#thomas halloway

[ultramanzer0]

dream blunt rotation

[brw]

Something I've been thinking about a lot in terms of the Golden Age is the fact that the Invaders just... aren't real. That's a fake concept writers retroactively made up. Other than Jim and Namor, none of those people knew or talked to each other. Like, I've read a fair portion of Marvel Comics, Captain America Comics and I've also begun reading All-Winners Squad and of the Golden Age Marvel stuff I've read, there are exactly two moments where something that could be considered Invaders-lite happen, and both of them are in text stories, not in the main comic.

In this one, it actually ends up being a dream that a little boy is happening, so it isn't even canon.

The other time is much closer to an actual canon event, but Captain America isn't there, and it seems like Aarkus is the closest thing to a leader of the group? Which is interesting.

Other than that, these people did not interact with each other. Their stories were entirely self contained. Other than Namor and Jim, those people did not talk to each other. And it's possible they will later and I'll look like an idiot but at the moment, the Invaders are more or less a concept that people made up to compete with DC's more established JSA, which actually did directly talk to each other from time to time.

[comiccoverarchive]

Sub-Mariner Comics #7 (October 7th, 1942)

Art by Allen Simon and Frank Giacoia

[evilhorse]

The Angel spots the so-called vampire…

[timelyovertime]

Marvel Comics #1

Date of publication: August 31st, 1939

Back in the Golden Age of comics, "Marvel Comics" didn't exist yet. The company at the time was called Timely Comics, hence the name of this blog. But, it just so happens that the first book they put out would also be called Marvel Comics, and it would go on to be their central pillar throughout this era. Obviously, it's the future namesake of the company, but it's just serendipity that this first comic had such a good name for them to adopt later, especially because that name will change in the very next issue. I wonder what would have happened if this first issue was "Marvel Mystery Comics #1" instead.

The other thing you might notice immediately from the cover is that the headliner for this book, & a lot of Timely Comics in general, is the Human Torch. I think it's not super obscure knowledge among comics fans, but as a fan of secondary media instead, it was definitely surprising for me that Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four actually took his name from this otherwise unrelated character.

Golden Age comics in general were mostly anthology books, collecting different shorter stories from different creators, & Marvel #1 is no different. The first page is 5 single-panel gags, which I am sure were hilarious in 1939. After that the first proper story is the origin for this Human Torch: a synthetic human, somewhere between robot & man, created by a brilliant scientist named Professor Horton. However, somehow, a flaw in the creation causes the Torch to burst into flame on contact with oxygen. Unable to control it, Horton seals the Torch in a concrete block until he can find a solution, but a leak allowed the Torch to escape. Setting everything in his path on fire, he takes refuge at the bottom of a swimming pool, that just so happens to make him easy to capture for a criminal named Sardo, who has a very poorly thought out plan to use the Torch as part of a racket, threatening companies to melt their wares if he isn't paid. But he doesn't mention having the Torch, nor does he have any plan to recapture him, so he gets nothing, commits a single case of arson, & then the Torch comes to burn his house down in revenge. In the conflict, some nitrogen gas neutralizes the Torch's flame, after which he is able to turn it off & on, & gains overall pyrokinesis. Police release him back into Horton's custody, but Horton mentions how much money they could make off his newfound powers, & the offended Torch leaps through the ceiling to freedom.

It's mostly an interesting story in comparison to how the Torch would go on to be portrayed. He's a tragic monster here, a victim of his own powers who is hated for no fault of his own. But he's also notably manic, frequently laughing, even with a firehose turned on him. Just an oddity of this being the first ever Timely strip.

The second story is The Angel, Tom Halloway (although his name won't be revealed yet). He's a crime fighter with no powers, with his trademark being a winged shadow he casts while leaving his defeated baddies for the police. In this issue, a mayor is convinced to ask for his help as a wave of violent crime rocks the city, over 200 arrests all walking free as no victim is brave enough to speak against them. Before the Angel can be contacted though, he sends a message that he's already on the trail of not just the "Six Big Men" behind the crimes, but also the "Big Boss" they all answer to. He promptly begins a violent crime spree of his own by killing 3 of the Six Big Men, before being captured by the 4th and a mysterious woman called Lil. He's driven out of town to be executed by 4 & 5, but Lil cuts his bonds, allowing him to kill both of them. He makes it back, unceremoniously kills the last of the 6, & finds a lead that brings him to Lil and the Big Boss, who turns out to have been the man who suggested to the mayor to contact the Angel in the first place, in the hopes that they could split their loot 2 ways instead of 8. It's a solid little story that sets the tone for the Angel well. My understanding is that he gets flanderized into a brutal killer in his few modern flashback appearances, but here as is often the case he's satisfied with just getting the criminals for the cops when it doesn't impede his ongoing investigation- but he definitely doesn't mind killing either when the situation calls for it. That's honestly kind of the vibe for most Golden Age comics, though.

The third story is famously the first to have been made, & the only character here to have an ongoing importance to Marvel today. It starts as a mystery, with a salvage ship sending 2 divers down to a wreck to find that someone had already been there. That someone was Namor, a capricious, water-breathing prince who cuts their airlines, this being over a decade before scuba was invented, so divers had actual tubes leading all the way from their helmets to the boat for air. He then crashes the entire ship, gathers up the divers' bodies, & carries them back to Atlantis (though it hasn't yet been identified as such), where his mother eggs him on to wage war on the surface world, telling him the story of how she came to love his father while acting as a double-agent on his ship, sending info back to her people about how to avenge the surface's accidental bombings of Atlanteans. Namor & his cousin Dorma then go on a short mission, attacking a lighthouse, & hijack a small plane so Dorma can escape before Namor plunges back into the sea.

This strip, or at least the first part of it, before they swim to the lighthouse, was originally produced for Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, a comic meant to be given away at movie theaters earlier in 1939, but it was never released. It was also not a Timely publication, so I don't really have any intention of going back to it. In every way that matters, the Sub-Mariner begins here. I have read that Bill Everett came up with the character after hearing about the plans for the Human Torch- might be just hearsay, but as the most long-standing duo in Marvel comics with only a couple of competitors on the DC side of things, it's only appropriate they both start alongside each other in the very first issue of Marvel.

One other thing worth mentioning is that the underwater scenes here are all covered extremely blue, to the point it is difficult to see details in a lot of cases. As a result, most appearances of the Atlanteans here show them as being blue, & they become established as just being blue-skinned in canon. However, the same is true for Namor, & both his mother & cousin have a caucasian skin tone when shown out of the water. Blue skin clearly wasn't intended, & is just a quirk of this heavy-handed coloring choice.

The Masked Raider is a typical western story, & unlike the previous three it won't be sticking around for very long. Jim Gardley here refused to sell his ranch to the man who "rules" the town, whose name is either Brunder or Brunter depending on the panel, even after Brunder kidnaps him and turns him into the sheriff on a made-up charge. He breaks out of jail & goes on the run for weeks, honing his skills as a gunslinger & taming a white stallion he names Lightning. After he's satisfied with his preparation, he takes on this secret identity & returns just in time before the rest of the ranchers decide to sell, teaming up with the sheriff to take the Brunder Gang down. Aside from the reaction of Brunder's right-hand man Slick to Jim's offer of surrender being very funny to me, I have little else to say about this comic, or most Masked Raider strips.

The fifth story is a one-shot called Jungle Terror, and it's at this point the negatives of media from so long ago become apparent. We made it about 2/3rds of the first issue before we hit any blatant racism. A professor has been missing in the Amazon for 3 months, so his nephew & a family friend resolve to go after him, while they are followed by a plantation-owner called Crafton, who wants to get the hypnotic diamond that the professor had gone to look for, owned by an "Indian" tribe. The protagonists' plane crashes, & they are taken captive by the "savages", who of course speak in broken English. In the hut where they are kept they conveniently find both the professor and an entrance to a cave full of the diamonds, but are forced to flee as they are first threatened by Crafton, then he is killed by the natives & they are chased from the cave. They manage to find Crafton's intact plane & get away. For exactly one panel on the last page, without explanation, the natives are also shown with demonic horns. It's a less than mediocre story & I'm glad it did not spawn an ongoing series.

The sixth story is in prose! Most of these early comics have a 2-page written short story, & the majority are self-contained. I also skipped over any that didn't involve existing characters for my first read, so in skimming back through these it will be my first time actually reading most. Burning Rubber is an... interesting story. Bill Williams (William Williams?) has a racecar that looks shabby because he & his mechanic Fred dedicated everything to its performance. The first segment of the story is dedicated to this dynamic, making it seem like it will just be about the ugly duckling winning the race. But the next segment has Fred explain to Bill's girlfriend Ann, who is worried about him crashing, that the race is actually a final test for their experimental new gas-feeder, which if anything goes wrong could explode, & that if she wants to save his life she needs to go to an acquaintance of hers with the blueprint & convince him to buy it. She succeeds, just in time as gas starts to fly out onto Bill's face & the car begins to smoke. Bill is, naturally, mad & sexist about being interrupted, thinking she was just stopping him from proving the gas-feeder made the car go faster, until he learns what happened & is is happy that they can discuss selling the gas-feeder... that is blatantly faulty. I'm just not sure what the takeaway here is, other than that Bill is terrible. Such an odd story.

Finally, we have Ka-Zar, another Golden Age character whose name will get reused for a completely unrelated Silver Age one. As the title card there says, he's a pre-existing character, from the 1936 novel King of Fang and Claw. The first five Ka-Zar stories here are adapted from that book. John Rand, owner of a South African diamond field, gets what he deserves as his plane crashes deep in the Congo with his wife Constance & their 3-year-old son, David, who quickly begins to befriend all the wildlife except for a leopard called N'Jaga, who tries to eat the boy but is wounded by John. They repeatedly try to get the attention of passing planes, but fail, & eventually Constance dies of a fever. Before they can start to try to reach civilization on foot, John is struck by a falling tree during a storm, & the injury, implied to have caused some minor brain damage, convinces him that Constance's grave is their home, & they would continue to build a life for themselves in the jungle. As he grows, David continues to grow close with the wildlife, learning the language of the beasts, & ultimately saving the lion Zar from quicksand.

A week after saving Zar, David and his father see smoke, & it leads them to the camp of a white man, Paul de Kraft, who is using native Africans for labor and is repeatedly emphasized as being both fat & greasy. de Kraft has come for emeralds, and when told to leave by John, pulls a gun out, but David hits him in the arm with an arrow so they can escape. However, de Kraft tracks down their home, mortally wounds John, & captures David, but Zar leaps into the clearing, killing the natives & driving the white man away. With John's death, Zar adopts David as his brother, & he officially becomes Ka-Zar in the final couple panels.

Ka-Zar's treatment of Africans is not exactly charitable, but at least they are the minions ordered around by an evil white guy instead of being the antagonists themselves. The comic is much meaner to overweight people than to racial minorities. Otherwise, it's a pretty typical "white baby grows up in darkest Africa" story, & while a solid example of that weird genre, it's nothing new for anybody that knows Tarzan, at least not in this first issue.

Skipping some advertisements as is typical for the back of these books, this is the end of the first issue of Timely Comics. This took longer than I expected, definitely longer than just reading the comic itself; I'd say that I'll try to keep future posts shorter, but I know myself better than that. Some issues are just gonna take 3 hours to write up. I will have to give up any delusions of being caught up with what I have read soon, though. Until next Timely.

...Yeah, I'll keep workshopping, I don't think that's gonna work as a catchphrase.

[toro-raymond]

I think the funniest way to fill that gap in like the 1950s in Marvel comics timeline would be to just give characters that were alive at the time but haven't really interacted in canon random beef and just do the bare minimum to explain it.

Just like imagine shit like:

Namor doesn't like the Agents of Atlas except for Namora cause there was an Incident that everyone's too embarrassed to talk about

The Angel (Thomas Halloway) cheated Wolverine out of money at cards starting a decades long feud that The Angel escaped cause Wolverin keeps losing his memory

Fury Sr has been trying to prove Toro committed treason for years but he claims he didn't do it - and neither of them will elaborate on what he thinks he did or why

You ask anyone from the 40s/50s about Aarkus and they just have horrific flashbacks to all the weird shit they've seen him do

[scarletwitchpanels]

Kitty protecting Wanda in X-Men Noir: Mark of Cain #4

[earth-6677]

Master of Shadows

A one shot about the creation of Union Jack

Cairo, Egypt, 20 April 1943

It’s a wild plan; fantastical. Some would call it insane. Possibly just enough to work. And Halloway likes crazy.

So Michael starts, “You see, sir, we may be running into a small security problem. One that could bloom into a larger one given, and correct me if I’m wrong, that the powers that be would rather keep my existence quiet.”

“Even to the cousins,” Halloway replies. “You are the only one in the field at the moment. And synthesizing the herb is proving difficult. So what is this ‘small security problem’ per se?” 

The villa is empty except for Michael, Halloway, and Maddie. Robby’s taken the rest to the desert for training. It’s just them and Michael’s hopefully not too crackpot idea.

“Well you see, sir, there was enough time on Fidonisi for Crichton to alert HYDRA about, well, me.”

“Or that a British officer named ‘Micheal Carter’ is active in the eastern Mediterranean,” says, somewhat saving face.

“And I did give Volker and Malvaggio my Christian name. But…” Michael desperately tries to save himself the embarrassment, “the ‘Brian Falsworth’ identity is still secret.”

“Very good.”

“But it got me thinking…”

“Seems dangerous,” Halloway says.

Michael hopes it’s a way to diffuse the tension. He’s always gotten himself wound up about these things. Standing like a nervous school boy.

He continues, “With my track record, yes. But I thought there may be an opportunity for a bit of a deception game with HYDRA.”

“What sort of game?” Halloway asks, still leaning in his chair.

“Please don’t be shocked if you figure out where I got this from. But I’ve amassed a couple identities now: ‘Brian Falsworth’ and ‘Kevin Marlow.’ ‘Michael Carter’ if you want to include that one, sir. And they could be put to more use than just temporary nom de guerres.”

“As what, Carter?”

“We create a new character, but one I won’t really play.”

“A man-who-never-was,” Maddie adds.

“A phantom?” asks Halloway.

“Of sorts.” Halloway stares at Michael with some skepticism, but motions for him to continue. “My thinking is that we create a character that not only us, but other intelligence cells, partisan, could attach their deeds to. He would take credit for deeds when it’s not in a resistance cell’s best interest to be attached to. He could be everywhere and nowhere all at once. Sew confusion and fear among the ranks. All while making the officers chase shadows. Have them hunt a myth.”

“A bit Count of Monte Cristo.”

“Had to get the inspiration from somewhere, sir.”

Maddie interjects, “We do have a target in mind.”

“You do?”

“Werner von Strucker,” Michael answers.

“The Baron’s son?”

“Indeed,” Maddie passes the younger von Strucker’s file, “He seems to be the family disappointment and wants to prove himself to his dear father.”

“And I see he is with HYDRA’s security division,” Halloway says, reading the file. “So you want him running around biting at bait.”

“All the while we have freedom of movement and action,” Michael finishes the thought.

Halloway nods and ponders their idea for a moment. “I want you two write a proposal. Maybe include a name for your phantom. I’m sure the planners in Cairo may have some fun with this.”

“Well I did suggest to Major Carter that ‘Union Jack’ may be an appropriate codename for this project.”

“And I thought it was a bit too on the nose,” replies Michael.

“And yet the Germans cannot help themselves with the obvious naming conventions.”

“Well the fascist mind is a conspiratorial one,” Halloway interjects like a parent preempting an argument amongst their children. “They’ll make a mountain out of something trivial. And I would like to see a written proposal on my desk on Monday.