BHOC: INVADERS #39

Brevoort History of Comics

It was almost the end of the road for INVADERS, though I didn’t know that at the time. But looking back, it seems almost inevitable. The artwork had been progressively getting less and less polished, and editor and series creator Roy Thomas had been letting other people write his baby. I can’t imagine that the staff at Marvel had the same positive feeling towards the book that Roy did, so nobody else was really looking out for it. Nevertheless, it remained on my buy-list to the very end. I do have to say, though, that this last string of issues aren’t really much good.

This is another issue that was written by Don Glut, a novelist who had an affection for the comic books of old. He did journeyman work on the series, but somehow the spark of childlike glee that was always apparent whenever Roy himself was scripting the series simply wasn’t in evidence. So the characters became slightly more wooden and one-dimensional. And again, Alan Kupperberg was the regular penciler on the series–I’ve made no bones about the fact that I never warmed to his artwork, and the thick inking of Chic Stone didn’t help matters any here.

This issue opens up just as the cover indicates, with Captain America and the Human Torch racing to the aide of the Kid Commandos, who have been soundly trounced by the Invaders’ old foe U-Man. The two adult heroes are able to drive U-Man into retreat, but he takes Golden Girl with him. This is all part of the grand design of Lady Lotus, who is guiding U-Man’s actions from afar. The Invaders and the Kid Commandos powwow about their situation, then teh Human Torch and Toro set out across the ocean, hoping that they’ll be able to pick up some sign of U-Man’s undersea trail. Good luck with that, boys.

Once she comes to, Golden Girl finds herself a guest of the aforementioned Lady Lotus, who accommodatingly gives Gwenny Lou and the readers a rundown of her history. Short version: while she’s posed as being Chinese, Lady Lotus is actually Japanese. And as Golden Girl also shares Japanese descent, Lotus hopes to be able to sway her over to their side. Meanwhile, the twin Torches have come upon the slenderest threat of a lead. But it’s better than nothing, and so they return to gather up Captain America and the rest of the bunch before investigating further.

Meanwhile, back in England, Union Jack and Spitfire are getting a bit squirrelly from inactivity. So consequently, they suit up and head out onto the Falsworth Manor grounds in response to UJ having “a bad feeling” Back at Lady Lotus’ place, Golden Girl makes it clear that she’s not throwing in with the ersatz Dragon Lady, and she’s attacked by U-Man and Lotus’ troops as a result. But she holds her own quite well in this sequence, clobbering her way through pretty much all of them with her hard-light powers and fighting skill.

Just as the tide is beginning to turn upon Golden Girl, the Invaders and the Kid Commandos arrive–promoting Lady Lotus and U-Man to make a hasty and unscheduled retreat. Seeing how thoroughly Golden Girl has trounced Lotus’ men, Bucky inelegantly hugs her while talking about how she beat up a bunch of “Nips”. Uh, bud, you do remember that Gwenny Lou is of Japanese descent too, right? This is all in service to a minor monetary romantic triangle that Glut was setting up between Bucky and Toro, both of whom had eyes for Golden Girl, but it comes across as pretty tone-deaf to today’s sensibilities.

But anyway, Golden Girl is recovered and the villains routed. So all’s well. Except that, over in England, continuing to prowl around the Falsworth grounds, Spitfire and Union Jack find themselves in combat with a couple of Japanese spies who are attempting to resurrect the Invaders’ enemy Baron Blood. And after a page or so of action, despite Jack and Spitfire going to town on them, they do just that–and that’s the cliffhanger for this issue. To Be Continued! So, yeah, this really wasn’t a great story on any level.

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22 thoughts on “BHOC: INVADERS #39”

  2. I probably would have stopped reading the series had I not had terminal completeness. What else did Glut write? I have a vague positive feeling reading his name but yeah, his Invaders was total drek. Kupperburg was at best a C level artist but he did usually have good story telling chops. I would have taken Mister K over the overly artsy types who give you a great looking book that is difficult to parse the story from. The art’s not helped at all by Stone, whose inking I just now finally figured out why I found it unsatisfying: It always looked like he only inked outer lines and never shaded anything. That did improve some artists’ output but did Kupperberg no favors. Big K at this point needed an inker who acted like a semi-finisher.

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    1. I am fan of Stones inks however you are correct. IMHO they worked nicely with Sal Buscema for example but not Alan Kupperberg. Alan was a nice guy and a solid story teller layout-wise but he need an inker like Gene Day (MTIO 49) or Rudy Nebres (Dr Strange 32) who was able to stylistically fill in gaps.

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  3. Frank Robbins made it for me. Without his heart’s & kinetic style, it lost it’s visual energy. I might get lectured by someone for this, but in a dream scenario, if these artists were willing and available, I’d’ve wanted to see Gene Colan, or Rich Buckler, or Richard Howell take over drawing “The Invaders”.

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  6. I also kept getting the Invaders until the bitter end. Although I initially didn’t care for Frank Robbins’ style, I got used to it appreciate it more. I also much enjoyed Thomas’ writing. But after Thomas stopped writing and Robbins retired, Glut & Kupperberg couldn’t really rekindle the initial excitement. Invaders lasted quite a bit longer than nearly every other entirely new title Marvel introduced in the mid-70s but eventually it joined the rest of them on the ash heap.

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  7. I appreciate FrankRobbins much more now than I did as a kid, but I always thought he was a great fit with The Invaders. I was not able to regularly follow the series due to distribution issues in my area, but I loved the Golden Age setting.

    I have to be honest….a lot of times if I saw Kupperberg in the credits and it wasn’t part of a series I was reading regularly, I’d put it back in the rack. I do agree with Steve above in that he was a good storyteller, but he needed a good finisher.

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  8. “What else did Glut write?”

    Lots of stuff. He broke in at Warren Comics in the late 60s, writing their kind of weird horror, and did a lot of stuff for Gold Key — including DAGAR THE INVINCIBLE, DR. SPEKTOR and TRAGG AND THE SKY GODS.

    I think all (or almost all) of the Marvel work he did was for Marvel, and most of it was after Roy moved to California. I think Roy liked that Glut liked a lot of the same things he did, and was interested in cultivating California talent, so he had a kind of “Western bullpen” — he also worked with Christy Marx and later with Rick Hoberg, David Cody Weiss and other local-to-him talent.

    But I don’t think Glut was all that suited to superhero writing.

    Man, even Joe Sinnott couldn’t save Alan Kupperberg’s pencils, could he? That cover, to my eye, is laid out by Cockrum — and if they’d just sent the rough sketch to Joe, it’d have wound up looking great. But it’s pretty disappointing as is, like Kupperberg just drained the life out of the sketch. Cap looks sleepy.

    And I’ll chime in with everyone else saying that we read INVADERS right to the end. But without Frank Robbins it just never found its footing again. Roy seemed to be satisfied with sub-par (or at least uncommercial) art, something that harmed ALL-STAR SQUADRON and his later DC books as time wore on and artists got replaced. It seemed like he either didn’t feel he needed to compete for the audience or didn’t really know how to.

    Certainly, after all that time working with John Buscema, Barry Windor-Smith, Neal Adams, Gene Colan and others, it was quite a lower plateau.

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    1. Folks interested in more Don Glut info:
      Alter Ego 143

      Yeah sadly Invaders and All-Star could have been so very much better and lived so much longer had Roy been less interested in getting early 1940’s Belt Buckles and Cuff Links technically correct and more interested in giving kids art that was somewhat intelligible.

      Best quote I’ve ever read about Frank Robbins’ Super-Hero Work was; “Kids wanted Heroes to look like Heroes not Heroin Addicts in the Throes of Withdrawal”

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    2. Glut also took over from Thomas on a few issues of Captain America in the months after Kirby’s final run. And Steve Gerber eventually took over for a brief run. It was a rather weird period on that mag, with Thomas initiating a plot to delve deeper into Steve Rogers’ background that Gerber took over, going in his own typically bizarre directions. Usually I didn’t mind Gerber’s twists, but in this instance I felt his take didn’t really fit. At the time, I didn’t know enough about Captain America’s back history (or of what prompted Kirby & Simon to co-create him in the fall of 1940) but certainly as I became more knowledgeable of all that in later decades, it struck me as terribly wrong and inconsistent to have Rogers only keen to join the army after the Pearl Harbor attack, seeking vengeance for a previously unknown brother killed by the Japanese bombardment, rather than being incensed at the atrocities the Nazis were committing in Europe in 1940 and trying to enlist over a year prior to December 7, 1941. Despite all the agonizing over Bucky’s death so prevalent of him during the first decade or so after being thawed out, to my judgment, Cap’s prime motivation to willingly be a guinea pig to become a “super soldier” and put on a flag-based costume wasn’t any sort of personal vendetta sparked by the death of close kin, as with Batman and Daredevil, or even a sense of guilt as with Spider-Man, but due to a hatred of injustice perpetrated by authoritarian tyrants such as Hitler and the Japanese Imperialists.

      As a teen in the 1970s, I loved Gerber’s writing on the Defenders, Man-Thing, Daredevil, Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, etc., and as an adult I still enjoy re-reading many of his stories. But I felt he was off on Captain America. At any rate, pretty much all his revelations about Steve Rogers were ret-conned away a few years later. I wonder if Thomas had much planned out. As happened with him on several Marvel series during the 1970s, he started seemingly gung-ho with all sorts of plans, then, often in the middle of a story line, something would come up forcing him to quit as writer, leaving someone else to finish the story. To my recall, aside from the Invaders and Captain America, it also happened on Thor and the Fantastic Four (twice, if his first run, just after Lee’s last issue, is counted).

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      1. “Being incensed at the atrocities committed by the Nazis”, “a hatred of injustice perpetrated by authoritarianism tyrants”. Well said. I agree. That’s “my” Cap

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  9. Robbins’ superhero art certainly was frenetic next to the Caniff-esaque he did for his own comic strip. But Invaders works better with his approach than any of his Batman art.

    The only art job I remember liking from Alan Kupperberg was WHAT IF 9, the one he did with Glut about the 1950s incarnation of the Avengers. The inks by Bill Black and colors by Carl Gafford made it look like a lot of Atlas comics of the fifties.

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    1. What If?#9 ( June 1978 ) inspired me to look up the other Atlas Age characters I knew had to exist that could be recruited to be Heroes & Villains ( Like Gorilla-Man & Human Robot; & Skull-Face were ). I found them and I there could be a Team of Super-Soldiers, a Team of Super-Powered Explorer’s Club members, a Team of behind the Iron Curtain Super-Powered Anti-Commie Fighters ( Invisible Woman. Nightmare Men ( 3 of them ), Rita Raymas ( she and the first 2 have profiles at marvunapp.com ), a sorcerer, a ghost, a hypnotist ) a Team of Super-Powered Africans ( 2 not human — Gold Gorilla and its shape-changing mom who has brown fur ) and a Team of European Super-Powered Vampire-Slayers. The Guardians of Mankind ( Think a team of Shadowcats & their leader a unnamed psychiatrist whose image Paul Reinman used in another Atlas Age story — I sent both stories in an e-mail to Marvel ) & The Other Men ( Men with Healing Ability whose mission is to heal the divisions in mankind ). FYI, the Atlas Age has a robot ( similar in appearance to DC Comics Golden Age Robot Man ) that fell into the ocean that wasn’t a killer. Plus I could replace Yellow Claw and most of his What If?#9 team with the Communist Red Skull, Electro ( stays ), a communist scientist ( Atlas Age Captain America fought ), Communist sorcerer, a female telepath ( she was a foreign spy – they never said if she was communist ) and a human looking communist robot assassin ( defeated by a human looking U.S. robot ). There are Mutants, Mutates, Immortals, Mermaids/Mer-People, Ice-Monster ( could take the place as in be identified as Cold Warrior with his Marvel Age real name being an alias ), Sram ( a super-strong Martian doing heroic things –read his name backwards ), etc.

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      1. PROFESSOR X is not the first TELEPATH Marvel owns with X in his alias: DETECTIVE X [ Mystery Tales#47 ( November 1956 ) “The Man With No Face!” — a police detective and disguise artist with an adult daughter of no known powers ] & he isn’t the only Police Department telepath – PAUL KILEY [ Journey Into Mystery#44 ( March 1957 ) “The Outcast” — he thinks this little boy he rescued might be like him because he answered his thoughts ]– I sent both stories in an email to Marvel ( Plus you can find them mentioned on comics.org ). I also put together a Team of ATLAS AGE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.

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      2. Dr. Henry Busch [ Marvel Tales#159 ( August 1957 ) 1st story “The Man Who Believed!”] looks identical to the unnamed leader of the Guardians of Mankind [ Astonishing#56 ( December 1956 ) 1st story “They Walk Thru Wall!” ]– Dr. Henry Busch is a psychoanalyst and the unnamed leader is a psychiatrist ( Both by Paul Reinman ). Then there are the Scanners ( a team of men who can detect aliens — in this case Martians that possess the bodies of human infants and grow with them )[ Adventures into Weird Worlds#24 ( December 1953 ) 5th story “Look Out for Martians” — all the Scanners were killed by the Martian possessing the man they confronted who was unaware he was possessed. But there could be more Scanners out there ].

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    1. I actually liked Robbins on Batman, too, for the reasons you described. The only time I really got a jolt from his art was with The Shadow. It was such a change from Kaluta.

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  11. Kaluta’s art is about as good as art in comicbooks can get. I don’t see the fundamentally sound, naturalistic qualities of his art, mixed with a romantic, otherworldly elegance in it, polarizing or even repulsing nearly as many readers as Robbins’ stark, exaggerated, eccentric visions of places, faces, & figures. The differences are harring. I appreciate both. They gave different strengths. I’m glad works by each are in existence. 😊

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  12. In the letter page of one of The Invaders issues someone brought up The Fiddler [ Captain America Comics#7 ( October 1941 ) Captain America 3rd story – reprinted in Fantasy Masterpieces#8 ( April 1967 ) – CAC#7 -page 6 panel 7 ( “The audience seems to awaken as if from a deep trance. They remember nothing except that they feel the effects of a severe emotional strain –” ) & he can use it to break ear drums ] and I think he wanted a new Fiddler but with a new name because DC Comics has a Golden Age Fiddler ( 2 actually – 1 a Flash foe & the other a Vigilante foe ) — he clearly didn’t know Marvel & DC Comics have villains named Scarecrow. ME, I would bring back that Fiddler ( Der Geiger in German ) since he was immune to his violin’s sound, I would reveal his “death” is like the Avengers “death” in the Grim Reaper’s first appearance [ The Avengers#52 ( May 1968 ) ] and their “death” from Ultron’s Encephalo Beam in The Avengers#162 ( August 1977 )– perhaps he wasn’t much of a fighter and this was his way of escaping so others could wake him later.

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    1. LADY LOTUS: The same way Marvel Team-Up#1 ( March 1972 ) cameo became MISTY KNIGHT’s new first appearance thanks to the last page of Marvel Team-Up#64 ( December 1977 – Chris Claremont ) is the same way one of those JAPANESE WOMEN seen on pages 6 to 7 [ All-Winners Comics#11 ( Winter 1943-44 ) Sub-Mariner story ] can give LADY LOTUS A TIMELY COMICS FIRST APPEARANCE ( Plus Modern Marvel FEMALE JAPANESE AGENTS ). Plus with her powers she could be a near female counterpart to Bill Dunn ( The Reign of the Superman — January 1933 ) and a foe to any of TIMELY COMICS & MARVEL COMICS near Superman counterparts ( Granted her powers would useless against MARVEX the SUPER-ROBOT ( super-strength, super-speed, durability and leaping ability — 1938 Superman’s powers ) but not Wonder Man, Dynamic Man, John Steele ( Who should be more like Hugo Danner who Wikipedia says has superhuman strength, leaping, stamina, speed and durability. Accelerated healing factor ), Blue Diamond, Fiery Mask ( Jess Nevin’s site — super-strength, superbreath, can do Hulk-Jumps, his body gives off intense heat & can erect a heat forcefield ( Which I would have do with his forcefield what the Invisible Woman can. Jess leaves out his electrically charged eyes that can see beyond the visible spectrum to track Fluorescent Salt -Human Torch#2 page 6 panel 7 ), Marvel Boys, Roko the Amazing ( Timely’s near Captain Marvel ( Billy Batson ) ) & Rockman ( is fast — Jess Nevis site – he has exceptional speed and fighting ability. super-tough body, “limited super-strength” ( despite the fact he is seen plowing right thru the debris that blocks the tunnel ( USA Comics#1 Page 8 )– like a human bulldozer) , does not need oxygen to breath and is immune to the pressure of the sea-depths. Leaves out Super Sensitive Ears of all Abysmians ).

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  13. I hated Robbins art at the time and still do … except on the Invaders. I have much higher respect for his scripting.

    I think I enjoyed this book at this point better than any of y’all but yeah, it was off its game compared to peak Invaders. And Kupperberg’s art really is unappealing.

    Glut wrote a number of film reference books, aside from his comics work, mostly focusing on horror.

    I can easily believe Bucky talking about “Nips” to Sun Girl. She’s American, after all, and one of the Good Ones. But it’s still uncomfortable to see him toss the word around.

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