Showing posts with label Stan Lee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stan Lee. Show all posts

Monday, May 26, 2025

Nazi-Punchers SGT FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS "Fighting Side-By-Side with Captain America and Bucky!" Conclusion

 Captain America and Bucky have discovered a Nazi plot involving movement of slave laborers to a French coastal site where large amounts of munitions are also being moved.
Why?
Freeing a group of captive American aviators who were about to be executed, Cap has an idea about how to discover the plan, but he wants backup...

 Now that was kool!
This wasn't the first time the Nazis tried this trick in the Marvel Comics Universe.
in Timely's Marvel Mystery Comics #16-17 (1941), Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner discovered another English Channel tunnel as well as a Japanese one under the Bering Strait!
After destroying the German tunnel single-handed, Namor then teams up with the Original Human Torch and Toro to destroy the Japanese tunnel.
In actual history, the idea of an invasion tunnel from mainland Europe to England dates back to 1804, when it was rumored Napoleon Bonaparte was digging one to bypass the British fleet!
1805 illustration showing proposed French invasion using a tunnel as well as barges and balloons.
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Sunday, May 25, 2025

Nazi-Punchers SGT FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS "Fighting Side-By-Side with Captain America and Bucky!" Part 1

It's Memorial Day Weekend...
...and since we wanted to show the actual (comic book) military in action, we thought we'd present them along with a pair of costumed heroes!
We hate to break into the classic Stan Lee-scripted, Jack Kirby-penciled, and Dick Ayers-inked action from Marvel's Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos #13 (1964), but you'll have to tune in tomorrow to see how the Howlers fit into this situation!
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Monday, March 24, 2025

Russkie-Smashing with AI! JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY / WHERE MONSTERS DWELL "Ruler of Earth!"

Despite the ominous-sounding title (and word balloon)...

...the Artificial Intelligence in this tale is benevolent...until Russkies enter the picture!
(Yeah, Russkies ruin everything!)
So, let's travel to the "future" year of 1990...as seen from 1962...





Appearing as the cover-featured story in one of the final pre-Mighty Thor issues of Atlas' Journey into Mystery (#82 in 1962), this story by plotter/editor Stan Lee, writer Larry Leiber, penciler Jack Kirby, and inker Dick Ayers is a clear Cold War/anti-Communist parable!

But, when the tale was reprinted at the end of the Cold War in Marvel's Where Monsters Dwell #25 (1973)...

...editor Roy Thomas had the hammer and sickle and red star insignias removed from the Russkies' hats...

...and replaced with an "H", which was explained with the change in the dialogue balloon above!
HYDRA???
Why not AIM...who were always more tech-oriented?
So, presumably, there are at least two worlds in the Marvel Multiverse where ROE presides, to this day, over a peaceful Earth!
Bonus for putting up with this all this fanboy mishigas...the lovingly-detailed original art for the spash page by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers!


BTW, did you note how warm, cuddly, and almost teddy-bear-like the cover's ROE is, compared to the version in the story itself?

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Commie-Clobbering Kaiju TALES OF SUSPENSE "Power of the Colossus!"

When Last We Left Commie-Crushing Kaiju Colossus...

...the Russkies, unable to stop the rampaging kaiju through "normal"military means, decide to use a nuclear bomb...
Judging by the closing caption, this story from Atlas' Tales of Suspense #14 (1961) was apparently meant for Journey into Mystery!
At any rate, it received enough reader response that a sequel appeared in Atlas' Tales of Suspense #20 (1961)...
...though it only involved Commies at the beginning, when they shipped the statue off to America for an international exposition, not realizing the aliens who animated it would return, only to be beaten by good ol' Yankee ingenuity!
BTW, please don't think that Colossus didn't have the cover to himself, but the splash pages were so kool that we didn't want to use them as the post headers as we usually do in multi-part presentations...
Here's Tales of Suspense #14 (note they mis-colored him orange on the cover)...
...and here's the cover (by Herb [Incredible Hulk] Trimpe) from his reprinting in Marvel's Monsters on the Prowl #17 (1972)!
A year later, the character, whose reprints had sold better than other issues of MotP, was given a brand-new ongoing series, continuing the storyline from the end of the second appearance!
Since no Communists were involved in any of those tales, we're nor presenting them here!
But, there's one thing we'd like to mention...

Fellow Commie-Clobbering Kaiju Fin Fang Foom made his first new appearance since his original Strange Tales story (which we showed HERE and HERE) over a decade earlier, in the final two issues of Colossus' series!
(Can you tell it was during the Kung-Fu craze of the early 1970s?)
Next Week, We Return to Our Usual Russkie-Smashing Fun!

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