Post-OMU

In my previous post, I discussed in general terms where the Original Marvel Universe seemed to be heading when it came to an end circa 1991, based on where the characters were left off. By extending my OMU timeline out a bit beyond that, I realized that the climax of the entire overarching saga of the Marvel Universe was imminent. The two biggest storylines that were building to that climax were the inevitable war between humans and mutants (from the X-Men titles) and what would happen when Franklin Richards came into full possession of his mutant superpowers (from Fantastic Four). And best of all, those two storylines promised to intersect.

But, of course, the last thing Marvel wanted to do was bring its ongoing saga to its logical conclusion, which is probably the main reason they bailed on continuity when they did. Unfortunately, when you set up a number of heroic characters to have grand destinies, if they never achieve those destinies, then they cease to be super-heroes and become super-losers instead. Also, one of the main recurring themes of the early Marvel Universe stories, the tone set by Stan Lee and clarified by later writers such as Steve Englehart and Steve Gerber, could be summed up as “the rising and advancing of the spirit.” This is what gave the Original Marvel Universe the feeling that it was going somewhere, and not just spinning its wheels like Marvel’s current output. That theme was largely abandoned in the 1990s and the result was the Marvel Universe became a darker and darker place. The themes these days seem to be fatalism, nihilism, and entropy. In the Original Marvel Universe, however, that original theme is preserved and taken to its proper conclusion, a culmination of everything that occurred in over thirty years of published stories.

In the course of my readings of the OMU canon, it became clear to me that five characters in particular seemed marked for some special destiny, a greatness that, if properly channeled, could change the world immeasurably for the better. All one would need do is bring them together at the right moment. And that’s what happens here.

And so, below, I present an outline of what I believe to be the true “final chapter” of the saga of the Original Marvel Universe!

1975

The end of OMU stories. Tony Stark dies, despite attempts by certain parties to prevent the loss of his inventive genius by forcing him to upload his mind into a computer. District Attorney Blake Tower blocks all their efforts so that Stark can die with dignity.

As Franklin Richards turns 11, the Fantastic Four adopt new versions of their classic blue & black costumes.

The Hulk builds a new life for himself with Betty Ross and makes peace with the U.S. military.

The Avengers’ efforts to find Thor come to nothing. Likewise, no trace can be found of the Sub-Mariner.

Magneto becomes a martyr to a violent faction of mutants, causing tensions to increase. The Mutant Liberation Front comes to prominence, led by the mysterious Stryfe, who is secretly Cable in disguise. He seeks to play all sides of the mutant issue to fan the flames of war with the human race, a war he believes mutants will win and thus bring about the future world he grew up in. The X-Men remain unaware of Cable’s double-dealing as they try to re-establish their reputation as heroes.

1976

Ben Grimm marries Sharon Ventura.

Matt Murdock retires as Daredevil to become District Attorney for New York following the resignation of Blake Tower, whose career was systematically destroyed in retaliation for his role in allowing Tony Stark to die.

Captain America is highlighted as the Superhero of the Bicentennial.

Jennifer Kale assists the Avengers on a few occasions, having met them through Quasar, and proves herself a formidable sorceress.

Captain Britain and Meggan are married.

Jimmy Carter is elected President of the United States.

1977

Peter Parker gives up being Spider-Man when Mary Jane has a baby, though he finds adjusting to retirement very difficult. He finds a full-time job in the sciences to support his family.

Johnny and Alicia Storm have a daughter, and so the Human Torch finally takes a leave of absence from the Fantastic Four.

When Meggan gets pregnant, Excalibur effectively disbands and Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and Phoenix rejoin the X-Men.

Sam Guthrie breaks away from Cable’s increasingly violent splinter group and adopts the new identity Rocket Man, soon becoming the most popular superhero of the day.

The Hulk rejoins the Avengers and proves himself a hero to the world, while also using his scientific genius to solve the energy crisis.

1978

Wolverine finally discovers the whole truth about his past. He confronts Silver Fox, which leads the X-Men to work with Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. to bring down her branch of HYDRA. Wolverine then takes an extended leave of absence from the X-Men and returns to Canada.

Public opinion remains increasingly negative towards mutants due to the constant destruction caused by rival factions that the X-Men fail to contain.

Wundarr, also known as the Aquarian, meets with Doctor Strange and enlists the sorcerer’s disciple Topaz in his own cause.

Captain America’s health begins to deteriorate as the super-soldier serum starts to destabilize.

1979

Franklin Richards turns 15. Charles Xavier meets with Reed Richards to offer Franklin a place at his School for Gifted Youngsters when his mutant powers fully manifest. However, Wundarr turns up and talks Reed & Sue into letting him tutor Franklin instead. Reed & Sue realize they have doubts about the efficacy of Xavier’s methods and prefer Wundarr’s peaceful approach.

Ben & Sharon Grimm have twin sons.

When American hostages are taken in Iran, the Hulk leads the Avengers in to rescue them.

1980

Franklin Richards hits puberty and manifests his full mutant powers. He goes off with Wundarr and Topaz to learn how to use them properly at a secluded retreat in the Negative Zone.

Aunt May dies at the age of 86.

Captain America learns that his condition is terminal; he has about a year to live.

Charles Xavier is publicly “outed” as a mutant.

Tensions between humans and mutants are at an all-time high, and after President Carter is painted as “soft on mutants,” Republican challenger Ronald Reagan is elected to replace him in the Oval Office.

1981

The U.S. government activates its latest generation of Sentinels and so Cable sparks the long-brewing war between humans and mutants into a full-scale open conflict by destroying the city of Pittsburgh. Charles Xavier is killed during a retaliatory military attack on the X-Mansion. Rachel Summers fears the future she sought to prevent is coming to pass, but then she mysteriously disappears. Cyclops finally learns that Cable is his son as Cable’s true colors are discovered by all. Wolverine returns to the X-Men to lead them into their final battle, and his team finds itself forging unlikely alliances with mutants from all over the political spectrum. Unexpectedly, Quicksilver leads the Inhumans to fight at the X-Men’s side. They face a coalition of international government forces with an army of Sentinels, backed by S.H.I.E.L.D., high-tech mercenaries, and various superheroes. The Avengers are divided by the government’s call to arms and the team nearly disbands over the mutant issue. Cable manipulates both sides into waging the war’s first all-out battle in the heart of Manhattan. The destruction of New York City seems imminent when the conflict is abruptly ended by a new cadre of heroes, who are quickly hailed as the ultimate superhero team. They are dubbed “The Saviors.”

The Saviors make short work of the Sentinels and send Cable back to the future from which he came, while also plucking the infant Nathan Christopher Summers out of time and returning him to his father, Cyclops. Franklin Richards then restores the city of Pittsburgh, but explains that he cannot (or, perhaps, will not) raise the dead. They vow to work to bring about the peaceful coexistence of humans and mutants. Next, after saving Captain America’s life, they set about to “cure” / “fix” / “heal” every super-villain on earth, starting with Doctor Doom, until the threat from such beings is virtually eliminated. Finally, they even take on Mephisto and the other Hell-Lords, who are utterly destroyed once and for all, greatly reducing the influence of evil in the world. The Saviors prove to be completely unbeatable, and, thanks to Aquarian’s visionary leadership, they usher in a new age of peace and calm to the world. Ultimately, in the presence of Uatu the Watcher, the Elder God Gaea appears to the team and reveals that they are the culmination of what the Celestials began one million years ago, and their destiny is to help make the Planet Earth into a paradise.

THE END

Why These Five?

There is plenty of textual evidence to suggest that these five characters, allowed to reach full maturity in a normal time-scale, would make the most powerful superhero team ever assembled -- a superhero team that can accomplish what other superhero teams only dream about. And their appearance would also serve as the ideal climax to the epic saga of the Marvel Universe as it had been building for its first thirty years, before it went completely off the tracks.

Aquarian (Wundarr)
In Marvel Two-in-One #58, Wundarr communes with the Cosmic Cube and attains enlightenment. As he states to his friend Ben Grimm, “I have become the living son of the Cosmic Cube. I have the power to better the world. Henceforth I will call myself the Aquarian, after the star-system of my native planet. I will bring to the world the peace I have found.” He reiterates his mission before leaving Project: PEGASUS to wander the world. “It is my mission to open the way for a new age -- to bring mankind the peace I’ve found.” Soon growing a beard, the Aquarian is clearly a Christ-like figure with his talk of love and peace, and he even embarks on his own “forty days in the wilderness” to ponder how to go about his mission and to explore the limits of his heightened “null-field” powers. The parallel to Christ is especially obvious in his last canonical appearance in Marvel Comics Presents #46. And so, as post-OMU events in the superhero community reach a boiling point, Aquarian would be calmly assembling his small band of “apostles” and readying them for their mission. Foremost among them, of course, is the teen-aged Franklin Richards, whom Wundarr knows through his association with the Fantastic Four.


Fantastic Man (Franklin Richards)
Unlike the demented freak that he became in the Earth-616 continuity (see the excellent discussion of Franklin’s psychological problems at Enter the Story), the Franklin Richards of the Original Marvel Universe grew up in relative normalcy, given his unique circumstances. It’s unlikely that he went to public school, but was probably tutored at home in Four Freedom’s Plaza, where he received an excellent primary education. His friendship with the Power Pack would have aided with socialization, so no real worries there. And he lived in a warm, loving, and supportive family environment, with parents who demonstrated they would do whatever was necessary for his well-being. More likely than not, Franklin was all right, and he would aspire to carry on the altruistic tradition that his family established (See Fantastic Four Annual #14). The real turning point in his life would come as he approached puberty and Charles Xavier made his inevitable overtures to his parents to send him to join the X-Men’s novice class. But this is by no means the only option, and if Reed and Sue thought about it, they might question what, really, have Charles Xavier and the X-Men accomplished for human/mutant relations in 15 or so years? Xavier trains his students to fight, to be soldiers in his cause, however he might soften the truth with MLK-like rhetoric. Is that really the life they would want for their son? Would they want him turned into the X-Men’s ultimate weapon? If Wundarr, whom they implicitly trust, offered a different option -- a positive, peaceful, optimistic, almost Zen option -- wouldn’t they jump at the chance? And it is well established that Franklin has a special connection to the Negative Zone -- the only portal to which is inside his father’s laboratory, making it far away and nearby at the same time -- and thus it is the perfect isolated yet relatively safe place for his period of training. Plus, it would fulfill the Futurist’s prophecy in Fantastic Four #216. Thus, after a couple of years, Franklin Richards returns from the Negative Zone to become the distillation of everything his family has stood for -- he is essentially, the “fantastic one,” the Fantastic Man, the Man With the Power. As Franklin himself says in Fantastic Four #245, “With my power I can do anything.” He is undoubtedly the most powerful superhuman ever to walk the earth, with psychic powers at a cosmic scale that even Mephisto is no match for. And Mephisto has good reason to worry...


Catalyst (Topaz)
In Tomb of Dracula #64, Mephisto tries to destroy Topaz, for he fears the potential inherent in her empathic powers. As he says, “You are coming of age, and soon your power will be at its greatest! Indeed, at that moment, you shall possess power enough to destroy even we who call ourselves Satan! ... Your empathic abilities will eventually siphon away the evil we seek to create. Your powers will absorb all hatred and fear into you. Your powers can create a utopia! We cannot allow that to happen! You stand above the others -- for you possess the power of love -- and love is the one emotion of his we cannot destroy! You can spread that love. You can trample on the seeds of hatred which we sow.” However, forces outside of herself allow Topaz to access her fully-matured powers at that moment, and she unleashes them on Mephisto, who realizes he’s been set up by those same unidentified forces: “Suddenly we understand it all! He planted the knowledge of you in our mind. He wanted us to babble on, to speak to you of your future! Damn it all! He has made us the catalyst of our own doom!” Who exactly “he” is is left nebulous. As Mephisto is passing himself off as Satan in this story, the implication is he is referring to the Judeo-Christian God, but in terms of the Original Marvel Universe, it may be the mysterious One-Above-All or the same unknown Benevolent Entity that aided both Doctor Strange and Dracula’s wife Domini around this same time (if they are, in fact, separate beings). In any case, Topaz is able to cause Mephisto’s form to temporarily discorporate, just as Franklin Richards would manage to do later on. Unfortunately, Mephisto’s demon servants managed to trap her and ensorcel her, as explained in Doctor Strange v.2 #76, to nullify her powers even after she came of age. Eventually, Doctor Strange assists her in achieving that potential, as seen in Strange Tales v.2 #1. Topaz then begins a period of training so that she can learn to wield these powers to their fullest extent, and eventually hooks up with Doctor Strange again. With the Saviors, she can use her power not only to heal external wounds (like Doctor Doom’s face, for example), but she is also a “healer of the spirit,” as she puts it in Strange Tales v.2 #11. Therefore, she could also heal the madness in Doctor Doom’s mind, thereby not only ending the threat he poses, but turning him into a force for good in the world who uses his scientific genius for the benefit of all mankind. And so on with all the villains. Certainly a monumental task. But, if necessary, her power can be strengthened with the near-limitless Phoenix Force...


Phoenix (Rachel Summers)
As Rachel tells Necrom in Excalibur #50, “The Phoenix isn’t power in itself -- but it has the ability to tap into the elemental forces of the universe -- and they’re near infinite.” To demonstrate, Phoenix next battles Galactus into submission without breaking a sweat, as seen in Excalibur #61. However, Galactus reveals that the Phoenix maintains itself as a sentient entity on our plane of existence by drawing energy from “the sea of life yet unborn,” and thereby “denies existence to generations of the future.” Horrified, the Phoenix realizes it must revert to a non-sentient state and live only through Rachel. Before doing so in Excalibur #64, it gives Rachel this warning: “Do not be seduced by the infinite potential of life unborn. Take only from my strength. Accept its limitations.” Rachel takes the warning to heart and uses the power sparingly after being reunited with her friends. But still the Phoenix operates on a cosmic scale far beyond what most of Marvel’s characters can muster, and with several more years of experience would come the wisdom and skill to use it at its highest levels to do the greatest good. Plus, Rachel’s natural time-manipulation powers (what actually makes her a mutant) would enable her to sort out the Cable situation outlined above. Although in the Earth-616 continuity, Rachel eventually “lost” or was “rejected by” the Phoenix Force, in the Original Marvel Universe it remained as the Phoenix Force told her teammates in Excalibur #52: “One thing is certain. Now and forever, we are irrevocably merged.” With Rachel Summers, Franklin Richards, Topaz, and Wundarr assembled, there’s only one thing missing...


Sorceress (Jennifer Kale)
Even the awesome power of the other four members of this team might not save them from a mystical attack, as none of them has the slightest knowledge of magic. But Jennifer Kale, by now approaching 30 and with a decade of concentrated study of the mystic arts under her belt, would be the ideal candidate to serve as the team’s resident occult expert. Unlike many practitioners of the dark arts, Jennifer’s sunny personality and casual attitude would make her a good fit with her teammates. Of her potential as a sorceress there can be no doubt. As Dakimh the Enchanter says in Adventure into Fear #19, “young Jennifer’s name may one day be as hallowed as Zhered-Na’s own” and that “only greatness waits before her.” This is high praise considering Zhered-Na was still actively worshipped 20,000 years after her death. Furthermore, Dakimh was able to instruct Jennifer in the accumulated wisdom and occult secrets of three distinct ages of human civilization, and she even impressed Doctor Strange with her aptitude for magic. Therefore, along with Topaz, Jennifer Kale would be instrumental in the final defeat of the Hell-Lords and their demonic servants, and in freeing all the “souls” in their various infernal realms to finally enter the “Great Beyond.” Among those freed, of course, would be Thor. With this act, the Saviors prove themselves the ultimate superhero team -- and live up to their name -- because they not only save the living, they also save the dead.


Naturally, with such an awesome assemblage of supremely powerful do-gooders, the opportunities for exciting and dramatic superhero adventure tales kind of dwindle away. Without super-villains, the world of the Original Marvel Universe then becomes a fairly dull place, much like our “real” world. Which is why I consider the advent of the Saviors the end of the story for the OMU. While drama can be mined from any situation, and even a utopian Earth can give rise to adventurers (think Star Trek), it would be of such a different nature from what came before that it would almost be a separate thing unto itself. The Saviors represent for the Marvel Universe what some scholars term “the End of History.”

This is not, however, the end of our explorations of the late, lamented Original Marvel Universe!


Next Issue: The Return of Doctor Strange!

(Homo) Superior vs. Inferior (Five)

By 1966, industry leader National Comics (now better known as DC) was all too aware that the recently re-energized Marvel Comics was rapidly gaining on them in popularity. Upstart that it was, and keen to cultivate a hip image, Marvel was well-known for ribbing its competition, and the staid, conservative National proved an easy target. However, the editors at National were not above striking back, and the vehicle for one of their most elaborate spoofs of Marvel was their own lampoon of the superhero genre, the Inferior Five.

In their third try-out appearance in the anthology title Showcase (#65), written by E. Nelson Bridwell with art by Mike Sekowsky & Mike Esposito, the hapless team of superhero wannabees encounter this familiar-looking quintet of super-powered students:

The X-Men may have seemed ripe for parody at this time, as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had already passed the book on to other creators (Roy Thomas & Werner Roth), who could not generate the same chaotic dynamism found in the title’s early issues. Although, as it was hardly one of Marvel’s top books, we can say it may have been too easy a target, and one may wonder why National singled this property out for special ridicule.

The tale opens at Dean Egghead’s Academy for Super-Heroes, as the entire staff walks out and leaves the Dean to fend for himself with his rambunctious students. Dean Egghead is a straightforward caricature of Professor X, and even shares his telepathic powers.

When no superheroes will answer the Dean’s call for help, he turns to the Inferior Five, recruiting them as his new faculty. As they enter his Academy for the first time, he introduces them to his five uncanny students. Rather than “mutants” like the X-Men, these students are described as being “atavistic,” i.e. throwbacks to earlier epochs. Therefore, instead of seeing the next stage in human evolution, we are presented with evolution working backwards, suggesting these characters are even more “inferior” than the Inferior Five.

The star pupil (who also gets the most “screen time”) is Harry McElhinney / The Ape, a bookish monkey-man who sends up Henry McCoy / The Beast.

Next we meet Irish Autumns / Basilisk, a clever parody of the similarly mythology-themed Scott Summers / Cyclops. Rather than red force beams, his eyes emit a white ray that turns people to stone. Despite the mis-aligned word balloon pointer, it is the Dean who is speaking.

We are then introduced to the brown-winged Melvin Murgatroyd XIV / Icarus, a tow-headed and uncouth youngster who is the opposite of the glamorous Warren Worthington III / The Angel.

Next up is Billy Gander / Winter Wonderlad, a goof on Bobby Drake / Iceman. Rather than turning into either a snowman or a human ice-sculpture, Billy becomes a walking iceberg by encasing himself in the stuff.

Lastly, we meet Penelope Pink / Levitation Lass, a dark-haired version of Jean Grey / Marvel Girl. With the help of the Inferior Five’s resident airhead, Dumb Bunny, Penelope immediately ditches her saggy-baggy school uniform for the more revealing version seen above.

Like the X-Men, the heroes-in-training at Dean Egghead’s Academy also have villainous counterparts, a rival team that is diametrically opposed to their do-gooding philosophy. Instead of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, we are presented with the Fraternity of Atavistic No-Goodniks.

Frog Man is an obvious analogue to the Toad, and Pterano Don Juan bears a passing resemblance to Mastermind. The Amoeba may be a take-off on the Blob, and I can only assume that Angel Fish must stand in for the Scarlet Witch. I guess there’s a sort of logic to replacing a witch with a mermaid, both being creatures of folklore. Their leader, Dr. Dinosaur, really has nothing in common with Magneto, but he is the only truly funny concept in the book, as his special power is that he has two brains – one in his head and one in his ass. Hence the two-pronged attack needed to bring him down:

Curiously, during the heroes’ field-trip to the big city, Bridwell throws in a random dig at the long-running rivalry between the Fantastic Four’s Thing and the Yancy Street Gang, which, while making for a decent gag, seems a bit out of place.

Marvel Comics would get a little of their own back about a year later with the publication of their own lampoon comic Not Brand Ecch, which would send up DC’s characters in a similar fashion.

Stan Lee has since said in interviews that he intentionally played up the idea of an intercompany rivalry “to make it fun” for the readers, and no doubt in order to inspire brand loyalty among the fans. He claims to have enjoyed a jovial camaraderie with the personnel over at National Comics, and the good-natured spoof of one of Marvel’s franchises seen in this issue of Showcase seems to support his view.

OMU: The End

Strange as it may seem, the end of the Original Marvel Universe was heralded by the return of Roy Thomas. The man who had done much to build Marvel’s continuity returned to it in the late 1980s after a long interregnum, but even he demonstrated little regard for maintaining what had since been established. Rather, along with lesser talents, he might be considered one of the architects of the Second Marvel Universe. At this time, by editorial decree, Marvel’s characters were frozen into a sort of limbo where character development quickly ground to a halt, replaced by story stunts that came and went with no lasting repercussions.

One of the hallmarks of the Second Marvel Universe was the unnecessary resurrection of any and all deceased characters, no matter how minor or irrelevant. Dracula, Baron Strucker, James MacDonald Hudson, Norman Osborn, the Mimic, the Creature from Kosmos, even Borgo, the hunchback of Castle Frankenstein -- none of these were allowed to rest in peace. This trend continued to the point where it became ludicrous, until “death” was a joke and resurrections no longer even needed to be justified or explained. The end result was the creation of a world in which actions had no consequences, and as such, stories had no drama.

What, then, is the Original Marvel Universe? It’s not Earth-616, to use the common classification system. No, Earth-616 is whatever Marvel says it is. I hold the Original Marvel Universe to a more rigorous standard. Think of it as an alternate reality, one where Everything You Thought You Knew Is... essentially correct. A reality where the Marvel stories are played out against a backdrop of real-world history, with characters that live and die, change, grow old, and learn. A reality where three decades’ worth of Marvel stories occur between 1960 and 1975, just as westerns, pirate tales, or sword & sandal epics are located in their own eras. As an alternate reality of the Marvel Multiverse, we might want to call it Earth-6111. Sixty-One Eleven.

So where does one reality end and the next begin? I set out to determine the exact point of transition for each Marvel series, and to thus discover the endpoint for the OMU version of Marvel’s characters. Once I knew where they all “left off,” I could imagine for myself where their lives likely went in the years to follow, based on the general direction the Marvel Universe had been heading for 30 years, as well as clues left scattered among myriad issues. I present my findings below.


Endpoints for the Original Marvel Universe


DOCTOR STRANGE, SORCERER SUPREME #8 (OCT 1989)
With the end of the four-part storyline “The Faust Gambit,” Doctor Strange regains many of the magic talismans previously lost to him, and also discovers the origins of both Mephisto and Satannish. The next issue brings several odd revisions to Strange’s backstory, including the idea that he grew up in rural Nebraska, signaling the shift to the Second Marvel Universe. This story then leads into the creative team’s wrongheaded decision to bring vampires back after their “final” destruction years before. Still, the OMU Doctor Strange makes numerous guest-shots until appearing for the final time in Namor #24.

POWER PACK #55 (APR 1990)
This is the last issue before the introduction of editorially-mandated changes to make the series “edgier,” produced by new creative team Mike Higgins and Tom Morgan. The changes they made were later retconned away, suggesting that the series shifts into the Second Marvel Universe at this point.

MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #50 (MAY 1990)
The next issue begins Rob Liefeld’s feeble attempt at a Wolverine solo tale, followed by a Wolverine / Hulk story-arc by Mike Higgins and David Ross that pointlessly resurrects Calvin Rankin, the Mimic, and is thus definitely set in the Second Marvel Universe. There’s a nice break with #50, although the Comet Man story in this issue is necessarily non-canonical. However, a special exception is made for Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X” series in issues #72-84, which does depict the Original Marvel Universe. The other stories in those issues are excluded from canon, though.

SILVER SURFER #38 (JUNE 1990)
There is a continuity break at this point, following Jim Starlin’s first story-arc in the series, in which he brings back his favorite creation, Thanos. The Silver Surfer appears subsequently in Daredevil and then makes his final canonical appearance in Silver Surfer Annual #3. The following issues of this series tie in with The Infinity Gauntlet, which takes place in the Second Marvel Universe.

QUASAR #12 (JULY 1990)
The next issue begins the ill-conceived “Journey Into Mystery” story-arc in which Mark Gruenwald dredges up numerous obscure characters who are better left dead. Thus, the series clearly shifts into the Second Marvel Universe at this point, although the OMU Quasar continues to appear in Avengers and elsewhere for a while.

ALPHA FLIGHT #86 (JULY 1990)
The next issue of this series begins a regrettable story-arc by Fabian Nicieza that brings James MacDonald Hudson back from the dead, signaling a shift into the Second Marvel Universe. However, Alpha Flight makes its final OMU appearance in Nicieza’s six-part story “The Crossing Line” in Avengers.

HULK #377 (JAN 1991)
The menace of the Hulk is ended once and for all as Leonard Samson finally succeeds in re-integrating the fractured psyche of Bruce Banner, with some unexpected help from Maynard Tiboldt, the Ringmaster. Coming to terms with the death of his mother at the hands of his father, Banner emerges from therapy permanently transformed into an intelligent green-skinned Hulk and starts a new, better chapter in his life. Breaking here affords the character something of a happy ending.

NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. #19 (JAN 1991)
The story-arc beginning in the next issue brings Baron Strucker back to life, thus moving the series into the Second Marvel Universe. The OMU Nick Fury makes several more guest-appearances until bowing out with a cameo in Excalibur #56.

GHOST RIDER #9 (JAN 1991)
There’s a continuity break with this issue, which features guest-appearances by X-Factor and the Morlocks. The next issue starts an extended storyline that brings back Johnny Blaze, signaling the shift into the Second Marvel Universe. The brief OMU career of Danny Ketch ends with a guest-spot in Thor #430.

AVENGERS SPOTLIGHT #40 (JAN 1991)
This is the final issue of this title.

MARVEL FANFARE #60 (JAN 1991)
This is the final issue of this title.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #383 (MAR 1991)
This 50th anniversary issue marks the ideal spot to transition out of the Original Marvel Universe, as there is a clear continuity break before the extended story-arcs that follow. The OMU Captain America continues to appear in Avengers for several months.

NEW MUTANTS #100 (APR 1991)
This is the final issue of this title, and shows the last of the New Mutants, Cannonball and Boom-Boom, leaving Xavier’s school with Cable and his new team. The replacement title, X-Force, takes place in the Second Marvel Universe, although the OMU Cable makes a few more appearances in Wolverine.

THOR #432 (MAY 1991)
It’s the end of the line for Thor, as Odin banishes the thunder god to Mephisto’s realm as punishment for killing his brother Loki. The final page, which shows Eric Masterson transformed into a replacement Thor, occurs only in the Second Marvel Universe.

PUNISHER #48 (MAY 1991)
The endpoint for the Punisher, whose series are barely canonical anyway, is based principally on his guest-appearances in other comics. His chronology suggests this is a good breaking point for his main title.

PETER PARKER THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #177 (JUNE 1991)
Spider-Man stops the rampage of Dagny Forrester, a.k.a. Corona, in the final canonical issue of this series. The next issue launches an extended story-arc that’s set in the Second Marvel Universe. As such, the scenes of Harry Osborn hearing voices in this issue, meant to set up the coming story, can be dismissed as non-canonical.

WEB OF SPIDER-MAN #78 (JULY 1991)
Spider-Man teams up with Cloak & Dagger to defeat Firebrand and save most of his supporting cast from a burning building in the final canonical issue of this series.

FANTASTIC FOUR #354 (JULY 1991)
The last issue of Walt Simonson’s run on this series marks the end of OMU stories about the Fantastic Four. After escaping from the Time Variance Authority, the F.F. give up their black & white costumes and the Thing inexplicably changes back from his “stegosaurus” look to his “classic” form. His girlfriend, Sharon Ventura, has recently been cured of her own “Thing” state by Doctor Doom and is once more in human form. After a lame fill-in issue, the long run by Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan begins, which is unquestionably set in the Second Marvel Universe.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #350 (AUG 1991)
Spider-Man gets his ass kicked by Doctor Doom (though it’s most likely really another Doombot) in his final canonical appearance. However, the concussion he suffers causes him to have hallucinations about his Uncle Ben, which helps Peter to finally come to terms with his guilt over his uncle’s death. Spidey comes out on top in the end, as he prevents Doom from killing the Black Fox and saves the world from an invasion by carnivorous insects. This issue ends Erik Larsen’s run on the book, signaling the transition into the Second Marvel Universe, home of the “Clone Saga.”

SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK #30 (AUG 1991)
With the next issue, John Byrne returns to the series and takes it in a new direction. Hence, this is an ideal endpoint for canonical stories. However, as this is a “humor” title, the events depicted herein must be taken with a grain of salt anyway.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #33 (AUG 1991)
There’s a convenient continuity break following the story-arc “The Kamchatkan Konspiracy.” This is the final appearance of the OMU Punisher.

CLOAK AND DAGGER #19 (AUG 1991)
This is the final issue of this title. Cloak & Dagger make their last canonical appearance in Web of Spider-Man #78, which, though published a month earlier, occurs later in the chronology.

X-FACTOR #69 (AUG 1991)
The penultimate chapter of “The Muir Island Saga” marks the final canonical issue of this series. The next issue acts as a transition into Peter David and Larry Stroman’s new team, which is set in the Second Marvel Universe, and as such can be dispensed with. This issue features the original X-Men’s long-awaited reunion with Charles Xavier.

UNCANNY X-MEN #280 (SEPT 1991)
The final chapter of “The Muir Island Saga” brings this series to a close as far as the OMU is concerned. With the help of his former students, Charles Xavier finally ends the menace of the Shadow King, which wraps up a long-running storyline. The post-Claremont era begins.

AVENGERS WEST COAST #74 (SEPT 1991)
The conclusion of the story-arc called “The Pacific Overlords” marks the endpoint of this series, as the team gains new members in the Living Lightning and the second Spider-Woman. Meanwhile, Tigra resigns from the team and the Wasp & Hank Pym finally retire.

AVENGERS #339 (OCT 1991)
A six-part saga called “The Collection Obsession” wraps up the canonical run of this series, as the team’s old foe, the Collector, meets his final fate. Also of note, Crystal (of the Inhumans) joins the team.

MARC SPECTOR: MOON KNIGHT #31 (OCT 1991)
Following the “Scarlet Redemption” storyline, Moon Knight recovers from his injuries and adjusts his priorities, seeking to become less an agent of vengeance and more a catalyst for redemption. Incidentally, the scenes featuring the Hobgoblin, which merely set up the next storyline, occur only in the Second Marvel Universe and can be ignored.

X-MEN #3 (DEC 1991)
Chris Claremont’s last X-Men story (until many years later) is the final OMU adventure of the team, and features the death of Magneto. After this, the series shifts into the Second Marvel Universe as Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell take over.

WOLVERINE #50 (JAN 1992)
With this issue, Wolverine’s solo series takes off in a new direction, signified by the return of his yellow & blue costume. Thus, it is the ideal endpoint for the OMU Wolverine and is the last we see of members of the X-Men.

DAREDEVIL #300 (JAN 1992)
A new day dawns in the life of the Man Without Fear as he finally brings down the Kingpin once and for all in the four-part “Last Rites” story-arc by D.G. Chichester and Lee Weeks. In the end, Matt Murdock finds himself readmitted to the bar and set up in a brand-new law office. Reflecting on recent events in his life, he re-dedicates himself to his battle for justice, both in the courtroom and on the streets. A perfect ending for the saga of the OMU Daredevil.

IRON MAN #277 (FEB 1992)
Iron Man teams up with the Black Widow in the last canonical tale of this series. The next issue ties in with the “Operation Galactic Storm” crossover event that occurs in the Second Marvel Universe. We leave Tony Stark still suffering from the rapid and irreversible degeneration of his central nervous system.

NAMOR #25 (APR 1992)
With some help from Wolverine and his cousin Namorita, the Sub-Mariner escapes from the H’ylthri, only to fall victim to the sorcerer Master Khan, who strips Namor of his memory and identity and banishes him to parts unknown. John Byrne’s series then jumps ahead six months, and into the Second Marvel Universe as well.

EXCALIBUR #67 (JULY 1993)
Alan Davis’ final issue on this title also marks the last story set in the Original Marvel Universe. In it, he presents the final chapter of the “Days of Future Past” saga, as Rachel Summers finally succeeds in saving her future world from the Sentinels. Nevertheless, she elects to return home with her teammates rather than stay in her native reality. Interestingly, this last OMU story does not even take place on Earth-616, but in an alternate future timeline (now known as Earth-811). I should note that Excalibur #20, 26-31, 53, and 57-60 are all non-canonical and depict the Second Marvel Universe.


A Note about Other Series:

Some Marvel titles from this era are wholly non-canonical and are set entirely within the Second Marvel Universe, including New Warriors, Darkhawk, Sleepwalker, Guardians of the Galaxy, Nightstalkers, and Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man.


A Note about Annuals:

The 1990 Annuals are the last to be set in the Original Marvel Universe. These 16 comics break down into four separate storylines: “Days of Future Present” featuring the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, X-Factor, and the New Mutants; “The Terminus Factor” featuring Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Avengers West Coast, and the Avengers; “Lifeform” featuring the Punisher, Daredevil, the Hulk, and the Silver Surfer; and “Spidey’s Totally Tiny Adventure” which runs through the Spider-Man titles.


What Happens Next?

An intriguing question, and though we can never know for sure, a look at where the Original Marvel Universe leaves off can offer many suggestions and form the basis for reasonable speculations. Certainly, the landscape of the Marvel Universe would show some dramatic changes going forward.

For starters, three of its major heroes would be seen no more. Thor, banished by decree of Odin “for all eternity,” would certainly be freed from his imprisonment eventually, but several generations of men would probably pass before that time. It was 15 years, after all, that Thor was trapped in the form of Don Blake before being reunited with Mjolnir and assuming his true form once again, and that was punishment for a far more minor offense. It is entirely possible that Thor would remain banished / imprisoned until the coming of the true Ragnarok when the Asgardians reached the end of their current life cycle, sometime in the next 500 years. The Sub-Mariner was likewise banished by Master Khan “until the very end of time.” With his memory completely erased, he was teleported to the other side of the world from New York (perhaps to Indonesia or Hong Kong?) to live as a vagrant, just as he was when Johnny Storm found him in a Bowery flophouse 13 years earlier. Namor had spent a dozen years in amnesiac exile then, and it would probably be at least as long before he was found this time. Iron Man, though, died not long after the cessation of OMU stories, as his central nervous system failed from the effects of a parasitic techno-organism implanted in his body by his enemies. As he told the Black Widow, his body was “locked into an irreversible state of decline” and was failing faster than his technology could compensate. While it is certain that Tony Stark could have devised some means of transferring his consciousness into a suit of armor or a computer or some such, and live on indefinitely much as the Machinesmith or Arnim Zola did, I believe all the years Stark spent as Iron Man would have taught him that he would rather die as a man than live as a machine. It’s a good thing he did, too, for otherwise he would have existed for over ten thousand years and evolved into the immense super-computer called Baal, the last sentient thing on earth. This fate was avoided by sending the robot known as Mister Kline back in time to derail Foggy Nelson’s political ambitions. If Foggy had achieved high political office, he would have been pressured by interests determined not to lose Stark’s inventive genius into forcing Stark to upload his mind against his will. Since Mister Kline had been successful, Stark was able to pass peacefully into oblivion, and a terrible future was avoided.

Many of Marvel’s other heroes would continue on for some years, though age would begin to wear on them. Spider-Man turned 30 in the last year of OMU stories, and after finally coming to terms with his guilt for not stopping Uncle Ben’s killer when he had the chance, Peter Parker may very well have retired when his wife, Mary Jane, inevitably got pregnant. Nothing can change one’s priorities like becoming a father, and Peter just didn’t have the resources to support a family and be a superhero. Daredevil was pushing 40 by the time he finally defeated the Kingpin, and would be getting a bit too old for constant brawling. He probably shifted more to fighting injustice in the courtroom and less to putting on the red tights. Nevertheless, his hypersenses would serve him just as well as a lawyer until he eventually retired from that life as well. Nick Fury would be reaching retirement age soon, also. One of the good things about the OMU timeline is that it obviates the need for nonsense like the age-retarding “Infinity Formula.” The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. would only be 60 years old by the time of his final canonical appearance. The Hulk, benefiting from his new emotionally-balanced persona, could now turn his remarkable intellect, as well as his limitless strength, to the benefit of all mankind, and eventually would earn the public’s trust and be hailed as a great hero. Power Man and Iron Fist would renew their partnership following Danny Rand’s return, and Moon Knight, Cloak & Dagger, Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Alpha Flight, and Power Pack would go on much as before. Doctor Strange would doubtless serve as Sorcerer Supreme for the next 500 years, as did the Ancient One before him.

The Avengers would continue their proud tradition, adding new members as older ones retired. It’s unclear what effects the super-soldier serum would have on Captain America in terms of aging, or how long his career would continue. In the last canonical issue of his own series, Steve Rogers celebrated the 35th anniversary of his becoming Captain America, though as he notes, he spent 18 of those years in suspended animation. Still, it’s unlikely the formula granted him immortality, or even much of an extended lifespan. Hank Pym finally gave up adventuring to return to full-time research while his ex-wife, the Wasp, also gave up the hero’s life to start a new career as Janet Van Dyne, Hollywood screenwriter. The Scarlet Witch and the Vision, their marriage dissolved, would build separate lives on opposite coasts. The Black Panther would likely turn his attention to producing an heir, to ensure Wakanda remained at peace as he grew older. Hercules and Sersi, being immortal, would continue on into the foreseeable future with little change.

The ranks of the X-Men grew as the original members rejoined and Professor Xavier recovered from his injuries. However, the long-brewing war between humans and mutants would draw ever closer, with Cable undoubtedly playing a crucial role in finally sparking the conflict. This war would lead the X-Men to meet their destiny, both individually and as a team, and would put Xavier’s dream to the ultimate test.

The Fantastic Four entered their final phase as Reed Richards was well into his 50s by the end of the OMU timeline, and Johnny Storm, in his early 30s, would be starting a family soon with his wife Alicia. Things were looking up for Ben Grimm, though, who found after returning from his trip aboard the Cross-Time Express that not only had he regained his normal “Thing” form, but that he could change to and from human form at will. Furthermore, he confirmed that he did not age appreciably as the Thing, and still had the body of a man in his mid-30s. As such, there was nothing to stop him from marrying his gorgeous girlfriend Sharon Ventura and enjoying life to the fullest. They also probably adopted new versions of their classic blue costumes again at this time. They would have a good four years before Franklin Richards hit puberty and his mutant powers fully kicked in, at which time he would possess the power to change the world. But that’s a story for another time.



Next Issue: And Then What?

OMW: Sharon Friedlander

For the latest in our series featuring the Obscure Marvel Women of the Original Marvel Universe, we present an ordinary nurse whose life was turned upside-down after a chance encounter with the world’s mutants. Forced to reckon with powers beyond her comprehension, she would find herself changed forever inside and out.

Sharon Friedlander was born towards the end of World War II to a Jewish family in suburban New York. Growing up in the 1950s, Sharon decided she wanted to become a nurse, and finally realized her ambition in the mid-1960s when she graduated from nursing school and found a position at the Mid-County Medical Center near Salem Center, NY in Westchester County.

Sharon’s life took an unexpected turn one night in the summer of 1972, during a ferocious thunderstorm, when Danielle Moonstar, a student from the nearby Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, was brought to the emergency room after having apparently been mauled by a large bear. Though her prognosis was poor, the doctors scrambled to try to save the girl’s life, and Sharon saw to making Dani’s friends comfortable in the waiting room for their long vigil. However, three hours later, while Sharon was being chatted up by Officer Tom Corsi of the Westchester County police, the pair was suddenly attacked by a shadowy, monstrous bear. Sharon heard Tom’s gun go off, and then everything went black.

To her horror, Sharon found herself and Tom transported to another dimension, which looked like an unspoiled version of America’s Great Plains, where they were prisoners of the giant Demon Bear that had attacked them. Dani’s friends were also present, but they now wore yellow-and-black costumes and demonstrated superhuman powers. Rather than fight its enemies directly, the Demon Bear transformed Sharon and Tom into hideous demonic warriors to do its bidding. Unable to resist the Bear’s will, they attacked the young heroes with bolts of black lightning and eldritch weapons. Still, Dani’s friends prevailed and the Demon Bear was destroyed. Its intended victims were cast back to earth as the Bear was torn apart. Unfortunately, upon reviving, Sharon and Tom found their physical features had been completely changed, leaving them looking like members of the Cheyenne Nation.

When Professor Xavier finally arrived, he invited the distraught Sharon and Tom back to his school, which they learned was really the headquarters of the mutant superhero team the X-Men, where Dani and her friends made up the novice class, the so-called “New Mutants.” They were accompanied by Dani’s parents, William and Peg Lonestar, who had been trapped within the Demon Bear’s form until it was destroyed. As such, they knew that Sharon and Tom’s transformation was permanent, and sure enough, despite a thorough examination, the team’s resident sorceress, Illyana Rasputin, failed to find any enchantment to return them to normal.

Unable to go back to their former lives, Sharon and Tom agreed to recuperate from their ordeal at Moira MacTaggart’s Mutant Research Centre on Muir Island, off the coast of Scotland, while Professor Xavier dealt with the ramifications of their sudden “disappearance.” He remained hopeful that their condition could be remedied, but as the months passed, no solution could be found. When Sharon looked in the mirror, she saw the face of a stranger. Her hair was much longer and coarser, her once-blue eyes were now dark, her skin had changed color, and she was noticeably taller. One beneficial side-effect of the change was discovered: they were both now essentially perfect physical specimens with strength and endurance enhanced to nearly-superhuman levels. This offered cold comfort to Sharon, although Tom seemed to have an easier time adjusting to his new body.

Come December, Sharon and Tom again fell victim to uncanny phenomena when another patient of Dr. MacTaggart’s, young David Haller, used his telepathic powers to absorb their minds into his own, leaving their bodies in a vegetative state. They were soon rescued by Professor Xavier with some of his students and were reunited with their physical forms. However, as a result of the ordeal, Xavier himself remained comatose for another two weeks, so Dr. MacTaggart asked Sharon to act as his nurse, which helped her feel useful again. Her training came in handy when Xavier suffered a severe psychotic episode some time before regaining consciousness.

In March 1973, Sharon and Tom were recruited to join the staff of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters by Magneto, the reformed super-villain who became the new headmaster when Professor Xavier went into outer space for an extended period. Sharon was glad for the chance to return to the United States and work as a nurse again. Though she still felt cut off from her old life, Sharon enjoyed working with the New Mutants and tried to provide a balance for Magneto’s hard-driving approach. The X-Men were more intimidating, but Sharon eventually grew comfortable around them as well, and by summertime she had settled into a happy routine.

However, in October, a cosmic entity with godlike powers known as the Beyonder, who had been wreaking havoc on earth for several months, decided to punish the New Mutants for a perceived slight by killing them and then erasing all memory of their existence. Thus, Sharon and Tom entered a kind of fugue state for many weeks, living on the now-empty Xavier estate, until the Beyonder finally undid what he had wrought. The school was re-created exactly as it was before, and the New Mutants were resurrected, although the experience had caused them severe psychic trauma. Sharon did what she could to help them, but soon realized she was out of her depth.

By January 1974, Sharon, Tom, and Magneto were at their wit’s end as to getting the students the help they desperately needed. But then, while hiking on the grounds, Sharon and Tom spotted an intruder spying on the mansion and recognized him as one of the Hellions, a rival team of young mutants from a school in Massachusetts. Contemptuously, the boy called Empath unleashed his mutant power to control people’s emotions, causing Sharon and Tom to be overcome suddenly with an insatiable lust for each other. Though rationally they knew they were being manipulated, they could not resist the passion they felt, and the two went on a sexual bender that dragged on for weeks. Like drug addicts, the pair sought increasingly intense experiences to satisfy their need, and fled to New York City for its sadomasochistic underworld. There, they experimented with shaving, piercing, and hard-core bondage, finally being locked into leather fetish costumes which they could not entirely remove. All the while they felt more and more hollow inside. Though death seemed their only release, they refused to give Empath that satisfaction, and somehow found the strength to drag themselves back to Xavier’s School. Sharon collapsed from exhaustion before they arrived, and Tom carried her into the mansion before his own strength gave out. Magneto released them from their fetishwear and carried them to the infirmary where he and another teacher, Stevie Hunter, looked after them. Learning what Empath had done, Magneto swore vengeance, but was forced to set it aside when the Hellions’ mentor, Emma Frost, was needed to lend her telepathic talents to the New Mutants’ recovery.

Though free from Empath’s influence, Sharon and Tom both sunk into a severe depression and felt alienated from each other for the first time. The memories of their sexual escapades were too raw, causing both to withdraw into themselves and avoid the other, as well as to shun human contact in general. Sharon only began to come out of her funk many weeks later when the X-Men converted their headquarters into a medevac center following a massacre of the Morlocks, a population of mutants living underneath New York City, by a band of assassins called the Marauders. While battling the Marauders, a number of the X-Men were themselves badly wounded. Sharon struggled to keep up with the patient load as Dr. Moira MacTaggart was called in for her medical expertise. Fortunately, Wolverine managed to rescue a Morlock with the power to heal people with a touch, and he was able to stabilize many of the worst cases. Finally, due to the lack of proper facilities and the danger from their enemies, the X-Men decided to evacuate all the wounded to Muir Isle, where Sharon and Tom again took up residence.

That summer, Sharon met the Fantastic Four when Magneto attempted to enlist the help of Reed Richards to stop the molecular discorporation of Shadowcat due to injuries suffered during the fight with the Marauders. When Richards proved unable to help, the team turned to the villain Doctor Doom, who promised to succeed where his rival had failed. Thus, the X-Men took Shadowcat to Latveria, where Doom and Richards worked together and saved her life.

As their other patients recovered, Dr. MacTaggart opened Muir Isle to the “Warpies,” a group of children mutated by the phenomenon known as the Jaspers Warp, as part of an agreement with two British-based agencies, the Weird Happenings Organisation (WHO) and the Resources Control Executive (RCX). Dealing with these unfortunate children and their bizarre mutations helped Sharon put her own transformation into perspective, and her outlook on life improved. They were saddened, however, by news reports that the X-Men had sacrificed their lives to destroy a monster in Dallas, Texas.

Many months passed as Sharon and Tom settled into their new lives at the Mutant Research Centre. Things began to change, though, in the spring of 1975 after former X-Man Polaris arrived on the island. Sharon suddenly found herself embracing the darker aspects of her personality, and Tom developed a new fascination with big guns. Dr. MacTaggart also began to dress more provocatively and adopted a harsher, more confrontational tone. The quiet of the island was shattered soon after when the Centre was attacked by a group of mutant-killing cyborgs called the Reavers. Dr. MacTaggart ordered everyone into the standard X-Men uniforms she had devised, which in addition to affording protection from environmental extremes, also acted as body armor, being essentially bullet-proof. Sharon found she enjoyed wearing the skintight costume and liked the way it highlighted her physique. The Reavers were driven off with the help of Freedom Force, the U.S. governments’ mutant taskforce, but Sharon continued to wear her costume in any case.

As Polaris had revealed that the X-Men were still alive and in hiding, Dr. MacTaggart’s lover, Sean Cassidy, a.k.a. Banshee, set off with a man called Forge to find them. Following their departure, the situation on Muir Isle quickly worsened as everyone succumbed to their most evil inclinations and basest instincts, for they were all unwitting victims of the sinister telepath known as the Shadow King. As such, Dr. MacTaggart allied herself with the sorceress Amanda Sefton and took Polaris prisoner, hooking her up to a strange device they called the Nexus to amplify the Shadow King’s power. Sharon saw to the prisoner’s physical needs and found herself delighting sadistically in Polaris’ helplessness. Furthermore, Dr. MacTaggart established a gladiatorial arena where the island’s mutant residents would battle for the entertainment of the others. Sharon was responsible for patching up the losers so they could fight again, to which end she forced the Morlock Healer to tax his abilities to the limit.

Finally, Banshee and Forge returned to the island, having brought the X-Men with them. They confronted the Shadow King, whose plans they had since discovered, and were joined by Professor Xavier, just returned to earth, and the team X-Factor, made up of his original students. In the course of their showdown, though, the Mutant Research Centre was obliterated by a tremendous explosion that scorched a large area of the island’s surface. Luckily, Sharon, Tom, and some others were protected from the blast in the complex’s lowest sub-level. Ultimately, by disrupting the Nexus and freeing Polaris, the X-Men severed the Shadow King’s link to the physical world and his psychic essence was destroyed, thus freeing everyone on the island from his vile influence. Sharon was horrified at having been victimized yet again.

Having lost her own facilities, Dr. MacTaggart decided to return to America temporarily to help the X-Men re-establish their headquarters at the mansion in Westchester County, which also needed to be rebuilt. Sharon and Tom went along to resume their former duties at Xavier’s, though the “school” no longer had any actual students. Once the X-Men had everything up and running, Sharon Friedlander took stock of her life and realized she needed to look to the future.



First Appearance: New Mutants #19

Final Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #278



Next Portrait

OMU: Captain America -- Year One

Captain America returned from over nine years in comic book limbo just six weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Like the United States itself, Steve Rogers awoke to face a shocking tragedy that would cause profound changes to his character and lead him to question his very identity. In Avengers #4, Jack Kirby (who had created the character in 1940 with then-partner Joe Simon) and Stan Lee (who had written many of Cap’s previous adventures) resurrected the character with a stunning revelation -- the last thing he remembered was the fiery death of his kid sidekick, Bucky. Given the schedule for publishing comics, this story was certainly conceived and drawn some time before JFK was killed, and the reason for Bucky’s death was both to add some emotional baggage to Cap’s winning personality and because Stan hated the whole concept of “kid sidekicks” like Robin, Speedy, and Kid Flash. But the death of Bucky could have merely been used for a revenge-plotline to reintroduce Captain America and then forgotten. Instead, in the months that followed, Stan and Jack tapped into the current zeitgeist and led Cap on a journey of self-exploration as he mourned this unexpected death and re-evaluated his place in the world. The character became far richer as a result, and rather than serving as a vehicle for Allied propaganda as in the past, he could now be used to explore America’s ideals in contrast to a world of moral ambiguity and social unrest. America had changed, and Stan and Jack provided a new Captain America to meet its new challenges.

Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.


Now, so proudly we hail… The True History of Captain America!


January 1945 – Steve Rogers begins a new year as Captain America in Belgium, fighting with American and British forces to stop the German army from pushing westward through the forests of the Ardennes. The tide has turned against Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime as the Allied Powers have hammered away at them on two fronts, and Cap is hopeful that the war in Europe may finally be winding down. Whether working solo or with his teammates in the Invaders, Captain America has served as a symbol of his country’s fighting spirit, inspiring the rank-and-file soldiers with his own brand of colorful heroism. Armed with nothing but his famous indestructible shield, a marvel of modern science, Cap often leads the charge against enemy forces. Other times he has undertaken special missions which have led him all around the globe, battling tirelessly to prevent Nazi perversions of science from giving the Axis an unfair advantage in the war. He does not dwell on the irony that it was a similar tampering with the forces of nature that brought him to the pinnacle of human physical perfection.

He can scarcely believe that it was only five years ago that a scrawny, sickly kid from New York City, so frail that he was rejected by the U.S. Army when he went to enlist, was transformed into the first and only “super-soldier” by the secret process created by Dr. Abraham Erskine. After Erskine was killed by a Nazi agent, the government had been forced to abandon Operation: Rebirth and instead turned Rogers into the costumed hero known only as Captain America. Months later, Cap had acquired a teen-age sidekick, Bucky, after the young orphan James Buchanan Barnes discovered his secret identity. The duo had immediately captured the public’s imagination as they battled Nazi spies and saboteurs in the United States. Then, as America entered the war, Captain America and Bucky had joined with the Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch, and his sidekick Toro in forming the Invaders to confront the Axis powers directly in Europe. Since then, the team had gained new members, such as Spitfire, Union Jack, the Whizzer, and Miss America, and struggled constantly to defeat one bizarre menace after another.

Now, during lulls in the fighting, Cap finds himself brooding on some of the personal losses he has experienced in the last few months. His sidekick, Bucky, had reached his eighteenth birthday and surprised the Invaders by announcing that he was resigning from the team and abandoning his costumed identity to enlist in the U.S. Army as a regular soldier. After years living in Cap’s shadow, Bucky was determined to prove himself as a man. Their mission to Greymoor Castle, where they dealt a severe blow to the German rocket program, had proved to be their last adventure together. It was shortly after that that Cap had gone to France to help with the liberation of Paris, and had fallen in love with a beautiful American girl who had joined the French Resistance. Though they knew each other only by code-names, they had begun to plan a future together after the war. But then she was captured by the Gestapo and disappeared during the liberation of the city. Cap had searched frantically, but could find no trace of her, and none of her comrades in the Resistance could locate her. She had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. Not knowing whether she’s alive or dead, Steve Rogers has sought to bury his heartbreak in combat, and has become a much more grim, battle-weary figure than the Captain America of the early days of the war.

February 1945 – The Invaders are summoned together again to protect President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill as they meet Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in Yalta on the Black Sea. Captain America, the Human Torch, the Whizzer, and Miss America escort the American president to the conference while the Sub-Mariner, Toro, Spitfire, and Union Jack guard the British prime minister. As the leaders meet, the Invaders prevent the summit from being disrupted by the latest incarnation of the Super-Axis, led by their perennial foes Master Man and Warrior Woman. After an epic battle that rages all across the resort community, the Axis agents are driven off. When the conference ends, Cap bids a brief farewell to his teammates, confident that they will soon meet again, then heads into Germany on a solo mission behind enemy lines.

Having learned that the Red Skull is constructing some kind of doomsday device to be activated following Germany’s inevitable defeat, Captain America heads to Berlin to stop him. Along the way, he meets up with an old friend, Roger Aubrey, who has been fighting the Nazis within Germany for nearly three years as the fearsome Destroyer. With the Destroyer as his guide, Cap makes it into the Nazi capital city and soon discovers the Red Skull’s hidden bunker. Going on alone, Cap fights his way through the Red Skull’s guards to confront his nemesis face-to-face.

Cap chases the Red Skull into a labyrinth of darkened tunnels, determined to seize the strongbox his enemy is carrying, but the Skull suddenly produces a grenade. With split-second timing, Cap hurls his shield, striking the Skull full in the chest and causing him to drop the grenade. It explodes behind him, and the Red Skull takes the brunt of the blast. A portion of the tunnel wall also collapses, and the Skull is pinned beneath the rubble. As Cap stands over his fallen foe, he finds the Red Skull is still alive, saved by a layer of body armor under his olive drab jumpsuit. Dazed, the Red Skull remains defiant, announcing in his raspy voice that Cap is too late to stop his plans, and that his “Sleepers” will one day awake, and on that day the Third Reich will rise again. Before Cap can learn more, Allied bombs rain down on the city, causing the bunker to collapse. The Red Skull is buried under tons of rubble, but Captain America manages to get the strongbox and escape to the surface.

Heading southwest across Germany, Cap eventually rendezvous with U.S. Army forces, and delivers the strongbox to Allied Intelligence. Remaining with the unit for a few days, Cap is then present for the liberation of the Diebenwald Concentration Camp. Though he had heard reports of the atrocities committed in the Nazi camps, experiencing the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand is almost more than Cap can bear. His mind reels at the scope of the inhumanity he witnesses; however, he steels himself and helps ensure an orderly take-over of the camp and lends aid and comfort to the half-dead prisoners.

Upon reporting back to his superiors in London, England, Captain America requests permission to focus his energies on liberating the rest of the Nazi concentration camps as soon as possible. Instead, he is ordered to an Allied military installation on Britain’s east coast, where, it has been learned, his old enemy Baron Zemo is planning to steal an experimental drone plane. Furthermore, Cap is informed, assigned to the base security detail he will find one Pvt. Bucky Barnes. Though he feels liberating the camps is more important, Cap follows his orders, glad for the chance to see Bucky again.

March 1945 – Captain America arrives at the top-secret base by the North Sea and is greeted by his old pal Bucky, who has been briefed on Cap’s mission. While on patrol, they have a chance to catch up. Cap tells his former partner of what he witnessed at Diebenwald, and they also discuss the controversial firebombing of Dresden a fortnight ago. Bucky says he heard about the Invaders’ big battle at Yalta, but doesn’t regret his decision to retire and become a regular G.I. Nevertheless, Cap assures Bucky he had long since come to think of him as a partner rather than a sidekick. As night falls, Cap decides to go incognito so as not to scare Baron Zemo off, for they hope to capture him. Thus Cap straps his shield to his chest (as a safety precaution) and puts a standard U.S. Army uniform on over his costume, while removing his mask and gloves. He and Bucky, also wearing his regulation uniform, then take a motorcycle and head off to check the perimeter of the base.

As they roar past the hanger where the experimental drone plane is housed, they see the shadowy form of Baron Zemo initiating an unauthorized launch. Cap guns the engine and chases the small aircraft down the runway. When he gets close enough, Bucky makes a death-defying leap onto the plane and scrambles up to its control panel. Cap manages to grab the back end of the plane as the ground falls away beneath them. Twisting wildly while trying to find a solid handhold, Cap spots an exultant Zemo on the ground and realizes the plane must be booby-trapped. He yells to Bucky to jump, but Pvt. Barnes is determined to disable the explosives and save the plane. Seconds later, a tremendous explosion rips the plane apart, the force of the blast throwing Cap clear. As he falls toward the frigid waters of the North Sea, Cap screams in horror as he sees Bucky’s body consumed in the fireball.

Cap hits the water hard and blacks out. He has a vague feeling of drifting though a long, cold dark.

Then nothing.

November 1962 – Slowly, Captain America regains his senses. His mind is in a fog at first, his thoughts jumbled and his perceptions distorted. His body feels stiff and damp and cold. He hears muffled voices, the faint hum of engines, and the buzzing of an insect near his face. Then, he is shocked awake as the memory of Bucky’s death returns, and he leaps to his feet and scuffles with his rescuers. A moment later he collapses, overcome with grief. However, his years of battle training quickly take over, and he realizes that he is inside some kind of vessel, a highly-advanced submarine, and he turns to confront the strangers surrounding him. He first sees a man in scarlet and gold armor, then a hammer-wielding muscleman with long blond hair and a red cape. He is startled to see a twelve-foot giant in a red costume, and then discovers the insect he heard is in fact a woman. Naturally, he suspects they must be a new band of Nazi super-agents, but during a second brief altercation, he determines that they are Americans and stops the fight. For some reason, these people seem dubious that he is really Captain America, but he soon convinces them he is genuine. They introduce themselves as Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man, and the Wasp, all members of a team called the Avengers. Cap is stunned when they then claim that the Second World War has long since ended, and that he has apparently been “frozen” in suspended animation for nearly 18 years. Though they seem sincere, he just can’t bring himself to believe it. He tries to tell them about Bucky’s death, to explain how he came to be in the water, but he struggles to remember more than the most basic details. He is disturbed that he can’t quite remember who it was they were attempting to capture or where it had all happened. Wearied by the mental effort, Cap retires to a bunk as the Avengers assure him they will be back in New York in a couple of hours. Though confused, suspicious, and disoriented, Cap succumbs to exhaustion and falls asleep.

When Cap awakes, the ship’s engines have gone silent. He finds the vessel deserted; his rescuers have left him behind. Prepared for a trap, he climbs a ladder out of the escape hatch and emerges into the bright light of day. What he sees, however, is the skyline of New York City -- much as he remembers it, but also much changed. Strange new buildings stand among the more familiar towers. He recognizes that he is on a pier in the East River, and sees oddly gruesome stone statues of the Avengers standing nearby. Some weird monument to the team, he thinks. Wandering into the city, he notes the unfamiliar fashions worn by the people in the street, and marvels at the automobiles, which look like something out of science fiction. After following the river north about 20 blocks, he comes to an imposing edifice with the world’s flags arrayed around it, and discovers it is the headquarters of something called the “United Nations.” East River Drive is now a huge highway named after Franklin D. Roosevelt. New York has changed. The truth of the Avengers’ assertions is undeniable. Steve Rogers has suddenly become a man out of time, a modern-day Rip Van Winkle. His mind reels. The war is over. And the world has moved on.

Still feeling weakened, Cap finds his way to a nearby hotel and checks into a room. While pulling off his boots, he sees that televisions have become commonplace and he stares dumbfounded at the evening programming. He feels drained of energy and unable to focus his thoughts. He searches his memory but his mind is filled with darkness. He finally falls back onto the bed and drifts into a fitful sleep. However, he is soon awakened by an intruder, whom he first mistakes for Bucky. The young man gives his name as Rick Jones, and says he has followed Cap’s trail across town in search of the Avengers. The boy is clearly agitated, and makes vague threats involving someone called “the Hulk.” Cap volunteers to join the search for the missing team, and they set off immediately. Rick takes him to the local headquarters of a nation-wide network of young ham radio enthusiasts called the Teen Brigade, whose members don’t quite know what to make of Captain America. They begin studying news photos of the Avengers’ arrival at the pier, and in an enlargement Cap spots a man in the crowd of reporters holding what looks like a futuristic gun rather than a camera. Rick then enlists all Teen Brigade members in a city-wide manhunt for the man in the photo.

Through the night and into the morning the search continues, as the Teen Brigade members call in leads and Captain America follows up on them. With a mission to carry out, Cap feels his mind clearing and his sense of purpose returning. Running along the rooftops of the city makes him feel refreshed and energized. Finally, one of the leads pays off and Cap spots his quarry through a window. Without hesitation, Captain America crashes into the apartment, but his arrival brings several gunmen bursting through the door, firing away. Instinctively, Cap hurls himself into their midst, easily overcoming them with his fighting prowess. He disarms the man with the strange gun and pulls off his mask, revealing him to be a green-skinned alien. The gunmen flee in horror. As the strange being surrenders, Cap compels him to admit that the “statues” of the Avengers on the pier were in fact the heroes themselves, turned to stone by his unearthly technology. The remorseful alien also reveals that he committed this crime as part of a deal with the Sub-Mariner, who promised to raise his sunken spaceship in return. The name strikes a dim chord of recognition in Cap’s beclouded mind, but he dismisses the thought to focus on the matter at hand -- the resuscitation of the Avengers.

Cap and Rick escort the alien back to the pier, to the warehouse where the petrified Avengers are in storage. He reverses the settings on his gun and returns the team to normal. Moved by the alien’s plight, the Avengers agree to salvage his ship with no strings attached. It is morning again by the time the Avengers locate the ship, sunk just off a small uninhabited island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Grateful for Cap’s help, the team has invited him and Rick to see this adventure through to the end, and so the super-soldier joins Giant Man for a deep-sea dive to examine the wreck. By afternoon, they have completed their preparations, and with the help of Thor’s enchanted hammer, they succeed in freeing the craft from the sea bed. Impressed by their teamwork, Cap begins to wonder if he might find a place among the Avengers. Though he can’t remember why, he seems to feel he belongs on a team of superheroes. Before he can broach the subject though, they are attacked by the Sub-Mariner and his blue-skinned warriors. A sudden explosion hurls Cap into the sea, but he quickly recovers and swims back to the rocky shore. However, awed by the sheer power of Iron Man and Thor, as well as the devastating weaponry of the Atlantean warriors, Cap decides to hang back to observe the battle, taking the Avengers’ measure. But when the Sub-Mariner announces that he holds Rick Jones hostage, Cap leaps into the fray. He frees Rick, then battles the Sub-Mariner, unaware that they had once been comrades-in-arms. The island is rocked by the launch of the alien spacecraft, and the Atlanteans retreat to the ocean depths, convinced their foes will die when the island sinks. The tremors subside, though, as the ship disappears into the sky, and the Avengers regroup. Impressed by what they have seen of Captain America, the Avengers offer him full membership on the team, and he accepts.

Upon returning to New York, the Avengers invite Cap to stay at the team’s headquarters in the Stark mansion on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. There he meets the team’s benefactor, a world-renowned inventor named Tony Stark, and is also introduced to the butler, Edwin Jarvis, who prepares a room for him. During supper, Cap learns from Jarvis how the Allies ultimately won the war, and is shocked and saddened to hear that President Roosevelt did not live to see the final victory. He learns also of the devastating nuclear bombs that ended the war with Japan and ushered in the so-called Atomic Age. Cap is not so surprised to discover that General Eisenhower was elected president a few years after the war, and listens intently as Jarvis gives him an overview of the current state of the world, particularly with regard to the “Cold War” against the Soviet Union. The more Cap tries to recall his past, the more he realizes how much he seems to have lost. Much of the war now seems like a blur. Over the next couple of days, Cap finds himself at the center of a media frenzy, but he devotes himself instead to his training regimen, trying to determine if he has suffered any permanent physical damage as a result of his years in suspended animation. Only by keeping busy in this way can he stop himself from dwelling on Bucky’s death.

For his first official mission, the Avengers take Captain America to New Mexico to search for the Hulk, a mysterious green-skinned brute with superhuman strength who has been terrorizing the region for many months. Unfortunately, the trail is cold, even though the Avengers have enlisted the help of Rick Jones, who clearly knows more about the Hulk than he’s willing to tell. Hearing news reports that the Hulk is now on a rampage in New York City, the Avengers race back to their Fifth Avenue headquarters. Cap notes the concern in his teammates’ faces as they learn the Fantastic Four, the preeminent superhero group of the day, has failed to stop the Hulk’s rampage. Finally, the green goliath arrives at the mansion to confront his former teammates, and Captain America gets his first look at the incredible Hulk. Fueled by rage over a perceived betrayal, the Hulk attacks the entire team at once, and Cap is awed by his sheer unstoppable power. The brawl only ends when the Hulk grabs Rick, smashes through the wall, and storms off. The Avengers catch up to them down the street and Cap occupies the Hulk until his teammates arrive, but then things go awry when the Fantastic Four interfere in the battle. For a moment, Captain America mistakes Johnny Storm for the original Human Torch, but he has no time to pursue the fleeting memory. Taking advantage of the confusion, the Hulk again grabs Rick and makes his escape. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four work out their mutual frustration and agree to work together to capture the Hulk. Thus, the two teams pursue their quarry to a construction site on East 63rd Street. The half-finished skyscraper is demolished in the battle, but despite the best efforts of the assembled heroes, the Hulk manages to dive into the river and escape. Though disappointed, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four part on friendly terms, and Cap has a moment to get acquainted with Mister Fantastic and the Thing, both of whom are veterans of the Second World War. Captain America then returns with his teammates to their headquarters to inspect the damage before they all go their separate ways.

Feeling he has nowhere else to go, Cap offers to teach Rick some hand-to-hand combat techniques and military strategy, and finds him to be an eager student. Though Rick bears a passing resemblance to Bucky, Cap soon realizes he is rather a lonely and disaffected teen, haunted by experiences he refuses to discuss. And though Rick clearly has hopes of becoming Cap’s new partner, Cap doesn’t feel he can face shouldering that responsibility again, especially not while the fate of Bucky’s killer remains unknown.

December 1962 – Captain America takes a trip to Washington, D.C. to re-establish contact with the War Department, which he finds is now called the Department of Defense. Unfortunately, the government bureaucrats aren’t sure what to do with him. While at the Pentagon, he is saddened to learn that his old C.O., General Chester Phillips, has since died. Cap inquires after his personal effects, only to learn that much of his property, put in storage after he disappeared, has been lost. He is assured that if anything is found, he will be notified. Cap is then escorted to the White House for dinner with President John F. Kennedy, who tells Cap of his own service during the war aboard the PT-109. Cap tries to downplay his post-cryogenic amnesia, leading to several awkward moments. At the end of the evening, Captain America heads off into the darkness to wander the National Mall alone, wondering if there’s a place for Steve Rogers in this world of the future. Finally, he returns to New York, feeling frustrated and discouraged.

A week or so later, Cap is performing an acrobatic exhibition for the benefit of Rick Jones and his friends in the Teen Brigade when Thor arrives to summon him to an emergency meeting of the Avengers. Within the hour, the team jets back to New Mexico to investigate a series of disasters caused by powerful sound waves. Arriving at a military installation commanded by a General “Thunderbolt” Ross, the heroes find the source of the strange phenomenon is a huge boulder slowly pushing its way up out of the ground. Iron Man tunnels under the weird rock to discover that it is the primary weapon of an invading army of subterranean beings known as Lava Men, whom Thor has encountered before. Since the thunder god is the only Avenger capable of withstanding the intense heat of the Lava Men’s domain, Thor goes on alone while Captain America and Iron Man return to the surface to prevent any of the Lava Men from exiting the tunnel while Giant Man and the Wasp try to figure out a way to safely destroy the monolith. However, things go from bad to worse when the team is suddenly attacked by the revenge-seeking Hulk. Captain America realizes that they can turn the situation to their advantage by maneuvering the Hulk into the right spot to destroy the boulder before its sonic blasts can do any more damage. The resulting implosion stuns the Avengers, and when they recover, they find the ground where the monolith stood has been transmuted into a sheet of glass. With the threat ended and the Hulk nowhere to be found, the Avengers head for home.

Iron Man brings an offer from Tony Stark to incorporate the latest technological advancements into Cap’s shield, such as a magnetic retrieval device and a communications system. Though dubious that such gadgets would be an improvement, Cap accepts the offer. Stark’s work is impressive, but Cap feels that the shield is now slightly off-balance. He decides to see if he can get used to it before asking Stark to remove everything.

The Avengers are soon called to arms again when New York City is menaced by a squad of super-villains. Cap learns that the Melter, the Radioactive Man, and the Black Knight have each recently fought one or another of his teammates and have now joined forces as the Masters of Evil. The villains wreak havoc by spraying Adhesive X, a super-strong glue, all around town. Captain America immediately recognizes it as the work of his enemy Baron Heinrich Zemo, jogging a memory of one of their previous encounters. The Avengers obtain an extremely powerful solvent from an incarcerated criminal known as Paste-Pot Pete and then initiate a bold plan with the help of Rick Jones’ Teen Brigade. Cap formulates a strategy that has the other Avengers switch foes, so the villains will be unfamiliar with their fighting styles and thus be at a disadvantage. As his teammates charge into battle, Cap leads the Teen Brigade to track down Baron Zemo, taking a canister of tear gas disguised as the super-solvent, which Cap knows Zemo will be desperate to get his hands on. As Cap confronts his old adversary once again, he is filled with a ferocious rage. However, Zemo attacks him with surprising confidence, having trained himself in the martial arts over the years since their last encounter. The fight ends inconclusively when Zemo’s treacherous pilot tries to shoot Cap in the back, managing only to graze his skull. The pilot is apprehended by Giant Man while Cap recovers, but Zemo flees in his airship. The Avengers watch with satisfaction as Baron Zemo is forced to make an emergency landing after opening the tear gas canister. Unfortunately, the war criminal manages to escape from the police and get away. Cap vows to bring Baron Zemo to justice.

In the days that follow, Captain America is plagued by increasingly vivid nightmares which force him to relive Bucky’s death. Finally he has a breakthrough and remembers that it was Baron Zemo they were trying to capture that night -- it was Baron Zemo who caused Bucky’s death. Cap’s determination to track Zemo down and make him pay for his crimes begins to border on obsession. Nevertheless, Cap agrees to attend the Avengers’ first annual Christmas charity benefit, an event which garners the team some good press. Cap is embarrassed when his teammates toast him as a “living legend,” and he responds by claiming to be merely a soldier trying to fight the good fight. At the team meeting afterwards, Iron Man steps down as chairman, and Captain America joins the others in electing Giant Man to assume those duties. Though Rick is not allowed to vote, Cap encourages him to attend team meetings and offer his unique point-of-view. The day after Christmas, Cap is surprised to receive a package from the U.S. Army, containing an old metal strongbox and a scrapbook that Cap had kept early in the war. He immediately recognizes the strongbox as having belonged to his arch-nemesis, the Red Skull, but he is unable to recall the significance of the tattered and faded documents within. Perhaps, he thinks, the answer will come to him in his sleep.



Notes:

January 1945 – Captain America’s career during the later period of World War II was never shown in any great detail, but was limited to a few occasional flashbacks. However, I noticed that Bucky was conspicuously absent from several of these flashbacks. Also, in Captain America #109, Cap tells Nick Fury that one of his last missions with Bucky occurred just before the Allied invasion of Europe on D-Day in June 1944. When compiling my timeline for the Original Marvel Universe, I realized Bucky probably turned 18 in 1944, and it seemed logical that he would officially join the service at that time and give up being Cap’s kid sidekick. This would also provide a simple explanation for why Jack Kirby drew him wearing an Army uniform rather than his costume in the flashback in Avengers #4 that showed his heroic death. Cap and Bucky’s adventure at Greymoor Castle was chronicled in Tales of Suspense #69-71, a story that clearly occurs after D-Day. Since Cap remembered the events in such vivid detail despite his post-cryogenic amnesia, it seemed likely this was his final adventure with Bucky, and hence carried special emotional weight. The girl Cap fell in love with during the liberation of Paris (in August 1944) was Peggy Carter, and their tragic love story was told in Tales of Suspense #77, although her identity was not revealed until several years later.

February 1945 – Steve Rogers’ final adventure with the Invaders was never shown in any canonical story, but the timing suggests the Yalta Conference would make the perfect backdrop for this Untold Tale of the Original Marvel Universe. Likewise, Cap’s subsequent team-up with the Destroyer is suggested by the need to get Cap to Berlin for his final wartime confrontation with the Red Skull. As set up in Invaders #34, the Destroyer was active inside Germany during this time, and it adds a cool dimension to the story. We witness Cap’s showdown with the Red Skull in Tales of Suspense #72, and get it from the Red Skull’s point of view in Tales of Suspense #79. Cap’s participation in the liberation of Diebenwald Concentration Camp was revealed in Captain America #237.

March 1945 – Captain America and Bucky’s fateful encounter with Baron Zemo is first shown in Avengers #4, though Zemo’s identity as the man responsible is not revealed until two issues later. Roy Thomas and John Buscema unnecessarily complicate the story in their retelling of these events in Avengers #56, adding giant androids and time-travelers to the mix. Their explanation for the Army uniforms, that Zemo dressed the heroes that way after knocking them unconscious, begs the question of why Zemo wouldn’t have kept Cap’s indestructible shield for himself. Clearly it would have been a most sought-after prize among Hitler’s agents. Fortunately, this entire revision can be dismissed as an alternate reality that the time-traveling Avengers were diverted to by Immortus, whose involvement can be traced to the very next story in the sequence, presented in Avengers Annual #2. Immortus pulls exactly the same stunt when he shows the Vision an alternate-reality version of his android origins in Avengers #133-135 in order to convince him he had once been the heroic Human Torch. You just can’t trust anything Immortus tells you. Similarly, Don Glut’s insertion of an entire adventure between Cap’s plunge into the sea and his lapsing into suspended animation, as seen in Captain America #220, does more to weaken the story than it enhances it. However, this addition can also be discounted, as the flashback is projected into Cap’s mind by Lyle Dekker’s machines. It is more likely that Dekker had encountered the second Captain America, William Nasland, but never suspected he wasn’t the original, and the tale got further warped when filtered through Dekker’s addled brain. In any event, Bucky’s death is a powerful story, and an important element in Captain America’s history, and it is only diminished when writers concoct elaborate scenarios to explain its minor details. Simple is better. Of course, the profundity of the story was completely destroyed in 2005 with the retcon that Bucky had survived and gone on to become a Soviet assassin called the Winter Soldier. But that is of no consequence to us here, as modern-day comics do not take place in the Original Marvel Universe. In the OMU, Bucky remained thoroughly, completely, and totally dead.

1945-1962 – Stan Lee abandoned much of previous continuity when he reintroduced Captain America, and later writers sought ways to salvage as much of the Golden Age past as they could. And so, as mentioned above, Roy Thomas revealed that shortly after Captain America and Bucky disappeared, replacements were recruited to prevent the blow to Allied morale that their deaths would have meant. William Nasland, seen previously as the Spirit of ’76 in Invaders #14-15, became the new Captain America, and Fred Davis, introduced in Marvel Premiere #30, became the new Bucky. When Nasland was killed in battle, the mantle of Captain America was taken up by Jeff Mace, formerly the hero called the Patriot, as revealed in What If #4. Mace was said to have retired around 1950, and there was no Captain America until a few years later. When Steve Englehart launched his celebrated run on Captain America with issue #153, his first story-arc brought the Atlas-era Captain America series into a semblance of continuity by revealing that an anonymous man had discovered Steve Rogers’ secret, along with a copy of the long-lost super-soldier serum, and assumed both his civilian and costumed identities, alongside a third Bucky (later identified as Jack Monroe). However, since these latest versions had not been exposed to the stabilizing “vita-ray” treatment (the missing element in all attempts to recreate Erskine’s success), they were soon driven mad and exposed as impostors by the FBI. Except for an obvious hoax perpetrated by a minor crook called the Acrobat, who posed as Cap in a plot against the second Human Torch (in Strange Tales #114), there were no other Captain Americas until the original returned. However, when Steve Rogers did reappear in the 1960s, many people seemed to know that he had actually disappeared in 1945, before the end of the war. Therefore, I conjecture that Fred Davis, who had been forced to retire as Bucky after suffering a debilitating gunshot wound (inspired by the story in Captain America Comics #66), had probably written a book telling the life story of James Buchanan Barnes and revealing the truth about Nasland and the third Cap (without naming Mace) to set the record straight. The book, probably called something like Bucky: The Life and Death of an American Hero, would have appeared in the late 1950s, and been well-known by the time Steve Rogers was thawed out in the autumn of 1962.

November 1962 – Captain America is revived in Avengers #4. Neither Cap nor the Sub-Mariner, who is suffering his own memory problems, has more than a vague recollection of the other at this point, and neither seems to recall their service in the Invaders (mainly because the Invaders weren’t created until about 12 years later). The Original Human Torch is currently deactivated, Toro and Spitfire have retired to lives of obscurity, the Whizzer is a drunken bum, and both Miss America and the second Union Jack are dead, which is why none of Cap’s former teammates look him up after his return. Cap ruminates on the extent of his memory loss during these early days in Captain America #247. The green-skinned “Medusa” alien was later identified as a member of the D’Bari race, and he probably got back to his home planet just in time for its destruction by Dark Phoenix. Poor sod. Captain America appears next in Marvel’s first big crossover event in Fantastic Four #25-26, with a brief wrap-up at the beginning of Avengers #5.

December 1962 – Cap’s trip to Washington, D.C. is not mentioned in the comics, but it is a logical course of action during this lull in the story, and it explains how he came to have the Red Skull’s strongbox in his possession in Tales of Suspense #72. Although General Phillips was finally used again (so he could be killed off) in recent years, it seems likely that in the Original Marvel Universe, he was already dead when Cap was resurrected. This further alienates Cap from his past, leaving him completely alone -- a stranger in a strange land. The battle with the Lava Men comprises the rest of Avengers #5. Captain America uses Tony Stark’s “improvements” to his shield for about a month before getting rid of them just prior to Tales of Suspense #62. Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil attack in Avengers #6, where Zemo is revealed as Bucky’s killer. Incidentally, a younger version of Zemo appeared simultaneously in Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #8, released the same day as Avengers #6. The first of the Avengers’ annual Christmas charity benefits was not shown in any canonical story, though Cap’s photo album / scrapbook first appears very soon after, in Tales of Suspense #59, which kicked off his new series of solo adventures.



OMU Note: The final canonical appearance of Captain America is in Avengers #339.


Next Issue: The End!

Hulk Splash!

As much as I love old comics -- the actual physical items, I mean -- the decades-old paper and staples, the classic ads, the fascinating letters pages -- I have to admit I often prefer reading the stories in the “Essential” format, i.e., in glorious black & white. I find the vintage coloring jobs to be distracting, more often than not, and quite frankly, the scenes usually look much better in my mind’s eye than they do on the printed page.

For example, let’s take Incredible Hulk #4, since I have it out. When reading the story in Essential Hulk v.1, the main panel of the splash page looks more or less like this in my imagination:

But when I read the original comic book from 1962, what I see is this:

While I mean no disrespect to the issue’s uncredited colorist (either Stan Goldberg or one of his assistants), who actually did quite nice work overall on this story, still the coloring jobs of this era were necessarily crude, slap-dash affairs that favored bright primary colors over mood, atmosphere, or realism. Here especially, the dark tone of the story -- a tale of desperation, fear, and risk -- is ill-served by the over-reliance on yellow and white as background colors.

The fascinating intricacies of the machinery Jack Kirby drew are all but lost when the whole thing is colored a uniform gray. But the primitive color-separation process of the time -- sometimes described as a room-full of old ladies with X-Acto knives -- did not allow for much detail. Highlights and shading were basically out of the question. In essence, the simpler, the better. So, the colorists at Marvel did what they could within the limitations of the technology.

But when I want to immerse myself in the Original Marvel Universe, it’s often easier when the bright, sloppy colors are stripped out and I can imagine how the scene looks for myself, based on the line art alone.

So bring on the Essentials!

What Gray Hulk?

While looking at my copy of Incredible Hulk #4, I noticed the following exchange on the letters page.

I was somewhat surprised to see Stan Lee telling a big, fat lie to this poor fan.

Stan makes it sound like he intended the Hulk to have green skin but somebody “goofed” and made him gray instead. That’s not really what happened. Despite Stan’s assertion here, when Marvel introduced the world to the Hulk in early 1962, he was supposed to have gray skin. It just didn’t work out very well.

As has since been revealed, Stan Lee’s initial idea was to have a gray-skinned Hulk, and as both editor and de facto art director of the tiny comic book company, it was his decision to make. Giving the character gray skin probably seemed like a good idea in the abstract, as it would make him look monstrous and inhuman without being outré. However, with his many years of experience, Stan should have known this was not a practical choice.

Comic book coloring was a rather limited undertaking in those days, and colorist Stan Goldberg had a very restricted palette available to him. He could not even use real gray, since gray-tone was achieved by putting little black dots on the white paper, and that was the province of the inker, not the colorist. Goldberg had to choose from different combinations of cyan, magenta, and yellow to approximate gray. It was really sort of a muted purple that stood in for gray in standard comics coloring.

Plus, in those days, Marvel printed on the cheapest newsprint they could get, and probably used cheap inks at a cut-rate printing shop. Comic books were considered a low-end product and Marvel was a small-time operation. They had to cut costs wherever possible. All that compounded the problem, so that the final result was wild variations in the Hulk’s hue throughout the first issue. It looked like a mess. After seeing it, Stan Lee decided to switch to a nice, reliable shade of green.

It may have been too late to really work it into the story at that point, so the Hulk just suddenly appeared with green skin in the second issue. Naturally, some concerned fan would write in and ask what the heck happened.

Stan admits that “we” goofed, which is probably the editorial we, suggesting he’s accepting responsibility for the mistake. But then he tells the little white lie that the Hulk was supposed to be green, which is not the case.

To maintain that lie, the Hulk was colored green in all subsequent re-tellings of his origin for decades. And the story grew to suggest that the gray Hulk was really somehow the printer’s fault. But after the “Gray Hulk” was brought back into continuity in the 1980s -- and proved to be very popular -- Stan Lee reversed himself and was happy to take credit for the idea. Now he says the Hulk was supposed to be gray.

Being caught in a lie doesn’t exactly bolster one’s credibility. In fact, it makes Stan Lee seem rather… incredible.

Hulk Hungry

I feel this way sometimes.

From Incredible Hulk #4 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers.

OMU: Ant-Man -- Year One

While Marvel introduced their new superhero Ant-Man the same day that Spider-Man and Thor also burst on the scene, the character of Henry Pym had actually been introduced eight months earlier in a one-off sci-fi / monster story, the like of which was the company’s bread-and-butter at that time. Tales to Astonish #27, with its lead feature “The Man in the Ant-Hill,” hit the stands the same day as Fantastic Four #2, which makes Pym technically the second Marvel Universe property to appear, even pre-dating the introduction of the Hulk by several months. However, he was not intended as a continuing character at that time, and was no different from dozens of other hapless scientists in Marvel’s monster comics who experienced something terrifying, learned an important lesson, and were never seen again. It was only later, when Stan Lee was launching his interconnected superhero universe, that he decided to revisit the character and turn him into a hero called Ant-Man.

The concept was considerably less daring and innovative than the rest of the Marvel heroes, inspired no doubt by the 1957 film The Incredible Shrinking Man and DC Comics’ own shrinking superhero, the Atom, who debuted about three months before Henry Pym did. Also Pym lacked the distinctive personality and rough edges that made Stan Lee’s other characters so compelling. Even the introduction of a female partner, the Wasp, and the concomitant attempt to inject the sort of flirty banter popularized by the Thin Man film series, did little to revitalize the property. Converting the lilliputian Ant-Man into the brobdingnagian Giant Man a year later was a clear sign that this was a series in search of its identity. If not for his role in the team book The Avengers, it seems likely that Henry Pym would have soon faded into obscurity. Instead, he developed into a hard-luck hero who hung in there through highs and lows unmatched by any other major Marvel character.

Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.

Let’s go under the microscope with… The True History of Ant-Man!


1960 – Henry Pym is finishing a three-year post-doc in biochemistry at Columbia University in New York. As a young man, Pym had always demonstrated a great talent for science, and ultimately chose to major in biochemistry at college with a minor in cybernetics, though his other interests included mechanical engineering, artificial intelligence, and robotics. A gifted student, Pym pursued an accelerated course of study and earned his doctorate while most of his peers were still undergraduates. At a faculty mixer, Pym meets the brilliant geneticist Pavel Trovay, and is instantly smitten with the professor’s daughter, Maria Trovaya. Pym is impressed to learn how they had escaped from Hungary during the failed revolution in 1956, after being arrested several times as political dissidents. Furthermore, he finds Maria to be intelligent, witty, and beautiful. She, in turn, is quite taken with the handsome and dedicated researcher, and they quickly fall in love.

Within a few months, Henry Pym and Maria Trovaya are married. Maria convinces her husband to take their honeymoon in her native Hungary, believing her new identity as “Mrs. Pym” will shield her from the secret police. Despite his reservations, Pym chooses not to disappoint his new bride and agrees to the plan. Upon arrival in Budapest, though, Maria is kidnapped at gunpoint by KGB agents. Pym is pistol-whipped and staggers to the American embassy to report the crime. An hour later, the ambassador receives word that Maria’s body has been found. She has been shot in the back of the head as an example to any who would seek to escape Hungary’s Soviet regime. Furthermore, a message from America reports that Professor Trovay has also been killed, in an explosion in his laboratory caused by sabotage. Pym goes out of his mind with rage and swears vengeance. Within a few days of his rampage, Pym finds himself in jail on the verge of a mental and physical breakdown. The State Department manages to negotiate his release, and Pym is sent home, where he sinks into a profound depression.

Eventually, Pym works through his depression to return to his laboratory, though he is now more hard-driven and his research more radical than ever before. His new theories are ridiculed by his peers as project after project ends in failure. Ostracized by the scientific community, Pym sets up a laboratory at his own house in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, overlooking the Palisades.

1961 – Henry Pym stumbles upon a subatomic particle with strange properties and educates himself in particle physics while continuing his experiments. He becomes obsessed with the idea that this particle could cause objects to change their physical size, and soon develops a liquid potion in which these particles are suspended. Then, after several successful preliminary experiments, Pym decides to test the size-changing potion on himself. However, the serum is more potent than he expected, and he finds himself rapidly shrinking to the size of an ant.

In a blind panic, Pym runs under the door of his house and falls off the step, landing on the front walk. He runs into the grass, where he sees a swarm of ants leaving their ant hill and heading toward him. In a desperate gamble, Pym tries to hide in the tunnels of the ant hill, only to become trapped in a store of honey. Strangely, one of the ants helps him out of the sticky trap. As the rest of the ants move in for the kill, Pym finds a matchstick and manages to light it. Using it as a torch, he fights his way back to the surface, but is soon backed up to the wall of his house with the ants closing in. Then, the friendly ant appears again and carries Pym up the wall to an open window. Inside, Pym reaches the antidote he had prepared and returns to normal size. Traumatized by his frightening experience, Pym destroys his potions and vows to pursue more practical inquiries.

A few weeks later, however, Pym thinks better of it and reformulates his two potions, keeping them locked in his wall safe. He also becomes obsessed with ants following his strange ordeal, and trains himself in the science of myrmecology.


January 1962 – After two months of studying the means by which ants communicate with each other, Henry Pym devises a cybernetic system he believes will allow him to tune in to the ants’ frequency. Preparing himself for another foray into the ant hill, Pym designs a protective outfit to wear, using a red jumpsuit and some blue rubber boots he had laying around.

February 1962 – Pym begins constructing a helmet containing his cybernetic communications system. With its two antennae and the mandible-like extensions on which the microphone is mounted, the silver helmet gives Pym an ant-like appearance when he puts it on. Pym finances his new project by accepting a government contract to work on developing a new anti-radiation gas. He is provided with four lab assistants for the project, but he conceals from them his work with ants. Later, Pym is incredulous when the new superhero team the Fantastic Four sets up its headquarters in nearby New York City and then saves the metropolis from the menace of the Sub-Mariner. The leader of the F.F., Reed Richards, is a scientist whom Pym holds in high regard.

March 1962 – Pym’s plans for another close encounter with the ants take a sudden turn when four Soviet spies burst into the lab and hold his assistants at gunpoint. They demand the formula for the anti-radiation gas, but Pym refuses. He then sequesters himself in his upstairs office while the spies ransack the laboratory. Infuriated that he is again being victimized by Communist agents, Pym dons his protective suit and cybernetic helmet, then splashes himself with the shrinking potion from the wall safe. He is immediately reduced to the size of an ant. Pym then escapes from the house and returns to the ant hill, where, through trial and error, he uses his helmet to recruit an army of ants. He leads them back to the laboratory, where the ants swarm over the spies, enabling Pym to free his assistants. They then subdue the hapless enemy agents while Pym slips back to his office to expose himself to the antidote liquid and change back into his normal clothes. When he returns to the lab, he finds his assistants have already called the FBI. Later, Pym begins to ponder the implications of what he has accomplished.

April 1962 – Realizing he now has the power to fight crime, tyranny, and injustice, Henry Pym decides to become a superhero called “the Ant-Man” as a way of honoring Maria’s memory. He refines his protective suit into a proper superhero costume and converts his size-changing serum into a gaseous form which he can carry in pressurized canisters on his belt. Furthermore, he builds a large computer to monitor and catalog the communications network of the millions of ants throughout the New York metropolitan area. The computer is based on a primitive artificial intelligence system he has been developing. Once he feels fully equipped, Ant-Man embarks on his crimefighting crusade. Within a few weeks, he has garnered an impressive reputation, as the public is fascinated by the diminutive hero and the authorities are grateful for his help.

May 1962 – Ant-Man’s reputation grows as he assists the Coast Guard in capturing the dangerous Soviet spy known only as Comrade X, revealing the espionage agent to be a woman disguised as a man. Next, he helps the police break a protection racket run by a masked man called the Protector, who has been victimizing the jewelry stores of Hackensack, New Jersey. With the help of the local ant population, Ant-Man tracks the Protector to his secret lair, overcomes the villain, and proves that his fearsome “disintegration ray” is a fake.

June 1962 – Ant-Man continues his war on organized crime, always frustrating the underworld’s attempts to eliminate him. His network of ants informs him of one such plot, hatched by the disgraced scientist Elihas Starr, better known by his nickname “Egghead.” Thus, Ant-Man is prepared for a trap when he goes to stop a jewel heist. The hero brawls with the gangsters until the police arrive to arrest them. However, Egghead manages to slip away and disappear into the night.

Shortly after, Ant-Man discovers a mutated scarlet beetle lurking in the sewers of Manhattan, which has gained human-level intelligence following exposure to radiation. Intending to conquer the world, the beetle traps the lone hero in a deep hole, then uses Pym’s enlarging gas to achieve gigantic proportions. It goes on a rampage in the city, causing extensive property damage, while its insect army attacks the human populace. Ant-Man escapes with the help of his loyal ants and lures the scarlet beetle into a toy store, where he manages to puncture his shrinking gas canister to reduce the beetle to its normal size. Back at his lab, Pym uses the anti-radiation gas he has been working on to undo the beetle’s mutations, thereby stripping it of its intellect. He then releases the creature back into the wild.

Unfortunately, Ant-Man’s victory over the scarlet beetle is not witnessed, and he is castigated in the media for failing to come to the rescue when the insects attacked. Following this public relations disaster, Pym accepts an offer from the publishers of the Fantastic Four comic book to do a series based on his exploits. He is soon informed that the first issue is due to hit the newsstands in September. Ant-Man then begins to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation when he helps nab the perpetrator of a series of payroll robberies at the Mitchell Armored Truck Co., unmasking the hijacker as the company’s owner, Howard Mitchell. Pym also redoubles his efforts against organized crime in New York and New Jersey, working closely with an FBI agent named Lee Kearns. Towards the end of the month, Ant-Man apprehends the traitorous research scientist Nathan Garrett before he can sell state secrets to the Red Chinese. However, Garrett makes bail and flees the country.

July 1962 – Henry Pym is the latest victim of a plot to kidnap leading scientists, and finds himself transported to an alien dimension. His strange-looking captors are ruled by a vicious warlord named Kulla, who has forced the earth scientists to construct a “death ray” weapon for him. Overcoming his initial amazement, Pym manages to change into Ant-Man, adjusting his cybernetic helmet to contact the indigenous insect population. With the help of the alien bugs, Ant-Man soon turns Kulla’s death ray against him and the warlord is disintegrated. With Kulla dead, the rebel faction storms the citadel and takes over. Assuming his civilian identity once more, Pym rejoins his fellow scientists to be returned to earth by the grateful leaders of the new regime.

Feeling lonely, and finding he has no one to talk about his adventures with, Pym begins to consider the possibility of taking on a sidekick. He decides to look into ways to equip such a crimefighting partner should the opportunity arise. He finds a promising new avenue of research with wasps, and over the next few weeks he makes some interesting discoveries.

Public opinion is suddenly turned against Ant-Man by the hypnotic vocal powers of the unscrupulous orator Jason Cragg, and the hero soon finds himself a hunted fugitive. Cragg’s irresistible commands nearly cause Pym to drown himself in the Hudson River, but the ants come to his rescue of their own accord. Days later, as Cragg prepares to use a television broadcast to make Ant-Man a pariah to millions of viewers, Pym hatches a desperate plan. Confronting Cragg at the TV studio, Ant-Man bluffs him with a prop gun set up offstage and forces Cragg to publicly retract his previous statements. After Cragg has done so, Ant-Man then releases some microbes he has stolen from a nearby hospital to infect Cragg’s throat and ruin his voice. Bereft of his superhuman power, Cragg is then run out of town by an angry mob.

Soon after, Ant-Man tracks down a villain calling himself the Time Master, who is threatening to turn his “aging ray” against the people of New York. Pym discovers him to be a disgruntled scientist named Elias Weems, who seeks revenge on society after losing his job for being “too old.” Confronting Weems in his apartment, Ant-Man tries to talk him out of his mad plan, but Weems turns his ray on the hero, changing him into a frail, elderly man. Despite his enfeeblement, Pym trails Weems to City Hall where the ants wrest the device from the mad scientist after he turns it on the unsuspecting crowd. Ant-Man then instructs a bystander how to operate the device to return everyone to normal. Weems is placed under arrest, and Pym is left with a new appreciation for his youthfulness.

August 1962 – At a preliminary hearing, Ant-Man offers testimony on Elias Weems’ behalf, seeking leniency since Weems acted only out of outrage against his unjust firing and the fear of losing his grandson’s respect. In light of his fantastic invention, Weems is offered his old job back, and so the judge sentences him to probation only. Leaving the courthouse, Pym feels he has accomplished a greater good than just sending an old man to jail.

Henry Pym receives a visit from eminent scientist Vernon Van Dyne, who has brought along his daughter Janet. Immediately, Pym is struck by the resemblance between Janet Van Dyne and his late wife, Maria. Dr. Van Dyne suggests collaborating on a project, but, seeing no correlation in their research areas, Pym declines. The Van Dynes take their leave, but Pym finds he can’t stop thinking about Janet, even though she seems very young to him. Later, he receives a phone call from a distraught Janet, saying her father has been killed. Pym initially dismisses it as a prank, but when his network of ants corroborates the story, he goes to investigate as Ant-Man.

In Van Dyne’s laboratory, Ant-Man deduces that Janet’s father must have inadvertently brought some alien menace to earth with his experiments. Janet is determined to avenge her father’s death, and Pym is impressed by her resolve, seeing the strength of character hidden beneath her debutante persona. Seizing his opportunity, he instructs her to report the crime to FBI agent Lee Kearns and then return to Henry Pym’s laboratory. She complies, and while racing back home, Pym learns from the ants that the alien has left behind traces of formic acid. When Janet arrives at his lab, Pym questions her to see if she could be a suitable partner. Satisfied by her answers, he reveals that he is Ant-Man and offers to turn her into a superheroine called “the Wasp.” She immediately accepts the offer, and the procedure begins at once. Pym implants specialized wasp cells in her body to give her wings and antennae when she is exposed to his shrinking gas. He also provides her with a black-and-red costume with canisters containing his size-changing gasses. Regarding herself in the mirror, Janet declares the Wasp is ready for action.

Ant-Man and the Wasp then race to the George Washington Bridge, which is being menaced by the creature that killed Vernon Van Dyne, and find it to be a gigantic gelatinous monster. The Wasp recklessly attacks the alien, but Ant-Man saves her as the monster shrugs off the military’s most advanced weapons. Pym hypothesizes that the creature is composed primarily of formic acid, and so they rush back to his laboratory to prepare a compound to neutralize the acid in the alien’s biochemistry. Replacing the gunpowder in a number of shotgun shells with the chemical he has prepared, Pym grabs his shotgun, and he and Janet catch up with the monster on Wall Street. As the gelatinous creature oozes by, Ant-Man opens fire on it, and the chemical succeeds in breaking down its body mass, killing it. After returning home, a triumphant Ant-Man calls Lee Kearns to report how he destroyed the monster, as well as announcing his new crimefighting partner, the Wasp. Janet is swept up by the excitement of it all and falls head-over-heels for Henry Pym. For his part, Pym is embarrassed by the emotions Janet stirs in him, and is also afraid to fall in love again and risk his heart being broken a second time.

In the days that follow, after Vernon Van Dyne’s funeral, the Wasp joins Ant-Man in his war against criminals. On one of their first cases together, the diminutive duo captures the international jewel thief Ramond Theis, recovering the Star of Ghana, one of the largest diamonds in the world. While returning the gem to its rightful owner, the crimefighters hear tales of the sorcerers of India, such as one who can hypnotize people with his magic flute, but they dismiss such stories of the occult. On their way home, Janet drags Pym to a jazz club to hear a trumpet-player called Trago. During a break in the set, however, Pym is almost relieved when they must don their costumes again to prevent Trago from stealing the manager’s cashbox. The manager agrees not to press charges if Trago will leave the country, and the luckless musician agrees to go. Satisfied, Ant-Man and the Wasp return home. A week later, Pym gets back at Janet by dragging her to a lecture on human/insect relations given by a zoologist named Carl Striker. It is a brilliant lecture, and even Janet enjoys it, though Striker seems unsettlingly familiar to Pym.

September 1962 – Henry Pym gets frustrated when the signals from his network of ants keep getting scrambled, and as a result he fails to prevent a major jewel heist. The next day, while he works to correct the problem, Janet attends another lecture by Professor Striker, this one specifically about wasps. However, that night, Ant-Man must rescue his new partner from Striker, whom he learns is really his foe Egghead, out for revenge. Egghead sets an aardvark on them, but Ant-Man defeats the animal with his disproportionate strength. Meanwhile, the Wasp finds a pin and uses it to “sting” Egghead and his cronies. In the end, the jewel is recovered and the accomplices arrested, but Egghead again manages to evade capture. Pym later chastises Janet for going off to investigate on her own, though overall he is happy with her performance.

Soon after, Ant-Man is invited to meet the Fantastic Four at their headquarters in the Baxter Building. After introductions are made, Reed Richards explains that each member of his team has inexplicably shrunk to tiny size for a brief period over the last several days. Ant-Man offers them a bit of his size-changing solutions and then returns home. A few days later, though, Ant-Man returns to the F.F.’s headquarters after all attempts to contact them fail. Finding traces of shrinking fluid, Pym realizes they must have shrunk to the point where they crossed over into a “microverse” dimension. He follows them, and as soon as he has appeared on the alien world, he is set upon by armored guards and beaten into unconsciousness. When he comes to, he finds himself the bound prisoner of the F.F.’s greatest enemy, Doctor Doom. As he is about to be sold into slavery to a race of lizard men, Ant-Man is rescued by the Invisible Girl, and they launch a counterattack. Doom flees as the Fantastic Four subdue the villain’s forces and return the rightful rulers to the throne. Then the five heroes expose themselves to the enlarging gas and are quickly returned to the Baxter Building. Ant-Man heads home having earned the Fantastic Four’s respect.

After a quiet couple of weeks, Janet gets bored and restless, so Pym suggests they take a vacation together. She chooses Greece as their destination, and two days later they arrive in the Mediterranean. While trying to charter a pleasure boat, they learn of a giant monster that’s been terrorizing the region, and so they decide to investigate. Out among the islands, they find a fifty-foot Cyclops straight out of mythology, which they soon discover to be a robot. The Cyclops leads them to a detachment of aliens from the planet Alpha Chiltar III, who are conducting experiments on captured humans in advance of their invasion of earth. While the Wasp frees the captives, Ant-Man gets inside the robot’s systems and turns it against the aliens. They flee to their ships and call off the invasion, believing earthmen to be too formidable. Ant-Man then directs the Cyclops to walk into the Aegean Sea until it is lost beneath the waves. Pym and Janet enjoy the rest of their vacation before returning to New Jersey.

Later, Ant-Man and the Wasp receive a radio message broadcast by the Teen Brigade asking for help finding the Hulk. Having heard of the green-skinned monster, they decide to check it out and make their way to the small town of Quemado, New Mexico. Once there, they find two other superheroes have also answered the call, Iron Man and Thor. The Wasp is instantly smitten with the so-called thunder god, but to her disappointment, Thor leaves suddenly. Ant-Man and Iron Man agree to team up and help in the search. Soon, Ant-Man’s network of ants locates the Hulk at a nearby traveling circus. The heroes’ efforts to reason with the Hulk fail, and the green behemoth destroys the circus tent and gets away. Ant-Man and the Wasp then catch up to the Hulk at an auto factory in Detroit, where he is battling Iron Man. The brawl carries them all into another installation next door, where Thor suddenly arrives with his evil half-brother Loki in tow, who is responsible for inciting the conflict. When Loki tries to escape, Ant-Man and his legion of ants trap the god of mischief in a lead-lined tank full of radioactive nuclear waste. Thor announces that he will return Loki to his prison in Asgard, but before they split up, the Wasp goads Ant-Man into suggesting the group continues to act as a team on a regular basis. When the others all agree to the idea, the Wasp suggests they call themselves “the Avengers.”

A few days later, Ant-Man and the Wasp attend the first official meeting of the Avengers, held at the Fifth Avenue mansion of Iron Man’s employer, industrialist Tony Stark. They arrive to find Stark’s butler, Edwin Jarvis, has fainted upon encountering the Hulk. The Wasp administers some smelling salts to bring him around. Pym is annoyed during dinner when Janet flirts with Thor shamelessly, though he realizes he has no claim on her affections. After dinner, she excuses herself when the men start to discuss the team’s organizational structure, charter, and by-laws, and Pym wonders if she is taking her own idea seriously.

October 1962 – At the next meeting of the Avengers, it becomes clear to Ant-Man that he and Iron Man are the only ones serious about drafting a proper charter and really getting the team off the ground. The Hulk and his teenage pal Rick Jones participate half-heartedly, Thor’s pronounced mood swings make him unpredictable, and the Wasp, who insists on acting flighty and flirty, seems more interested in the mansion itself than the team’s organizational work. Still, Pym manages to strike up a genuine friendship with the serious-minded Iron Man.

One evening, while Janet is hanging out in Pym’s laboratory, their quiet evening is shattered when Trago and his Magic Trumpet come on the radio and produce an overwhelming sonic effect that pummels them into unconsciousness. Upon recovering their senses, Ant-Man and the Wasp track Trago to the radio station that broadcast his uncanny music, recalling what they had learned about Indian sorcery during the summer. After a brief struggle, Ant-Man gets inside Trago’s trumpet and causes him to play the wrong notes, thereby breaking the magic spell. Trago instantly loses not only his powers, but his memory as well. Furthermore, everyone hypnotized by his trumpet also awakes with no memory of what happened. Under the circumstances, Pym decides to let Trago go free, seeing no way to prove he committed a crime.

Later, as Ant-Man and Iron Man use their records of defeating Soviet agents to negotiate with the government for special security clearance for the Avengers, Pym realizes that the diminutive Ant-Man will always be overshadowed by his more-powerful teammates. Fearing that he will become a liability – or worse, a joke – he sets out to improve his powers. Fueled partly by jealousy over the way the Wasp ogles Thor at their weekly meetings, Pym starts investigating the possibility of changing size in the opposite direction.

November 1962 – While the Wasp is laid up with the flu, Ant-Man goes it alone against an armor-wearing bank-robber calling himself the Porcupine, due to his quill-like weapons system. However, the Porcupine gets the better of him and leaves the hapless hero to drown in a bathtub, bereft of his cybernetic helmet and gas canisters. At the last moment, Ant-Man is rescued by the Wasp, but rather than feeling grateful, Pym is angry and mortified. His worst fears have been confirmed and his confidence shaken, and he becomes doubly determined to succeed in making himself giant-sized. Together, he and the Wasp manage to disable the Porcupine’s weapons, but to Pym’s frustration, the villain manages to escape nonetheless. Pym immediately returns to his lab and devotes himself to his experiments with his enlarging gas, and also works on refining his bulky cybernetic system so he can incorporate it into a cloth mask.

Soon after, Pym succeeds in turning himself into a giant. Unfortunately, his house is wrecked when his initial dosage of growing formula is too high and his body smashes through the walls. After the Wasp arrives, he finally manages to stabilize himself at twelve feet tall, and then reveals to Janet that he has also converted the size-changing gas to capsule form, replacing the pressurized canisters on their belts with capsule-ejecting cartridges. However, their conference is interrupted by an extraterrestrial kidnapper called the Living Eraser, who “erases” them by sending them into his own dimension with a device worn on his palm. On the strange world, Pym learns that he has once again joined several kidnapped scientists who are being coerced into building weapons of mass destruction by an alien despot. The Wasp, who has been hiding in the pocket of his lab coat, slips Pym a shrinking capsule, enabling him to escape his captors and get into his new costume. As soon as he gets outdoors, Pym grows to his full 12-foot height and attacks the aliens, calling himself “Giant Man.” Reveling in his newfound strength and power, Pym goes on a rampage, easily overcoming whatever his opponents throw at him. Though he is finally re-captured by the Living Eraser, Giant Man is again freed by the Wasp, giving him the opportunity to seize the transporter device. They use it to return all the kidnapped scientists to earth before returning home themselves. Subsequently, it takes the world several days to realize Ant-Man has adopted a new identity. In the meantime, Pym decides to write off his home in Englewood Cliffs as a total loss, and instead rents the top two floors of a building in Lower Manhattan.

Days later, Giant Man and the Wasp arrive for the first Avengers meeting for the month and interrupt an argument amongst the other members. Pym announces his change of identity to the team. During the meeting, the Hulk suddenly becomes more belligerent than ever, and finally smashes through the wall of the building and storms off. The frustrated Avengers adjourn, but Giant Man and the Wasp soon receive a radio message from Rick Jones at the local Teen Brigade headquarters. Jones reports that the Hulk has been replaced by an impostor, an alien plunderer called the Space Phantom. They find the Hulk and Iron Man brawling outside the Stark Industries plant in Flushing, Long Island and enter the fray. During the battle, the Space Phantom assumes Giant Man’s form, casting Pym into the dimension of Limbo, where the hero lies insensate for a brief time. When he comes to, Pym finds the Space Phantom has now taken Iron Man’s form. However, when the Wasp returns with Thor, the tide of the battle turns. The Space Phantom immediately tries to assume Thor’s enchanted form, but his power bounces back at him and he is himself cast into Limbo, where he is trapped. Though the Avengers are victorious, the Hulk is furious at the way the others have treated him and he angrily quits the team. The Wasp is glad to see him go, but Giant Man suggests that the green behemoth is now more dangerous than ever. Privately, Pym feels that he has finally held his own in a major battle.

Soon after, Pym’s ego gets a much needed boost by the formation of a Giant Man Fan Club, and he is all too happy to entertain its members at his Manhattan headquarters. However, he discovers a new set of problems when he attempts to stop the notorious criminal known as the Human Top from robbing a major downtown department store. While chasing the whirling super-villain across the city, Giant Man grows increasingly reckless and clumsy as his foe eludes him. Unaccustomed to maneuvering his 12-foot-tall form through the city streets, he nearly causes a traffic accident before losing the Human Top in the subway system. Frustrated, Pym returns home and begins an intensive training regimen, and also tries to increase his speed and reflexes by taking a chemical stimulant. When that fails, he builds a humanoid robot to mimic the Human Top’s movements. Still, his performance is poor and he begins to worry again that he can’t cut it as a superhero. When the Human Top appears again, Giant Man suffers a humiliating defeat, despite the help of the NYPD. Giant Man then attends a high-level meeting after the FBI is called in, following the Human Top’s theft of certain civil defense plans from the Federal Building, and manages to convince the authorities to give him one more chance. He cooks up an elaborate strategy to fence off the side streets near the site where the Human Top is due to rendezvous with the city’s top Soviet agent, and then coats his gloves with a strong adhesive. When the criminal shows up, Giant Man succeeds in driving him into the trap and apprehending him. As the Human Top is finally taken into custody, Pym is merely relieved that he didn’t blow it.

Deciding the Hulk is too dangerous to be allowed to run around loose, the Avengers return to New Mexico to capture him. However, the Hulk deals his former teammates an ignominious defeat and gets away on an eastbound train. Giant Man is especially frustrated by his poor showing during the fight, since he was knocked off the train when he hit his head on an overpass. After a fruitless search, the Avengers return to New York, where they learn the Hulk has joined forces with the Sub-Mariner to challenge the team to a showdown at the Rock of Gibraltar. They meet in the tunnels under the famous promontory, and while Thor battles the Hulk, Giant Man and Iron Man take on the Sub-Mariner. All of a sudden, though, the Hulk abandons the fray, and the Sub-Mariner, realizing he is outnumbered, flees to the ocean depths. Exhausted, the Avengers head for home.

A few days later, Giant Man and the Wasp chase down a costumed villain calling himself the Black Knight, who has been hijacking vehicles while flying on a winged horse. They find him attacking a helicopter high over New York Harbor. During the fight, Giant Man realizes the Black Knight is really the traitorous scientist Nathan Garrett, whom he apprehended months before. Trapping Giant Man with his steel-cable bolas, Garrett brags about the arsenal of unusual weapons he has developed, particularly his high-tech lance. Working together, Giant Man and the Wasp manage to disarm the Black Knight, then drive his horse down towards Coney Island. Garrett is thrown off the horse when the Wasp pinches the animal and lands atop a roller coaster, where Giant Man grabs him. Unfortunately, the Wasp gets into trouble trying to rein in the flying horse, and the Black Knight gets away when Giant Man leaps to her rescue. Returning home, Pym is frustrated that so many of his foes seem to escape capture.

Soon after, during a mishap at a charity event, Giant Man fractures his ankle, and finds he is stuck at giant-size until it heals. The Giant Man Fan Club comes to his headquarters to cheer him up. The young fans are dressed in home-made costumes of his many enemies, as depicted in the officially-licensed comic books, but among them is the real Porcupine, back for revenge. After sending the Wasp into a trap, the Porcupine gasses everyone with a powerful sedative. Giant Man manages to fight him off, but the Porcupine escapes. For the next several hours, Pym is frantic to find his kidnapped partner, but the Porcupine has managed to knock out the ant network. Finally, the Wasp returns, believing she has escaped, but the Porcupine suddenly attacks them. He has decided to steal their supply of size-changing capsules, and before Giant Man can stop him, the Porcupine swallows several of the pills, thinking he’ll become an invincible colossus. However, he discovers he has instead taken the shrinking formula, and is rapidly reduced to microscopic size. While resting his ankle, Pym theorizes that the Porcupine may even have crossed over into the Microverse.

The following week, Giant Man and the Wasp join the Avengers as they search the North Atlantic Ocean for the Sub-Mariner, who has been terrorizing coastal areas since his defeat at the Rock of Gibraltar. Near the Gulf Stream, the team discovers the body of a man in tattered Army fatigues drifting in the open ocean. Giant Man enters the airlock and pulls the soldier into the submarine. The Avengers make a startling discovery when the Wasp recognizes the colorful costume beneath the man’s rotted uniform as that of Captain America, the lost hero of World War II. To their astonishment, he is still alive, albeit in suspended animation, and Giant Man and Iron Man work to revive him. When he then awakes, the disoriented Cap reacts violently and scuffles with his rescuers. Finally, Captain America convinces them he is genuine, and they piece together what happened to him in the winter of 1945 and how he came to be preserved in ice for almost 18 years.

After docking at a pier in New York, the Avengers are startled by a blinding flash. When their senses clear, Giant Man and the Wasp find themselves with their teammates in a warehouse, facing Captain America and a green-hued extraterrestrial. Cap explains that the alien had turned the Avengers to stone as part of a deal with the Sub-Mariner, but the heroes agree to help the alien salvage his spaceship from the bottom of the ocean with no strings attached. And so, they travel to a small rocky island in the Atlantic, from which they raise the sunken craft. Suddenly, they are attacked by the Sub-Mariner and his elite guard. Giant Man is caught underwater, but quickly frees himself and joins the battle raging above, lending a hand as Iron Man takes on Namor in single combat while Thor battles his troops. When Namor reveals he is holding Rick Jones hostage, Captain America finally joins the fray. The battle comes to a sudden stop when the launching spaceship causes a massive shockwave that rocks the island. Namor leads his forces back to the sea, convinced his enemies will perish when the island sinks. Fortunately, the island is not completely destroyed, and as the dust settles, the Avengers invite Captain America to join the team.

For his first mission, the Avengers take Captain America out to New Mexico to search for the Hulk, only to learn that the green-skinned goliath has gone on a rampage in New York City. Racing back to their Fifth Avenue headquarters, the Avengers find the Hulk has defeated the Fantastic Four and has come to confront his former teammates, believing they have betrayed him. The Hulk suddenly attacks the entire team at once, but when he spots Rick Jones, he grabs the boy and smashes out of the building. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four converge on the Hulk down the street, but the two teams only trip each other up, allowing the Hulk to get away with Rick. Setting aside their pride, the two super-teams agree to work together, and they pursue the Hulk to a construction site, where they demolish a half-finished skyscraper. Despite the best efforts of the assembled heroes, the Hulk manages to dive into the river and escape. Though disappointed, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four part on friendly terms. Giant Man and the Wasp stop at Avengers Mansion to inspect the damage before returning home.

December 1962 – Giant Man must cut short a visit with his fan club when he and the Wasp are summoned to a high-level meeting at the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. There, government officials request that the duo travel to Costa Rica to investigate possible election fraud after a communist-supporting strongman known as “El Toro” has been elected president in a suspicious landslide victory. Honored to serve, they jet down to the Central American republic that very day. However, as soon as they arrive at the airport in San José, Janet is arrested. Pym changes to Giant Man but fails to rescue her after El Toro knocks him down from behind. The despot’s soldiers pursue him through the city, and Giant Man again curses his clumsiness as he tries maneuvering his 12-foot-tall body through the narrow streets. He escapes his pursuers atop a train that takes him to the Pacific coast. With the help of the local ant population, he soon finds Janet being held prisoner aboard a freighter anchored at a dilapidated port. After rescuing his partner, Giant Man and the Wasp return to the capital and attack El Toro at the Casa Presidencial, where they find evidence that the election was rigged. El Toro is ousted, and a proud Henry Pym celebrates with Janet Van Dyne as a new election is held. After a few days relaxing on the beach, they return home.

Soon after, Giant Man and the Wasp host another gathering of the Giant Man Fan Club, showing old newsreel films of their heroic exploits. But when they learn the Human Top has escaped from prison and robbed a bank, they dismiss their fans and race to the scene of the crime. Feeling pretty confident, Giant Man promises the bank manager that they will recover the stolen money. They then return to their headquarters to plan a strategy, only to be attacked by the Human Top, who has followed them back. The crook manages to snatch Pym’s canister belt and swallows a size-changing capsule, shooting up to twelve feet tall. Finding his enhanced size has increased the amount of wind he generates when he spins, the Human Top blows the still-normal-sized Pym into a closet. Locking the hero inside, the Human Top then traps the Wasp in a jar and kidnaps her. Furious, Pym has the ants bring him a shrinking capsule so he can get out of the closet and give chase. He soon catches up to the giant-sized Human Top and a rooftop battle ensues. When a roof collapses under the Human Top’s weight, the Wasp forces the stunned villain to swallow a shrinking capsule. The dazed villain is then returned to police custody. The next day, Pym brags about his victory to members of his fan club, though his insecurities are mounting.

Pym talks himself into buying a diamond engagement ring and plans to propose to Janet. However, he gets nervous and fumbles his words. In a ploy intended to make Pym jealous and thus spur him to action, Janet announces that her childhood friend, wealthy socialite Sterling Stuyvesant, will likely propose to her that very night. She leaves for Stuyvesant’s party, hoping Pym will follow her, but instead he goes into a fit of rage. After he has calmed down, he learns that the stage magician Stuyvesant hired to entertain his guests has instead robbed them and kidnapped Janet. When a city-wide search by the ants proves fruitless, Pym decides to bait a trap. He lures the kidnapper to a luxury yacht by advertising a charity gala in the newspaper, and confronts him as Giant Man. The crooked magician tries to escape aboard a blimp, but Giant Man pursues him and frees the captive Janet. They defeat the villain by crushing his blimp, and he is immediately picked up by the Harbor Patrol. Afterwards, Pym decides that he needs to sort out his feelings, and that his idea to propose to Janet was premature. He puts the ring away and says no more about it.

Days later, the Avengers assemble to investigate a series of disasters caused by powerful sound waves. Tracing the mysterious phenomenon to the New Mexico desert, they discover a gigantic rock slowly rising out of the ground. The rock proves to be the weapon of an advancing army of subterranean Lava Men. While his teammates fight off the Lava Men, Giant Man makes a thorough examination of the rock and determines a way to destroy it safely. Unfortunately, at that very moment, the Hulk attacks them, still intent on exacting his revenge. However, the Avengers manage to trick the green-skinned brute into striking the rock’s one vulnerable spot. The force of the resulting implosion stuns the Avengers, and by the time they recover their wits, the Hulk is gone. The defeated Lava Men retreat to their deepest caverns, and the Avengers return to New York.

Giant Man and the Wasp join their teammates in the Avengers in confronting a squad of super-villains, which includes the Black Knight, the Melter, and the Radioactive Man, when they wreak havoc by spraying a super-strong glue called Adhesive X all over town. Captain America is convinced that the mastermind behind the villains’ rampage is an old adversary from the Second World War, the Nazi scientist Baron Heinrich Zemo. After obtaining a powerful solvent from an incarcerated criminal known as Paste-Pot Pete, the Avengers decide to switch foes to gain a tactical advantage. Thus Giant Man goes after the Radioactive Man, but it is Iron Man who actually apprehends the villain before turning around and defeating the Melter as well. Pym is frustrated with his grandstanding teammate, and goes to help Captain America. Giant Man captures Baron Zemo’s pilot, who has no super-powers, but lets Zemo escape. It is only Cap’s quick thinking that prevents Zemo from getting the solvent he was after, by switching it with a canister of tear gas. Though forced to make an emergency landing, Zemo nevertheless manages to slip away before the police can capture him. Pym is disgusted with his poor performance, and begins to consider resigning from the team.

A week later, Giant Man and the Wasp participate in the Avengers’ first annual Christmas charity benefit. Though Janet is filled with the holiday spirit, Pym is glum as he continues to compare himself negatively to his teammates. Iron Man and Thor are so much more successful, he thinks, and Captain America is a living legend. He finally decides to hand in his resignation at the team meeting after the party. To his surprise, however, Iron Man announces he is stepping down as Avengers chairman, and the others elect Giant Man to assume those responsibilities. Heartened by his friends’ vote of confidence, Henry Pym vows not to let his teammates down.



Notes:

1960 – Henry Pym’s tragic relationship with Maria Trovaya is shown in Tales to Astonish #44, and later revisited in West Coast Avengers #33. The name of Maria’s father was never revealed, so I fashioned this one for my own convenience. “Trovaya” seems to be a rather unusual name, but may be the feminine form of the more common name “Trovay.” This leads me to assume that her father was a Russian who had settled in Budapest, where Maria grew up. There is often confusion over what organization was responsible for Maria’s execution, but it was without doubt the KGB, who took over for the disbanded Hungarian secret police following the failed revolution in 1956. In the real world, the United States did not maintain a diplomatic presence in Hungary in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and there was no ambassador to help people like Henry Pym. Apparently the situation was somewhat different in the Original Marvel Universe. Pym reflects on his college days in Avengers #227.

1961 – Pym’s discovery of his size-changing potions and his ant-hill adventure are featured in Tales to Astonish #27.

January-April 1962 – Henry Pym’s career as Ant-Man is chronicled in Tales to Astonish #35 and following. It is likely the general public found the teeny-tiny adventurer to be non-threatening, and this accounts for his atypically high level of acceptance and popularity among the superheroes of this period. However, the artificial intelligence computer Pym constructs to deal with the vast amounts of data generated by his ant communications network will eventually evolve into the killer robot Ultron, one of the greatest menaces to mankind ever constructed.

May 1962 – In the next issue, Ant-Man discovers the true identity of Comrade X by hiding inside her purse, and then defeats the spy by tying her shoelaces together. Then, while battling the Protector in Tales to Astonish #37, Ant-Man proves that he can fight his way out of a paper bag. Not the most auspicious debut for a major superhero.

June 1962 – Egghead, Pym’s most implacable nemesis, makes his debut in Tales to Astonish #38. The Scarlet Beetle, introduced in the following issue, will return to menace Pym again in an Ant-Man back-up story in Iron Man #44, of all places. The premiere issue of the Marvel Universe’s Ant-Man comic book can be seen in Fantastic Four #17. Lee Kearns will appear in later issues, when his relationship with Ant-Man is already established. Nathan Garrett will return as the villainous Black Knight in about five months. Although the beginning of Tales to Astonish #52 shows Garrett being captured by Giant-Man, the amount of time necessary for subsequent events places their initial meeting at this point in Pym’s career.

August 1962 – The Wasp is introduced in Tales to Astonish #44. It seems likely that Vernon Van Dyne had ulterior motives for contacting Pym – and for bringing along his flighty debutante daughter Janet – but his plans were abruptly cancelled when he was murdered by the creature from the planet Kosmos. As discussed in a previous post, Van Dyne may have been a member of the clandestine 12-member council that oversaw the creation of S.H.I.E.L.D., and would actually have been trying to recruit Pym as the group’s latest member. While vetting Pym, Van Dyne would certainly have noticed the resemblance between his daughter and Pym’s deceased wife, and so he took Janet along hoping that Pym would be intrigued enough to give Van Dyne another avenue of approach should Pym rebuff his initial offer. It is no coincidence, then, that Pym and Janet Van Dyne met, though her father could not have foreseen Janet’s transformation into a superheroine. When the Creature from Kosmos is on its rampage through Manhattan, the Fantastic Four have temporarily disbanded and are scattered across the country and Thor has returned to Asgard. The only other available superhero is Iron Man, and he may have been away on a business trip as Tony Stark. Thus only Ant-Man is present to deal with the “giant monster” crisis. As with the Black Knight, the amount of time necessary for subsequent events places the diminutive duo’s first encounter with Trago at the beginning of Tales to Astonish #47 at this point in the timeline.

September 1962 – Ant-Man joins the Fantastic Four in saving the Microverse from Doctor Doom in Fantastic Four #16. Then, Ant-Man and the Wasp become founding members of the Avengers in Avengers #1. The team’s first meeting can be seen in the flashbacks in Avengers #280. While the Avengers are off searching for the Hulk, the Sub-Mariner invades New York, as seen in Fantastic Four Annual #1. The FF have dealt with the situation by the time the Avengers get home.

October 1962 – Ernie Hart, who scripted the tale of Trago, the Evil Jazz Trumpeter (under the pseudonym H.E. Huntley), clearly took the path of least resistance when coming up with names for his Indian characters, deriving “Nehradu” and “Ghazandi” from Nehru and Gandhi, the two most famous citizens of India of his day. I get the sense from Pym’s comments at the jazz club that he is probably a big fan of Perry Como and guys like that. Henry Pym reminisces about his early days with the Avengers in Avengers #227.

November 1962 – Tales to Astonish #48 proves to be the final adventure for Ant-Man, as Pym adopts his new identity as Giant Man in the following issue. It is also around this time that the Wasp starts calling him “Hank” instead of Henry, in an attempt to get him to loosen up. Most likely he’s been called Henry his whole life up to this point. The Avengers battle the Space Phantom in Avengers #2, and the unconscious Giant Man is found lying in Limbo by the Wasp’s future self in Avengers #267. Then, in Tales to Astonish #50, Pym meets his other great nemesis, the Human Top, later known as Whirlwind, who would plague him throughout his career. After finding Captain America in Avengers #4, Giant Man and the Wasp participate in the first big Marvel crossover event, as chronicled in Fantastic Four #25-26 and the brief wrap-up scene at the beginning of Avengers #5.

December 1962 – Costa Rica is fictionalized as “Santo Rico” in Tales to Astonish #54. Costa Rica did hold a presidential election in the spring of 1962, though events obviously unfolded a bit differently in the Original Marvel Universe. Pym’s battle with the eminently forgettable villain called the Magician occurs in Tales to Astonish #56. The rogues gallery created for Ant-Man / Giant Man is unrivaled in its lameness. The Avengers’ first encounter with Baron Zemo’s Masters of Evil brings us up to Avengers #6. Pym later claims that he long considered retiring from the Avengers before he actually did it in Avengers #16, but fate conspired to keep him on the team.


OMU Note: Henry Pym’s final canonical appearance was in Avengers #338. The final canonical appearance of the Wasp was in Avengers West Coast #74.


Next Issue: The Sentinel of Liberty!

OMW: Jennifer Kale

Another in our continuing series featuring the OMW (Obscure Marvel Women) of the OMU (Original Marvel Universe). This is the story of a very young girl and some very old magic, a girl who, despite growing into one of the most powerful practitioners of white magic on earth, never quite received her due.

Jennifer Kale was born in 1950 in Citrusville, Florida. When she was four years old, her brother Andy was born. At some point in her early teens, Jennifer and Andy were orphaned and went to live with their grandfather, Joshua Kale, at his remote farmhouse in the swampland outside Citrusville. Jennifer was fascinated with her grandfather’s many magic talismans and mystic texts, even though her growing interest in the occult led to her being ostracized by her schoolmates. Jennifer heard the rumors about a mysterious swamp monster called the Man-Thing, and believed him to be a creature of magic. Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, Jennifer convinced Andy to help her steal her grandfather’s most sacred text and attempt casting a spell out in the swamp. Unfortunately, despite her inexperience, Jennifer managed to conjure up a powerful demon called Thog, the Nether-Spawn, who then sought to punish them for their impudence. Following a battle in a local movie theater, Thog was defeated by the Man-Thing, who had been drawn into the conflict by his empathic abilities. Jennifer was shaken by the experience and felt deeply ashamed of the trouble she had caused.

A few days later, Jennifer confessed to her grandfather what she had done, but Joshua Kale realized that his sacred text, the Tome of Zhered-Na, could never summon an evil being such as Thog; therefore the true Tome must have been stolen previously and a book of black magic left in its place. Furthermore, he revealed to Jennifer that he was the leader of a sorcerous cult that traced its history back 20,000 years to the time of ancient Atlantis, and that their purpose was to guard the Nexus of All Realities, a pan-dimensional crossroads located within the swamp. Seeking revenge, Thog then kidnapped the Kale family, along with Jennifer’s boyfriend Jaxon, and tried to force the Man-Thing to kill them all. However, Jennifer managed to foil his evil scheme when she discovered she had formed a psychic link with the Man-Thing.

The Kales soon learned that the Tome of Zhered-Na had been stolen to render the cult powerless in the face of an invasion of earth by the forces of Thog’s infernal realm, called Sominus. They recognized the corrupting influence of the extradimensional demons when a wave of bizarre, violent behavior swept the globe. Jennifer accompanied the cult into the swamp as they attempted to find the Tome through mystical means, but suddenly found herself transported with the Man-Thing to a strange world. There she met the wizard called Dakimh the Enchanter. The Man-Thing was sent to fight that world’s greatest gladiator, Mongu, in the arena. When the muck monster prevailed and Jennifer proved her defiant spirit, Dakimh sent both of them back to earth. Later, the wizard appeared to Jennifer and revealed his true motives. Dakimh was in fact the last of the ancient disciples of Zhered-Na, made immortal by her two hundred centuries ago, and was one of the founders of Joshua’s ancient cult. He recruited Jennifer to accompany the Man-Thing on a mission to retrieve the stolen Tome, and when she agreed, Dakimh transformed her clothes into the sacred raiment of a priestess of Zhered-Na. Together, the Man-Thing and Jennifer succeeded in finding the Tome and stopping the demonic invasion.

Following the defeat of the demons of Sominus, however, Jennifer’s psychic link with the Man-Thing appeared to have been broken, and throughout the summer that followed, she felt depressed and anxious. She was plagued by nightmares that grew steadily more intense, and her relationship with Jaxon became strained as she retreated into herself. Jennifer’s condition continued to worsen after starting back to school in the fall, and Joshua began to fear for her sanity. Finally, in November, Dakimh returned to reveal what was happening to her, explaining that the cosmic balance that prevents the multiplicity of alternate dimensions from colliding with each other had been disrupted. Jennifer’s psychic potential had caused her to project her astral self into the Nexus of All Realities while she slept, where she experienced the dimensional chaos firsthand. Sensing her great potential as a sorceress, Dakimh then proposed to make Jennifer his apprentice, and impart to her all the mystical knowledge he had amassed during his 20,000 years of existence. With her grandfather’s blessing, Jennifer accompanied Dakimh to his lonely citadel, the Castle in the Sky, located in a realm known only as the Land Between Night and Day, where she once again donned her ceremonial garb.

Before her lessons could begin, though, the castle was attacked by a band of tyrants seeking to take advantage of the dimensional chaos to gain dominion over all reality. Jennifer was taken prisoner and brought to the council chamber of the so-called Congress of Realities to be executed. However, at the critical moment, she was rescued by Dakimh, who charged her and his other recruits, Man-Thing, Korrek the Barbarian, and Howard the Duck, with setting right the cosmic axis and restoring the normal structure of reality. They journeyed into the Nexus, but their efforts were disrupted when the Congress of Realities charged through the Nexus to invade the dimension of Therea, a pastoral paradise which stood in direct opposition to the hellish Sominus. The villains’ leader was then revealed to be Thog, the Nether-Spawn, but he was again defeated by the Man-Thing in hand-to-hand combat. Bereft of Thog’s leadership, the Congress of Realities fled, allowing Dakimh to repair the structure of reality. Jennifer accompanied Dakimh back to the Castle in the Sky to begin her training in the arts of sorcery.

Jennifer studied under Dakimh for one full year, until Korrek returned to enlist their aid in reclaiming the throne his enemies had usurped during his brief sojourn on earth. Despite the Man-Thing’s help, the battle proved too strenuous for Dakimh’s ancient body, and he collapsed and died. Devastated by the loss of her mentor, Jennifer returned to the Kale family farm, where Dakimh’s body was buried. Furthermore, with her lessons barely begun, Jennifer lacked the knowledge to send Korrek home, and so the barbarian moved in with the Kales. Realizing that she had dropped out of high school to study with Dakimh, Jennifer felt completely adrift. She was overjoyed then, two months later, when Dakimh reappeared in a ghostly form, claiming that death was little impediment to a true master of sorcery. After sending Korrek home to his own dimension, Dakimh took Jennifer back to the Castle in the Sky to continue her education. A few months later, she celebrated her eighteenth birthday.

In February 1969, after her second year of training, Dakimh sent Jennifer to once again join forces with Man-Thing, Korrek, and Howard the Duck. Their mission this time was to stop a semi-demonic being called Bzzk’joh from spreading his vile influence throughout the universe. Though she was kidnapped and held prisoner by Bzzk’joh, Jennifer was soon rescued by her friends and they returned home triumphant. Shortly afterwards, however, while studying the Nexus, Jennifer and Dakimh were assaulted by the demonic entity known as D’Spayre. For several weeks, D’Spayre held them prisoner in the swamp and tried to corrupt their souls and make them slaves to his evil will. Though they resisted his malign influence, the cost, particularly to Dakimh, was great, for his spirit form could exist on the mortal plane for only limited amounts of time before he needed to retreat to Therea to rejuvenate himself. They were ultimately rescued by Spider-Man and the Man-Thing, who overcame D’Spayre, but Dakimh was so greatly weakened that he could no longer serve as Jennifer’s teacher. After promising to return one day, Dakimh disappeared, leaving Jennifer to her own devices. She went home to Citrusville, intending to continue her studies on her own.

However, that summer, Jennifer was again captured and held prisoner for several weeks, this time by the evil sorcerer Baron Mordo, who planned to open a portal that would unleash a demon horde upon the earth. Mordo’s intent was to use the Man-Thing, Jennifer, Andy, Joshua, Jaxon, and several others as human sacrifices to power his spell. All Jennifer’s attempts to escape or resist Mordo’s power proved futile. When the ritual finally began, Jennifer and the Man-Thing found themselves shackled to the center of a circular dais within an eldritch tower, her family and friends chained naked to obsidian slabs all around them. Though Jennifer dared to hope that deliverance was at hand when Doctor Strange, earth’s Sorcerer Supreme, stormed the temple, his fight with Mordo carried them into another dimension. The victims were thus left undefended as a crystalline gateway began to open and a great demon hand reached out and snuffed out the lives of its victims one by one. Jennifer watched in horror, begging the Man-Thing not to honor his Faustian bargain with Mordo. Finally, the demon hand reached Jennifer and reduced her to a desiccated skeleton. Moments later, though, Jennifer found herself restored to life, along with the other sacrificial victims. Doctor Strange appeared and explained that Mordo was defeated and when the spell was broken uncompleted, the demon was forced to return the lives it had stolen. Doctor Strange encouraged Jennifer in her studies, but unnerved by her experience, she returned home with her family and debated whether to continue her occult education.

During that autumn, Jennifer worked to complete her G.E.D., and distanced herself from the mystic arts. Disappointed in his sister, Andy fell in with a bad crowd, a local motorcycle gang. Joshua became very disheartened. Then, in January 1970, Jennifer was sought out by a young woman named Barbara Bannister, who had heard the local lore that Jennifer was a witch. Bannister’s boyfriend, local sheriff John Daltry, had disappeared after falling victim to some sinister magic force, and Jennifer agreed to try to locate him. Her search was interrupted when the motorcycle gang attacked the Kale farm, looking to kill Andy for betraying them, but the bikers were routed by the Man-Thing and a mysterious stranger named John Kowalski, who turned out to be a modern-day Grim Reaper.

Soon after, Sheriff Daltry turned up, dressed as a pirate, and captured Jennifer with the power of his enchanted cutlass. She was transported to Sominus, where she found other mystics had also been taken prisoner, including Doctor Strange and a severely weakened Dakimh. To their surprise, Barbara Bannister came to the rescue, transformed by Kowalski into an angel of death. Daltry summoned his dread master, who turned out to be Thog, the Nether-Spawn, still seeking revenge on Man-Thing and the Kales. Despite his best efforts, Thog was again defeated by the Man-Thing, allowing Doctor Strange and Dakimh to transport all present back to the Kale farmyard. Jennifer’s reunion with Dakimh proved brief, as he immediately bid her farewell once again and withdrew to Therea.

Doctor Strange commended Jennifer on her progress, and she struck up an acquaintance with the other mystics who had been captured, the gypsy sorceress Margali Szardos and her daughter Jimaine, also known as Amanda Sefton. Inspired by their example, Jennifer resumed her study of the mystic arts and set up the attic in the farmhouse as her sanctum sanctorum. Doctor Strange assisted her with constructing the necessary mystic defenses to protect herself and her family. Jennifer then spent the next five years studying and practicing sorcery at home, while also exploring the Nexus of All Realities and assisting the Man-Thing in his role as its guardian. With access to over 20,000 years of mystical knowledge, she grew into one of the most formidable wielders of magic on earth, though she intentionally kept a low profile.

However, in 1975, while investigating an unnatural maelstrom swirling through the swamp, Jennifer met the superhero known as Quasar, who was quite smitten with her. Together they battled the super-villain Quagmire, who used the Man-Thing’s body as a conduit through which to escape his home dimension. Following Quagmire’s defeat, Quasar asked Jennifer for a date and she agreed. Though their relationship was brief, it was through Quasar that Jennifer met other members of the superhero community, and she gradually established a reputation as a powerful sorceress. In time, she returned to the Land Between Night and Day and claimed the Castle in the Sky as her own.


First Appearance: Adventure Into Fear #11

Final Appearance: Marvel Comics Presents #29



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