Comic 1: Marvel Comics #1, Oct/Nov 1939 (part 2, remaining features)

The Angel
"At the point of a gun, a group of racketeers known as the "six big men" have taken over an entire city", the narrator says as this story opens with a montage showing a gang of brutal thugs doing exactly that. A restaurant owner is shot for not paying protection money, a city official is threatened on his life to fix a jury, a subway station attendant is killed for not complying, a night club owner is threatened to sell the racketeers' brand of liquor, a gambling house owner is killed and replaced and a delivery syndicate owner is forced to watch one of his trucks get blown up. A "group of civic-minded men" go to the mayor for help, but he can't do more than call in the police commissioner to explain they're simply incapable of getting anyone to successfully testify against these people.

One of the men wants the mayor to swear them all in as special investigators with full power to act as they see fit, and the mayor seems to be fine with this until another of the men, later identified as "Dr. Lang", suggests calling in a certain "Angel" instead. The commissioner says that's going too far - the Angel will stop at nothing - but Lang says that's precisely his point: The Angel will simply wipe the big men out without any "legal formalities". Before he can set off for Paris, where this Angel was last seen, however, a stone with a note crashes through the window. The note is from the Angel and lists the six big men in order before ending with the name "The Big Boss", saying they'll go one by one. As the commissioner tells Lang he's seemingly getting his way, Lang mumbles to himself about the addition of the "Big Boss" to the list, but assures himself that the Angel will never figure out who that is anyway, all but spelling out that it's him.

The next day, the first man on the list, Gus Ronson, head of the restaurant protection association is freed from a manslaughter charge by a fixed jury, but as he leaves the courthouse he's approached by the commissioner telling him about the Angel's list. Ronson simply laughs in his face, apparently considering the Angel an urban legend, but stops laughing the instant he spots a shadow in the shape of an angel on a building across the street as a cold wind blows at the group. He panics and runs for his car as we get our first actual glimpse of the Angel in the story - a mustached man wearing a costume that rather resembles Superman's. He jumps from the roof of the courthouse and lands by Ronson's car before Ronson gets there, then hides in the back seat as Ronson gets in and drives off. Ronson tries calming himself when he notices someone behind him, ut before he can do anything the Angel reaches forward and chokes him to death. A short time later, the commissioner find Ronson's car in front of his office, Ronson dead at the wheel with a note from the Angel pinned to him: "Six big men went for a ride, one took a dive and then there were five".

Mike Malone, the head of the gambling ring, isn't particularly concerned about Ronson's death, even as another man points out he's next on the list. Malone tells him he'll show the Angel something if he comes by, but as he says those words, the Angel speaks from behind his curtains, saying he's already there. Mike turns around and shoots, but the Angel punches him in the face before he can aim properly and then quite literally starts beating him to death. After killing Mike, he turns to the other man, who tries escaping through the window - but in the confusion he picks the wrong one, so instead of getting to the fire escape, he falls to the street below and dies. As this is going on, a quietly woman opens the door and places an apparently very quickly written note to the Angel on a table saying that the man that went out the window was actually number three on the list (making him subway protector John Dillon) and that number four is waiting for him. The Angel didn't see who left the note and only catches a glimpse of the woman as she heads into the elevator when he goes into the hall to check, so he decides to go straight to number four on the list for now, his suspicions raised that there might be other reasons beyond civic ones why someone wants these men dead.

Number four on the list is Trigger Bolo, head of the retail-delivery protective association, who is sitting in his hideout with a couple thugs, waiting for the Angel. He sends some of them to "bring him the Angel", but that proves unnecessary. The Angel is already in the building, choking one of his henchmen, "Shorty", as they speak. Shorty knocks over some crates in the struggle, attracting the attention of the other henchmen who rush the Angel, as Trigger had told them he wanted the man alive. The Angel fights back, but since there's apparently four thugs and only one of him, he eventually gets knocked out, tied up and brought before Trigger, who has him placed against the wall, preparing to finish him off with a tommy gun. Before he can shoot, however, the woman from Mike's apartment steps into the room and orders him to stop. The Angel is not to be killed here. Trigger tells her he'll take orders on how to run the racket, but not on how to kill people, but the woman pulls out an automatic and tells him to know his place. Trigger complies and the woman, whose name is Lil, tells him their orders are to meet up with Steve Enkel (political fixer and the fifth man on the Angel's list) upstairs and then take the Angel into the woods and kill him there. At this point the Angel reveals he only had a hunch there was a big boss behind all this, which make you wonder why he wrote it on that note, since he clearly didn't suspect anyone in particular either.

Trigger and Steve take the Angel to the woods in their own car while Lil follows in another, and once they get there, the Angel is tied to a tree. Lil claims to want to check that the Angel is properly tied and, to nobody's surprise, cuts his ropes while "checking", telling him to ask Enkel for a cigarette and work from there. The Angel does so and grabs Enkel as he's busy lighting the cig, but Trigger shows no concern for Enkel and shoots them both, saying he's simply following orders. Enkel pulls out his gun and shoots back to save himself, and the two of them end up killing each other while Enkel's body shields the Angel from the bullets. As the Angel tries thanking Lil, however, she says she just followed orders and quickly gets into her car, driving off.

The Angel follows in Enkel and Trigger's car, but Lil's car is too fast and he quickly loses her, so he decides to go after the final man on the list, Dutch Hansen; head of the night club protective association. Dutch has apparently been given an hour's notice to "close the books and make a deposit" and is muttering about how it's too short a time when the Angel opens the window behind him. Dutch turns and grabs for his gun, but the Angel throws a chair at him and knock him into a fireplace, where he hits his head and dies on impact. The Angel goes over his stuff and finds a huge stash of money, a key to a deposit box at the bank and a note from his boss to deposit it by ten so he can "check it over". It's currently 9:30, so the Angel heads to the bank, spots Lil and Dr. Lang walk into the bank and open the box only to discover Dutch hadn't been there after all, then confronts them. They immediately surrender as the Angel explains to the readers that Lil and Lang planned the rackets and had arranged for all the six big men to deposit all the proceeds in this box after exactly one year so they could divide it in seven even parts, the ultimate plan being to make sure the other six got killed after making their deposits so Lang and Lil could get all the money themselves. The end. Watch for the next episode of "The Angel" in the next issue!!

The Angel is supposedly more than a little bit inspired by The Saint, a character I'm not overly familiar with, but let's be fair - it's just a guy in a costume that has the slightly creepy ability to cast the shadow of an angel. It's the storytelling that sell the strip, and what we have here is fairly effective. The story isn't told from the Angel's perspective, we don't even see him until page 3, and story presents him as a complete mystery. While we do get to learn how he ultimately solved the "mystery", the rest of the story mostly just has him appear behind his victims, kill them, then disappear. His murdering ways are so brutal even the police commissioner thinks calling him in is going too far, even though the story makes it clear how hopeless the situation is; The big men just can't be touched by the law. Yet, despite how effective he is at first, he does get overwhelmed when he has to fight multiple men at once and only escapes through pure luck - Lang needs him alive for the plan to succeed. Hell, despite Lil outright confirming there is a boss, the Angel only exposes Lang by pure luck - Dutch didn't get to the bank in time, whether by his own fault or because Lang miscalculated when to give him the note, and his money, note and key were the only leads the Angel had. It's not often a villain contacts the hero himself and the story actually presents it as a plan that would've worked. There's definitely pacing problems here - Dutch AND Lang are both dealt with in just half a page combined - but this is still a decent read with a very nice atmosphere.

The Sub-Mariner
"Here is the Sub-Mariner! An ultra-man of the deep... Lives on land and in the sea... Flies in the air... Has the strength of a thousand men... Is a youth of dynamic personality... Quick thought and fast action... From whence does he come, and what is his mission?"

After this intriguing description of our main character, we start our story on the salvage ship S.S. Recovery, where diver Rod Nelson returns from the deep and is asked about what he found. Nelson had been sent to investigate a wreck and look for a safe there, but he tells his boss there was "sump'n screwy" about it all - the safe was there, but it was empty, and he found a knife on the deck that had yet to rust, so whomever had been there before them had been there pretty recently.

The boss is puzzled - they've been in the area for a week without having seen anyone around, and there's been no reports of any other salvage ships there for three years, so he sends another diver named Carley down to investigate further as Nelson prepares to join him. When Carley gets down he asks about the open side hatch in the wreck, which Nelson confirms was closed earlier, and as they approach it to investigate, they spot a swimmer wearing nothing but a pair of trunks inside. The two can't believe their eyes - no human can live at this pressure - yet this was clearly a living person swimming around. As they search the wreck for him without luck, the swimmer has reached the deck of the sunken ship and spotted the cables connecting their diving suits to the ship. The swimmer has clearly never seen diving suits before and takes them for robots - their movements are much too mechanical to be men, and they're obviously not fish. He assumes Carley's acetylene torch to be a weapon and decides to get out of there, but not before cutting what he assumes is their control wires so they won't be able to follow him.

The "control wires" are, of course, their air hoses, telephone cables and acetylene tube, and while the two divers are able to shut the air valves before water can get into their suits, the cut phone wires make them incapable of contacting their ship as the swimmer, now called "the Sub-Mariner", attacks them, stabbing one with his knife before crushing the other's helmet with his hands alone. The mate on the Recovery sees bubbles on the surface and the crew tries contacting the two, and upon learning the wires are dead, the boss of the operation sends another diver named Anderson down with lifelines. Anderson finds the crushed bodies of his partners - the mysterious swimmer having hidden himself, watching from a distance - and immediately hauls himself to the surface to report.

Upon receiving the report the mate orders the ship to get going so they can report this incident to the coast guard, but below the surface the Sub-Mariner has approached the propeller just in time to see it start spinning. "With the speed of a bullet" he grabs the rudder and jams it to the right before stopping the starboard propeller with his hands. The crew stops the engine in response to their inability to control the ship, but the ship still keeps moving - the mysterious Sub-Mariner is pushing it straight towards a coastal reef, and the panicky crew is unable to do anything as the Recovery crashes into the reef and splits in two. "Elated in this feat of his own strength", the Sub-Mariner then returns to the wreck, grabs the two corpses he had left there, and carries them off at super speed through the water.

His destination is a "mammoth door in a secluded grotto", which he commands someone named Domma to open. Enter the cave, he approaches a beautifully robed humanoid creature with a face that somewhat resembles a catfish. He addresses the creature as "the holy one" and the creature calls him Namor, asking him what prize he has just brought in. Namor produces the divers and explains that while he doesn't know what they are, they came from a floating ship he later wrecked, aiming to "raid the earth-men's derelict". The holy one tells Namor to open the "robots" to see what they are made of, and he does so, discovering that they were indeed earth-men after all. Namor's mother appears behind him, congratulating him on having begun their "war of revenge" and orders a creature named Karal to ossify the dead men and place them in the throne room to serve as examples.

Namor asks why the earth-people are supposedly so bad, since his father was allegedly one of them, and his mother explains that while his father was a fine man, "his people were cruel", having invaded their ancient undersea home by the South Pole and nearly exterminated their entire race. She had met Namor's father, captain Leonard McKenzie, in 1920, when his ship Oracle came from America on a scientific expedition and made their base on a ice-floe right above their city. The expedition set off "bombardments of explosives" that demolished the undersea castles and killed many of their people, and once more ships arrived to join the expedition, the elders of the city formed an army in desperation and sent Namor's mother Fen, the member of this race that most closely resembled a human, to spy on them and "work her feminine wiles to their racial advantage".

Fen sneaked onto the ship, where she was taken for a stowaway and taken to captain McKenzie, who gave her warm clothes that nearly suffocated her and food that made her ill. Still, his attempts at comforting her led to them becoming friends and she started to learn their language, while they never learned her true identity. Fen's Sub-Mariner race can only live out of water at five hours at most and she kept returning to her people to report, warning them that they could never win against the humans in battle, even as she and McKenzie fell in love and got married on the ship. The Sub-Mariners still prepared for an attack, but before they could launch one, a massive bombardment from above struck and wiped out nearly the entire race. And now, twenty years later, Fen tells Namor that they have finally built up a race to avenge the harm done to them, and that it is his duty to lead them into this battle, since he is "the only one of us left who can live on land and in water, and who can also fly in the air, and because he also has the strength of a thousand earth men".

And with that, Fen sends Namor to the "land of the white people" to avenge an injustice that was apparently a complete accident, committed by people that had no idea this other race even existed. Namor sets of, and in the next room meets his young cousin Dorma, who finds the war they're about to launch absolutely wonderful and asks him to take her along. Namor tells her it will be too dangerous, but that she may accompany him part way, and after deciding it's better to travel light without any equipment, leave the undersea castle with the heartfelt best wishes of the entire tribe. After traveling for two days, they reach Cape Anna lighthouse, which Namor is magically able to identify at first sight, and Namor decides their first move will be to wreck the lighthouse and thus endanger and hopefully destroy many ships.

The two sneak up to the lighthouse and Namor has Dorma stand guard as he knocks on the door, ready to jump the guard and rush inside when he opens. The plan succeeds and Namor starts wrecking the controls inside the lighthouse when he hears Dorma yell for help. Another guard is attacking her. Namor leaps at him and throws him far into the sea, but another guards appears in a window in the lighthouse and starts shooting at them. Namor leaps to the window and punches out the guard, then throws him down the stairs as Dorma is making her way up them. Grabbing Dorma, he leaps to the top of the building and starts smashing the beacon as more people with guns approach the lighthouse. Spotting a small plane flying through the air nearby, he once again grabs Dorma and leaps to it as it flies close, then climbs into the cockpit, punches out the pilot, and throws him into the sea to his doom. Placing Dorma at the controls, he orders her to wreck the ship somewhere and swim home before diving into the ocean, ready to continue his crusade on his own.

This is definitely a unique story and one that's rather hard to place in a strict genre. Namor is definitely super powered, but while he's not presented as outright villainous, he's absolutely not a hero. Whereas the Torch spent most of his story as a threat, he was aware of the fact and tried his best to minimize it while fighting clear villains that tried using him for evil means. Namor on the other hand, while he may have spent the first half of the story not realizing he was killing actual humans, goes on to spend the second half actively fighting "earth-men" in general for the actions of a few scientists the story is very blatantly saying had no idea they were causing any kind of harm in the first place. Namor may not be presented as wholly unsympathetic, but the reader is not meant to agree with his actions or cheer him on. Instead, Everett just wants you to be intrigued by the character and want to read more about him, rather than see him take on people that deserve it. It doesn't sound that unique today, but at the time, this was extremely rarely seen.

The Sub-Mariner was originally created for Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, Funnies Inc.'s failed attempt at a weekly freebie magazine for movie theaters to give out in order to attract more customers. The first 8 pages here were made for the first issue of that magazine, while the remaining 4 dealing with Dorma and the lighthouse are new, and it shows - these two parts of the story have little to do with each other. And you have to wonder why Dorma is even there; apart from being someone Namor can explain his plans to, she serves no real purpose in the story and is written back out at the end. That little oddity aside, though, this is definitely intriguing stuff. It's all setup, but it's good setup and it's hard to imagine someone reading this and not wanting to see what happens once Namor starts his attack for real next month.

The Masked Raider
"Cal Brunder, powerful ruler of Cactusville, is attempting to force all of the smaller ranchers to sell out to him, at his own price. Brunder sends his gun-men to call on Jim Gardley."

The story starts with this Gardley fellow punching out one of Brunder's men, telling him to get back and tell Brunder he'll never sell, though another of Brunder's men, Slick, sneaks up behind him and holds him up at gunpoint. The men then take Gardley back to Brunder as Gardley tells them people are eventually going to get enough of Brunder and his gang and run them out of the country, with Slick merely replying they could use someone like him. They drop Gardley off with Brunder and tell him what happened, and Brunder sends them off to deal with other ranchers as he'll take care of Gardley alone. He starts threatening Gardley, but upon realizing it'll be futile, calls in the sheriff and claims he caught Gardley rustling his stock instead.

Gardley is arrested and put in jail, where he once again starts thinking it's about time someone did something about the Brunder Gang. He finally gets an idea and pulls the oldest trick in the book, calling the sheriff over and claiming he's dying. The sheriff actually falls for it and comes over to investigate, and Gardley tells him to lean closer - he wants to confess. The sheriff does so, Gardley punches him out and locks him in the cell, then sneaks out and steals a conveniently unguarded horse parked right nearby, which he rides into the hills before releasing it to avoid people using it to track him.

After raiding his own ranch for supplies, he then stays in the hills for weeks, practicing his sharpshooting skills until he feels he's good enough to pull off his plan. He still needs a horse, though, and he eventually spots a good candidate in a white wild horse he comes across. He tries and fails for weeks to catch the horse until he one day finds the horse conveniently stumbled into a nearby corral. Some "days of utmost patience" later and he has befriended the horse, which he has given the name Lightning. Saddling it, he climbs on and learns that he's now tamed it, then tells it people are going to hear a lot more about them from here on. Wrapping a giant black mask around his face, he prepares to take on the new identity of the "Masked Raider".
"I, Jim Gardley, hereby make a solemn vow to forever fight the lawless... bring justice to the oppressed, and help the poor - to this end, I, the Masked Raider, dedicate my life to this oath!" he says, doing his best Batman impression.

Meanwhile, Brunder tells Slick to gather the gang and go burn the ranch of a guy named Bleck, who's apparently not all that willing to sell either. Bleck is keeping watch and spots Slick and the gang approach, but him telling them to back off only leads to the gang shooting him down before setting the ranch on fire. His wife is killed in the fire as well and the sheriff confronts Brunder about it, but he just mocks the sheriff and says he thinks people will be ready to sell now. Some of the ranchers decide to gather all the ranchers in the area for a meeting, where a wise and respected man named Lordin they've chosen to speak for them tries to convince them it's better to just sell to Brunder and avoid any more killings, which most of them agree with. Back in town, Brunder laughs as he hears the ranchers finally came to their senses, but he's interrupted by one of his men calling for him. A member of the gang, Rowdy, has been found outside, shot, with a note pinned to his back: "Brunder, you and your gang must pay for all your crimes. I'm starting to collect. Signed, the Masked Raider."

While Brunder is reading the note, the Raider visits the sheriff and asks where he is standing on all this, and the sheriff finally decides he's done getting pushed around by Brunder and goes along with the Raider in openly opposing him. One of Brunder's men is eavesdropping on the conversation and prepares to shoot them both before they can do anything, but another member of the gang appears and, rather idiotically, loudly asks if he can join in on the fun. The talking catches the Raider's attention and he sneaks out the back door to attack the two men from behind, knocking them out and getting the sheriff to lock them up. He then sets off to take on the rest of the gang, starting with Slick, who he approaches and orders to walk to jail. Slick calls for help and the rest of the gang arrives to help, but the townspeople come to the Raider's assistance and they mop up the entire gang in a single panel. Brunder escapes the town on his horse, but the Raider follows and catches him with a lasso, putting an end to the Brunder gang for good. "But will the masked man tackle the bigger game", the sheriff asks?

This was the only story in the issue I didn't really remember anything about before rereading it for this project, and it's easy to see why. It's a perfectly okay western plot about a nasty businessman threatening ranchers to sell their land and the ranchers eventually fighting back, but there's nothing memorable or original here. The Raider's "origin story" doesn't come across as a compelling reason for him to continue fighting now that Brunder is dealt with, his training has no impact on the story, and he does extremely little beyond motivating the sheriff and the townspeople to fight back, something he hardly needed a secret identity to pull off. Not a terrible story, but utterly forgettable and gave me no reason to think "this guy wears a mask" is a gimmick that's going to set the Raider apart from your average generic cowboy hero.

Jungle Terror
This is the only story in the issue to not be referenced on the cover, as well as the only story that's clearly written as a standalone. Completely standalone stories like this were rather uncommon in comics at the time, though not entirely unheard of, and it's going to be many years before Marvel does another. As such, it's an odd choice for Timely to include one in the first issue of their first book, especially considering, as we'll see next issue, they did indeed have a sixth hero available for use.

The story starts at the Florida plantation home of a Professor Roberts, where a guy named Ken Masters is talking with the professor's nephew Tim Roberts. It turns out that three months ago, they let the professor travel alone into a jungle in search of a diamond possessing hypnotic power someone told him a "certain Indian tribe" there had, and they haven't heard from him since. Luckily the professor marked a spot on his globe before he left - a spot deep in the Amazon jungle - so the two of them decide to travel there the next day to find him. However, while they're talking, a mysterious figure is listening in on them from outside the window before running off to report to John Crafton, owner of the adjoining plantation. Upon hearing Ken and Tim will take off the next day, Crafton tells his subordinate to gather the rest of the men - they're following.

The next day, Ken and Tim take off for the Amazon in a small plane, but soon notices Crafton's plane following them. Unable to do anything about that, they continue towards the Amazon, where their... uh, motor goes missing, according to Ken's dialogue. I assume he meant to say "stopped". The plane crash lands in the jungle, and Ken carries Tim to safety, but they're soon followed by savages that eventually stop them and tell them to accompany them to their chief. Elsewhere in the jungle, Crafton and his men land their plane and start searching for Ken and Tim, planning to follow them until they find the professor and the diamond, then kill them and steal it. Before the gang can locate the two boys, however, an Indian sneaks up on them and lunges at Crafton's henchman Slug. His other henchman, Mike, quickly shoots the Indian, but before the gang can continue, Mike himself is killed by a poisoned arrow fired out of the bushes as Indians surround the other two and motion for them to follow.

In the native village, Tim and Ken are taken to the chief, who orders them sent to the prisoners' hut, telling them they'll be killed later. As Tim mutters about how they'll never find his uncle John now, they're shown into the hut, where the professor himself is waiting. Ken asks him what's going on, he thought the professor knew the tribe, and the professor explains they were only friendly until they learned he was after their diamond, upon which they threw him in jail...  which sounds sensible enough, considering he IS there to steal from them. The professor has found a strange opening in the floor at the corner of the hut that he for some reason hasn't bothered exploring yet, and the three of them decide to enter it. The opening leads them to an underground cave filled with huge pots containing thousands and thousands of diamonds. The professor prepares to fill his pockets, but he's stopped by Crafton, who walks into the room together with Slug, their guns aimed at the group. Crafton explains that after he and Slug got captured by the natives, they were thrown into another prison hut, but managed to escape into the jungle where they found a cave entrance leading to this very room.

Crafton tells Slug to fill his pockets, his plan simply being for them to grab a bunch of diamonds from this room, then escape back to the plane, leaving the Indians to kill the other three, but before either of them can do much, the Indians show up and shoot both Slug and Crafton dead with their arrows. Ken grabs Crafton's gun and starts shooting at the Indians to hold them off, and the group manages to escape into the jungle where they start searching for Crafton's plane. They find it in time, get in and take off before the Indians can catch them, and as Ken feels down about them not getting any of the diamonds, the professor reveals that he managed to nab one in the confusion. "Say! That's great work, Prof!"

There's some okay action here, but this seriously isn't much of a story. The kids get to the jungle, find the professor and get back out without any particular twists, and the amount of plot conveniences that work out in the protagonists' favor is completely ridiculous. Their plane crashing doesn't matter since they were conveniently followed by someone whose plane they could later steal, out of the six invaders the Indians just conveniently happen to kill the three evil ones, and there's a random entrance to the diamond room IN the prison hut. And the hypnotic diamond randomly gets forgotten halfway into the story. It's readable, but it's extremely poorly written and by far the worst story in the book.

Burning Rubber, a short story about the auto race tracks
Back in the early days of comics, magazines that wanted to qualify for second-class postage permit for their subscription copies - essentially a must for staying in business considering how much cheaper this was than sending them out with first class mail - were required to contain at least two pages of text. Some books would thus feature editorials, letter pages, book reviews and similar material, but by 1939 the vast majority filled their two required pages of text with a short prose story. This is exactly what Timely did for their first book as well:

A guy named Bill Williams is entering an auto race with his car Blue Bird, which looks so shoddy the crowd just laughs when he shows up. It looks like that because Bill had spent what money he had on the entry fee and his "new super-charger", but the crowd's laughter still appears to get to him, and his mechanic Fred finds it weird when he's asked to let Bill drive alone this time. When the race starts, Bill quickly takes the lead and shuts up the crowd. His girlfriend Ann, who finds the entire racing business risky and apparently isn't too happy about Bill being part of it, is watching the race from the stands as Fred comes over, explaining that Bill wanted to drive alone this time before telling her there's something she can do to help. He and Bill had perfected a new gas feeder over the last few months, and this race is the final test for it. If the feeder works, Bill has said he'd retire from racing permanently, but if it doesn't... its temporary placement over the engine means a leak will make the entire car explode.

Ann asks what she can do, and Fred tells her that since she's friends with the daughter of motor magnate (or as the story spells it, "motor magnet") C. G. Clark, she might be able to have his daughter let her see him and show him the plans for the feeder right away, sell him on buying the rights, and then get Bill flagged out of the race before anything goes wrong. In the car, things have already gone wrong, as Bill realizes there's gasoline mixed into the oil he's wiping of his face and that the feeder has thus started to leak. Fred notices the car has started smoking, but he also notices Ann talking to the starter. Bill is waved out of the race as the other cars start their final lap and starts yelling at Ann for ruining all his hard work, but changes his tone completely once Mr. Clark introduces himself and invites him over to his office to discuss business. "To the devil with the race" he says, but as a final twist, Fred tells him he already won the race anyway, the gas feeder worked so well he gained a lap on the other cars and completed his final lap before they started on theirs.

I don't care much for racing, but I doubt I'd have cared much for this story even if I did. It's poorly told, with more than half the text just being straight dialogue and several plot points, including the risky mounting of the feeder being temporary and the final twist about Bill having won the race already being so poorly explained I initially missed them. Bill doesn't come across as particularly sympathetic either. Timely had some decent short stories in their books, but this isn't one of them.

Adventures of Ka-Zar the Great, from the famous character created by Bob Byrd
As mentioned, Ka-Zar was the only character featured in this issue that wasn't new to the world. Instead, he had debuted in his own pulp magazine "Ka-Zar", published by Martin Goodman's Manvis Publication, which debuted in mid 1936 and lasted a total of 3 issues, each issue featuring a 70-80 page novel by Ka-Zar's creator Bob Byrd, followed by various unrelated short stories by other authors. The comic featured in this magazine adapts the first 9 chapters of the first Ka-Zar novel, "King of Fang and Claw" from Ka-Zar #1, which can be read in full at Project Gutenberg.

John Rand, young owner of a rich diamond mine in Transvaal, is flying from Johannesburg to Cairo with his wife and their three-year-old son David when the plane develops motor trouble over the heart of the Belgian Congo and he has to come down. Rand staggers out of the wreck and learns that while he son is fine, his wife Constance has broken her leg, which he fixes with his medical kit. As his mother recovers, David is playing around with the small animals, being observed daily by the lion Zar, until he is one day attacked by N'Jaga the leopard. Rand saves him with his rifle and sends the wounded leopard running off, but David is saddened it won't come back and and realizes his son has no instinctive fear of the animals. Later, Rand kills a snake to save David and David once again mourns its death, feeling unhappy about Rand's announcement that search parties will soon find them.

As the family becomes reconciled to the new environment a plane eventually shows up and Rand lights a signal fire before walking into the lake and waving a tarpaulin at it, but the plane fails to notice either. Rand assures Constance it will be back the next day, and it is, but farther away from the camp this time. Every time the plane returns it searches farther and farther in the wrong direction until it eventually stops coming. Constance eventually dies from jungle fever and Rand starts plotting his and David's way back to civilization, feeling the only meaning his life now has is to protect his son, his wife's last wish. However, the day before they were to set off, a raging storm sends a tree crashing down towards them, hitting Rand in the head. When he comes to, he starts thinking of the clearing in the jungle as their home, a delusion he never recovers from despite being rational in every other aspect. David is glad he doesn't have to leave, though.

The years pass as Rand and David live together in the clearing, a latent impulse making Rand provide David with some simple schooling. The boy preferred playing in the jungle, however, learning to swim like Nyassa the fish, climb like Nono the monkey and live according to the code of the jungle: Kill only when necessary. He learns to talk to the animals and encounters Quog the wild pig, Wal-Lah the hippopotamus and Trajah the elephant, the latter which he desires to one day ride on, all while unaware that he's watched by Zar the lion. One day, David saw Kru the buzzard drop to the earth and, running to where it landed, is alerted by a fear-filled roar that Zar the lion is trapped in a nearby bog of quicksand. Not being able to resist the forlorn appeal of the hopelessness in its eyes, he uses some nearby branches to save the lion, resulting in the two making a strange pact of truce.

A week later, David smells smoke in the jungle and he and his father go to investigate, discovering a black man sitting by a fire as two other blacks scoop gravel from a stream, watched by a fat white man. Rand walks towards the three men at the stream and David watches him commanding them to leave, and then, as Rand turns his back to them, the white man Paul De Kraft raising his gun at Rand's back. Quickly, David fires an arrow at De Kraft, hitting his arm and making him drop the gun before he can fire. Rand returns to his son as De Kraft leers at him with hate in his eyes, later telling David that the jungle is sacred to their mother and must never be profaned by another man.

That night, De Kraft tells his natives he has discovered emeralds in the stream and refuses to let some half-crazed hermit order him away from them, then sends one of them, Mubangi, to spy on their camp. Mubangi does so, returning with a report that there are only two people there and that they have no guns, leading to De Kraft commenting that this will make things easier. As dawn breaks, David approaches the other men's camp, finding it apparently deserted. He examines the empty camp, getting particularly fascinated by a mirror, before returning to his own camp to tell his father of what he found. On his way he hears shots and, remembering his father shooting N'Jaga when he was a child, rushes for the camp, finding it on fire. His wounded father crawls towards him, mumbling a warning as David picks him up, failing to notice the native sneaking up behind him before he's pricked in the back by his spear. Before he can act, De Kraft comes out of the jungle and David confronts him, telling him "Fat-Face" is going to die for wounding his father. De Kraft laughs and tells him he's the one who's going to get killed, but as he raises his gun, Zar bursts into the clearing, having watched everything. De Kraft escapes, assuming the lion will kill David for him, and David tells his father that Zar apparently killed two natives off panel while driving Fat-Face off. It's too late for Rand, however, who dies from his wounds and leaves David all alone... or at least until Zar returns to the clearing, sensing his grief, to invite the boy to share his cave, saying that from that day on, David would be known as Ka-Zar, brother of Zar. More adventures of Ka-Zar to come in the next issue!

This is actually a good story, though the comic adaptation of it is absolutely atrocious. Roughly 30 pages of prose is turned into 12 pages of comic, with 3 of those spent on a single chapter at that. The writing itself may be more sophisticated than most comics at the time, being largely lifted verbatim from Byrd's novel, but the comic just rushes through the plot and covers the absolute bare minimum ground required to follow the events, the relative lack of speech bubbles making it more like a short, illustrated summary than anything. The atmosphere is gone, and the way it skips over things like Constance's death, the passages told from Zar's point of view, Rand's inner, desperate monologues and even De Kraft's poor treatment of his men robs the story of nearly everything that made it a good read in the first place. Hell, it doesn't even bother explaining why the family stayed in the clearing for months anyway (the rainy season had just started and it was too risky to start traveling before it had ended). The source material is strong enough this comic isn't a complete disaster, but I really can't imagine any Ka-Zar fans in 1939 not finding this a poor adaptation. Just read the novel and skip this nonsense.

As a whole
It's Marvel Comics #1. It's the iconic debut of the Sub-Mariner, the somewhat less iconic debut of the original Human Torch and the not-at-all-iconic-but-still-quite-solid debut of the original Angel. It's a great book even if the latter half of it never rises above "okay".

Comic 1: Marvel Comics #1, Oct/Nov 1939 (part 1 - intro and Human Torch)

This is where it all begins. Marvel Comics #1 was one of the first Golden age comics I ever read and I have a fair bit of nostalgia for it, though I'll try to not let it impact this post too much.

Timely's very first comic book was a fairly typical action-adventure anthology, similar to what other publishers were putting out at the time. These type of books would start off with a colorful, often Superman-inspired hero that would often be showcased on the cover, then continue with a variety of other action heroes. Each book would have around 7-8 different comics, usually but not always starring heroes that would keep appearing in new adventures every month, which meant kids would keep picking up each subsequent issue to read more about their favorite heroes. In addition to the lead feature, which was usually a super hero, a typical action-adventure anthology would usually include heroes taken from the following list: Detectives, western heroes, Buck Rogers-inspired sci-fi heroes, Tarzan-inspired jungle heroes, magicians, sports heroes, aviators, spies, explorer-adventurer types, newshounds, soldiers and historical swashbucklers/knights/Robin Hood types. There wasn't all that much variety within these rough archetypes; the characters tended to have little in the way of actual personality and most of them lacked any kind of unique hook, so it was mostly the strength of their individual stories that made people prefer one generic detective over another.

Marvel Comics #1 promises us "Action, mystery and adventure" and tells us this month will give us "The Human Torch", "The Angel", "Submariner" and "Masked Raider", as well as "12 pages of jungle adventure" featuring "Ka-Zar the Great", the only name here readers may have already been familiar with. Ka-Zar was a Tarzan clone that had appeared in a couple pulp stories at the time, so name dropping him on the cover to potentially attract some of his fans makes sense. The cover itself doesn't feature Ka-Zar, though: Instead, we see some strange, demonic fire creature melt its way into a vault, as some poor guy is futilely trying to defend himself against this monster with a gun. It definitely looks more like the cover of a horror comic than a super hero one, but not only is this scene a fairly accurate depiction of a scene that actually takes place in the lead story, the fire demon is actually the story's hero, while the poor dude with the gun is the villain. Absolutely not the idea you get from the cover itself.

Let's give the actual book a look, then:

Now I'll Tell One!
The first feature in the book is this small collection of one-panel gags. Timely didn't do this type of filler all that often, and what little they did typically wasn't panel gags, which is probably a good thing considering the overall quality of this page. None of these five jokes are good, and some make no sense to me whatsoever. In order:
*Two workers peek out of a manhole, with one of them saying "I used 'ta live in a penthouse". I'm not sure what the joke here is supposed to be... he used to be high above ground and now he's below ground? I dunno.
*A grinning, bald worker at "Acme Sand" says "ten years ago I hated dis job because the sand got into my hair". Not funny.
*A toddler tells a nurse he insists upon getting his breakfast (a bottle) in bed. The joke is that babies are always fed in bed, I assume, but I don't think that was even the case back then. Even if it was, this isn't very funny.
*During a boxing match, one of the boxers takes a photo of the other's incoming punch, saying "Oboy, what a shot!". I'm honestly not seeing what the joke here is beyond the situation being utterly bizarre.
*A prisoner sits in his cell with a birthday cake, grumbling about how nobody came to his party. Probably the best joke here, but it's still pretty sorry stuff.
Not the best start to the issue.

The Human Torch
Our story opens at the laboratory of a Professor Horton, where the professor has called in some "gentlemen of the press" to present a difficult problem in his latest discovery. As they all know, he has been working on creating a synthetic man - "an exact replica of a human being", but once he finished he found that he had surpassed anything any scientist had ever done - something even he feared. He takes them to an air-tight glass cage he keeps his creation, which he's dubbed "The Human Torch", in, then explains that due to "something having gone wrong with his figurings somewhere", his robot bursts into flame upon contact with oxygen. He lets some air into the cage to demonstrate, and as the synthetic man catches fire, one of the journalists immediately tells Horton to destroy his creation before some madman can "grasp its principles and hurl it against our civilization".

Horton refuses, saying destroying the Torch won't solve anything, so the journalists walk off to write articles warning the public about how potentially dangerous the Torch can be, and within the hour, newsboys are on the street with extras about Horton's invention. As Horton reads the paper, he gets a phone call from the Scientists' Guild, which wants to see his creation. He invites them over, and they send three men over that evening to investigate the Torch due to the newspaper articles having aroused the public. Horton gives them a demonstration as they attempt use a pyrometer to measure the Torch's heat, but the flame turns out to be too hot to measure. As Horton confirms he has no control over the flame whatsoever, the lead scientist says he unfortunately has no choice but to agree with the papers. The Torch is too dangerous and must be destroyed. Horton objects, saying he might be able to stumble over a device to control and master the Torch, and the lead scientist proposes an alternate solution: Entombing the Torch in a concrete block, where he'll pose no danger to anyone, but which he can be dug out of if Horton finds a solution to the flame problem. Horton thinks this is a great idea, and the next day a mold for the concrete is constructed. Horton then seals the Torch into a steel tube in front of witnesses before the tube is lifted up by a crane and dumped into the wet cement, where it sinks down, possibly sealed forever. This is all presented surprisingly realistically for the time - none of the characters involved have any sort of hidden agendas or act particularly out of line. Instead, it's just a number of people understandably worried about the Torch (with even Horton admitting he's afraid of it) that eventually arrive at a solution they all think is fair. This wasn't common at the time.

Of course, the Torch didn't stay down in that cement block forever. One morning, after "everybody had forgotten about the fire-man", a terrifying blast "split the earth open", shattering Horton's windows in the process. The blast wakes Horton and he sees the tomb has been blown open. His initial assumption is that the Torch has been destroyed, since nothing could have survived such a blast, but he then hits on the possibility that the air-tight tube may have had a leak. He tries disregarding that possibility since he sealed the tube himself, but a narration box informs us there had indeed been one as we cut to the Torch running through the city, panicking over the fact that everything he touches turns to flame... including some poor guy he lights on fire as he runs past him. Someone calls the fire department and a fire truck is sent in, and as it rolls up next to the Torch, he actually turns around and admires the sound of the bell with childlike enthusiasm. It's an amusing moment that's very much a product of its time. The Torch is nice enough to just stand there as the firefighters get their hose attached to the fire hydrant and start spraying him with water. The Torch laughs as the pressure of the water just tickles him, creeping out the firefighters, but his flame starts to die down and one fireman runs off to get Horton. Unfortunately, the Torch ends up stepping on the hose and burning a hole in it, cutting off the water supply and making his fire blaze back up again as he runs off, wanting to get away before he causes more damage. He eventually spots a pool in a garden behind an iron gate and, hoping that will put out his flame, grips the iron bars in the gates and melts the metal itself away to get into the garden, then runs over to the pool and dives in, lighting the lawn on fire as he goes.

Inside the house, a guy named Sardo is reading a paper that's already covering the Torch's rampage as his henchdude Red points out that his lawn around the pool is on fire. Sardo immediately realizes what has happened and tells Red to "get the winter glass cover that fits the pool, draw the air out, then drain the water". Is this a thing? Sounds bizarre. Red does as told, then he and Sardo goes to inspect the now empty, air-tight sealed pool where the Torch is standing, no longer on fire. He's standing upright, so apparently this "exact replica of a human being" can function perfectly fine without needing to breathe. Sardo is happy to have the Torch there, while Red doesn't quite get why this is such a big deal, so Sardo tells him they have a million dollar racket and don't have to worry about the cops any more. As he puts it, they're now in the fire insurance business and their first customer will be "Acmen Warehouse", which deals in steel. Steel may not burn, but they now have the Human Torch with them, and he can melt steel - and they don't even have to worry about whether or not he wants to work for them, since he starts burning when he touches air anyway. Red still doesn't really get it, but still drives Sardo to see Mr. Harris, the president of Acmen, who Sardo tells quite upfront that he'll either sign up for his protection insurance or he won't have more steel in his warehouse. Harris doesn't like racketeers much and throws Sardo out, so an angry Sardo tells him he'll be sorry, then returns to Red and gets driven back to the mansion. There, they fill the pool with water again, then Sardo goes down in a diving suit and encloses the Torch in a giant glass tube he, like all of us, had lying around in his lab. The Torch is still fully conscious and under the impression Sardo is helping him, so he lets himself get put in the tube, then lifted out and loaded into a truck. It's now "the night" for some reason as the truck speeds to one of Harris' warehouses, where Sardo and his men unload the glass tube and carry it into the apparently unguarded building before Sardo tosses a weight at the tube, shattering it and freeing the Torch, telling him to burn the place to the ground. This was apparently Sardo's entire plan - threaten businesses dealing in fireproof wares, let the Torch lose on the first business that doesn't pay. Of course, he lost the Torch this way, so he can't exactly pull that stunt more than once, nor does he "no longer have to worry about the cops"... and he DOES have to worry about the Torch, who might not appreciate being used in this way, and who knows where he lives. Granted, he didn't tell Harris he was going to use fire, but he still made no money off this, so I can see how Red didn't get it. The plan makes very little sense.

As the Torch walks through the now burning warehouse, he tries to figure out why his apparent benefactor would bring him here and break the cover, eventually deducing he must be a racketeer. He decides he has to get out and "see" Sardo, and when the roof caves in, he has his way out. He takes a running start and manages a massive leap through the destroyed roof that surprises even him, as a narrator helpfully explains that "the blue and combined red flames made the Human Torch lighter than air". If you say so.

This was apparently just a long jump, not outright flight, and the Torch lands some blocks away, then starts running towards Sardo's house as scared citizens flee the scene. When he gets there, Sardo is rather naievely "taken by surprise" by the Torch's return, then runs into his house, closing the door. The Torch simply walks straight through the door, and a shocked Sardo decides to hide in his underground lab - "It's steel - it'll stop him". This is the guy who outright said the Torch could melt steel 3 pages earlier.

Sardo runs to his lab, which "walls are made of twelve inch battleship chromium steel plates", as the Torch burns his house to the ground searching for him. Sardo's men are still in there, having waited for Sardo to join them, but finally decide they have to escape without him. They and the Torch spot each other as they escape the house and he follows them as they run into the garden, most of them diving into the pool, while Red ducks under a car. The Torch leaps onto the car, melting it over Red "as if it was made of butter", and a narration box mentions he also turns the water in the pool to steam, scalding the gangsters there. Quite brutal.

With only Sardo still alive, the Torch returns to the house to search for him, eventually spotting a steel door he hadn't seen before. He places his hand on it and melts his way through, reaching Sardo's lab, where Sardo is hiding behind a "special door", mocking the Torch and saying he'll never get him in a million years. The Torch has absolutely no trouble simply walking straight through the door in a scene that inspired the cover to the book, and a panicking Sardo dons a gas mask and tries to get rid of the Torch with a "gas bomb", with the heat of the Torch "causing it to fizz before it can even touch" him. If the bomb going off in mid air meant it wasn't close enough to harm the Torch, I wonder why Sardo bothered with the mask. The Torch then mocks Sardo by picking up one of his bombs and melting it in his hand, which doesn't make it go off for some reason, as a now half crazed Sardo prepares to toss a tank of "liquidar" at him.

A fire truck arrives at the scene at that point with Horton on board, and as the firemen attempt to put out the fire in Sardo's house, Horton storms into the house, having spotted a tank of nitrogen he wants to get out of there before it explodes. The Torch, who has returned to the surface for some reason, spots the same tank and leaps at it, closing his arms around it and melting a hole for the gas to get out before it can cause an explosion... with Horton watching in amazement as the gas causes the Torch's fire to die out. The fire chief then sees the Torch is no longer on fire, pulls out a gun and shoots him in the head. The end.

Or not. The Torch's skin is still so hot the bullet just melts on impact, and a laughing Torch then runs back into the fire to finish off Sardo. Down in the lab, Sardo sees the approaching Torch is no longer and fire and wonders if it might have been put out by the nitro upstairs. Once the Torch catches fire again he's sure of it and grabs a nearby tank of nitro, offering it to the Torch if he'll let him go. A rather cruel Torch simply rips the tank from Sardo's hands and thanks him for it, then declares he'll never let him go. Sardo begs for his life, but the Torch simply says he should've thought of this before he used him for his racket, then starts tearing up Sardo's lab "with seemingly fiendish delight". Sardo eyes a chance and sneaks into a corner, grabbing a tank of sulphuric acid he throws at the Torch, but just like the bomb it explodes in mid air due to the Torch's heat, the resulting explosion being so great it kills Sardo. Torch grabs the tank of nitro and walks back to Horton, saying that the explosion he head was just "a rat (that) dealt out justice to himself".

The police show up and spot the Torch and Horton as the Torch walks back into the blaze to "experiment" with the nitro, the details of which the comic kind of just glosses over. After the experiments are over, however, the Torch now has complete control of his flames, not only being able to turn it on and off at will, but also being able to throw it like a ball. He leaves the house as the police chief calls for backup, then starts tailing the Torch as he walks away. The Torch, noticing he's being followed, starts running away, but is eventually stopped by a blockade. The officers are unable to approach the Torch due to the heat he gives off, but he tells them to wait and willingly turns off his own flame, apologizing for not knowing they were after him and going with them.

At police headquarters, the Torch is questioned about his actions, and while he explains Sardo's involvement in the warehouse fire, his excuse for burning down Sardo's estate is simply that "it was of (Sardo's) own doing", as Sardo set him free in the air. They also seemingly just ignore the fact that the Torch straight out murdered at least three people that were only trying to escape his rampage. Oh well. Horton tells the captain to leave the Torch in his custody and the captain goes along with that, saying the Torch would probably just burn down the jail if he didn't. Horton drives the Torch to his house as the Torch tells him he now has complete control of his flame, then demonstrates at the house by lighting Horton's cigar from a distance. Seeing an opportunity here, Horton exclaims they can make a fortune out of this, but the Torch refuses. With the words "No one will ever use me for selfish gain - or crime", he burns a hole in the ceiling and leaps out with a laugh as the final panel promises "another Human Torch picture-action story" next month.

This is a really solid story for the time, and considering its length and position at the start of the book, Timely clearly thought so as well. Sure, it has issues - Sardo's plan is nonsensical and he's ridiculously short-sighted to not realize the Torch would probably come after him, while all the random crap he has lying around is awfully convenient to the plot, but as a whole the story is full of energy and pretty damn exciting. The Torch is written as a genuine threat to the point you fear a lot more about Sardo's safety than his, but at the same time it makes it clear that the Torch never WANTS to cause any harm and is not only actively trying to put out his own flame, he's afraid of it himself.

Horton is also written as rather nuanced for the time. He's open about not wanting to destroy the Torch, he goes along with the plan to seal him away without any trickery, he shows genuine heroism when he runs into the fire to get the nitro tank away from it, he's willing to take responsibility for the Torch before he learns he can now control his flame... yet at the end of the story, he sees the potential for profit and wants to take it. And even here, he's open with the Torch about his intentions, seemingly just not accounting for the fact that the Torch might disagree. In this era of paper thin personalities, he just comes across as human.

So what is this blog, anyway?

First of all, it's a blog written by a person who's never been great at writing introductions to his projects.

Hi, I'm Adamant, welcome to my crazy journey through a significant piece of American comic book history. This is a project I've been toying with the idea of starting up for years now: Reading, detailing and commenting on everything Marvel released during the Golden Age. This isn't some radically new idea; It's been done before, including by this guy and this guy, but what I hope to do differently is to give each story an in-depth look. Everything will be given reasonably detailed summaries, interesting tidbits will be commented on, and I'll give each story and each issue a final evaluation.

Now, I'm perfectly aware of the fact that these comics are rather simplistic in nature and don't exactly hold up to modern material, so I'm not going to review them at length as if they're complex works of art - instead, stories and issues will primarily be judged on how much fun I had reading them. I'll also try my best to put myself in the position of a young reader at the time of publication; Stories about nazi saboteurs infiltrating American troops definitely felt a lot scarier and more real to a reader in the early 40s than they do today, and reading about brave men dressed like flags punching them out while spouting patriotic slogans would've likewise made kids feel more hopeful that things would turn out all right. The nazis weren't comic book villains, they were actual, real enemies of the country, and it's hard to imagine just how scary they must've felt to young kids back then.

We're not going to start with wartime material, though. We're going to start in 1939, with the very first issue of "Marvel Comics", the first comic book published by Timely Publications.