![]() ![]() There were two sides to this debate in the letters pages in the 1970s issues of Invaders, a comic set in World War II that used Marvel Golden Age canon and played with it. This is especially important when it comes to how Marvel reinterprets its World War II heroes. They are very seldom reprinted or available. One of the very unfortunate tragedies is that a lot of culture is lost from the old Marvel letters pages, which were the centers of conversation and community around every comic. ![]() Does that mean the Destroyer was Weapon 2? Likewise, it was stated in dialogue that Weapons 5-7 were created by experiments with “minority prisoners in the United States.” That is clearly a reference to Luke Cage, Power Man, but Luke Cage as Weapon VII hasn’t been directly confirmed yet.) (Side note: remember when they said that Wolverine’s code name, Weapon X, was actually a roman numeral, and he was actually Weapon 10? Weapon 1 was supposedly Captain America. For instance, the Destroyer was so obviously based on the blueprint of Captain America that it’s the easiest thing in the world to say that the Stan Lee Destroyer, a Nazi smasher who gets his super-athleticism abilities from a scientific potion in a Nazi concentration camp, was created by a more refined, later version of the Super Soldier Serum. Druid explained that he was trained by the Ancient One as a “backup” Sorcerer Supreme in case anything happened to Dr. Druid, who actually came before Fantastic Four by 6 months. ![]() It takes a little bit of effort to slip some of the earlier Marvel heroes into the framework created by the post-Fantastic Four, Stan Lee era “Marvel Universe.” One of my favorites is that oriental wizard turned hero Dr. Makkari assuming different hero identities through the years was examined in one of Marvel’s most interesting and under-read miniseries, The Lost Generation by Roger Stern, who explained what happened in Marvel between World War II and the beginning of the current “Age of Marvels.” I especially liked how Makkari was used in Gruenwald’s Quasar, as a mentor to the next generation of superhero “fast guys.” He has “Eternal” written all over him, even down to the weird mixing of mythology. The reveal that Hurricane was Makkari was extraordinary and elegant because it fits everything we know about Hurricane: not just his speed but his weird other powers, like matter manipulation and force bolts (obviously, he couldn’t be, say, the Whizzer), and the fact that it seemed he came from and returned to nowhere. Marvel comics comics history pulps pulp history The really unusual thing is that Ka-Zar was revived in the pages of X-Men, and so was absorbed into the cast of that title and never really broke out as a solo star, though every 2 decades, he gets a solo series. Many know of Ka-Zar and the Savage Land because he was, like Captain America and the Human Torch, a pre-existing hero who was revived in the 1960s. And they did! Marvel created that character in 1937, 2 years before Marvel even started publishing comics at all, in a character pulp in imitation less of Tarzan than of the Ki-Gor series. Here’s more support for the idea that Marvel Comics grew out of the Marvel pulp publishing empire: notice that in the first-ever Marvel Comic, they mention “Ka-Zar” on the cover as if the audience should know who he is. Incidentally, I am always amused by pedants who insist that Marvel “was actually called Timely Publishing in the 1930s-40s.” Technically true, I guess…but they were known as Marvel Magazines as far back as the 1930s. Goodman had tickets on the Hindenburg’s final explosive flight (two years before creating Marvel’s comic publishing division), but had to cancel at the last minute. Martin Goodman, pulp publisher and the founder of Marvel Magazines in the late 30s, was Stan Lee’s uncle by marriage, and gave Lee his first job in comics writing text stories in Captain America #3 (1942). ![]() Paul’s cover for Marvel Science Stories, a year before: Marvel Comics started off as an extension of the pulps into a new medium, hence why they called the most famous 20s-30s scifi artist of all time, with whom Marvel Magazines had a strong working relationship.įrank R. Paul as he illustrated the cover of many of their pulp magazines, like Marvel Mystery Stories and Marvel Science Stories as far back as 1938. Marvel Magazines (Timely Publishing), founded by Martin R. This is because Marvel’s comic books were an extension of their already existing pulp magazine publishing empire. Paul, the definitive pulp scifi artist, did the cover of the first-ever Marvel Comic in 1939. ![]()
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