at worst. If you want to see how one introduces conflict within a team and does it right go read Tom Stillwell's Honor Brigade . Many of these early stories were written by Stan Lee and illustrated (and possibly co-plotted) by Jack Kirby and Lee's trademark "soap opera elements" -- the stuff that made Marvel stand out from DC back in the day -- just don't work here.

And then there is the Wasp. I'm probably going to get hate from Janet Van Dyne fans over this but I'm sorry -- the Silver Age version of the Wasp was too stupid to live.

The first problem was that she had something of a weak power set. Now, I'm not a person who thinks that just because a hero doesn't have a great power set that that won't make them a good character. I do firmly believe that almost all characters can be great with the right writer and the right approach. You almost have to set out to deliberately make a bad character in order to make one that is completely unwritable. But the Wasp -- whose power was that she could shrink down to the size of a wasp and when she did so she suddenly grew wings and could produce energy blasts which she called "wasp stings" -- was almost universally overpowered by the rest of the Avengers. Worse still, Stan and Jack tended to use the character only to provide distractions or annoyances to the villains... something that just didn't seem to add that much punch to the story. Other than that... her personality consisted of every bad female stereotype in the book. Going into battle she had to check her hair and make-up first and was more concerned that her battles with supervillains might muss her make-up than she was with the fact that said villains might destroy New York or such. She complained about having to go heroing when she would rather be shopping instead and she actively tried to make her quasi-love interest, Ant-Man (laster Giant Man) Henry "Hank" Pym jealous by flirting with the other members of the team (in the early days pretty much only Thor since no one knew who was under the Iron Man armor so no one knew what he looked like). If that were not bad enough, in her flirtation with Thor Janet often talked about how good looking he was... and then how much she wanted to see him cut his hair and wear a suit. That just goes right back to that annoying trope that all women want to get their hooks into a guy so that they can change him.

Is it true that there are women who are obsessed with their looks -- their clothes, their hair, their make-up? Yes. But it's still a really annoying stereotype to most women. But what annoys the hell out of me more is that in these early days the Wasp is the only female member of the team and as such there is not another female character to balance out this stereotype. yes, yes, I know that subsequent writers had her get 'better' and got rid of a lot of this sort of thing, but that doesn't change the fact that it was there then. Stan and Jack should have been ashamed of themselves for even thinking that this was a proper portrayal of a woman, even back in those days!

Okay, I'm down off my soapbox now.

There is some levity to be had in the usual bad comic book science and silly supervillain plots but the best stuff comes near the end when they introduce Captain America to the team. Rick Jones, nearly perpetual sidekick, had started out as the sidekick to the Hulk but then found himself, well, kicked to the side. He made himself an adjunct to the Avengers and then quickly endeared himself to Captain America. What is hillarious is that, in Stan's attempt to inject angst into the stories, we have Captain America beating himself up over losing his former sidekick Bucky in the waning days of WW II and seeing in Rick a lot of Bucky, and Rick, on the other side, wanting to be Cap's sidekick and yet worried about what the Hulk might think of this "betrayal" if he ever comes back. Seriously, it reads like a gay version of a cheap romance novel.

So, in the end, I'm not sure myself where to tell you to start reading The Avengers if you want to start reading them but I can tell you to definitely not start reading at the beginning... even if you do like the Silver Age. As for myself... well, I got this on deep discount and I can say that at my earliest opportunity it's going to get sold off to the local used bookstore. There's just no room in my overstuffed Comics Closet to hold something that annoys me this much.