"A Drive in the Country"
Writer: Roy Thomas
Artists: Lee Weeks and Frank Robbins (p), Jesse Delperdang, Mike Perkins, Lee Weeks and Vince Colletta (i)
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Plot: The Invaders meets with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt at Hyde Park. Two Nazi agents use special capsules that allow them to grow in size and strength. The Invaders prevents these agents from killing the two leaders of the Allied powers.
Commentary: This book was a real treat for me. Back in 1992, my eldest sister got married to a former comic collector who gave me his run of the original Invaders title as a groomsman gift. It was then that I discovered both the Invaders and Roy Thomas, and I've been a fan of both ever since. (Though to be honest I prefer the All-Star Squadron, but that's the DC fan in me.)
The opening tale was a quintessential Invaders story. Thomas revisited his team with a nod to the past but told in a contemporary fashion. Thomas was very liberal with his exposition back during the original run, and some of that was eliminated without losing his own voice. Everything I liked about the series was there: the bickering between the Human Torch and Namor, Nazi villains, the mix of historical figures and events with Marvel super-heroes and a great story that had action and character.
I guess you can come home again.
Another tool Thomas used was what I call retroactive foreshadowing, which is fitting since Roy Thomas is one of the founders if not the founder of retroactive continuity. He takes a character or event from the present and makes mention of it in the context of the past. A good example of this was an issue of All-Star Squadron where the golden age Green Lantern informed a racist villain that he didn't care if his daughter was white, black or green as long as she didn't associate with people like the villain, which retroactively foreshadowed the birth of his daughter Jade. This time Roy Thomas uses the Invaders to examine the concept of the suicide bomber who is willing to lay down his or her own life in service to the cause. Captain America's comments at the end of the tale on this subject gave the story a real depth, and I liked the way that Thomas worked it into the plot.
Lee Weeks was a great choice for the art chores. His pencils have always been smooth and his story telling strong. The likenesses of the historical figures were nice, and I enjoyed the detail in the vehicles as well, though I am no expert on the subject. The costumes of the Nazi agents were neat, and I liked the way he worked the swastika into the design.
The reprints in this issue were a lot of fun. Earlier this year, I read through my Invaders run so the first two issues of the title that were reprinted here are still fresh in my mind. I'm a little curious why they chose these issues to reprint when the origin of the Invaders told in the first Giant-Size Invaders would have been more appropriate, to my mind at least. There is some justice to having these issue reprinted here since the original plan was to have them appear in a Giant-Size Invaders #2 that was to be published after the first issue of the Giant-Size, but Thomas and crew received the go-ahead for an ongoing series so they split the story up into the first two issues.
These two issues are also quintessential Roy Thomas stories as they mix super-heroes with more classical fare. Thomas was, and probably still is, a fan of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen opera, and he worked that into the Marvel Universe, albeit through an alien race. The story did what it was supposed to: introduce the team and put them on a wild adventure. When you compare this story to the other books published at the time you can see why Roy Thomas was such a good writer. Sure it is considered a little wordy now, but it still holds up.
The Golden-Age reprints were a nice look into the Golden-Age of comics, and when you read the comic as a whole, you get a sense of how far comics have come since the thirties and forties. That is not to say that the books published during the Golden-Age were bad. They weren't. You can't fairly compare them to the books published today because times and sensibilities have changed. Reading them you can see why the characters became popular. They were fun little tales filled with action and colorful figures. While reading them is a little difficult because the language of the medium has changed so much, they are well worth the effort. Also many of the issues during the original Invaders run had golden-age reprints, as did the first Giant-Size Invaders, so it is fitting that this volume contains them as well.
In The End: For five dollars, this book is a bargain. Obviously, I recommend this issue to both Roy Thomas and Invaders fans, but if you want a tight little story with reprints of great comics from the past, I suggest you pick it up. The stories were fun and the opening tale was fantastic and shows that Roy Thomas still has the ability to tell stories about these characters. This book was good, clean, Nazi fighting fun. What more can you ask?
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