BHOC: INVADERS #38

INVADERS was a series on a downward slope, and much closer to cancellation that I realized as a regular reader. I could tell that something was off about the book, but I was so invested in the Golden Age as a concept and in the formative versions of these characters, like the Justice Society of America over at DC, that I never allowed it to puncture my enthusiasm for the series. INVADERS was a title that i still followed avidly, even as it steadily grew less polished and less well executed, and circled the drain.

INVADERS started off as a passion project for editor Roy Thomas, a book that featured the vintage versions of the heroes he had read as a young fan growing up in the 1940s. Roy’s always been something of an aficionado of that period, and so he sprinkled every issue with as many contemporary references to the period as he was able to. At a certain point, though, the bloom was off the rose, and seemingly coinciding with Roy’s relocation to the west coast, he began having other people write the series, most regularly Don Glut, an author and filmmaker with a wide variety of credits, including a number of fan films in which he played the super heroes of his youth. Glut was on paper a good choice, but in practice, what he seemed to deliver were watered down versions of Roy’s concepts–executed perfectly well, but lacking the spark of connection to the material that Thomas always brought.

The artwork was at this point being delivered by Alan Kupperberg, and I feel as though I’ve dumped on Kupperberg enough over previous issues for a lifetime. But the truth is, his doughy figures and lackluster storytelling were pretty poor, and his work never appealed to me whatsoever. This issue also contains three pages penciled by the stalwart Don Heck and which I’m guessing had been done for the aborted LIBERTY LEGION #1, which the past couple of issues had cannibalized for parts. Heck never quite found a groove in a world of Jack Kirby-inspired super heroics, but he was a solid storyteller who could draw anything and whose work had an appealing flavor to it when he wasn’t trying to be something that he wasn’t. The Heck pages in this issue are far and away the best of the lot.

The story this month is a bit of a transitional one, setting up for the next couple of issues. It opens with the Invaders, accompanied by the Whizzer, taking down some Fifth Columnists who are trying to shake down the German-born foreman of a factory that’s making items for the war to give them classified intel. It’s a quick action opener, following which the Whizzer races off back to Liberty Legion headquarters (using those repurposed Don Heck pages) and lets his fellow team members know that while the Invaders are back on the Home Front, he’s going to be working with them. Miss America demands to be let in on this deal as well, pointing out that both Union Jack and Spitfire are absent from the Invaders’ ranks, having remained in the United Kingdom.

Elsewhere, an enshrouded figure makes his way into Chinatown from the dockside, being helplessly drawn by an unyielding compulsion to enter a certain shop. The place is decked out not on Chinese decor but rather Japanese, and that the first indication that our man may have walked intoa trap. Fortunately for him, once he doffs his overcoat disguise, he is revealed as Meranno, the U-Man, an enemy of the Invaders and Prince Namor in particular. Meranno learns that he’s been drawn to this place by the mental abilities of Lady Lotus, a Japanese operative. She’s interested in using U-Man’s power to help her capture one of the Kid Commandos, the group formed by Bucky and Toro some time earlier. In particular, she’s interested in the Japanese heroine Golden Girl.

Lotus is something of a rogue player, and she tells U-Man that she’s aware through her psychic abilities that a cabal of Japanese spies will be attacked and rounded up by the Kid Commandos that evening. so she dispatches U-Man as her operative to jump into the middle of that fight and bring Golden Girl back with him, no matter who he has to smash along the way. Elsewhere, Bucky has a phone call with Captain America and convinces the Invaders to come out to the west coast to visit him and the other Commandos before they return overseas. This sets up the fact that the Invaders are now en route to the Kid Commandos location for next issue. While they wait, the Commandos intend on breaking up a meeting of a Japanese spy network they’ve just learned about.

The initial takedown of the spies goes off like clockwork, but then suddenly U-Man leaps in out of the waters and annihilates the Kid Commandos in the space of a single page. Which is a good thing, too, as we’re almost at the end of the issue. U-Man wants to finish off the defeated kids, but Lotus is only interested in Golden Girl–she wants to turn her to the side of the Axis, and so she orders U-Man to withdraw and bring Golden Girl with him. And that’s where this outing is To Be Continued. It was very plug-and-play, a by-the-numbers sort of an affair without a whole lot to recommend it.