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How a kid named BUCKY won the war all by himself (mostly)
(This page is dedicated to E.J. Saul and Joe Linehan: two guys who know darned well why they were called the "Gold" and "Silver" Ages of comics, respectively... and two stand-up gents, in particular.)
)
Wellllllllllllll... okay. Maybe he had a little help)
The all-too-short-lived INVADERS series was nothing less than a "dream project" for writer Roy Thomas; it was his chance to chronicle the wartime adventures of the WWII-era Marvel heroes whose fantastic exploits he'd grown up reading... and which had, in turn, inspired him to seek out a career as a comics scripter.
Now: those selfsame issues of ALL-WINNERS COMICS and whatnot were well and truly before my time -- I'm old, yeah; but not that old-- but: nonetheless, the fateful (and unheralded, by and large, by Marvel's sleepy *kaff*kaff* 70's "promotional department") appearance of that first issue of THE INVADERS in the spinner racks, back then, sent a galvanic shock-thrill coursing along my (then-)supple spinal column, as well.
You see... Roy Thomas remembered to include Bucky.
As the reigning CAPTAIN AMERICA junkie/fanatic in my neighborhood's comics- reading "circle" (Hi, Kenneth! Hi, Allen! Hi, T.S.! Hi, Mark!) -- a child so slavishly devoted to all things "Cap"-ish, that (to this very day) any especially stirring rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" still makes me wanna quick-change into spandex leggings and do the Ubangi Stomp on forty or fifty rogue HYDRA agents -- one of my chiefest childhood fantasies was that of donning the tres nifty blue-and-red costume of the Captain's pre-adolescent wartime sidekick, and storming Nazi outposts alongside the Star-Spangled Sentinel his own bad self.
Yeah, yeah... go ahead and snicker, fellah. At least my fantasies
never involved half a dozen overripe mangos; a trampoline; and a trained
gerbil named "Rudy." In teeny-tiny fishnet stockings, yet.
Freak. )
In any event -- with that perfectly humiliating public confession well
and truly behind us, God willing -- the chronicled wartimeexploits
of Captain America; the original, android Human Torch; the imperious Sub-Mariner;
flaming Torch sidekick, Toro; and Bucky (Leader of Men, and Idol of Millions),
as rendered by writer Thomas and reconstituted Golden Age penciling great Frank
Robbins, were nothing short of wonderful. Depraved Nazi EvilBadGuys
(Nazis always make for the very bestest comic book villains); people
running around shouting things like "V for Victory!" and "Loose Lips Sink Ships!",
and other waycool wartime thingamabobbies... Roy Thomas just plain ol' lived
for this kind of thing (he did it even better, a few years later, in
the Golden Age-centered ALL-STAR SQUADRON,
for DC Comics), and his unapologetic glee was -- plain and simple -- infectious.
He also added several "new" Golden Age heroes (retroactively) to the storytelling Chex Mix, such as the fascinating "Union Jack" [see cover, immediately above]: Great Britain's WWII answer to Captain America, and possessor of one of the Top Ten All-Time Spiffiest Super-Hero Costumes, to boot.
Known (when not parading about in said dynamite duds) as "Lord Henry Falsworth," landed gentryman and British Peer, Union Jack also contributed to the group in yet another fashion (albeit unwillingly). In joining the team, he introduced the beauteous "Lady Jacqueline Falsworth" -- his daredevil daughter -- to the heroes assembled.
This proved significant, in turn, when -- just a few issues later -- Lady Falsworth suffered a grievous injury at the hands of one of the team's foemen (the vampiric "Baron Blood," in this instance), to the extent that she required nothing less than a near-total blood transfusion... and the only available "donor" was the not-quite-Human Torch [see pictures, accompanying].
Said transfusion had the wholly unexpected "side effect" of gifting the lithesome lass with a sort of flame-propelled "super-speed/flight" power... and -- just like that -- the Invaders had yet another member within their ranks: the British bombshell known as: SPITFIRE.
Perhaps the coolest INVADERS storyline of them all, however, was the one in which the verminous Red Skull -- costumed Nazino-goodnik and confirmed "Bucky-Hater" (the stinkin' louse) -- managed to capture and brainwash the roster of the Invaders entire... except for Bucky, whom he dismissed as "unworthy of my time and attentions, being merely a non-powered costumed toddler."
(There... you see? I told you he was evil, man.
I mean... being a filthy, rotten Nazi is bad enough, but: dissin'
the Buckmeister...?!?)
The Skull, however, was quickly tutored in the error of his nefarious ways, as ol' Bucky (BUCKY: from the ancient Hopi, meaning: "He Who Helps the Lame To Walk, and the Blind To See") promptly recruits -- sans any "adult" aid or supervision, mind -- a small army of "second-string" heroes of the era, in order to rescue the dragooned Invaders... and, thus: the LIBERTY LEGION was born [see cover, accompanying].
Now, when I refer to the heroes (and heroine) of the Liberty Legion as "second-stringers"...
I'm being neither altogether unkind nor dismissive, in so doing.
I mean: the "heavy hitters" in their line-up included such, ummmmm, interesting
character concepts as "the Whizzer" (a super-speedster, who gained his accelerative
abilities via -- swear to Jesus -- an infusion of mongoose blood into
his circulatory system); "the Thin Man" (not William Powell, recreating
his famous 30's cinematic role; but, rather, a crime-bustin' fool whose super-power
was the ability to... well... make himself really, really thin.
Like... y'know... a piece of paper. Wotta powerhouse, huh...?);
and "the Blue Diamond" (who names these guys, anyway...?), a super-strong
college professor who kept tripping over his own two left feet so often, he
practically qualified as the team's first opponent.
In any event: said Legionnaires -- who promptly went out and (wonder
of wonders) managed not only to defeat the enthralled Invaders in pitched battle,
but also handed the Red Skull one good, old-fashioned country butt-whuppin',
by golly -- automatically deferred to Bucky (in the ancient Summerian
dialect: "He Who Bestrides the Universe Like Unto a Colossus") as their
"team leader." And since -- if Bucky's Battalion hadn't toppled
the Skull and his uber-powerful catspaws -- we'd all being singing the
Horst Weissel song at ballgames and suchlike, right about now... that
means that B-U-C-K-Y won the war. Period. End of sentence.
End of story. )
The Invaders managed to thwart the machinations of several other malevolent types, of course, without requiring You-Know-Who to drag their collective fats out of the battlefield "fire." One of the most oft-recurring of these was Nazi Germany's own answer to the "super-soldier serum"-enhanced Captain America: the malign myrmidon known as "Master Man." [See cover, accompanying]
It's worth noting, here, that Roy Thomas added quite a few noteworthy nemeses to the ranks of the Invaders' opponents, over the years. Along with the aforementioned Master Man, there was also "Baron Blood" (a vampire recruited into the Reich's service, and direct "blood" relation -- sorry -- to both Union Jack and Spitfire); "the Blue Bullet" (an early, wartime precursor of sorts to the latter-day IRON MAN); and "Warrior Woman" (think: "... what if DC's WONDER WOMAN had ended up a Nazi dominatrix...?" here).
The team's
most gut-wrenching battle, however, wasn't waged against any threat of
the spandex-and-bicep'd type whatsoever.
The ugly
subject of America's wartime "relocation centers" )i.e., prison camps)
for U.S. citizens of Japanese descent was broached -- bravely, I think -- by
Thomas in the latter days of the series' run.
Without
attempting to open up this site to the nasty sort of political "so's-your-old-man"
rhetoric and name-calling which (sadly) seems so prevalent hereabouts,
online... I think it painfully obvious (if only in shame-faced retrospect)
that the (then-)current administration's decision to indulge in such an
abhorrent and jingoistic exercise in "guilt-by-ancestry" was one of the
less savory moments in our country's history. And I'm damned
proud of Roy Thomas for using the frequently pooh-pooh'd vehicle of a superhero
"funny book" to say so.
Plus: Bucky (He Ended the War) got to belt a raving bigot a sweet
one -- right square in the ol' kisser -- in the course of said story.
So that much is still right with the world, in any event. )
Captain America: PAGE TWO
Captain America: PAGE THREE
Namor, the Sub-Mariner: PAGE ONE
Namor, the Sub-Mariner: PAGE TWO
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