The Wastebasket

OMU: Spider-Man -- Year Two

2011-12-13T07:42:00.002-06:00

The next twelve months in the life of Spider-Man cover the remainder of co-creator Steve Ditko’s tenure on the title as primary plotter and sole artist, as well as the early issues of Ditko’s replacement, John Romita. As has been widely discussed in fan circles, Ditko became increasingly disenchanted working at Marvel in general and with scripter/editor Stan Lee in particular, and eventually terminated his association with the company.

However, a legend has grown up that Ditko quit The Amazing Spider-Man after an argument with Stan Lee over how to reveal the Green Goblin’s secret identity. The tale is told that Stan Lee insisted on the villain being a familiar face to satisfy readers’ expectations, while Ditko’s unbending personal philosophy dictated that the “face of evil” be anonymous. This legend has been pretty well debunked, though it never really seemed to hold water in the first place. First of all, it’s unlikely there was any “argument” between Lee and Ditko, since they were no longer on speaking terms by this time, dealing with each other through an intermediary, production manager Sol Brodsky. Lee has discussed how Ditko would turn in finished pages of art without any marginal notes to guide Lee, leaving him to puzzle out the story while writing the script. The best example of the problem with this situation is the confusion over who some costumed hijackers were working for in issues #30–31. Lee clearly had no idea where the book was heading or what Ditko was planning to do with the characters, but since sales were strong, he was content to let Ditko lead the way. For them to suddenly argue over a specific plot point would require a drastic change in their working relationship, and no one has ever claimed this took place.

Furthermore, Ditko had just done the “villain is revealed to be some unknown guy” routine with the Looter in #36, and was, I think, unlikely to repeat himself with the Green Goblin. In issue #37, he is clearly setting up Norman Osborn as a crafty villain who would bedevil Spidey again. Issue #38 would be Ditko’s last, so we’ll never know what he would have done had he continued. Unlike the grand finale Ditko provided for the “Doctor Strange” feature, the end of his run on Spider-Man offered no sense of resolution.

In the very next issue, Stan Lee took back control of the book and began altering Ditko’s status quo. Harry Osborn, who had so far treated Peter with nothing but contempt, suddenly became his friend. And the mysterious Green Goblin, whose face Ditko had made a point of never showing, ripped off his own mask to reveal himself as a crazed Norman Osborn. Within four months, Lee and Romita also revealed the face of Mary Jane Watson, ending one of Ditko’s long-running visual gags. It’s easy to see how fans assumed there had been a power struggle behind the scenes, which Ditko lost.

Other than a few cryptic comments, Steve Ditko has not, as yet, explained his true reasons for quitting Marvel Comics in 1966. Where the “Green Goblin argument” myth originated is not clear.

Nevertheless, this chronology covers a time of tremendous change in the life of Peter Parker which has never been equaled. He graduates from high school and enters college, moves out of his childhood home into a shared apartment in the city, and endures a painful breakup with his first love. This is the year that Peter Parker becomes an adult.

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 spinning out more of… The True History of the Amazing Spider-Man!

January 1963 -- Peter Parker begins the second semester of his senior year in high school, along with classmates Flash Thompson and Liz Allan. Liz continues to flirt with Peter, much to Flash’s annoyance, but Peter remains committed to his rocky relationship with Betty Brant. In the late evenings, Peter continues to sneak out of the house in Forest Hills, Queens, where he lives with his Aunt May, to patrol New York City as Spider-Man. Selling photos of Spider-Man’s exploits to the Daily Bugle newspaper remains Peter’s sole source of income, which helps Aunt May make ends meet.

Peter learns that the internationally-renowned Kraven the Hunter, who normally deals in traditional big game hunting, has chosen Spider-Man as his latest prey. During their initial skirmish, Kraven scratches Spider-Man with a poison claw that makes his hands tremble uncontrollably. The effect lasts throughout the next day, causing problems for Peter at school. The following night, Spider-Man tracks Kraven to Central Park, where they have a major battle. Spidey overcomes Kraven’s attempts to handicap him and captures his foe, also bagging Kraven’s accomplice, the Soviet spy known as the Chameleon. Peter sells photos of their arrest to Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson, soon after which the pair is deported.

Peter’s social life is complicated when Aunt May insists he go on a blind date with Mary Jane Watson, the niece of their elderly neighbor Anna Watson. Not interested in meeting someone new, Peter does his best to avoid Mary Jane, assuming from Aunt May’s description that she must be a homely girl. Nevertheless, the mere presence of Mary Jane and Liz in his life disrupts Peter’s relationship with Betty, who is very insecure.

When Peter sees a circus poster claiming that Spider-Man will be making a personal appearance, he decides it might be good publicity to go ahead and do the show. However, he soon discovers that it is all a scheme by the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime to boost attendance at their felonious carnival. Finding himself hypnotized by the Ringmaster’s mind-control technology, Spidey is forced to battle the superhero Daredevil, who appears unexpectedly at the scene. Daredevil proves to be immune to the Ringmaster’s hypnotism and manages to free Spidey from his trance. Enraged, Spider-Man defeats the entire Circus of Crime singlehandedly while Daredevil applauds his remarkable fighting skill.

After a close encounter with the fast-flying Thor, Spider-Man searches the city for his old foe Doctor Octopus, who has escaped from prison. While walking down the street in his civilian guise, Peter’s spider-sense alerts him to a suspicious character, but before he can follow the man, Peter is accosted by Flash Thompson and his pals. Flash challenges Peter to a fight, angry that Liz has been paying so much attention to Peter lately. Peter dodges Flash’s punches for a minute or two, then takes the opportunity to slip away when the fight is interrupted by a mysterious man in a dark blue cape. Peter quickly changes into Spider-Man and pursues the suspicious character, only to witness the man suddenly dissolve into a pile of empty clothes. Confused, Spidey heads home for dinner. When he arrives, though, he finds Aunt May in the attic, looking tearfully at old photos of his Uncle Ben. Overwhelmed with guilt and sadness, Spidey wanders the rooftops of Manhattan, brooding over how a single act of irresponsibility on his part cost Uncle Ben’s life. Suddenly, he stumbles and falls, shocked to discover that all his spider-powers are gone. Clinging precariously to a flagpole, Spidey watches helplessly as the Fantastic Four pass by in their Fantasti-Car. Though they see him, they offer no help, clearly assuming he is just clowning around. Peter saves himself and slowly makes his way home.

The next day, Peter skips school and wanders the city, confused, distracted, and depressed. By chance, he witnesses Giant-Man and the Wasp apprehend a gang of criminals at the waterfront, which makes him realize how much being Spider-Man meant to him. Later that day, Peter learns from Jameson that Aunt May and Betty Brant have been kidnapped by the Sandman and Electro. Suddenly, the Vulture appears in the window, instructing Jameson to publish a challenge to Spider-Man from the Sinister Six. Peter realizes that Doctor Octopus would know Spider-Man fought for Betty Brant twice before, and must be the mastermind behind the conspiracy. Aunt May was clearly just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Distraught, Peter realizes that Spider-Man must attempt to rescue them, even without his super-powers.

Following the Vulture’s instructions leads Spidey into a battle with Electro at Stark Industries, just about five miles from the Parker home. During the confrontation, Spidey realizes he hasn’t lost his powers after all; it was merely a psychosomatic reaction to his loss of self-confidence. Emboldened, Spidey defeats Electro just as Iron Man shows up to investigate the ruckus. Leaving Iron Man to deal with the unconscious Electro, Spidey moves on to defeat Kraven the Hunter again at Flushing Meadows Park, three miles away, where the new World’s Fair is under construction. This leads Spidey into a fight with Mysterio and his robotic doppelgangers of the X-Men, followed by a struggle with the Sandman inside an air-tight trap. Finally, Spidey faces the Vulture in aerial combat, and forces the villain to reveal the location of Doc Ock’s hideout. There, in a large manor house on eastern Long Island, Spidey captures Doctor Octopus and frees May and Betty, who spent their period of captivity quite comfortably in a well-appointed sitting room. The police soon arrive and take Aunt May home, where she claims to have found her infamous “host” to be very charming, giving Peter and Betty a chuckle. Later, Spidey swings by the city jail, hoping that Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Sandman, Electro, Mysterio, and Kraven the Hunter will all remain safely in police custody.

Spider-Man is suddenly attacked one day by Giant-Man and the Wasp, and their conflict goes on in cat-and-mouse style for quite some time before they realize they were tricked into fighting each other by the criminal mastermind known as Egghead. Giant-Man leads them to a warehouse on the Hudson River, where they find Egghead has just committed a major heist. Together the heroes apprehend Egghead and his gang and turn them over to the police. Spidey is irritated by the Wasp’s negative attitude toward him and departs in a huff, leaving the two Avengers to get all the credit for Egghead’s capture.

Peter learns that Flash Thompson is organizing a Spider-Man Fan Club, and they will be holding their inaugural event at a posh Manhattan supper club owned by Liz Allan’s father. Flash is hopeful that Spider-Man will make a public appearance to support his fans, and Peter thinks it would be a good idea, especially in light of some recent public blunders. His decision is confirmed when he witnesses the Human Torch being cheered and congratulated after helping the police catch an armed robber. Plus, as it turns out, the event will allow him to put off meeting Mary Jane Watson. At the event, Spidey is surprised by the large turnout, although the audience includes detractors such as J. Jonah Jameson and the Human Torch. Unfortunately, his performance is interrupted by the Green Goblin, and Spidey tries hard to make the attack seem like part of the show, to prevent a panic. During the fight, however, Spidey overhears the maître d’ taking a phone message that Peter Parker’s aunt has been hospitalized. Frantic with worry, Spider-Man races out of the club, certain that the Human Torch can finish off the Goblin. Arriving at the hospital, Peter learns that Aunt May has suffered a major heart attack and is in surgery. He spends the rest of the night in the hospital waiting room. The next morning, Aunt May’s condition is stable, and after visiting hours, Peter finally returns home. He is thoroughly disgusted to find the media is abuzz with the story of Spider-Man’s “cowardice,” even though the Human Torch let the Green Goblin escape.

In the days that follow, Aunt May is released from the hospital, and Peter forgoes being Spider-Man to stay home and take care of her, with Anna Watson helping out while Peter’s at school. Worried about raising money to pay for Aunt May’s medical expenses, especially after a gloating Jameson claims he will buy no more photos of Spider-Man, Peter goes out as Spidey only to try finding other sources of income. He offers an exclusive contract to a trading card company, but they are not interested due to Spidey’s poor public image. He tries selling the formula for his web fluid to a glue manufacturer, but they reject it upon learning that it completely evaporates after one hour. On the way home, Spidey is chased by a jeering Sandman, who has already escaped from jail. Unwilling to risk a confrontation, Spidey refuses to fight the villain, which bolsters the claims that Spider-Man is a coward. Peter sinks into a profound depression and is ready to give up being Spider-Man forever, until Aunt May chastises him for moping and worrying so much about her. Inspired by his aunt’s gumption, Peter rededicates himself to doing good as Spider-Man. He goes out later that night for a very successful campaign of crime-fighting. Renewed in spirit, Spider-Man publicly redeems himself the very next day by rescuing the Human Torch from the Sandman, the Enforcers, and their henchmen. The crooks are taken into custody and Spidey and the Torch part on amicable terms, sharing credit for the capture. After selling photos of the battle to Jameson for a premium price, Peter is feeling so good that he is even gracious when Betty introduces him to a man she’s been dating, reporter Ned Leeds.

February 1963 -- A few days later, Peter realizes that J. Jonah Jameson has hired a private eye named Mac Gargan to follow him around for some reason. He decides to find out what Jameson is up to, but he is distracted when Betty asks him to accompany her to Idlewild Airport to see Ned Leeds off. Peter is happy to learn that Ned is going to be on assignment in Europe for the next six months, since he won’t have to compete for Betty’s affections. As soon as he is back in Manhattan, Spider-Man is attacked outside the Daily Bugle by a new villain called the Scorpion. They brawl on a rooftop while Jameson cheers on the Scorpion from his office window. The Scorpion manages to overpower Spidey twice, knocking him out both times, before their final battle in the Daily Bugle offices. There, Spidey is finally able to defeat his murderous foe by webbing his feet to the floor and ripping his scorpion-tail weapon off the back of his body armor. Jameson is somewhat conflicted that Spider-Man has just saved his life, and Peter is not surprised later when he finds Jameson has claimed the credit for capturing the Scorpion. Though Peter watches carefully for several days, Mac Gargan seems to have disappeared.

After spotting a Spider-Man impostor entering Avengers Mansion with Captain America, Spidey listens in on the argument between the impostor and Cap, Thor, Giant-Man, and the Wasp. He hears the impostor claim that Iron Man is being held prisoner at the famous Temple of Tirod in Mexico and realizes the Avengers are racing into a trap. He makes his way to Idlewild Airport, changes into Peter Parker, and buys a plane ticket for Mexico City, using up a good chunk of his savings. By the time Spidey arrives at the remote temple, the impostor has already defeated Giant-Man, Wasp, and Thor. Spidey saves Captain America from falling to his death, then attacks the impostor, who turns out to be a highly sophisticated robot. Spidey manages to outwit his computerized foe, leaving it smashed to pieces on the jungle floor. Spidey then races back to civilization to catch his return flight to New York. He is annoyed later when the Avengers make no attempt to thank him.

While running some errands on a Saturday afternoon, Peter helps out a pretty teenaged girl named Doris Evans, after she gets jostled by some roughneck children. Finding Doris has lost her billfold, Peter takes it to her house to return it to her. Doris is very friendly and invites him in for a Coke, and they seem to hit it off. Peter is feeling on top of the world when he meets up with Betty Brant to do some window shopping, but his mood is spoiled when the Human Torch suddenly accosts him, explaining that Doris Evans is his girlfriend. Betty is crushed to hear that Peter was hitting on some other girl, and Peter is furious with the jealous Torch for causing problems. He decides to get even by making a play for Doris as Spider-Man. However, as soon as he arrives at the Evans home, Spidey is attacked by the Beetle, an old foe of the Torch, and their battle causes a good deal of property damage. When the Beetle spots Doris, he grabs her as a hostage and flies away. Spidey pursues him, and is soon intercepted by the Torch, who assumes Spidey has kidnapped Doris. Spidey leads the Torch to the Beetle, and the two heroes attack the villain independently. Although they end up getting in each other’s way more than cooperating, Spidey and the Torch manage to defeat the Beetle and rescue Doris. She accuses Spider-Man of being in league with the Beetle, causing Spidey to take off, feeling angry, frustrated, and dejected.

The following weekend, Spidey happens upon the Human Torch arriving for a party at Doris Evans’ house. Still angry with the Torch because Betty has refused to speak to him all week, Spidey decides to crash the party. The kids jeer Spider-Man, knowing he recently wrecked the place, and the Torch tries to drive him away. Their fight takes them to a nearby beach, where the Torch’s teammates intervene. Spidey briefly tussles with Mister Fantastic and the Thing until the Invisible Girl stops the fight. Fed up with celebrity superheroes, Spider-Man swings off back to the city.

March 1963 -- While Peter is visiting the campus of SUNY Hegeman, he once again runs into the Human Torch and the Thing. The Torch remembers him as the kid who tried to hit on Doris last month, and they trade insults. Peter decides that if the Human Torch is planning to go to that school, then he won’t enroll there.

A few days later, Peter and Betty finally make up and attend the opening of an art exhibition sponsored by J. Jonah Jameson. Unfortunately, the gallery is robbed by the Ringmaster’s Circus of Crime. Spidey tracks down the Ringmaster, only to learn that he’s been dumped by his gang, which is now being led by the crafty Clown. Cursing his luck, Spidey hypnotizes the Ringmaster with his own device, forcing him to reveal the likely hideout of his former cronies. Upon arrival at the warehouse where the circus is storing its equipment for the winter, Spidey easily defeats the Clown, Ernesto and Luigi Gambonno, and the Cannonball, but has a very difficult time apprehending their latest recruit, Princess Python, since he’s reluctant to hit a woman. Finally, the police arrive and capture her, along with the Ringmaster and the rest of the gang. Peter later sells photos of the arrest to the Daily Bugle.

Peter and Aunt May commemorate the first anniversary of Uncle Ben’s death.

Spidey feels insulted when he is not invited to the engagement party for Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Girl, especially when he learns the Avengers and the X-Men will all be there. Realizing he is persona non grata due to the incidents with Doris Evans, Spidey nevertheless swings by the Baxter Building and snags a piece of cake with his webbing. When he spots a strange-looking “flying saucer” approaching the building, he swings away, not wanting to get involved.

Peter becomes suspicious when Frederick Foswell gets out of prison, having been sent there after being exposed as the “Big Man” last year, and is given his old job back at the Daily Bugle. Trailing Foswell gets Spidey involved in a gang war between a mobster called Lucky Lobo and the Green Goblin. Lobo and his gang end up getting arrested, but Spidey is unable to stop the Green Goblin from getting away. Peter is also troubled to discover that Betty is secretly exchanging letters with Ned Leeds while he’s on assignment in Europe.

April 1963 -- Peter feels increasingly agitated and paranoid, worrying about investigative reporter Frederick Foswell discovering his secret identity, struggling to keep up in school while needing to make money selling crime photos, fretting about winning a scholarship to Empire State University, and fuming about Betty writing letters to Ned Leeds behind his back. When Liz Allan asks Peter to tutor her in science so she won’t fail the class, he agrees to do it, partly because he wants to get back at Betty. After this, he becomes convinced Flash Thompson is following him.

Peter’s worries are magnified when he reads in the Daily Bugle that the noted European psychiatrist Dr. Ludwig Rinehart is convinced that Spider-Man is suffering from acute psychological problems and is heading for a complete nervous breakdown. On his way to the newspaper office to learn more about Rinehart, Spidey is attacked by phantoms of Doctor Octopus, the Sandman, and the Vulture. Fearing that he is now having paranoid hallucinations, Peter starts to panic, imagining what would happen if an insane Spider-Man were unleashed on the world. Thus, Spidey goes to visit Rinehart, where more hallucinations convince him he is in need of immediate psychotherapy. Rinehart attempts to convince him that his only hope of remaining sane is to abandon his Spider-Man identity, but their session is interrupted by J. Jonah Jameson, who accuses Rinehart of being a fraud. Flash Thompson stumbles in as well, causing Rinehart to bolt for the door. Spidey chases the psychiatrist, discovering that the “hallucinations” were all generated by Rinehart, who is revealed to be Mysterio in disguise. With Mysterio captured, Jameson is forced to retract the entire series of fraudulent articles, since the real Ludwig Rinehart is dead. Peter is relieved to know he’s just stressed out, not going crazy.

Realizing his Spider-Man costume is starting to get a bit worn out, Peter begins working on making himself a new one. He finds it to be a difficult and frustrating process.

May 1963 -- Peter meets the robotics expert Spencer Smythe when the scientist tries to convince J. Jonah Jameson that his latest invention could capture Spider-Man. Jameson is reluctant to finance the scheme, but Peter talks him into it, hoping to profit from selling photos of Spidey fighting Smythe’s robot. He comes to regret it, however, when the robot proves to be far more formidable than he expected. After an exhausting chase all across the city, Spidey is finally captured in the robot’s unbreakable metal coils. Worse, he is forced to listen to Jameson’s incessant gloating via the robot’s viewscreen. When the screen goes blank, indicating Jameson and Smythe are on their way, Spidey breaks into the robot’s chest panel and figures out how to deactivate its offensive systems. Wanting to play a prank on Jameson, Peter rigs up a dummy made of webbing inside his costume and leaves it in the robot’s clutches. From a hidden vantage point, he takes photos of Jameson’s enraged antics when the publisher discovers Spidey’s made a fool of him again. Unfortunately, Peter is forced to leave his costume behind when Smythe stays late trying to repair the robot. When Peter gets home, Aunt May scolds him for having missed another chance to meet Mary Jane Watson. She is more angry, though, to have found the Spider-Man costume he was working on. Peter tries to explain away the unfinished costume, but Aunt May just decides to get rid of it. After Aunt May goes to bed, Peter searches the house, but is unable to find it. He realizes he is now a superhero without a costume.

The next day, after getting into a fight with Flash Thompson at school, Peter hits on the idea of buying a Spider-Man outfit from a costume shop. He finds one for a good price, but soon discovers that the elastic in the costume is worn out, so the gloves and boots keep falling down, the shirt rides up, and the mask won’t stay in place. He is forced to use webbing to keep the cheap costume from falling apart. He soon learns from Jameson that Spencer Smythe has his real costume. Spidey’s clothing proves to be a constant distraction as he investigates a new gang war between the Green Goblin and a masked mobster called the Crime-Master. Peter suspects that Frederick Foswell is one or the other, and spends the evening looking into it. Despite being captured and chained up by the Goblin, Spidey fights off the Crime-Master’s entire gang, with the help of some officers of the NYPD. The Green Goblin soon abandons the fight and flies off into the night sky. Spidey chases the Crime-Master, but loses him in the sewers. Convinced Foswell is behind one of the masks, Spidey races to the Daily Bugle, only to learn that the Crime-Master has been gunned down in a battle with the police and revealed to be a mob boss named Nick “Lucky” Lewis. Spidey receives assurances that Foswell is involved strictly as an investigative journalist.

The next morning, Peter decides to sell his photos of last night’s escapade to the Daily Globe, since he is annoyed with Jameson. He visits the offices of the rival paper and meets their picture editor, Barney Bushkin. Though Bushkin happily buys the photos, he asks so many questions about how Peter got such shots that Peter decides he is better off just dealing with Jameson. Left without a usable costume, Peter decides he’s too busy finishing up the school year to go out as Spider-Man anyway. Instead, he spends as much time as he can with Aunt May, taking her out to the movies and other fun diversions.

A week or so later, Peter celebrates his 18th birthday at home with Aunt May. He and Betty Brant are still angry with each other, so Peter avoids going to the Daily Bugle.

June 1963 -- As the school year at Midtown High winds down, Peter decides to give up trying to make a new Spider-Man costume and to just get his old one back from Spencer Smythe. He retrieves his costume from Smythe’s laboratory, but is drawn into conflict with Smythe’s violent lab assistant, Mark Raxton, when an accident mutates him into the Molten Man. During their battle at Raxton’s apartment building, Spidey tries to avoid getting punched in the face, not wanting to look bruised at graduation. He finally manages to bind the super-strong Molten Man with extra-thick webbing and leaves him for the police.

Peter attends the graduation ceremonies at Midtown High, where Principal Davis announces that he has won a science scholarship to Empire State University in the fall. Peter is thrilled that he’ll be able to afford to go to college, though he’s not too happy to hear that Flash Thompson will be attending ESU as well, on a football scholarship. Then, J. Jonah Jameson takes the stage to give the commencement address, causing the students to groan. After the ceremony, Peter meets up with Aunt May and her friend Anna Watson in the courtyard. Aunt May tells Peter how proud she is of him. Then Jameson joins them, trying to be charming, and Peter realizes he must have caught wind that Peter sold some exclusive photos to the Globe. Peter moves off to say goodbye to Liz Allan, who is depressed about becoming an adult. Liz admits she had a crush on Peter, though he clearly preferred more mature girls like Betty Brant. Peter feels bad when he notices Flash pays no attention to Liz as she leaves with her parents. Finally, Peter takes a last look at Midtown High School before heading home with Aunt May.

Soon after, on the wedding day of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Girl, Spider-Man can’t help but swing by the Baxter Building to check out the event, which has turned into a media circus as crowds fill the streets outside the Fantastic Four’s headquarters. Spidey is surprised to find Captain America and Hawkeye fighting with the Cobra, Mister Hyde, the Executioner, and the Enchantress in the street, and uses his webbing to save Hawkeye from a falling safe that materializes out of thin air. Realizing a super-powered slugfest is raging all around the building, Spidey gets out his camera and starts taking pictures. He gets some spectacular shots as Mister Fantastic, the Thing, the Human Torch, Daredevil, Captain America, Hawkeye, Thor, Iron Man, Quicksilver, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, and the Beast battle a horde of villains including the Beetle, the Black Knight, Diablo, the Eel, Electro, the Grey Gargoyle, the Human Top, Kang the Conqueror, the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android, the Mandarin, the Melter, the Porcupine, the Super-Skrull, and the Unicorn. That evening, Peter sells his photos to J. Jonah Jameson for a handsome sum. Peter and Betty make up and agree to go out on some dates again, though their relationship remains strained.

Later in the month, Spider-Man fights with two burglars who appear to be in a trance, after he spots them coming out of an attic window in Greenwich Village. Spidey trails the thugs back to their master, a wizard named Xandu, but in the ensuing altercation, Spidey finds himself falling through a portal to another dimension. Luckily, he snags the wizard’s magic wand with his webbing and pulls it through the portal with him. His gambit pays off, as the thugs soon appear to capture Spider-Man and take him back to the wizard’s lair. Returned to earth, Spidey finds Xandu battling Doctor Strange, the mysterious occult expert. Strange contacts Spidey telepathically, instructing him on how to defeat the ensorcelled thugs. Once that is accomplished, Spider-Man joins Doctor Strange in attacking Xandu, and they finally manage to separate him from his magic wand. Doctor Strange uses his magic amulet to drain all the power out of the wand, and casts a spell that removes all knowledge of black magic from Xandu’s mind. Somewhat mystified, Spidey watches as Doctor Strange floats off into the night. The next morning, Peter wonders if any of it really happened.

July 1963 -- Peter sees Betty Brant infrequently, and generally finds the summer to be lonely and dull. He finds few opportunities for newsworthy photos and consequently spends little time at the Daily Bugle. His activities as Spider-Man are limited to stopping petty street crime and the occasional cat burglar.

Peter is astonished when the news breaks that the Hulk is actually the alter-ego of Dr. Bruce Banner, one of America’s leading nuclear scientists. The Hulk is thought to have been vaporized following an altercation with the U.S. military in Washington, DC.

Late in the month, Peter is startled when the entire sky is suddenly engulfed in flames. The city is gripped in a panic, although his spider-sense tells him there is no immediate danger. After a while, the flames vanish as mysteriously as they appeared, though other bizarre aerial phenomena follow over the next week.

August 1963 -- For a few days, a curtain of space debris circles the globe, darkening the sky with asteroids, though, again, Peter’s spider-sense indicates there is no immediate danger. The debris vanishes as a gigantic figure appears briefly on the roof of the Baxter Building and encounters the Fantastic Four. After the giant disappears in a flash, J. Jonah Jameson publishes an editorial in the Daily Bugle claiming that the entire “Galactus” incident was a hoax.

Spider-Man defeats the Scorpion again when the villain breaks out of prison and tries to get revenge on Jameson. Their fight wrecks some of the offices at the Daily Bugle, and Betty is terrorized in the process. Peter is upset when he realizes that Ned Leeds, who has just returned from his assignment in Europe, is taking much better care of Betty than Peter ever could. Later that night, Spidey becomes more frustrated when he fails to prevent a gang of costumed crooks from hijacking a truck laden with radioactive materials.

The next day, Peter is shocked when Betty tells him Ned has proposed to her. Realizing that he’s lost his first love, and that Spider-Man is mostly to blame, Peter responds with anger, lashing out at Betty. He storms out, changes to Spider-Man, and takes out his frustrations on a gang of armed bank robbers. In order to avoid Betty’s phone calls that evening, Peter goes out as Spider-Man to try claiming the $1000 reward J. Jonah Jameson has offered for the capture of the notorious Cat Burglar. Unfortunately, though he is able to track down the Cat Burglar, the police manage to arrest the crook first, thus depriving Spidey of the reward money. Peter confronts Betty at the Daily Bugle in the morning, telling her they’ve nothing more to say to each other.

September 1963 -- Spider-Man comes across the same gang of hijackers he encountered last month, and though he crashes their helicopter, he again fails to stop them from escaping with the containers they’ve stolen from a nuclear research complex. He does not pursue the matter in the days that follow, as he is distracted with the beginning of the fall term at Empire State University. Peter is excited as he attends orientation and registers for his courses. However, the night before classes are to start, Aunt May falls ill and must be hospitalized. The next morning, Peter is so exhausted and sick with worry that he can’t concentrate on his professors and is too distracted to even greet his classmates. Thus, his Introduction to Biology class with Professor Miles Warren does not get off to a very good start.

The second day of classes doesn’t go any better than the first, as, desperate for money to pay Aunt May’s medical bills, Peter spent the previous night as Spider-Man searching for crimes to photograph. Thus, he barely notices when one of his new classmates, Gwen Stacy, tries to strike up a conversation. He rushes off to visit Aunt May before going on the prowl as Spider-Man again. Spidey manages to finally foil the costumed hijackers with the help of an underworld informant known as “Patch,” but he is unable to capture them or get any photos, so his victory is a hollow one.

At the hospital the next day, Peter learns that Aunt May is dying of radiation poisoning due to the blood transfusion he gave her last November. Mad with rage, guilt, and grief, Spider-Man tracks down Dr. Curt Connors for help devising an antidote to save Aunt May. The vital component in Connors’ proposed serum is a rare chemical called ISO-36, but their supply is stolen from the airport by the same gang of costumed hijackers. Enraged, Spider-Man hunts them down, finally discovering their hideout at the bottom of Upper New York Bay. There, he learns that the gang is in the employ of Doctor Octopus, so Spidey fights his old enemy viciously to retrieve the canister of ISO-36. Unfortunately, the structural damage caused by their battle causes tons of cast iron machinery to topple over onto Spidey, trapping him. Doc Ock escapes, but, with tremendous effort and determination, Spidey frees himself from the wreckage, fights his way through his foe’s remaining henchmen, and delivers the ISO-36 to Curt Connors. The antidote proves effective, and, after receiving a total blood transfusion, Aunt May begins to recover. Meanwhile, Spidey gives Frederick Foswell a scoop on Doctor Octopus and his gang, getting exclusive photos of the gang’s arrest. Peter then demands enough money for them from Jameson to pay Aunt May’s hospital bills and cover Connors’ research expenses.

As Aunt May recovers, Peter finally meets some of his classmates, such as Harry Osborn and Sally Green, and first notices how attractive Gwen Stacy is. He also discovers that the other students think he’s been snubbing them because he’s full of himself for winning a scholarship. Peter starts trying to make up for his bad first impression, though he is still spending as much time as he can taking care of Aunt May. When a phony Spider-Man further trashes his reputation by relentlessly harassing J. Jonah Jameson, Peter sets out to track the impostor down. Spidey quickly discovers that Kraven the Hunter has been impersonating him as part of a revenge scheme. Their battle is constantly interrupted by mobsters eager to capture Spider-Man for some reason. Annoyed by the distraction, Kraven helps Spidey defeat the mobsters so they can focus on their personal combat. Spidey finally knocks out Kraven and leaves all the crooks webbed up for the police.

During a sudden blackout of the entire east coast of the United States, Peter stays home with Aunt May so she won’t worry. Soon after, Spidey catches the Molten Man when he tries to rob a jewelry store. While trying to sell his photos of the incident to Jameson, Peter learns that Betty has quit her job. When Jameson’s new secretary mentions that Ned Leeds has also left for the west coast, Peter assumes that the couple has run off to get married. He returns home feeling depressed.

October 1963 -- Peter makes more of an effort to socialize with his college classmates, but things do not go well at first. Over the course of a week, Spider-Man tries to capture a costumed thief known as the Looter. He finally succeeds when the Looter tries to steal a worthless meteorite from Empire State University.

Next, Spidey trails Frederick Foswell around, hoping the investigative reporter will lead him to some opportunities for newsworthy photos. From Foswell he learns of Professor Mendel Stromm, a scientist who has just been released from prison after serving ten years for embezzlement. Stromm has sworn revenge on his former partner, the industrialist Norman Osborn, father of Peter’s classmate Harry. Spidey stops a strange amoeboid robot sent by Stromm to destroy Osborn’s electronics factory, but not before it burns down the main building. With the help of the informant known as “Patch,” Spidey is able to locate Stromm’s hideout in time to stop a more traditional robot from assassinating Norman Osborn. Spidey is knocked out in the melee, but Osborn manages to escape from the robot. Spidey then tracks the robot back to Stromm’s hideout, where he is finally able to destroy it. A sniper tries to kill Stromm before he can reveal a secret about Osborn, but Spidey pushes him out of the line of fire. Though Spidey tries to apprehend the sniper, his assailant mysteriously vanishes. Returning to Stromm, Spidey finds the revenge-seeking scientist has died of a massive heart attack. Later, the sniper incident leads Peter to worry that there’s something wrong with his spider-sense.

As the weather starts turning chilly, Spider-Man comes into conflict with Daredevil when he begins to suspect that DD might be in league with the criminal mastermind known as the Masked Marauder. Daredevil launches an unprovoked attack on Spidey, during which the Marauder and his gang steal an experimental auto engine. Spidey uses his spider-sense to track Daredevil down, but it leads him to a law office in which he finds only a woman, a blind man, and a short, pudgy guy. Since none of them could possibly be Daredevil, Peter’s concerns about his spider-sense grow. When J. Jonah Jameson announces that the Masked Marauder failed to steal the formula for the only fuel that works in the new engine, Peter realizes the Marauder’s gang is sure to strike again. Thus, Spidey stakes out the building where the formula is kept, and when the villains finally arrive, Daredevil appears and helps Spidey capture them. Unfortunately, the Masked Marauder manages to escape. Spider-Man and Daredevil part on friendly terms.

November 1963 -- While at the Daily Bugle, Peter runs into Ned Leeds and discovers that he and Betty didn’t run off together after all. In fact, Ned has no idea where Betty is. Peter worries about Betty until he is distracted by a super-strong troublemaker in a green-and-orange costume. Changing into Spider-Man, he attacks the strangely silent man, trying to stop his rampage. Unfortunately, the man overcomes Spidey, throwing him into a garbage dumpster. By the time the dazed Spidey emerges, the man is long gone. That evening, another wave of mobsters attack Spidey, intent on capturing him, and he is forced to fight them off. He stumbles upon his unnamed foe battling a gymnasium full of prizefighters and decides to intervene, only to find himself attacked by one and all as soon as he enters. Spidey learns from the prizefighters that some underworld figure has put out a contract on Spider-Man worth $20,000, which is why so many ordinary crooks have been willing to attack him lately. During the fight, the man in the green-and-orange costume loses his super-strength and comes to his senses. As the police burst in to break up the brawl, Spidey learns that his mystery foe was just a guy named Joe Smith, who gained his temporary powers in a freak accident. Later, Peter is disheartened to learn that Joe Smith has signed a lucrative deal to star in a new superhero TV series, while Spider-Man remains a pariah.

Peter comes down with a bad head cold, but still goes to campus since he’s already had too many absences. He finally hits it off with Harry Osborn, who opens up to Peter about the troubles he’s had recently with his father, Norman Osborn. Peter is sympathetic, revealing that he can’t even remember his own father, who died when he was very young. Harry’s previous animosity toward Peter is forgotten. After classes finish up for the day, Peter decides some web-swinging might make him feel better. Before long, Spider-Man breaks up a robbery on the observation deck of a skyscraper. One of the crooks hits him with a gas grenade, though it seems to have no effect. After leaving the robbers for the police, Peter stops off at the Daily Bugle on his way home, still fretting about the false impressions he’s received from his spider-sense lately. There, he and Ned Leeds come to an understanding about Betty, and Peter assures Ned he has no intention of standing in the way of their relationship; whatever was once between Peter and Betty is now over. Peter then heads home to his house in Forest Hills.

When he arrives at home, Peter is shocked to find the Green Goblin waiting for him, and he realizes his spider-sense has completely failed. Worse, the Goblin has somehow discovered that Peter Parker is really Spider-Man. Worried that Aunt May will witness their battle, Peter allows himself to be captured and carried off to his foe’s hideout. Once there, the Green Goblin pulls off his mask and reveals his true identity to Peter -- he is Norman Osborn. Peter tries to keep him talking to stall for time, and Osborn tells him something of Harry’s childhood, his history with Mendel Stromm, and how he became the Green Goblin. Peter goads him into a final showdown, so Osborn releases him from his bonds and allows him to don his Spider-Man costume. Their battle tears up the place, causing Osborn’s equipment to short out, catching the building on fire. Finally, Spidey kicks the Green Goblin into some damaged machinery near his chemistry bench, causing the villain to receive a staggering jolt that erases his memory. Spidey burns the Goblin’s costume and carries Osborn out of the fire, leaving the scene just as the police and fire department arrive. Free of the Goblin’s chemical gas, Peter’s spider-sense soon returns to normal.

While buying a used motorcycle to help him commute between Forest Hills, Queens, and the ESU campus in Manhattan, Peter runs into Betty Brant outside a coffee shop. She has just returned from her trip, having left town to try and get her head together. Peter quickly realizes he and Betty have become virtual strangers to each other, and he is actually relieved when Ned Leeds shows up. Later that night, Spider-Man stops a powerful thug called the Rhino from kidnapping Colonel John Jameson, the astronaut son of the Daily Bugle’s cantankerous publisher. At school the next day, Peter shows off his motorcycle to Harry, Gwen, and Flash. When he arrives home, he learns that Anna Watson has invited him and Aunt May to a Sunday dinner so Peter can finally meet her niece Mary Jane. Though he is now interested in Gwen Stacy, Peter decides to just get this Mary Jane business over with.

Spider-Man is invited to try out for membership in the Avengers, so he goes to the team’s headquarters and meets with Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Goliath, the Wasp, and Hawkeye. After a few misunderstandings, the team sends Spidey to track down the Hulk, who has been spotted in the city lately, and lure the green behemoth back to Avengers Mansion. Spidey sets off immediately, thinking that the Hulk is pretty stupid so he’ll be easy to trick. After hours of searching, Spidey finally finds the Hulk hiding out near the Gamma Radiation Research Center. It’s been nearly a year since their last encounter, and the Hulk clearly doesn’t remember Spider-Man. As they fight, Spidey begins to feel guilty about hounding the Hulk, who seems like he just wants to be left alone. When the Hulk accidentally smashes a gamma ray machine, he is bathed in radiation that turns him back into Bruce Banner. Spidey and Banner have a few moments to talk before he changes back into the Hulk. This convinces Spidey to let the Hulk go free, thinking he couldn’t live with himself if he kept persecuting the misunderstood brute, and that a great physicist like Bruce Banner deserves better than to be a prisoner of the Avengers. Thus, Spidey swings back over to Avengers Mansion and tells the team he couldn’t even find the Hulk. They are disappointed, but Spidey leaves before they can ask any questions.

Along with the rest of the class, Peter and Gwen give tissue samples to lab assistant Anthony Serba in Miles Warren’s Intro to Biology class. After doing some routine experiments on the cells they have collected, they forget all about it.

While Peter is at the bank one morning, his spider-sense alerts him to a bomb hidden inside a locked money bag. He changes into Spider-Man, breaks into the vault, grabs the bag, and hurries away to the Queensboro bridge, where he drops the bag into the East River seconds before it explodes. He knows Spidey will be accused of robbing the bank until they can determine that there’s no money missing, but there’s nothing he can do about it. Later that evening, he is accosted by Colonel John Jameson, who has somehow acquired super-strength. John announces his intention to use his new power to bring Spider-Man to justice for robbing the bank, but soon becomes completely irrational. Spidey is only able to defeat him by luring him inside a power station and hitting him with a massive surge of electricity. John collapses and reverts to his normal size, losing his powers.

On Sunday, Peter has a restful day before heading next door with Aunt May for dinner at the Watsons’ house. Peter is amazed when Mary Jane Watson arrives and turns out to be a stunningly beautiful redhead. Peter is smitten with her, and learns that she is an aspiring actress taking drama lessons. Following dinner, Mary Jane accompanies Peter into the city when he learns from the TV that the Rhino has escaped from jail and is on another rampage. She is happy to wait in the crowd while Peter goes off to find a vantage point from which to take photos. He quickly changes into Spider-Man and attacks the Rhino. Unfortunately, the Rhino knocks Spidey for a loop and escapes. After changing back into Peter Parker, he spots a small piece of the Rhino’s hide-like costume in the rubble and slips it into his pocket. After dropping Mary Jane off at her apartment, Peter pays a visit as Spider-Man to Curt Connors’ lab. Connors helps Spidey analyze the fragment from the Rhino and develop a means to dissolve the villain’s protective armor. Thus armed, Spider-Man is able to stop the Rhino’s second attempt to kidnap John Jameson. With his armored hide destroyed, the Rhino is taken into custody by federal agents.

On the way home, Peter runs into Harry, Gwen, and Flash and learns that Flash is joining the Army to fight in Vietnam. A few days later, Spider-Man is recruited for the X-Men by Iceman and the Beast. However, after his recent experience with the Avengers, he declines their offer. He then writes a letter to the blind attorney Matt Murdock, having deduced that Murdock must be Daredevil. Peter remembers that the Masked Marauder’s dazzling “opti-beam,” which temporarily blinded him, seemed to have no effect on Daredevil. Likewise, the Ringmaster’s hat, which hypnotized Spidey, failed to work on Daredevil. This would make sense if Daredevil were blind. Peter also realizes that his spider-sense had, in fact, led him to Daredevil last month, but he dismissed Murdock due to his blindness and focused on his law partner instead. He speculates that Murdock must possess some kind of extra-sensory perception to compensate for his lack of sight. Hoping to make some kind of personal connection with another superhero, Peter mails the letter, but never receives a response.

Peter forgets about his letter to Daredevil when President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Both he and Aunt May are shocked and saddened by the event, which casts a pall over their Thanksgiving dinner with the Watsons.

December 1963 -- On doctor’s orders, Aunt May takes a vacation to a warmer climate. While seeing her off at Penn Station, Peter spots Curt Connors’ wife and son, just arrived from Florida and looking very worried. Curt Connors has disappeared, and his wife fears he has turned into the Lizard again. Spider-Man searches the city for a while before heading to ESU. At the coffee shop after class, Peter introduces Mary Jane to his classmates. He notices that Gwen seems jealous when Mary Jane invites him out on an impromptu date. The next evening, Spider-Man finally tracks down the Lizard. However, after a fierce struggle, the Lizard causes Spidey to sprain his arm before escaping. Worried his sprained arm might compromise his secret identity, Peter cancels his next date with Mary Jane. At school the next morning, Peter claims that he injured himself riding his motorcycle. When he tells Harry he’s worried about earning enough money to pay for Aunt May’s trip to the seaside, Harry offers to put in a good word for Peter with his father, certain that Norman Osborn could find a place for a science-whiz like Peter at his company, even just part-time. Peter says he’ll keep it in mind.

Later, Spider-Man catches the Lizard attempting to hijack a traveling exhibit of reptiles, leading them to a fight atop a speeding freight train. Spidey defeats the Lizard by luring him into a refrigerated train car. The cold makes the Lizard sluggish, allowing Spider-Man to finally knock him out. He administers the antidote to turn the Lizard back into Curt Connors and reunites him with his family. One the way home, Peter discovers that Harry and Mary Jane are out on a date together. Deciding that Mary Jane is pretty but shallow and somewhat annoying, Peter realizes he actually prefers Gwen, even though they haven’t really gone out yet.

Harry asks Peter if he wants to be his roommate in an apartment near ESU that Norman Osborn is renting for him. Peter is unsure about leaving Aunt May alone, until, upon returning from her vacation, May informs him that she has decided to move in with Anna Watson. Peter then accepts Harry’s offer, excited about the prospect of having his own place in Manhattan. Despite his sprained arm, Spider-Man is able to defeat a costumed criminal called the Shocker after a destructive battle at the Federal Reserve Bank.

Peter gets settled into his new apartment with Harry and continues to go out with Mary Jane, though he hopes to woo Gwen. He soon “meets” the amnesiac Norman Osborn, and they hit it off well. While with Mary Jane at a football game between Empire State University and Metro College, Peter is startled when a strawberry-blond girl in a yellow catsuit materializes on the field in a flash of light, with a gigantic, monstrous dog at her side. They disappear again after speaking briefly with one of the Metro College players. Peter tries to sell his photos of the incident to the Daily Bugle, but Jameson dismisses it as a publicity stunt.

Gwen hosts a farewell party for Flash Thompson, as he will soon be leaving for basic training. Peter invites Betty Brant and Ned Leeds to join him and Mary Jane at the party. The festivities are interrupted by Kraven the Hunter, who crashes into the soda parlor and grabs Harry, demanding to know where his father is. Peter assumes that Kraven must have had some dealings with Norman Osborn when he was the Green Goblin. He slips out, changes into Spider-Man, and attacks Kraven. The other kids help Harry get to safety as Spidey lures Kraven to a construction site across the street. After several minutes of battle, Kraven gains the upper hand by hitting Spidey with an energy ray that jangles his central nervous system. The villain’s attention is diverted when Norman Osborn himself appears on the scene in a taxi. Kraven grabs Osborn and demands the $20,000 the Green Goblin owes him. Osborn doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and, as Spidey recovers, Kraven flees the scene. Flash is thrilled that his going-away party culminated with seeing his hero, Spider-Man, in action. Afterwards, Peter shakes Flash’s hand and wishes him luck in Vietnam.

Spider-Man runs into Daredevil, who is searching for Stilt-Man. When Daredevil makes no mention of the letter Spidey sent to Matt Murdock last month, Peter begins to doubt his conclusions. Later, Spidey comes across Stilt-Man breaking into a jewelry store and tries to apprehend him. Unfortunately, Stilt-Man manages to surprise Spidey with a gas grenade and escape. The next day, Peter learns that Stilt-Man was captured by the Harbor Patrol.

Peter and Aunt May have a fun Christmas with the Watsons and the Osborns. Despite enjoying all the festivities, Peter finds he can’t stop thinking about Gwen Stacy.

Notes:

January 1963 -- The adventures of Spider-Man continue in Amazing Spider-Man #15 and following. Spidey runs into many of his fellow superheroes and battles the Sinister Six in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1. The mysterious man in the dark blue cape is, of course, Doctor Strange, though Peter is too preoccupied to notice that fact. The suspicious character who disappears suddenly is the Sandman. Of Spidey’s six foes captured in this story, only the Vulture would stay behind bars for more than a few weeks. Later, Spider-Man teams up with Giant-Man and the Wasp to battle Egghead in Tales to Astonish #57.

February 1963 -- Peter is unaware that Mac Gargan and the Scorpion are one and the same. Spidey then saves the Avengers from a robot impostor sent by Kang the Conqueror in Avengers #11. As pointed out by continuity-pioneer George Olshevsky in his Marvel index series, the Spider-Man / Human Torch back-up story in Amazing Spider-Man #8 must logically follow the story in Amazing Spider-Man #21, in which Peter meets Dorrie Evans for the first time.

March 1963 -- Peter runs into the Fantastic Four at “State University,” the alma mater of Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, and Victor Von Doom, in Fantastic Four #35. In Amazing Spider-Man #22, we see Peter reading up on the latest research by Dr. Henry Pym. Spidey then pays a discreet visit to the Baxter Building during Reed and Sue’s engagement party in Fantastic Four #36. The “flying saucer” is being piloted by the Frightful Four.

June 1963 -- Following his graduation from high school in Amazing Spider-Man #28, Spidey makes a brief appearance at the chaotic wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm in Fantastic Four Annual #3. Afterwards, he and Doctor Strange team up for the first time in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2.

July 1963 -- The Hulk’s secret identity is revealed to the world in Tales to Astonish #77. The Watcher causes the “flaming sky” phenomenon in Fantastic Four #48.

August 1963 -- Galactus menaces the world in Fantastic Four #48–50.

September 1963 -- Peter starts his college career in Amazing Spider-Man #31. Spidey remains unaware that the underworld stoolie known as “Patch” is really Frederick Foswell in disguise. In Amazing Spider-Man #34, the mobsters and Kraven are all trying to claim the $20,000 bounty the Green Goblin has placed on Spider-Man’s head. The blackout of the entire east coast of the United States occurs in the S.H.I.E.L.D. story in Strange Tales #161.

October 1963 -- In Amazing Spider-Man #37, Spidey remains unaware that Norman Osborn is working against him, knocking him out with a blow from behind during the battle with the mechanical robot. Osborn is also the sniper taking aim at Mendel Stromm from a high window. Presumably, Osborn used his goblin glider to reach the precarious vantage point and to disappear so quickly. Later, Spider-Man and Daredevil battle the Masked Marauder in Daredevil #16–17.

November 1963 -- Spider-Man battles the Hulk while trying out for the Avengers in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3. Peter and Gwen are seen giving their tissue samples to Miles Warren’s lab assistant in a flashback in Amazing Spider-Man #148, thus setting the stage for the whole business of the Jackal and his clones. Spidey runs into Iceman and the Beast in Uncanny X-Men #27. Spider-Man’s letter to Daredevil, which is intercepted by secretary Karen Page, is revealed in Daredevil #24. Peter would not learn that he was correct about Matt Murdock being Daredevil until Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #110, though Matt Murdock discovered that Peter Parker was Spider-Man in Daredevil #103. The Kennedy assassination occurs behind the scenes, but this satisfies my initial research question as far as Spider-Man is concerned.

December 1963 -- Peter witnesses the brief appearance of Crystal and Lockjaw at the ESU-Metro football game in Fantastic Four #61. Spidey’s brief battle with Stilt-Man occurs in Daredevil #27. This brings us up to Amazing Spider-Man #47.

Next Issue: Spider-Man -- Year Three

Jump Back: Spider-Man -- Year One

Marvel Universe Relaunch!

2011-10-21T14:22:00.003-05:00

In my previous post, I suggested that the time had come for Marvel to reboot their comic book universe. Rather than start completely from scratch, though, I thought Marvel would do better with a starting point developed by updating where the Original Marvel Universe stood just before the Fantastic Four first gained their superpowers. Thus, I outlined the “current” circumstances of over 240 characters, which offered myriad tantalizing story possibilities. I thought this would serve as a firm foundation on which to rebuild a shared universe in the tradition started by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and all the others who contributed.

As I continued to think about it, I realized this was just the first step. As others have done, I came up with a plan to relaunch the entire line of Marvel Comics as a response to DC’s recent “New 52” initiative. For what it’s worth, here’s how I would do it.

Fifty-two being an arbitrary number, and somewhat unwieldy, I would trim it down to forty titles a month, released ten per week. This isn’t too far off from Marvel’s current output of regular ongoing titles. Next, I felt variety was extremely important -- variety of subject matter, tone, genre -- which has been sorely lacking in the tunnel-vision strategy of mainstream comics for some time. This also keeps readers from feeling they need to buy all 40 titles to keep up with what’s going on. Some are more interconnected, more “plugged in” to the shared universe, than others. Some can easily stand alone, though all share common elements that reward taking a completist, or “big picture” approach to collecting. A “win-win” for everybody.

Also, many of the titles below would be designed to have a limited life-span, to be replaced by “all-new, all-different” properties after they’d run their course. This would help keep things fresh as the new Marvel Universe rocketed onwards and upwards.

If it were up to me, I would relaunch the Marvel Universe as follows:

FIRST WEEK

1. Fantastic Four
While testing an experimental warp-drive spacecraft in high Earth orbit, Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm, and her brother Johnny Storm are exposed to strange energies than transform them into something more than human. Celebrated as the Fantastic Four, they use their superpowers to explore the world’s most mysterious places, and battle whatever weird menaces they find there.

2. Spider-Man
High school student Peter Parker receives superhuman abilities in a bizarre laboratory accident, and does what any self-respecting teenager would do: he tries to cash in! Unfortunately, his show-biz career as the mysterious Spider-Man is cut short by personal tragedy, forcing Peter to learn a bitter lesson about responsibility. Desperate to earn money as a news photographer, Peter uses his Spider-Man identity to get spectacular shots of New York’s most infamous criminals, whom he invariably ends up fighting.

3. X-Men
Professor Charles Xavier has created a school for mutants, where he trains his first class of students in the use of their uncanny powers. Fearing persecution, the students have adopted the codenames Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, Beast, Banshee, Havok, and Polaris. Xavier dreams of peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants, but realizes his students may have to fight for their place in a world that hates and fears them.

4. Iron Man
Tony Stark has felt like a target since his parents died under mysterious circumstances, leaving him in charge of the family business, an international technology firm. When he is nearly killed during a kidnapping scheme, Stark constructs an invincible suit of high-tech battle armor and swears he’ll never be vulnerable again.

5. Thor
Thor, son of Odin and prince of Asgard, has been banished to Earth because of his bad attitude. Good for Asgard, bad for Earth. This is one thunder god who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, least of all foolish mortals. His hair-trigger temper and unstoppable magic war-hammer spell trouble for anyone who gets in his way. But learning to be a better man is his only hope of returning home. The beautiful emergency-room doctor Jane Foster wants to help, but can she survive the chaos that surrounds Thor long enough to try?

6. Hulk
A laboratory accident turns withdrawn scientist Bruce Banner into the ultimate Jekyll & Hyde. His green-skinned alter-ego Hulk is a distorted mirror image: physically strong but morally weak, and may prove to be the most dangerous man on the planet. After Hulk makes a shambles of Banner’s life, the fugitive scientist goes on the run, trying to keep his inescapable “enemy within” from hurting anyone else.

7. Black Panther
The noble king of the prosperous African nation of Wakanda, T’Challa, the Black Panther, upholds his sacred duty to protect his people’s greatest treasure, the unique substance called vibranium. He’ll need all his intelligence, cunning, and fighting skills to fend off spies, mercenaries, and thieves from every corner of the globe. He soon discovers, however, that his greatest enemies may lurk within his own government.

8. Ant-Man & Wasp
Pym particles are the key to all superpowers, but only one man understands how they work: Dr. Henry Pym, the molecular biologist who discovered them. Of course he becomes a target for every terrorist group, subversive organization, and two-bit crook with delusions of grandeur. However, the wealthy young socialite Janet Van Dyne has taken a shine to Dr. Pym and is determined to keep him from meeting the same tragic fate suffered by her renowned scientist father. When Pym’s wife Maria is murdered by his enemies, he agrees to empower Van Dyne and himself to fight back. As Ant-Man and the Wasp, this unlikely couple finds action, adventure, and romance!

9. Black Widow
International superspy Natasha Romanova goes rogue when her handlers try to have her killed after a botched operation. She searches for allies she can trust while tracking down and getting revenge on the men who betrayed her.

10. Tales from the Swamp
An anthology of strange tales of suspense featuring a rotating cast of eccentrics in the steamy swamps of the southern United States. In the Florida everglades, disgraced biochemist Ted Sallis agrees to help Dr. Wilma Calvin re-develop the lost “super-soldier” serum of World War II, unaware that his sexy girlfriend, Ellen Brandt, is working for a subversive organization. Her meddling causes Sallis to be transformed into a terrifying monstrosity called the Man-Thing. Meanwhile, not far away, young sorceress Jennifer Kale explores the astonishing alternate worlds she finds within a spacetime rift called the Nexus of All Realities. Elsewhere, Jericho Drumm battles zombies in the bayous of New Orleans and southern Louisiana.

SECOND WEEK

11. Doctor Strange
Master sorcerer Stephen Strange protects the earth from all manner of mystical menaces as he travels the world collecting occult artifacts. Whether he’s exploring mind-boggling alternate dimensions or fighting off demons and monsters, the dashing Doctor Strange knows how to use magic with style.

12. Hawkeye
Former carnival performer Clint Barton uses his unparalleled skill with a bow-and-arrow as a modern-day Robin Hood on the streets of Chicago. He is equally adept at busting corrupt corporations and protecting the people from street crime, all while living according to his mantra: free-wheeling, free-loving, and freeloading!

13. Logan
The Canadian secret agent known only as Logan is the best there is at what he does, and what he does is covert-ops! A mysterious experiment stripped him of his memories, but left him with an unbreakable skeleton and razor-sharp claws that can slice through anything. His most closely guarded secret is that he is a mutant with enhanced animal-like senses and the ability to rapidly heal any wound. The rough-and-tumble Logan frequently crosses paths with straight-shooting CIA agents Carol Danvers and Michael Rossi, as well as their gruff superior, Nick Fury, in the course of his globe-spanning missions.

14. Inhumans
Since the dawn of time, the Inhumans have dwelled apart from humanity in the lost city of Attilan, hidden deep in the Himalayas. Each member of their race possesses a devastating super-power, which makes ruling them a challenge for their young king, Black Bolt. Palace intrigue and Machiavellian machinations are the order of the day as Black Bolt pursues the beautiful princess Medusa while fending off his traitorous brother Maximus. But how long can the Inhumans hide their existence from the world outside?

15. Department H
As head of a secret project within the Canadian Ministry of Defense, James MacDonald Hudson has been tasked with creating the perfect superhero to protect his nation and its people. High-tech research & development, radical biochemical experiments, tracking down mutants, and even magic and mysticism are all fair game as Hudson and his team seek to accomplish their mission.

16. Ka-Zar
Since he was a boy, Kevin Plunder has been lost in the mysterious Savage Land at the bottom of the world. Now calling himself Ka-Zar, this brutal and savage young man sets out to conquer his jungle home before he is enslaved by its bloodthirsty inhabitants or eaten by its prehistoric flora and fauna. But the greatest threat of all may prove to come in the form of beautiful scientist Bobbi Morse, the last survivor of a doomed expedition who sees Ka-Zar as her only hope of getting home alive.

17. Mystique
Mutant shape-changer Raven Darkholme is perhaps the world’s most devastatingly effective covert operative, due to her ability to precisely mimic the appearance of anyone she meets. However, when she stumbles on a top-secret multinational initiative to build mutant-hunting robots called Sentinels, her priorities change. Raven begins investigating the Sentinel project while continuing her government missions, knowing that tipping her hand could make her lover, Irene Adler, a target.

18. Patsy Walker
Former reality-TV child-star Patsy Walker is having difficulty settling into life as a celebrity “has-been,” a process not made any easier by her vicious and demanding “stage mom,” Dorothy. Patsy’s sunny, Orange County lifestyle suddenly takes a dark and frightening turn when dabbling in the occult gets her involved with a mysterious orphan named Daimon Hellstrom.

19. Where Monsters Dwell
FBI agent Jimmy Woo takes the cases no one else will touch: crimes so gruesome they could only be committed by inhuman monsters. Jimmy has learned the hard way that humans are not necessarily at the top of the food chain, especially after the sun goes down.

20. Werewolf by Night
High school student Jake Russoff has a problem. He’s a werewolf. Luckily his mother, Laura, and his step-father, Philip, know all about it, because Jake’s father was a werewolf too, until the night a silver bullet brought him down. Jake has another problem: his annoying little sister Lyssa. She’s not a werewolf yet, but in a few years, who knows? Jake is ready to run away and lose himself in the Sierra Madre Mountains when he meets a mysterious teen beauty named Topaz Taboo, who tells him if he helps her find an ancient book of spells called the Darkhold, it contains the cure for his curse. Topaz then leads Jake into a dangerous world, where he finds there are worse things than being a werewolf.

THIRD WEEK

21. Avengers
There are some menaces too great for any single superhero to withstand. Thus, Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, and Wasp band together as the Avengers. Their first mission leads them to recruit both the Black Panther and Hawkeye, as the renegade robot Ultron and its spectral android servant the Vision try to steal a sample of vibranium from the University of Chicago. A loose-knit, ever-changing membership roster allows the Avengers to respond to all manner of threats with just the right force. Captain America, the Black Widow, Hercules, and others soon join their ranks as well.

22. Sub-Mariner
Prince Namor is forced to leave his undersea kingdom of Atlantis to search the ocean depths for three ancient artifacts: Neptune’s Trident, the Sword of Kamuu, and the jewel known as the Eye of Zartra. However, the despotic warlord Krang is determined that Namor’s quest should fail. Mystery and adventure await as young Namor tries to prove himself worthy of being the one, true Sub-Mariner.

23. Captain Marvel
The world believes Captain Marvel to be one of its greatest superheroes. No one suspects he is really a spy for the galaxy-spanning Kree Empire. His mission is to test earth’s super-powered population, to determine who will be allowed to serve the Kree and who must be destroyed when their invasion armada eventually arrives. What better way to do that than to help superheroes battle supervillains? Only one thing threatens his mission: his own emerging sense of justice.

24. Magneto and the Brotherhood of Mutants
The mutant known as Magneto knows a war with mainstream humanity is inevitable, and it’s a war he is determined that mutants will win. As such, he has rallied a group of militant mutants to his cause: Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Mastermind, Toad, Pyro, Gypsy Moth, Mesmero, and Unus the Untouchable. Though strong-willed and fractious, Magneto believes they may be mutantkind’s last, best hope for survival.

25. Hercules
Bored with life in eternal Olympus, Hercules has defied the edict of his father Zeus and come to earth in search of adventure. His love of wine, women, and song quickly earns him as many admirers as do his amazing heroics. But he must stay one step ahead of the implacable Huntsman the gods have dispatched to drag Hercules home. Like all challenges, Hercules meets this one with a hearty laugh.

26. Sunfire
Teenaged Shiro Yoshida hates living in New York, but his father’s job at the United Nations gives him no choice. His attitude begins to change when he manifests mutant powers that enable him to fly and shoot flames from his body, inspiring him to become the brash superhero Sunfire.

27. Cable
The mysterious cyborg soldier-of-fortune known as Cable knows something bad is going to happen in the year 2025, because he’s traveled back in time to stop it. Unfortunately, he arrived twenty-five years early and has been forced to live in an era that seems very primitive to him, while trying to pick up the threads of his original mission. His inscrutable motives make Cable shockingly unpredictable as he tries to avert the coming global catastrophe.

28. Mantis
Though only a teenager, the girl called Mantis may be the world’s greatest practitioner of the martial arts, and she will need all of her skill as she leaves the temple of the Priests of Pama to search her native Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia for her missing father, a German mercenary named Brandt. Her unique philosophy makes Mantis an enigma to everyone she meets, from international financiers to drug-smugglers and pirates. But those who underestimate this young girl soon regret it.

29. Red Wolf
Will Talltrees joined the military to escape life on an Indian Reservation in Montana, and is now a member of Navy SEAL Team 11, performing special-ops missions around the globe. Will has a unique advantage over his fellow SEALs, though—the mystical entity Owayodata appears to him in the form of a red wolf to guide him in times of danger.

30. Tomb of Dracula
Dracula, Lord of Vampires, is revived after a century entombed in his castle in Transylvania, and is horrified to discover that the modern world has nearly wiped out all the other vampires. He sets out to rebuild his legions of the undead, despite the opposition of expert vampire hunters like the elderly Quincy Harker and his young assistant Rachel Van Helsing. Dracula’s personal code of honor and air of sophistication belie his ruthless, savage instincts, and he knows how to use the seductive power of evil to his advantage.

FOURTH WEEK

31. Captain America
The lost hero of World War II is found frozen solid in the Arctic, but miraculously revives upon being thawed out, due to the legendary “super-soldier” serum that made him the ultimate fighting man. Now a man out of time, Steve Rogers must find a place in this daunting world of the future, while bringing old-fashioned justice to criminals of every stripe.

32. Daredevil
Blind attorney Matt Murdock has made a reputation for himself with his skillful defense of super-villains who are brought to trial. However, using the hypersenses he developed in a freak childhood accident, he has also become the masked vigilante Daredevil, to ensure that justice is done, whether in the courtroom or on the streets.

33. Ghost Rider
For most people, the Ghost Rider is a legend they tell around campfires, a frightening skull-headed demon said to haunt the loneliest back roads of America. But for Johnny Blaze, the legend is horrifyingly real, for Blaze is the Ghost Rider, cursed to wander the highways and byways of North America on a flaming motorcycle, searching for evildoers to punish with his soul-searing hellfire.

34. Falcon
Los Angeles street gang member Sam Wilson turned to crime in the wake of his parents’ unsolved murders, but now his 13-year-old nephew Jim has convinced him to make up for his past misdeeds. Adopting the masked identity of the Falcon, Sam uses his insider’s knowledge to thwart the crimes of both his and rival gangs. It’s a dangerous game as Sam must protect his secret identity at all costs, or see young Jim pay the price.

35. Punisher
Frank Castle returns from his tour of duty in the U.S. Marine Corps only to witness his wife and daughter gunned down by mobsters. He dedicates himself to a one-man war on crime, using all his military skill and hardware to become the fearsome Punisher.

36. Moon Knight
Marc Spector is a special-ops commando for the United States Marine Corps with a gift for unconventional warfare. Deployed to hotspots around the world, Spector battles terrorists, insurgents, traffickers, and anyone else who threatens America or its interests. His personal code of honor and preference for striking by night have earned him the codename Moon Knight.

37. Nekra
Nobody knows the power of hate better than Nekra Sinclair, an albino African-American goth chick who also happens to be a mutant. When she whips herself into a frenzy of negative emotions, Nekra becomes super-strong and invulnerable, as well as savagely violent, which serves her well living on the streets of Los Angeles. Her only friend is Jerome Beechman, a boy who looks like an ape but can bend women to his will using his mutant pheromones. Life is a bitter struggle for survival for these two teenaged outcasts, who are determined to live free or die.

38. S.H.I.E.L.D.
As head of the new clandestine agency S.H.I.E.L.D., Alan Chamberlain is responsible for keeping America’s ever-growing superhuman population under control, and he’s going to do it by the book. Unfortunately, the terrorist group HYDRA, led by Wolfgang Von Strucker, has other ideas, and they’ve got Chamberlain in their sights. Besieged on all sides, will S.H.I.E.L.D. survive the forces seeking to tear it apart?

39. Masters of Evil
From his hidden lair in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil, mercenary Helmut Zemo has decided to create an unstoppable army of super-villains. He’ll use any means necessary to imbue his unscrupulous recruits with the requisite superpowers, which leads them on a worldwide campaign of murder and extortion. With Nathan Garrett, Erik Josten, Sergei Kravinoff, Karla Sofen, Elihas Starr, and Calvin Zabo willing to do whatever it takes, Zemo’s Masters of Evil quickly become a force to be reckoned with.

40. Sword of Atlantis
In the twilight years of the legendary Age of Atlantis, some 20,000 years ago, Lemurian princess Zartra escapes from her Deviant captors and battles her way to freedom. With the help of the sorceress Zhered-Na, she seeks to forge an alliance with Prince Kamuu of Atlantis, the only kingdom still unconquered by the subhuman Deviants. Encountering vampires, werewolves, and the enigmatic Eternals, Zartra relies on her warrior skills to get her safely from one adventure to the next.

Of course, even the best approaches can be wrecked by poor execution, such as “writing for the trade,” and whether the current editors and creators at Marvel would be capable of turning around the company’s declining fortunes is open for debate. I might just have to fire everybody and get all new people in there to make my idea work. Well, almost everybody.

OMU: Daredevil -- Year Two

2011-10-04T13:58:00.006-05:00

After coming a bit late to the party, Daredevil wasted no time establishing himself as a fully-integrated member of the Marvel Universe, thanks largely to his frequent interactions with Spider-Man. He was perhaps less fortunate than everybody’s favorite web-slinger in his roster of villains, which grew slowly and generally failed to impress. Mister Fear, Stilt-Man, and the Gladiator had some staying power, but hardly qualified as world-class menaces. The Masked Marauder and the Owl were standard-issue diabolical masterminds. The Purple Man had some interesting potential, but nothing ever really came of it. This may be why the book soldiered on for years as a second-tier title, even after gaining Gene Colan as its regular penciler. Colan’s mastery of moody shadows gave the book a noir-ish atmosphere that was compelling, but by then the die had been cast.

The next twelve months in the life of Matt Murdock are interesting in that, for the bulk of that time, being Daredevil is clearly not his number one priority. Instead, he and his partner, Foggy Nelson, are building their fledgling law firm’s reputation by focusing on each man’s strengths. Matt is a whiz in the courtroom, where he practically has juries eating out of the palm of his hand. Foggy, in contrast, is far from glamorous, but obviously has a genius for legal research and writing, and is primarily responsible for the firm’s success. His hard work and dedication makes Matt’s second career as Daredevil possible.

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.

Continuing... The True History of Daredevil, the Man Without Fear!

January 1963 – Matt Murdock and Franklin “Foggy” Nelson continue to build their new law practice, assisted by their sole employee, secretary Karen Page. Foggy makes a concerted effort to win back the Fantastic Four as clients after Matt’s failure last month. Finally, Mister Fantastic decides to give the firm another chance, and Foggy makes sure the FF are not disappointed again. Busy making a name for himself in the courtroom, Matt appears as Daredevil only infrequently through the rest of the winter.

Matt accompanies Foggy and Karen to a circus where Spider-Man is scheduled to appear. However, when both the audience and Spider-Man are put into a trance by the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime, Matt changes into his yellow-and-red Daredevil costume and goes into action. Daredevil fights the hypnotized Spider-Man for several minutes before managing to free him from his trance. Then, as the enraged Spidey makes short work of the crooked circus performers, Matt changes back into his civilian guise and takes his seat in the grandstand. After Spider-Man releases the audience from their hypnotic state, Matt offers his business card to the captured Ringmaster, knowing he’ll need a good defense attorney.

A few days later, though, Matt is shocked by reports of Spider-Man’s cowardice while fighting the Green Goblin at a New York supper club, and can scarcely believe it when the wall-crawler further humiliates himself by fleeing from the Sandman down a crowded street. Matt is relieved when Spider-Man finally redeems himself by rescuing the Human Torch from the Sandman and the Enforcers.

February 1963 – Matt focuses on his work as an attorney, and tries to get up the nerve to ask Karen on a date. He remains unconvinced that she is truly attracted to him, due to his blindness. The reputation of Nelson & Murdock, Attorneys-at-Law continues to grow by leaps and bounds as Matt’s hypersenses give him a distinct advantage over other lawyers. In the evenings, Matt begins to work on redesigning his Daredevil costume and modifying his billy club weapon.

March 1963 – Matt agrees to defend Zebediah Killgrave, known as the Purple Man due to his bizarre skin coloration. However, Killgrave possesses the ability to make people obey his every command, and simply walks out of jail. Killgrave kidnaps Karen and turns the bystanders on the street into a bloodthirsty mob when Daredevil tries to recapture him. A little while later, Daredevil tracks Killgrave to the Plaza Hotel, where he goads his overconfident foe into making a full confession, then captures him within plastic sheeting that inhibits his pheromone-like powers. Daredevil’s public victory is widely celebrated in the media. However, Matt is preoccupied with his suspicions that Foggy has also fallen in love with Karen.

The fickle public quickly turns against Daredevil when he is beaten by a dashing masked thief called the Matador. Matt draws the Matador into a rematch by publicly claiming that the Matador is just Daredevil in a different costume, and the “Daredevil” who was so easily defeated must have been a patsy hired to wear the yellow-and-red costume. Sure enough, the prideful Matador breaks into the law office to punish Murdock, only to find Daredevil waiting for him. As they battle, Daredevil leads the Matador out onto the lower rooftops of the city, in full view of hundreds of onlookers. This time, Daredevil scores a decisive victory and is cheered on by the bystanders. Though Daredevil’s good name has been restored, Foggy frets about their law firm’s reputation in light of Matt’s cockamamie theory being debunked.

April 1963 – Daredevil tries to stop a heist being committed by the Ox, the Eel, and their leader, a ghoulish figure called Mister Fear. However, Daredevil unaccountably panics and abandons the fight. The next morning, Daredevil is excoriated in the media for his cowardice, and, unsure of what happened, Matt is reluctant to act as Daredevil for a few days. When he stumbles upon Mister Fear’s hideout, Matt goes back to investigate as Daredevil and fights with the three crooks again. Unfortunately, Foggy blunders in and is seriously injured while DD is having another panic attack. He soon realizes that Mister Fear is using a strange chemical gas to induce panic in his victims, and relieves the villain of his “fear gun” to even the odds. After a pretty intense brawl, Daredevil manages to knock out the Ox and the Eel. Mister Fear surrenders, afraid of getting punched in the face. Daredevil’s reputation is salvaged once again, and Foggy is soon released from the hospital.

May 1963 – Nelson & Murdock are hired by Prince Namor of Atlantis, a.k.a. the Sub-Mariner, who is intent on suing the entire human race. When Matt and Foggy convince him that there’s no legal basis for such a suit, Namor decides to get his day in court through more violent means. Matt dons his brand-new all-red Daredevil costume and sets off to stop the Sub-Mariner’s one man rampage through New York City. Daredevil proves to be no match for Namor though, and is easily defeated. Still, Namor allows himself to be taken into custody. Two days later, Namor loses patience with the criminal justice system and decides to return to Atlantis to stop a military coup he has learned of. Daredevil tries to stop him a second time, and is equally unsuccessful. Ultimately, Matt and Foggy decide it’s just as well they’re rid of the Sub-Mariner.

Daredevil comes to the aid of the Fantastic Four when they have lost their powers and their headquarters has been taken over by Doctor Doom. Daredevil faces the armored arch-villain alone to give the FF time to reach Mister Fantastic’s laboratory so they can regain their powers. Doom nearly crushes Daredevil’s wrists before the Fantastic Four arrive and drive him off. With a shudder, Daredevil perceives Ben Grimm’s transformation back into the Thing. As her teammates go after Doctor Doom, the Invisible Girl gives Daredevil some first aid before he heads home to recover.

Daredevil attempts to capture a high-tech robber called Stilt-Man, who uses a pair of hydraulic lifts to steal from high-rise buildings. He is frustrated when Stilt-Man manages to escape after multiple encounters, but begins to suspect that the hydraulic system the crook uses is the basis for one of the lawsuits he’s working on, brought by an engineer named Wilbur Day against his employer, Carl Kaxton. Matt initially suspects Kaxton of being Stilt-Man, but soon learns that it is, in fact, Day, who is merely trying to cover up his criminal activities. Daredevil then battles Day when he tries to steal a shrinking ray that Kaxton has developed. An errant blast bathes Day in the eerie energies, and Daredevil can only stand by helplessly as Stilt-Man is reduced to microscopic size.

Karen pesters Matt to look into an experimental eye surgery that might restore his sight. This leads him to Lichtenbad, a tiny independent dukedom in Central Europe, the ruler of which, Klaus Kruger, was a classmate of Matt and Foggy’s during their last year at Columbia Law School. Once there, Matt learns that Kruger is a cruel dictator, and the surgeon, Dr. Van Eyck, is only one of many world-class experts Kruger has kidnaped. Daredevil goes into action, freeing Kruger’s prisoners and inspiring the underground resistance movement. A full-scale political revolt breaks out as Daredevil battles Kruger on his castle’s ramparts. The fight ends when Kruger falls over the edge of a parapet and plummets to his death. Daredevil then discovers that Dr. Van Eyck has sacrificed his own life to deactivate Kruger’s doomsday weapon. Matt returns to New York and tells Karen that Van Eyck died before he could perform the operation.

While arguing a case in court, Matt is momentarily distracted when his hypersenses detect a wave of telepathic energy sweeping over New York City. The trial then continues normally.

June 1963 – Matt, Foggy, and Karen are invited to the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm at the Fantastic Four’s Baxter Building headquarters. Among the guests they meet industrialist Tony Stark, the noted geneticist Charles Xavier, the mystic Stephen Strange, and the blind sculptress Alicia Masters. They are also introduced to the mysterious X-Men: Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, and the Beast. When a number of super-villains stage an attack on the building, Matt becomes Daredevil to lend a hand. Outside the building, Daredevil stops a squad of HYDRA shock troops from blowing up the Baxter Building with a truck-bomb. Despite being attacked by the Black Knight on his flying horse, Daredevil manages to drive the truck into the East River. There, the bomb explodes, driving away Attuma and his horde of undersea barbarians. Daredevil makes his way back to the Baxter Building in time to see Mister Fantastic activate a strange device that causes all the super-villains to disappear into a time vortex. After meeting Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Giant-Man, Wasp, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch, Daredevil goes off and becomes Matt Murdock again. Meeting up with Foggy and Karen, he enjoys the rest of the day’s festivities.

July 1963 – Towards the end of the month, Matt is surprised when Foggy announces that he’s been asked to run for District Attorney as a third-party candidate. The New York criminal justice system has been in disarray following the sudden resignation of the previous D.A. in the face of constant threats from super-villains, so a special election is being held. Despite his youth and relative inexperience, Foggy has clearly impressed the leadership of the Reform Party, so Matt is supportive. They attend a gala fundraiser aboard the yacht of Abner Jonas, who was the Reform Party’s candidate in the last mayoral election. There, Foggy is reintroduced to his junior-high sweetheart, Debbie Harris. After dark, Matt saves Jonas from an assassination attempt by a Frog-Man who is working for someone called the Organizer. Despite becoming Daredevil, Matt fails to capture the assassin. Over the next three days, Daredevil battles a Bird-Man and a Cat-Man who commit further crimes against the Reform Party, though they also escape. However, Daredevil captures the Cat-Man when they kidnap Debbie Harris from a Reform Party fundraiser. Soon after, outside police headquarters, Daredevil stops an Ape-Man from lobbing a hand grenade through the window of the room where the Cat-Man is being interrogated. Feigning defeat, Daredevil trails the Ape-Man back to his hideout and discovers that Debbie’s kidnapping was staged; she’s in league with the Organizer. Nevertheless, Daredevil rescues Debbie to prevent the conspirators from manipulating Foggy. After the Cat-Man tells the police the Organizer is trying to use the Reform Party to take over the city government, Matt argues that Foggy should withdraw from the race, though he is reluctant to reveal Debbie’s duplicity. Once Foggy is convinced that the Reform Party is crooked, Daredevil tracks down Debbie, who now fears the Organizer will have her killed. She agrees to help Daredevil infiltrate the Organizer’s headquarters. After a savage battle, Daredevil defeats the animal-themed henchmen and unmasks the Organizer as Abner Jonas. The Reform Party is discredited, and Foggy’s hopes of being the new District Attorney are dashed. Furthermore, Foggy is depressed that Debbie was just using him, even though she’s agreed to testify against Jonas.

Matt convinces himself that Karen loves Foggy and decides not to stand in the way of their relationship. He announces that he’s resigning from the firm to travel the world. Both Karen and Foggy are upset by his decision and try to talk him out of it, but Matt remains resolute. After leaving the office, Matt books an ocean cruise to help him get over Karen and figure out what to do with his life. However, a few days into the voyage, the luxury liner is attacked by the notorious pirate known as the Plunderer. Matt changes into Daredevil to fight off the band of freebooters, but is forced to surrender to keep the ocean liner’s crew from being made to walk the plank. When he is finished with the ship, the Plunderer compels Daredevil to join his pirate crew. DD is astonished to discover that the Plunderer’s apparently wooden sailing ship is actually a high-tech, heavily armored dreadnought capable of converting into a submarine. As they set a course heading due south, Daredevil learns that his captor is really an English lord named Parnival Plunder, and that their destination is a mysterious place known as Skull Island at the bottom of the world.

August 1963 – Daredevil spends the entire month a prisoner aboard the Plunderer’s submarine as they make their way stealthily towards Antarctica.

September 1963 – After about five weeks, the Plunderer’s submarine finally reaches Skull Island, which turns out to be located in the Savage Land. Once ashore, they are attacked by a savage called Ka-Zar and his massive sabretooth tiger. Ka-Zar quickly knocks out Daredevil with a blow to the head. When he revives moments later, Daredevil finds his radar sense is gone. The pirates’ cache of weapons is exploding, and Daredevil soon blacks out again when a piece of shrapnel tears through his arm. Sometime later, Daredevil wakes up in a cave, being menaced by some sort of primitive ape-man. He attempts to fight the creature off, but the injury to his arm and the loss of his radar sense make it difficult for Daredevil to either fight or escape. He is finally rescued by the Plunderer and his pirates, who assume DD went blind during the explosions earlier. The pirates soon capture Ka-Zar, who is revealed to be the Plunderer’s long-lost brother. Ka-Zar throws a bunch of berries at Daredevil, indicating that he should eat them at once. As he does so, Daredevil is amazed that his hypersenses quickly return and the pain in his arm fades away. He decides not to let on to the pirates that he has recovered, still hoping to learn what the Plunderer is trying to achieve, and why he has gone to such lengths to get Ka-Zar’s half of a broken medallion. The pirates load the captive Ka-Zar onto the submarine, and Daredevil follows them aboard. He spends the rest of the month playing the helpless blind man aboard the Plunderer’s ship as they traverse the length of the Atlantic Ocean, heading north.

October 1963 – About five weeks later, the Plunderer’s submarine reaches a lonely castle on the coast of England, where Daredevil joins the pirate crew for a banquet to celebrate their successful voyage. Later that night, the Plunderer forces Daredevil to fight Ka-Zar for possession of the broken medallion. The villain reveals that the medallion is the key to the vault containing their father’s samples of Antarctic vibranium, a very dangerous substance. However, Daredevil skillfully maneuvers Ka-Zar into the right position so he can use him as a springboard to attack the Plunderer. No sooner is their foe unconscious than Daredevil and Ka-Zar are confronted by two of his underlings, Slagg the pirate and the butler, Feepers, who each want the medallion -- and the treasure -- for himself. Feepers shoots Slagg dead, but Daredevil and Ka-Zar quickly knock the butler out and escape into the English countryside. Their progress is halted by a sniper, whom Daredevil tails back to the castle. Hidden from sight, Daredevil observes as the Plunderer kills both Feepers and the sniper and finally unites the two halves of the medallion. Daredevil tries to stop the Plunderer from reaching the cache of vibranium, but must flee when the police arrive, for “Lord Plunder” has framed Daredevil and Ka-Zar for the murders. Getting away aboard a moving train, Daredevil stops at the next station to send a telegram to Foggy Nelson, asking him to come to England to help defend Ka-Zar in court. He then doubles back to the castle to infiltrate the Plunderer’s pirate band as they ship off on their first campaign of conquest using the vibranium-powered weapon the Plunderer has created.

Three days later, the Plunderer’s gang attacks Thule Air Base in Greenland. With the Plunderer’s weapon capable of disintegrating all the military’s metal hardware, the pirates easily capture the base. However, Daredevil reveals himself and defeats the Plunderer in single combat. When their leader falls, the pirates all surrender. Under interrogation, the Plunderer makes a full confession, confirming that the murder charges against Daredevil and Ka-Zar are false. The base’s grateful commanding officer arranges for Daredevil to be flown back to London. Once there, Matt catches up with Foggy and Karen, who are relieved to find he is still alive after disappearing from the luxury liner back in July. Foggy convinces Matt to return to their law practice, and after Ka-Zar is released from custody, the three friends return to the United States.

Back in New York City, Daredevil tries to track down the Ox after the criminal escapes from jail with his cellmate, Karl Stragg. He finds the Ox menacing Karen outside her apartment building, and is confused that his foe seems much more intelligent than he was a few months ago. Unfortunately, the Ox overpowers Daredevil, but DD catches up to him later on a rootop helipad and prevents him from escaping in a helicopter. They fight again, and the Ox becomes increasingly reckless as his rage grows, until he accidentally throws himself off the roof. The Ox is killed instantly when he hits the sidewalk. Returning to the law office, Matt learns that Stragg helped Karen escape from the Ox’s hideout.

Daredevil and Spider-Man are tricked into fighting each other by a criminal mastermind calling himself the Masked Marauder, who steals an experimental auto engine while the two heroes are keeping each other busy. The next day, Spider-Man smashes into the offices of Nelson & Murdock, claiming to know that Foggy is really Daredevil. After the web-slinger has left, Matt realizes that Foggy is trying to make Karen think that Spider-Man’s accusation is true. He worries that Foggy is playing a dangerous game, and could end up making himself a target for underworld retribution. Later, Daredevil convinces Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson to announce that the Masked Marauder (and his accomplice Spider-Man) failed to steal the special fuel formula the engine requires. When the Masked Marauder and his gang return to the scene of the crime, Daredevil and Spider-Man are waiting. Though the gang is apprehended, the Masked Marauder escapes capture. Daredevil goes out of his way to defend Spider-Man’s reputation, to make up for the bad press he caused him.

November 1963 – Foggy continues trying to convince Karen that he is secretly Daredevil, much to Matt’s annoyance. When Matt learns that Foggy has procured a Daredevil costume for himself, he knows his partner is going to get himself into trouble. Thus, Daredevil tails Foggy and Karen on a dinner date that takes them to a secluded area of the waterfront. Sure enough, a costumed villain calling himself the Gladiator, obviously hired by Foggy, challenges him to battle. Foggy gets into his Daredevil get-up and goes to defend Karen. However, DD is forced to intervene when the unstable Gladiator knocks Foggy out and tries to rape Karen. Though Daredevil manages to defeat the Gladiator, the costumed Foggy takes all the credit when the police arrive. The next morning, the Daily Bugle carries the Gladiator’s claims that Franklin Nelson is really Daredevil. Matt spends the rest of the day trying to keep Foggy from being gunned down by revenge-seeking gangsters. The news quickly spreads that the Gladiator’s claims were false. Unfortunately, the Gladiator escapes from jail and disappears.

Daredevil receives a summons from the Avengers and stops at Avengers Mansion to meet with the team. Present are Captain America, Goliath, Wasp, Hawkeye, Thor, and Iron Man. They ask Daredevil for his assessment of Spider-Man, as they are considering making the wall-crawler a member of the team. Daredevil tells them about his battles alongside Spider-Man against the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime, and, more recently, the Masked Marauder. He is happy to give Spider-Man his highest recommendation. The Avengers thank DD for his help, and he departs.

Matt is kidnapped and taken to an ancient castle on a remote island in the North Atlantic Ocean. Upon entering, he discovers that his captor is none other than Leland Owlsley, the rogue Wall Street financier and crime-boss known as the Owl. Owlsley has also kidnapped retired Judge Lewis, who sentenced him to prison after Daredevil captured him last December, and wants Murdock to defend Lewis in a mock trial before the Owl has him killed. With no choice, Matt agrees to play along, hoping to beat the Owl at his own game. Matt skillfully manipulates the Owl into giving him a chance to change into Daredevil. Unfortunately, despite putting up a valiant fight against the Owl’s gun-toting goons, Daredevil is captured in one of his foe’s booby-trap bird cages. Luckily, Daredevil escapes to continue the battle, but the island’s volcano erupts, causing the castle to crumble. As the criminals flee for their lives, Daredevil leaps aboard the villain’s giant robot owl, rescues Judge Lewis, and flies back to the mainland. After a rough landing on Long Island, Daredevil searches for the Owl, without success.

Returning to his law office, Matt learns that they have been appointed by the court to defend the criminal known as the Rhino, with whom Foggy has already attempted to meet. However, the Rhino has escaped custody and is at large in the city. Matt considers going after the Rhino as Daredevil, but Spider-Man beats him to it. Spider-Man dissolves the crook’s Rhino costume, rendering him relatively harmless. The Rhino is returned to prison, and Nelson & Murdock agree to represent him.

Daredevil answers the challenge of a powerful android to a fight at Madison Square Garden, to prevent the artificial being from destroying the building. Before a crowd of thousands, Daredevil battles his inhuman foe, and they cheer him on to victory. As soon as the fight is won, however, Daredevil finds himself teleported to the hidden lair of the Masked Marauder and the Gladiator, who have teamed up against him. Daredevil learns that the android had been imbued with the abilities of three notorious criminals: a safecracker called the Dancer, an over-the-hill professional wrestler known as the Mangler, and an underworld strategist nicknamed the Brain. Daredevil quickly defeats the three of them and turns his attention to the Gladiator. Suddenly, the Masked Marauder activates his teleportation device again, sending Daredevil and the Gladiator to a mock-up of the Roman Coliseum on an abandoned movie set in Europe. There they fight for the entertainment of ranking members of the Maggia, the international crime cartel. However, the Gladiator calls off the fight when Daredevil saves him from an escaped lion. Impressed with Daredevil’s fighting skills, the criminals decide to let him leave in peace.

Unfortunately, Daredevil finds himself in northern Italy with no money, passport, or civilian clothes. A chance encounter with a group of armed brigands engaged in a guerilla war against their government provides Daredevil with transportation—he commandeers a fighter jet they’ve stolen and flies it to England. Once there, he discovers that Ka-Zar has been accused of being a serial killer the papers have dubbed the “Midnight Stalker.” They team up to prove that Ka-Zar has again been framed by his brother, the Plunderer. The villain is recaptured and sent back to prison. In gratitude, Ka-Zar offers to pay Daredevil’s way back to New York.

Before leaving London, Matt is shocked to learn that President John F. Kennedy has been assassinated while visiting Dallas, Texas. He considers volunteering his services to the investigation, confident that with his hypersenses he could act as a human lie-detector. Matt weighs the pros and cons of getting involved on the long flight across the Atlantic.

When Matt disembarks from his plane at the airport in New York, he is accosted by a man calling himself Leap-Frog, who is bounding around on spring-loaded boots. Leap-Frog evades the police and gets away, but Matt is too eager to get back to the office and decides not to pursue him. However, when he arrives, Karen and Foggy confront him with a letter from Spider-Man, in which the web-slinger claims to know that Matt Murdock is Daredevil. Feeling backed into a corner, Matt hastily explains that he has a twin brother named Mike, and Mike is really Daredevil. Foggy is incredulous, since Matt never mentioned having a twin brother all through college. Matt claims that Mike was the black sheep of the family, and he never mentioned him because he was a bit ashamed of having a disreputable, wild adventurer for a brother. Foggy demands to meet this “Mike” Murdock, and Matt agrees to arrange a meeting soon.

While patrolling the city that night, trying to figure out what to do about this “twin brother” business, Daredevil finds the Leap-Frog robbing a jewelry store, though the crook is now wearing an outlandish frog costume. Suffering from jet-lag, Daredevil fails to prevent Leap-Frog from escaping. The next morning, Matt dons some loud clothes and a pair of stylish sunglasses and is waiting for Foggy and Karen when they arrive at the office. Claiming to be “Mike” Murdock, he assumes an obnoxious, abrasive personality, flirts with Karen, and teases Foggy. He hurries out when a radio bulletin announces that Leap-Frog has just robbed a bank. Daredevil soon catches up to Leap-Frog in Central Park and defeats him. He returns to the office as Matt Murdock to see if Foggy and Karen were fooled, and is relieved that they bought it. Later, Nelson & Murdock are hired to defend Leap-Frog in court.

December 1963 – Over the next few weeks, Matt continues to make appearances as “Mike” Murdock to keep Foggy and Karen thinking that Daredevil is his twin brother. In one such instance, he attends Leap-Frog’s arraignment, thus allowing Foggy a chance to do a high-profile court case. The proceedings are disrupted when Leap-Frog makes an escape attempt, but he breaks his leg and is recaptured. While chasing Leap-Frog, Daredevil encounters Stilt-Man, who has been restored to his normal size. Though Daredevil manages to topple Stilt-Man into an alleyway, the villain seems to disappear without a trace. DD spends the rest of the day searching for Stilt-Man without success, though he does run into Spider-Man. Daredevil decides not to mention the letter Spidey sent to Matt Murdock, hoping that will cause the wall-crawler to doubt his conclusions.

The next day, Matt, Foggy, and Karen are kidnapped by Stilt-Man and held prisoner aboard the Masked Marauder’s armored helicopter. The villains are convinced that the three of them know Daredevil’s true identity, and threaten to kill them unless they reveal it. Karen and Foggy are shocked when Matt immediately gives up “Mike” as Daredevil. Triumphant, the Masked Marauder drops off Stilt-Man so he can hunt down Murdock’s twin. Karen is horrified that Matt would betray his own brother. Then, the Marauder announces that instead of freeing his captives, he’s just going to kill them by throwing them out of the helicopter. And since Murdock cooperated, the Marauder says he can die first. However, under cover of darkness, Matt hooks his legs around the landing struts, changes into Daredevil, then swings back in and attacks the Marauder. Daredevil suddenly recognizes that the Masked Marauder is really their building manager, Frank Farnum. He unnerves the Marauder by calling him by his real name, causing the villain to take drastic measures. Farnum activates a disintegration field around the helicopter, to make it easier to kill Daredevil. As they fight, though, Foggy messes with the force field control panel, trying to deactivate it. The helicopter lurches and Farnum stumbles through the open door, vanishing into the energy field outside. Foggy takes the controls as Daredevil explains that he saved Matt before attacking the Marauder. Just then, Stilt-Man returns, and is just about to shoot Daredevil when his armor’s power supply shorts out. His stilts retract and he lands in the river, knocked out by the impact. Foggy radios the harbor patrol to pick up Stilt-Man before finding a place to land the helicopter.

Following this incident, Matt finds himself a pariah around the office, since both Karen and Foggy think he would betray his own brother to save himself. As a result, he spends more and more time hanging around as “Mike,” since Karen clearly enjoys their flirty banter. However, he gradually realizes that this whole “secret identity” problem is starting to get out of hand.

Notes:

January 1963 – Daredevil meets Spider-Man at the circus in Amazing Spider-Man #16. DD is then seen reacting to Spidey’s cowardly actions two issues later.

March 1963 – Daredevil’s adventures continue in Daredevil #4 and following.

May 1963 – Daredevil’s iconic all-red costume debuted in Daredevil #7, redesigned by Wallace Wood. Incidentally, DD makes a brief cameo while searching for the Sub-Mariner in Journey Into Mystery #116. Daredevil then helps the Fantastic Four survive Doctor Doom’s attack in Fantastic Four #39–40. Matt Murdock has another cameo appearance in Uncanny X-Men #13.

June 1963 – Daredevil helps out the Fantastic Four again on Reed and Sue’s wedding day in Fantastic Four Annual #3. Of all the assembled villains, Daredevil has previously encountered Electro and the Eel. Mister Fantastic specifically states that Nelson & Murdock are his team’s attorneys.

July 1963 - Why New York is looking for a new District Attorney is not explained in the story, so I speculate that it has to do with the ever-growing crowd of super-villains the criminal justice system is trying to deal with. I believe this would make an interesting Untold Tale of the Original Marvel Universe.

August 1963 – Daredevil is aboard the Plunderer’s submarine somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean when Galactus arrives on earth, and so misses the entire event.

October 1963 – Thule Air Base in Greenland is not named specifically in Daredevil #14, but it seems the most likely candidate, even though it is about 3,000 miles from the west coast of Britain. When Daredevil realizes the pirates’ weapons are all made of plastic, he warns the approaching fleet that the Plunderer’s vibranium weapon is effective only on metal weapons. It is quite possible that the American military has already developed plastic weapons at this point, in response to Magneto’s attack on Cape Canaveral one year ago. In Daredevil #15, Karl Stragg does the mind-transference mambo with the Ox. When the Ox’s body dies at the end of the story, his mind lives on in Stragg’s puny body.

November 1963 – Daredevil gives Spider-Man a character reference for the Avengers in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3. While Matt is busy with the Owl, Foggy is seen trying to meet with the Rhino in Amazing Spider-Man #42. Matt and Foggy discuss the Rhino situation in the next issue of that title. The maximum range of a fighter jet in the early 1960s was about 700 miles, which is why I speculate that Daredevil found himself in northern Italy at the beginning of Daredevil #24. Plus, this is the Maggia’s home turf and a likely place to film a movie involving Ancient Rome. I find it highly unlikely that Ka-Zar would have had Zabu shipped all the way from the Savage Land to England at this point in time. Since he is not necessary to the story, I maintain that Zabu was not actually present during these events. Naturally, the Kennedy assassination is not mentioned in the original story, but it falls at this point in the timeline.

December 1963 – This brings us up to Daredevil #27. Foggy actually succeeds in deactivating the disintegration field, allowing the Masked Marauder to teleport himself to safety.

Next Issue: Spider-Man – Year Two

Jump Back: Daredevil – Year One

Steranko Uncensored

2011-09-22T21:09:00.002-05:00

Jim Steranko’s artwork proved to be a bit too sexy for Marvel in 1968, when the company was operating under the censorious Comics Code Authority. He left the comics industry soon after, due in large part to frustration over the changes made to his finished drawings by Marvel staffers.

I have endeavored to reverse the change made in one famous example, the full-body shot of Contessa Valentina Allegra de La Fontaine on page 5 of the “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” story in Strange Tales #168. Here is the page as Steranko intended for it to be seen.

The page as published by Marvel in the May 1968 issue:

Steranko’s uncensored version of Val’s derriere was revealed in the Spring 1989 issue of Betty Pages magazine. The online version can be found here.

The Judgment of Galactus

2011-08-26T21:16:00.007-05:00

In this brief glimpse into the near future, Galactus passes judgment on Marvel’s current continuity.

Click on image to enlarge.

I think the Big Guy pretty well sums up the problems with the Quesadaverse. Good riddance.

By Chris Claremont & Alan Davis

A Strange Horoscope

2011-08-24T13:50:00.003-05:00

There’s been some controversy in astrological circles since scientists pointed out that the stars have significantly shifted since the zodiac was first described many centuries ago. Certain parties have even suggested revisions, including new signs and symbols, to bring astrology back in line with astronomy. These ideas have been largely rejected by the purveyors of traditional horoscopes. However, such problems are unavoidable when trying to reconcile a static system rooted in tradition with the chaotic, ever-changing universe surrounding the Planet Earth. These inconsistencies will only worsen with time, especially as science increases our understanding of the true nature of outer space.

Therefore, perhaps the time has come to abandon the well-worn zodiac, with its curious menagerie of animals, chimera, people, and inanimate objects. A much more reliable system can be devised using instead the various mystical powers invoked by Marvel Comics’ resident Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Strange. Not tied to the physical universe we can observe through telescopes, this system cannot be so easily debunked.

In order to be as helpful as possible, I have prepared a sample horoscope using this new mystical cosmology. I’m sure you will find its words of advice to be eerily relevant to your own life!

CYTORRAK
March 21—April 20

You may feel like you’re stuck with some pretty tough restraints, but this doesn’t mean you should be seeing red. Constraints are not always a bad thing, for often they force you to be more creative. In the end, you may find yourself being more effective than if you had been free to barrel ahead like a juggernaut.

Element: Air
Energy: Male

POHLDAHK
April 21—May 20

If you’re feeling a bit like a charlatan, there may be a reason for it. Perhaps you need to polish your skills so you can reach the level of success you desire. You can’t be an in-betweener about it, though. It requires commitment.

Element: Earth
Energy: Female

FALTINE
May 21—June 20

If you think you’ve been a bit too hot-headed lately, this may be a good time to step back and make some long-range plans. Family can often help with this process, but they can just as often be an impediment, so be careful. However, don’t take so long that you lose the fire in your belly; it’s the source of your strength.

Element: Fire
Energy: Male

MUNNOPOR
June 21—July 22

When life starts making you feel like you’re trapped in a maze, take a moonlit stroll and make a list of 12 things you hope to accomplish. You may find it illuminating.

Element: Water
Energy: Female

HOGGOTH
July 23—August 22

You’re not alone, so be ready if a helping hand must be given or accepted. Your wealth of experience will make you a most valuable team player, especially when the path ahead seems unclear.

Element: Air
Energy: Male

OSHTUR
August 23—September 22

You’ll be able to accomplish anything you set your mind to if you trust in yourself. Aim for the skies, and you’ll soon feel right at home. A keen eye and a steady hand will help you hit the target, so take good care of yourself. Remember, there’s no such thing as “too smart.”

Element: Earth
Energy: Female

AGAMOTTO
September 23—October 22

You have a vision of your current project, and no one can see it as clearly as you. Trust your own innate wisdom and let your mental “third eye” guide you. You don’t need a crystal ball to know where you need to direct your energies. Whether you see yourself as a lion or a caterpillar, you can be a leader.

Element: Fire
Energy: Male

IKONN
October 23—November 21

Don’t be fooled by imitations, and accept no substitutes, especially when it comes to friendship. People may try to get the better of you, but you can see right through them. Watch how the phonies fade away when you start calling them out for their deceptions.

Element: Water
Energy: Female

WATOOMB
November 22—December 21

A breezy manner and a light, effervescent personality may be your best defense when storms blow up, as they inevitably do. Remember, the right attitude can accomplish more than any magic wand.

Element: Air
Energy: Male

RAGGADORR
December 22—January 20

If someone is raining on your parade, you don’t need to go over to the dark side. A sudden change of direction may be all that’s needed, and you’ll soon be running rings around your competitors.

Element: Earth
Energy: Female

NIRVALON
January 21—February 19

Things can seem pretty dark at times, and others may be counting on you to light the way. However, you can accomplish much more working with your significant other than you’ll ever be able to do by yourself. Help each other to be knights in shining armor.

Element: Fire
Energy: Male

VALTORR
February 20—March 20

When life gets murky, it can be hard to tell right from wrong. Watch out for the snake-in-the-grass who comes in friendship but means to lead you astray, and, more importantly, make sure you’re not the viper in someone else’s bosom.

Element: Water
Energy: Female

In the name of the Venerated, Everlasting Vishanti, so mote it be!

OMU: Iron Man -- Year Two

2011-08-19T13:21:00.013-05:00

Following the highly successful first seven months of his career as Iron Man, Tony Stark is forced to experience the darker side of his life as a superhero. An encounter with the villainous Kang the Conqueror leaves Stark’s damaged heart in worse shape than ever, and he never fully recovers from the ordeal. He soon finds himself forced to remain in his armor twenty-four hours a day for several weeks, wreaking havoc on his personal life. Then, despite curtailing his activities, within a couple of months Iron Man feels he must resign from the Avengers, the team he helped found, due to his ill health. By autumn, he nearly dies of heart failure and must be hospitalized, after which he practically gives up being Iron Man altogether. For all his technological wizardry, Stark can manage only to keep himself one step away from his grave. To make matters worse, he struggles continually with feelings of sexual jealousy towards his closest friends, Happy and Pepper, and is hounded relentlessly by the United States Congress, in addition to dealing with his fearsome rogue’s gallery of super-villains. It is only his remarkable strength of character that sees Tony Stark through the dark days ahead.

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 resuming… The True History of the Invincible Iron Man!

January 1963 – Tony Stark is on hand for the top-secret launching of the Helicarrier as S.H.I.E.L.D. opens for business on the first day of the year. Everything goes off without a hitch, and Stark congratulates the agency’s executive director. They discuss the threat posed by HYDRA, and Stark assures the director that his Special Weaponry Section will provide the hardware S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to combat the enemies of freedom. Following the ceremonies, he returns to Stark Industries’ main facility on Long Island to continue working on his latest projects, including a powerful anti-gravity device.

A few days later, a fortuitous accident in the lab renders Stark’s anti-gravity ray fully operational. Word leaks out about the device when Stark holds a demonstration for the Defense Department, leading Natasha Romanova to reappear and steal it right out of Stark’s executive office. Stark is furious that he has allowed himself to be suckered by the Black Widow’s feminine charms once again, and, donning his Iron Man armor, searches far and wide without success. He is equally unsuccessful in recreating the device, since he cannot replicate the conditions of the accident that made it work. The Black Widow leaves a trail of destruction at various Stark factories in the region, and rumors surface that the U.S. Senate is considering investigating Stark for allowing the device to fall into the hands of a known Soviet agent. Iron Man soon discovers her hideout in a condemned apartment building, but she easily defeats him using the anti-gravity ray as a weapon. After devising a new strategy, Iron Man then tracks the Black Widow and her accomplices to Kentucky, where they are attempting to break into Fort Knox. He destroys the anti-gravity device by causing its internal components to fuse into slag, but though her fellow spies are captured, the Black Widow manages to slip away again. Iron Man is irritated when the Army officers at the base blame Tony Stark for the whole fiasco.

Upon returning to New York, Iron Man is summoned by his Avengers teammate Giant-Man when Thor is tearing up the streets of the city in a rage. Joined by the Wasp, they fly out to intercept the thunder god, finding him smashing the front end of a flatbed truck with his enchanted hammer. Thor refuses to explain himself, and Iron Man can only remind Giant-Man that they have made a pledge not to interfere in each other’s personal business.

A day or so later, Stark is called to a meeting at the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Sensing the romantic chemistry between his executive secretary Virginia “Pepper” Potts and his chauffeur Harold “Happy” Hogan, Stark gives in to jealousy and orders Happy to make an inspection tour of all the facilities damaged by the Black Widow so he’ll be out of the office during Stark’s absence. At the Pentagon, Stark is berated by military officers because the spy-drone aircraft he created have all disappeared while trying to take photographs behind enemy lines in Vietnam. Stark agrees to personally investigate the matter, and travels directly to Southeast Asia. He soon deduces that only the Mandarin possesses the technology to override his guidance systems, and tracks the villain to a remote fortress in the jungle. There, he becomes Iron Man and battles the Chinese despot for the second time, but soon falls before the full force of the Mandarin’s ten mysterious rings. Nevertheless, Iron Man escapes from the Mandarin’s death-trap, destroys the villain’s interceptor ray, and launches all the captured spy-drones back toward the American perimeter. After making a full report to the Army officers in Vietnam and their superiors in Washington, Stark finally returns to New York. He turns on the charm with Pepper, much to Happy’s chagrin, but quickly becomes frustrated that he cannot get closer to her without revealing that he is Iron Man.

Stark’s foul mood leads him to become disenchanted with the Avengers as well, when, at their next routine meeting, the heroes find they don’t really have much to talk about, since none of them are willing to reveal any personal details about themselves. Afterwards, Iron Man receives some judo training from Captain America, but it does little to improve his state of mind.

Soon, Stark gives vent to his rage and frustration over the necessity of wearing his iron chestplate 24 hours a day to keep his injured heart beating. Deciding that he’s sick and tired of being Iron Man and yearning to return to his happy-go-lucky days as a millionaire playboy, Stark ignores a call from the Avengers and goes for a spin in his brand-new Jaguar. He picks up a bleach-blond beauty named Pamela for a date at one of the East Side’s swankiest supper clubs. However, their evening is interrupted when Stark receives a phone call from a plant manager informing him the factory was attacked by a super-villain called the Unicorn, who used a head-mounted energy beam to break in, seriously injure Happy, and kidnap Pepper. Immediately, Stark becomes Iron Man and tracks the Unicorn’s residual energy traces to a beachfront mansion. After a brief battle, Iron Man rescues Pepper and returns her to Stark Industries. Unfortunately, the Unicorn follows him and renews the battle on the factory grounds. The Unicorn soon forces Iron Man to surrender by revealing he has hidden a powerful bomb on the premises, and orders the armored Avenger to accompany him behind the Iron Curtain. But, once their plane is out over the Atlantic Ocean, Iron Man smashes out through the hull and destroys the engines and wings, causing the aircraft to crash into the water. The plane’s crew of Soviet agents are picked up by the Coast Guard, but the Unicorn escapes. The next morning, Stark and Pepper visit Happy in the hospital and learn that he should soon be back on his feet. Stark begins to suspect that Pepper truly has feelings for Happy, and decides not to stand in the way of their relationship.

Giant-Man convenes a special Avengers meeting to demand that Iron Man explain why he ignored their call. Learning that his teammates were trying to warn him about the Unicorn, Stark is plagued by guilt when he realizes he could have prevented Happy and Pepper from getting hurt. Thus, he offers no defense except to cite “personal problems” and accepts their censure when they suspend him from active duty for one week. He returns to Stark Industries knowing that it was foolish to think he could shirk his responsibilities.

Thus, a few days later, when he sees a TV news bulletin that Thor is battling Giant-Man in Manhattan, Stark decides to intervene despite his suspension. Arriving on the scene, Iron Man sees Thor trying to kill the Wasp and attacks the thunder god with his repulsor rays. Iron Man quickly deduces that Thor must be under some form of hypnosis and generates a brilliant burst of flashing light to snap him out of it. Thor awakens from his trance, but just then Baron Zemo’s airship appears, strafing the rooftop with gunfire, before abruptly veering off across the city. Thor leads his teammates to the penthouse apartment of the Enchantress, the “Asgardian” sorceress who hypnotized him, where they find Captain America lying unconscious on the patio. Zemo’s airship is making a fast retreat, so Thor creates a space-time vortex that casts the ship into another dimension. The thunder god explains that if the Enchantress has come to Earth, then her lackey, the Executioner, would certainly have followed her, and if they have indeed joined forces with Zemo, then the danger the Avengers face is very grave.

When a villain called the Grey Gargoyle is on a rampage in New York, Stark agrees to lend a 3-D image projector to the manager of a television newsreel company who is working with Thor’s friend, Dr. Donald Blake. Although their plan is a success, the image projector is lost at the bottom of the Hudson River along with the villain. Stark agrees to write it off as a public service.

At the Avengers’ next training session, the team again discusses what they should do about the Hulk, who is reported to have disrupted the filming of a movie involving Spider-Man a couple of weeks ago. As Avengers’ chairman, Giant-Man decides to research the matter further. Later that evening, Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp intercept Thor as he flies past Avengers Mansion to see if he needs their help. Thor declines the offer, telling them this fight is a personal one, and zooms off into the sky.

Back at Stark Industries, Happy asks Iron Man to convince the boss to put in a good word for him with Pepper. Iron Man agrees to do so, though he struggles with his feelings of jealousy. He decides it would be easier to get over Pepper if she had a steady boyfriend. Unfortunately, she misinterprets Stark’s opening statement as a request for a date and enthusiastically accepts. Not wanting to hurt Pepper’s feelings, Stark schemes to take her on the most unromantic date he can think of. Thus, evening finds them strolling down the crowded midway at Coney Island. When one of the rides goes haywire, Stark ditches Pepper with a lame excuse, dons his Iron Man armor, and saves the people in danger. She is clearly disappointed with the whole evening, and the next day Stark feels guilty and plans to make it up to her by taking her for a proper night on the town. However, he finds that his gambit has worked, and Pepper has finally agreed to go on a date with Happy.

At the end of the day, Iron Man responds to an intruder alert and finds that a masked archer calling himself Hawkeye has broken into the factory. His high-tech arrowheads are able to damage Iron Man’s armor, and Hawkeye makes his escape while Stark is replacing the compromised components. Then, Iron Man pursues Hawkeye to a small marina near La Guardia airport to retrieve his stolen technology. Though Hawkeye seems defeated after a brief battle, he manages to fire an arrow with an explosive tip that stuns Iron Man. The Golden Avenger recovers in time to see Hawkeye and a dark-haired woman pulling away into the fog on a boat. Iron Man tries to give chase, but nearly collides with an airplane landing at the airport. Though his foe escaped, Iron Man is satisfied that Hawkeye’s attempted theft was thwarted, and he doesn’t consider a guy with a bow & arrow to be a serious threat.

Soon after, Iron Man checks out a disturbance at one of the power plants serving Stark Industries and finds Spider-Man and a defeated Electro. Spider-Man quickly swings off, leaving Iron Man to turn Electro over to the police. A couple of days later, while testing a new underwater breathing apparatus, Iron Man spots Kraven the Hunter trying to sneak ashore after being deported. Iron Man easily captures Kraven and hands him over to the Coast Guard.

Returning to Stark Industries, Iron Man is summoned to the front office by Pepper when an injured Captain America staggers in. Cap reveals that he had been captured by the master-of-disguise known as the Chameleon but managed to escape. Iron Man promises to track down the Captain America impostor before he can infiltrate the Avengers. Though the Captain America he finds at the team’s headquarters protests his innocence, Iron Man chases him throughout the city for a showdown at a construction site. Cap rigs various pieces of construction equipment into traps to slow Iron Man down, and Stark begins to doubt himself when Cap saves Happy and Pepper from injury when they blunder into the battle. Finally, Giant-Man and the Wasp appear, having apprehended the Chameleon nearby. Iron Man realizes he’s been fighting the wrong man all along. It was the impostor who came to Stark Industries and set the whole thing in motion. Cap says there’s no hard feelings, but later, Stark berates himself for falling for the Chameleon’s deception.

Early one evening, Iron Man joins the Avengers for a special conference-call with the top brass at the Pentagon, where they learn of the menace of Kang the Conqueror. Traveling to Virginia aboard a specially-chartered DC-8 from Idlewild Airport, the Avengers find Kang relaxing outside his massive time-ship. Thor notes the conqueror’s air of absolute confidence, and when Iron Man questions him, Kang announces that he has claimed their world for his dominions and easily repels the Avengers with his fantastic technology. Soon, an undersecretary from the Defense Department arrives on the scene and takes charge, prompting Kang to reveal that he is a time-traveler from the far future, who had been known in the distant past as Pharaoh Rama-Tut. After a chance encounter with Doctor Doom, Kang explains, he decided to assume a new identity and conquer the 20th century. Having heard enough, the Avengers charge again, but Kang captures and imprisons them within his ship using various energy beams. The paralysis ray holding Iron Man prisoner interferes with the workings of his life-sustaining chestplate, and as the hours crawl by, Stark feels himself growing weaker and weaker. Finally, Thor smashes open Iron Man’s cell, explaining that he had been set free by Rick Jones and his Teen Brigade. Iron Man struggles to get to his feet as his life-support system comes back online. He rallies as the Avengers storm out of Kang’s ship and find it is now morning. However, Iron Man remains too weakened to do much more than watch as Thor and Giant-Man drive Kang to abandon his plans of conquest.

In the days that follow, Stark becomes concerned that his encounter with Kang has left his heart weaker than ever. At the Avengers’ next meeting, they discuss Spider-Man’s public act of cowardice during a battle with the Green Goblin in a New York supper club. Iron Man worries that it reflects badly on all superheroes. Days later, Spider-Man further humiliates himself by running away from the Sandman down a crowded street. At the same time, Iron Man becomes concerned about Captain America’s frame of mind, as the strain of his obsession with bringing Baron Zemo to justice starts taking its toll. Finding even these routine meetings exhausting, Iron Man volunteers to remain on monitor duty when the rest of the team attends an out-of-town charity benefit.

Unfortunately, Iron Man is immediately called back to Stark Industries when the factory is attacked by the Black Knight, who has just escaped from prison. Arriving as Tony Stark to assess the situation, he suddenly collapses in the front office while talking to Happy and Pepper. Despite his feeble protests, they refuse to leave his side until a doctor arrives. Luckily, the Black Knight’s attack causes a power failure, enabling Stark to crawl into his office and lock the door. He dons his Iron Man armor and attaches two disc-shaped power boosters to his belt, which finally make him feel strong enough to tackle the villain. Despite the Black Knight’s vast arsenal of unusual weapons, Iron Man soon defeats him. However, upon returning to his office, Stark realizes that his heart has become so weak that his chestplate alone is no longer sufficient; he needs the extra power afforded by his full suit of armor to stay alive. Thus, Iron Man informs Happy and Pepper that Tony Stark will be “out of town” for the foreseeable future and has left the armored Avenger in charge of the company. Iron Man realizes they know he’s lying and that they are suspicious of him, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

When a series of seeming earthquakes strike New York one morning, leaving huge, impossibly deep shafts where whole city blocks had been, Iron Man suspects it may be the work of Queen Kala of the Netherworld. However, when the Avengers arrive on the scene, the Fantastic Four inform them that the Mole Man is responsible. The Avengers agree to give the FF one day to deal with the situation before intervening. Several hours later, the city blocks return to their proper places and the FF report the Mole Man has been defeated and his underground kingdom destroyed by a chain-reaction of explosions.

While stopping a bank robbery being committed by Baron Zemo, the Enchantress, and the Executioner, the Avengers meet a new superhero calling himself Wonder Man. So overwhelmingly powerful is this interloper that Baron Zemo calls a retreat. After the villains escape, the Avengers question Wonder Man, who claims to have come from the heart of the Amazon jungles, and says he wants to join the team. Discussing the matter further at Avengers Mansion, Wonder Man reveals that he owes his powers to Zemo’s experiments, but they’ve also resulted in a strange disease that’s slowly killing him. The Avengers are glad to offer their assistance. Returning to his laboratory at Stark Industries, Iron Man tries to develop some transistor-powered device that will help Wonder Man, with little success.

A few days later, Iron Man receives a transmission from Wonder Man saying that both he and the Wasp have been captured by Baron Zemo and are being held in South America. Iron Man alerts Thor, Giant-Man, and Captain America, then sets off for Brazil at once. Iron Man is captured by Zemo upon arrival and watches helplessly as Wonder Man betrays them, defeating his teammates in rapid succession. However, Giant-Man manages to free Iron Man before losing consciousness. Iron Man battles Wonder Man, but the Enchantress soon casts a spell that makes him fall asleep. When he comes to, Iron Man sees that Wonder Man has switched sides again and is now fighting to save the Avengers. The tables have turned, so the villains retreat by blowing up their escape tunnel behind them. The Avengers turn back to Wonder Man, finding him lying on the ground near death. He tells them he wanted to do one noble thing in his life before the end. The toxins that Zemo used to empower him then take their toll, and he dies in Iron Man’s arms. Giant-Man is determined to do something to save him, and so when the Avengers bring Wonder Man’s body back to the United States, he takes it to his downtown laboratory. There, Iron Man assists him in conducting a thorough examination of the corpse and making a recording of Wonder Man’s brain patterns. A fingerprint match identifies Wonder Man as notorious embezzler Simon Williams, who had publicly blamed Tony Stark for his business failures. Stark feels a twinge of guilt and makes arrangements for a proper burial.

While leaving Avengers Mansion, Iron Man and Thor spot a heist in progress, as a gang of crooks tries to steal a collection of expensive fur coats. The two heroes easily disable the truck, overcome the crooks, and turn them over to the police.

Iron Man finds it increasingly difficult to account for Tony Stark’s prolonged absence, and rumors begin to circulate that he eliminated his employer for his own gain. The police launch an investigation, and news reports are broadcast that Iron Man is the prime suspect in Stark’s disappearance. When he contacts Avengers Mansion, Thor interrogates him about the situation. Iron Man swears he hasn’t harmed Stark, but Thor demands that he lift this cloud of suspicion as soon as possible. Hours later, while considering his options, Iron Man receives a call from Giant-Man, informing him that Hawkeye has once again raided Stark Industries and is holding Pepper hostage. Minutes later, Iron Man smashes into the factory and battles Hawkeye until the archer runs out of explosive arrows and retreats. Secluding himself in his private laboratory, Stark labors night and day seeking a means to compensate for his failing heart.

Fearing that he is dying, Iron Man proposes at the Avengers’ next meeting that they give Rick Jones some kind of costume and make him an official member of the team, noting his bravery during their encounter with Kang. However, Captain America claims that it’s his decision to make, and he needs more time to consider it. Giant-Man agrees to put the motion on hold.

Iron Man’s experiments are interrupted when Thor leads the Avengers to a mountainous region of Bavaria in search of a mysterious evil. Once there, they discover the X-Men are already working the case. Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel, and Iceman reject Captain America’s offer to join forces and attack the Avengers, attempting to drive them off. The Avengers try to subdue the young mutants without hurting them. After a few minutes, Thor suddenly stops the fight, explaining that he has been contacted telepathically by the X-Men’s mysterious leader, Professor X. Now convinced that the X-Men should be allowed to deal with the situation, the Avengers take their leave and return to New York. Stark is glad to get back to his laboratory without further delay.

February 1963 – Iron Man struggles to maintain control of Stark Industries under mounting suspicion that Tony Stark has met with foul play. Furthermore, the police finally announce their intent to hold Iron Man pending a grand jury investigation, so the armored Avenger holes up in his Long Island beach house. However, the next morning he finds Happy climbing in through his bedroom window, doubtless searching for clues. Since his helmet and gauntlets are not handy, Stark leaps into bed and pulls the blankets up over him. He pretends to be ill as the astonished Happy calls Pepper. When she arrives, Stark chides them for not trusting Iron Man. The police soon arrive to interview him, and Stark claims to be too weak to get out of bed. Later, after everyone has left, Stark finally puts his helmet and gauntlets back on and watches from the terrace as Happy and Pepper drive off. Just then, a powerful energy beam shoots down from the sky and destroys the house in a massive explosion.

Police and fire crews are soon on the scene, and Happy and Pepper return as well. The news media reports that Tony Stark must have been killed in the blast. Castigated by Pepper for his failure to act, Iron Man claims he was on the opposite side of the house when it happened and was unable to save Stark. Then, knowing it’s only a matter of time before he becomes the prime suspect in his own murder, Iron Man works throughout the next day and night to triangulate the point of origin of the energy beam. He finally calculates that it was fired from the Mandarin’s fortress in the remote Valley of the Spirits, and sets off for China at once. Unfortunately, upon arrival, Iron Man is taken prisoner by his foe once again and forced to listen as the Mandarin reveals his life story in excruciating detail. Iron Man is disturbed to learn that the villain’s ten deadly rings are an alien technology discovered inside a long-abandoned spaceship. Finally, having had a chance to recharge his armor, Iron Man breaks free of the death-trap and wrecks the Mandarin’s plans to spark a nuclear war between China and the United States. When the Red Chinese Army attacks the Mandarin’s fortress in retaliation, Iron Man abandons the fight. He soon hitches a ride in a U.S. military jet flying east across the Pacific Ocean. While he’s dozing off, inspiration suddenly strikes on a means to radically improve the life-support system in his chestplate.

Returning to Stark Industries, Iron Man immediately heads to his private laboratory to try out his new idea. The experiment is a success, and his improved chestplate allows him to finally remove the rest of his armor and put on regular clothes. Minutes later, Tony Stark strides into the front office. Happy is shocked and Pepper faints. Stark hastily concocts a story that he has gotten engaged to a debutante from Boston and was with her on her family’s yacht, cut off from the outside world, the whole time he was believed to be dead. Happy and Pepper are incredulous, but Stark embarks on an immediate inspection tour of his munitions plant to prevent them from asking for further details. One of his technicians, Dr. Donald Birch, tries to get a meeting, but Stark puts him off until next week. He is preoccupied with his conflicted feelings about Happy and Pepper’s relationship, recognizing they are a good match but still wishing he could have Pepper for himself. The news spreads quickly that Tony Stark is still alive and is back at work.

Over the next week, Stark Industries repeatedly falls victim to a mysterious saboteur, nicknamed “The Phantom,” and the situation prompts outrage from the military, Congress, and the unions. Stark puts in long hours dealing with irate representatives and patrolling the factory as Iron Man. Finally, late one night, Iron Man spots the Phantom trying to sabotage the factory’s computer control center. He chases the saboteur into a prototype lunar launch vehicle and traps him inside the capsule at the top. Iron Man then shakes the capsule until the Phantom surrenders. When the villain is unmasked, he is revealed to be Donald Birch, who admits he was jealous of Stark’s fame and fortune. The plant’s security guards turn Birch over to the police.

Giant-Man summons the Avengers to an emergency meeting, but when he says he has received a call for help from the ants, Iron Man assumes he must be joking. However, Thor is in one of his foul moods and their discussion quickly turns into a bitter argument. Giant-Man angrily decides he’ll handle the case on his own. Later, after a series of global tremors lend weight to Giant-Man’s bizarre theories, the Avengers meet again and learn from the Wasp that their oversized partner has gone missing. She is able to track Giant-Man’s cybernetic signals to the Mole Man’s underground kingdom of Subterranea, which was not completely destroyed after all. Then, following an attack on the mansion by a platoon of heavily armed Subterraneans, the Avengers descend to the Mole Man’s realm. They are surprised when confronted by a Russian with the power of intangibility, who calls himself the Red Ghost. Nevertheless, the Avengers defeat the Red Ghost, the Mole Man, and his hordes of Subterraneans, rescue Giant-Man, and destroy the villains’ arsenal of weapons. Upon returning to their headquarters, the team offers Giant-Man an official apology for doubting him earlier.

Soon after, the Avengers lose 24 hours when they are hypnotized during a charity event hosted by Count Luchino Nefaria, who has had his castle transported stone-by-stone from Italy to the New Jersey Palisades. As they return to the city, the team is suddenly attacked by the U.S. Army and a squadron of Air Force fighter jets. Confused, the Avengers defend themselves and disable the military’s weapons as best they can without injuring any of the soldiers. Unwilling to fight American forces, Giant-Man calls for a full retreat. The Avengers soon reconvene in their secret emergency headquarters, which is hidden in an abandoned, camouflaged railway tunnel deep in a forest. Listening to radio news reports, they learn that they are wanted for treason after trying to seize the reins of power from the government yesterday. Thor speculates that some evil group impersonated them, and Iron Man suggests there must be some connection with Nefaria’s castle. Despite the national state of emergency and the declaration of martial law, the Avengers make it back to the castle without being captured, but Iron Man, Giant-Man, the Wasp, and Thor are quickly paralyzed by Nefaria’s defensive systems. Captain America succeeds in getting inside the castle, but long, frustrating minutes pass before Rick Jones and his Teen Brigade escape the castle to free the Avengers. Learning from the boys that Nefaria is actually head of the infamous international crime cartel the Maggia, the Avengers smash their way into the castle’s dungeons, rescue Cap, and defeat the Maggia gunmen there. Army troops invade the castle in time to hear Nefaria’s confession, and the Avengers are cleared of any wrongdoing. However, they discover the Wasp has received a gunshot wound to the chest.

The Avengers race the Wasp to the hospital, where they learn that her condition is critical. Thor flies to Norway to fetch a Doctor Svenson, a pioneer in lung restoration surgery. However, once he has been brought in to examine the Wasp, the uncooperative Svenson turns out to be an alien in disguise. When his mask is removed, the alien quickly dies of asphyxiation, unable to breathe Earth’s air. In desperation, the Avengers search the globe for the alien’s secret base, where his people are holding the real Svenson. The team finally locates the aliens near the North Pole, where they have constructed an enormous city inside a cavern of ice. However, the Avengers are captured and taken before Ogor, ruler of the Kallusians. He explains that his people are a peace-loving race from a distant galaxy, driven to take refuge on Earth by an intergalactic war, even though they found the atmosphere to be poisonous to them. Svenson had stumbled upon their city while on a research expedition and had agreed to help the aliens with their respiratory problems. Ogor refuses to turn over Svenson, prompting Thor to break free and attack. He forces Ogor to release the rest of the Avengers and the team valiantly battles the Kallusian militia. However, Svenson appears and stops the fight, telling the Avengers he had agreed to remain with the Kallusians because they intend to leave Earth as soon as their extraterrestrial enemies finish searching this sector of space. When Giant-Man explains why they need Svenson to come to New York, the surgeon is torn by his dilemma. The matter is resolved suddenly when an alarm sounds—the aliens have been discovered by their enemies. The Kallusians prepare to make a last stand on Earth in a battle that would surely devastate the planet, but Thor threatens to destroy their weapons unless they depart for outer space immediately. Knowing they can’t waste time fighting the Avengers now, Ogor relents. As they get ready to leave Earth, the Kallusians use a teleportation device to send Svenson and the Avengers back to New York. They rush to the hospital where Svenson performs the operation that saves the Wasp’s life. With the Wasp convalescing, Giant-Man steps down as Avengers’ chairman, and Thor is elected to take over those duties.

His recent adventures prove to Stark that, despite the improvements he’s made, his chestplate’s life-support systems are still being pushed to their limits every time Iron Man goes into action. He realizes that he may have no choice but to limit his activities as a superhero for the foreseeable future.

March 1963 – When the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. is assassinated by HYDRA, Tony Stark speaks on behalf of the ruling council as the CIA’s Colonel Nick Fury is recruited to be the agency’s new Executive Director. Having been brought aboard the Helicarrier, Fury is at first reluctant, but agrees to serve when a HYDRA mole tries to kill him before he’s even accepted the job. Stark is convinced that Fury’s wartime exploits with the Howling Commandos and his many years of intelligence work make him the perfect man for the job.

Not long after, Iron Man joins Thor, Giant-Man, Wasp, Captain America, and Rick Jones at the engagement party for Reed Richards and Susan Storm at the Fantastic Four’s headquarters in the Baxter Building. The X-Men are also in attendance, as are some of Reed’s scientific colleagues and Sue’s society friends. During the party, Iron Man mentions Fury’s appointment as head of S.H.I.E.L.D., knowing both Richards and Ben Grimm are mutual acquaintances of his. Captain America, who’s been suffering from memory problems since emerging from suspended animation, begins to recall fighting alongside Sergeant Fury during the war as well.

Tony Stark’s story about having a fiancée in Boston soon unravels, but he skillfully manages to avoid revealing anything about his true whereabouts during the time he was missing. Stark realizes that Pepper has, as a result, again become ambivalent about her relationship with Happy, and wonders what he can do about it.

April 1963 – One evening, Tony Stark learns that the Black Widow and Hawkeye have teamed up to kidnap Happy and Pepper. Stark soon arrives at the rendezvous point and offers to trade the plans for his latest weapons for his friends’ safety. The Black Widow orders one of her squad of Soviet agents to examine the blueprints. While the spies are thus distracted, Stark sets off a smoke bomb that covers his transformation into Iron Man. The Golden Avenger easily dispatches Natasha’s gun-toting cronies, but runs into trouble when Hawkeye hits him with arrows that can dissolve his armor. In desperation, Iron Man forces Hawkeye to abandon the fight by stunning the Black Widow with a jolt of electricity. After they have fled, Iron Man ditches his ruined armor and returns as Tony Stark to free Happy and Pepper. Back at the factory, Stark’s first order of business is to fashion a new suit of armor to replace the one destroyed by Hawkeye’s acid.

At the next Avengers’ meeting, Rick Jones trips, hits his head, and is knocked out for a few minutes. Iron Man is a bit embarrassed that he proposed Rick for active membership, and is relieved that none of his teammates have brought the subject up again.

Feeling he is an impediment to Happy and Pepper’s romance, Stark decides to take an extended tour of his aerospace facilities in the Midwest. However, he is so distracted by his conflicted feelings about Pepper that he leaves the attaché case containing his new armor behind in his executive office. He only realizes his mistake a week later when he hears news reports that Iron Man has suddenly gone on an unstoppable crime spree. Stark races back to New York and dons his obsolete Mark-II armor to confront the impostor. During the ensuing battle, the crook makes several tactical errors, which Stark exploits skillfully. However, the less-advanced systems of his old armor place too much of a strain on Stark’s injured heart, and he soon collapses. He manages to hold on until his foe’s power supplies fail, at which point Stark is able to shut the new armor’s systems down. The police identify the impostor as a small-time burglar known as “Weasel” Wills. Luckily for Stark, Wills has gone completely insane, ensuring that Stark’s secret identity will not be exposed.

May 1963 – Iron Man is summoned to Avengers Mansion by the team’s latest chairman, Captain America, who expects an imminent attack by the Masters of Evil. When Rick Jones is then kidnapped by Baron Zemo, Iron Man requisitions an XL-750 rocket plane from Stark Industries so the Avengers can pursue Zemo’s airship. However, Iron Man and Thor soon exit the ship to confront the Black Knight and the Melter, leaving Giant-Man and the Wasp to chase down the Enchantress and the Executioner. While Cap flies off in pursuit of Baron Zemo, the rest of the Avengers finally surround the four criminals on a busy Manhattan street. Afraid that many of the gawking bystanders might be harmed in an all-out battle, the heroes are reluctant to attack until Thor uses his enchanted hammer to transport them all to another dimension. Unfortunately, the Enchantress and the Executioner recognize what he’s trying to do and escape from the space-time vortex. Carried to an alien world, the Black Knight and the Melter remain defiant, but quickly learn their technology no longer functions and are easily captured. After turning the two hapless villains over to the police, the Avengers decide to call it a night.

The next morning, Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp meet at Avengers Mansion to see if there’s been any word from Captain America. In Cap’s absence, Iron Man assumes the role of acting chairman. The Wasp mentions that Thor stopped by, mumbled something about a “Trial of the Gods,” and rushed off again. She then changes the subject and reveals that she intends to take a leave of absence from the team. When Giant-Man immediately agrees to do likewise, Iron Man decides to step down as well, since the life-support system in his chestplate has been giving him so much trouble lately. He also believes he needs to dedicate more time to Stark Industries, since there has been renewed rancor toward him on Capitol Hill. The meeting is suddenly interrupted by Hawkeye, who announces that he want to join the Avengers. Iron Man is shocked, but Hawkeye explains that he never set out to be a “super-villain,” but was a victim of circumstance, and was then led astray when he fell in love with the Black Widow. Now that she has been gunned down by Soviet agents for her repeated failures, Hawkeye wants a second chance to be a hero. Iron Man believes his story, and convinces Giant-Man and the Wasp to give Hawkeye a shot. He is quickly sworn in as the team’s second recruit.

Over the next few days, the Avengers start a recruitment drive, realizing they’ll need new members to keep the team viable. Though the Sub-Mariner turns down an offer of membership, which is made based on his service in the Invaders during World War II, the Avengers soon receive a letter from Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, two young mutants who until recently were in the service of the infamous terrorist Magneto. Tony Stark meets the pair when their ship from Europe docks in New York, and after a photo-op, he escorts them to Avengers Mansion. Stark makes sure they are comfortable, then goes off to don his Iron Man armor. Then he, Giant-Man, and the Wasp conduct an extensive interview with the super-powered siblings, asking them about their service to Magneto and their desire to become Avengers. Satisfied that their search for redemption is genuine, the Avengers accept Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch as their next two recruits.

During the official induction ceremony, Captain America and Rick Jones finally return from their confrontation with Baron Zemo in the Amazon jungle. Cap reports that the Nazi war-criminal perished in the battle, but is then shocked to learn of his teammates’ decision to quit and leave him with three raw recruits. They try to assure Cap that it is only temporary. Iron Man then leads the new Avengers outside for a press conference. Afterwards, Iron Man, Giant-Man, Wasp, Captain America, and Rick Jones conclude their final meeting. They are concerned by Thor’s absence, but decide that he must be occupied with personal matters and would surely contact them if he needed help. When their business is concluded, they go out to inform Jarvis of their decision and introduce him to Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. The butler is a bit taken aback by the sudden change of roster, but accepts the situation with his characteristic professionalism. Finally, Iron Man says farewell to Giant-Man and the Wasp and returns to Stark Industries to bury himself in his work. Over the next few days, though, Stark provides the Avengers with several advanced aircraft for their private use, so the team will no longer be dependent upon public transportation. He also sees about upgrading the mansion’s security systems.

Tony Stark meets with Senator Harrington Byrd, who has come to personally oversee the testing of a new minisub for the U.S. Navy. While they’re in the front office, Happy requests that he be allowed to pilot the craft during the test. But when Stark tells him that Iron Man will be conducting the test, Happy loses his temper and quits his job on the spot. Occupied with Senator Byrd, Stark is unable to go after Happy to learn what he is so upset about. The test proceeds in Long Island Sound as Byrd and his entourage watch from the docks. Iron Man pilots the craft across the sound to the open ocean. However, near Nantucket Island, Iron Man discovers the undersea marauder Attuma and his barbarian hordes readying a weapon to use against the surface world. Recognizing Attuma from Giant-Man’s recent report, Iron Man leaves the sub and attacks. He fights his way through the troops to battle Attuma directly, but the warlord manages to trap Iron Man in an undersea cave, expecting his oxygen supply to soon run out. Iron Man escapes barely in time and, having no other options, locks the minisub on a collision course with Attuma’s weapon. Though his gambit is successful, Iron Man is forced to tell Senator Byrd that the sub was a failure. Furious that the taxpayers’ dollars have been wasted by a frivolous playboy, Byrd vows to convince the Pentagon to cancel Stark’s defense contracts.

Over the next few days, Pepper argues with Iron Man about Happy’s sudden resignation, leading Stark to realize just how deeply she cares for Happy. When they finally receive word that Happy has gone to visit his grandfather in Ireland, Stark decides to fly over there and convince Happy to return to work. After Iron Man arrives at the grandfather’s farm, Happy is obstinate, rejecting the Golden Avenger’s assertions that both Stark and Pepper want him back. The discussion reaches an impasse, so Happy and his grandfather go outside to cool off. Suddenly, Iron Man hallucinates that he’s fighting the Crimson Dynamo, Jack Frost, Gargantus, the Melter, and the Black Knight in the Irish countryside. When he has defeated the last of his foes, Iron Man suddenly wakes up in the farmhouse. He overhears Happy on the phone with Pepper, and she has convinced him to return to America. On his way home, Iron Man is troubled by his hallucination, and remembers having a similar “dream” earlier in which he battled the Crimson Dynamo and the Unicorn atop a suspension bridge. He thoroughly checks his armor for anomalies, but finds nothing that could have caused it. Later, Stark decides to renew his reputation as a womanizer, hoping this will encourage Pepper to see Happy in a more favorable light.

June 1963 – Tony Stark becomes increasingly worried about his mental health after his ne’er-do-well cousin, Morgan Stark, returns from Europe looking for help repaying a gambling debt. While driving to a dinner-date with a blonde cover girl, Stark believes he sees a rocket standing in a wooded glade. Going in for a closer look, Stark finds a thermonuclear bomb inside the rocket. He immediately calls in a bomb squad, but when the authorities arrive, they can find no trace of the rocket or the bomb. Stark then sees a “spaceman” lurking in the trees, but an exhaustive search turns up nothing. Dismissed as a crank, Stark returns to his factory. He conducts another search of the area as Iron Man the next morning, but finds no evidence. Unfortunately, word has leaked to the press that Tony Stark has been seeing UFOs and Little Green Men, and a gaggle of reporters descend on the factory to pursue the story. While they’re there, Stark spots a flying saucer hovering over his facility, but no one else sees it. He begins to wonder if he isn’t cracking up from the strain of the last few months. After hearing that Senator Byrd is using this latest incident to further his push to relieve Stark of all national-security related projects, Iron Man takes a special sensor device to sweep the wooded glade again. This time he witnesses the landing of yet another spacecraft, from which several large, brutish aliens emerge. Iron Man drives them off after a strenuous battle, during which Morgan Stark stumbles upon the scene. When the authorities arrive, Morgan corroborates Iron Man’s story, and enough physical evidence is found to prove Tony Stark wasn’t just seeing things. In gratitude to his cousin for salvaging his reputation, Stark pays off Morgan’s gambling debt and sends him back to Monte Carlo with Happy and Pepper as his escorts. Stark hopes that the romantic getaway will help Happy and Pepper get their relationship back on track.

Soon after, Tony Stark attends the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm at the Baxter Building. Arriving with a gorgeous brunette on his arm, Stark sees that Nick Fury and some of his S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are working security for the event. Inside, he mingles with the Fantastic Four and the X-Men until they are joined by Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Giant-Man, and the Wasp. He is introduced to Doctor Strange, a purported master of sorcery. However, when numerous super-villains begin staging an attack on the building, Stark ditches his date and becomes Iron Man to come to his friends’ defense. Outside the building, Daredevil enters the fray, and Thor soon appears as well. The fight quickly escalates into an all-out brawl in the street. Among the villainous horde are Attuma and his undersea barbarians, the Black Knight, Electro, the Enchantress, the Executioner, the Grey Gargoyle, agents of HYDRA, Kang the Conqueror, the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android, the Mandarin, the Melter, and the Unicorn. Finally, Mister Fantastic produces a strange device that creates a temporal vortex to send all the villains back into the past. The ceremony proceeds without further incident, and Iron Man takes his place beside his teammates. During the lavish reception that evening in the Baxter Building’s grand ballroom, he makes an appearance as Tony Stark to explain away his absence during the fighting. Stark enjoys the party, but ends up having a bit too much to drink.

Stark spends the next several weeks working on a variety of inventions, among them a component called the SMR, which can disrupt and disable electronic systems from a short distance.

July 1963 – Tony Stark receives a telegram from the Soviet Union challenging Iron Man to fight someone called the Titanium Man at a neutral location, a message that has already been sent to newspapers around the world. Convinced that America’s honor is at stake, Stark accepts the challenge, despite his misgivings about the strain on his chestplate’s life-support systems. As arrangements are made for the Cold War confrontation, Stark works diligently to improve his armor’s systems to enable him to handle an extended battle. Finally, accompanied by Happy and Pepper, Stark travels to the neutral nation of Austria. While checking into his hotel, Stark runs into a former girlfriend, Countess Stephanie de la Spiroza. She offers to join him for a nightcap, but he declines, preferring to get a good night’s sleep. At dawn the next day, Iron Man meets the Titanium Man on an old battlefield from World War II, which is still littered with rusted tanks and other wrecked equipment. Stark is impressed by his opponent’s sheer physical size, but is confident that the Titanium Man’s armor is not as advanced as his own. The contest has become a worldwide media event, and as the numerous government officials and other V.I.P.s clear the area, the combat finally begins.

Iron Man is quickly put on the defensive by the Titanium Man’s ruthless tactics, and he is worried when he realizes that his power levels are dropping more rapidly than he’d anticipated. He soon decides his only chance of victory is to use the SMR to disable his foe’s armor. During the first rest period, Iron Man jets back to his hotel to retrieve the component. However, he discovers it has gone missing. Finding Countess de la Spiroza’s monogrammed handkerchief nearby, he realizes she must have taken it to entice Stark to meet with her. With no time to waste searching for her, Iron Man flies back to the battlefield and sends Happy to track her down and bring him the SMR. Unfortunately, Happy fails to return before the second round begins, and when he runs into the combat zone to deliver the component, a stray energy blast from the Titanium Man strikes him down. Furious, Iron Man runs over to his fallen friend. Before slipping into unconsciousness, Happy gives Iron Man the SMR, calling him “Boss.” Stark immediately realizes that Happy has deduced his secret identity. Fearing Happy has died, Iron Man renews his attack on the Titanium Man with uncharacteristic savagery. The SMR works as intended, and the Titanium Man finds his armor’s systems suddenly failing. Then, for the benefit of the TV cameras, Iron Man kicks his communist foe around the battlefield for several minutes until he finally surrenders. Iron Man pries off the Titanium Man’s helmet and delivers it to the judges’ stand. Iron Man is proclaimed the winner, and Senator Harrington Byrd congratulates him on behalf of the entire free world.

Learning that Happy is still alive and has been rushed to the nearest hospital, Iron Man declines to participate in the victory parade the senator has planned and leaves at once to visit his injured friend. He is forced to stop at the hotel to recharge his chestplate, then decides he’d better visit Happy as Tony Stark. When Stark arrives at the hospital, he finds Pepper and Countess de la Spiroza, and is disappointed to learn that Happy is in intensive care and can receive no visitors. The Countess demands Stark’s attention and is infuriated when he tells her to shut up. She storms out, vowing to make him regret speaking to her that way. Stark and Pepper maintain their vigil throughout the night as Happy is operated on by a top surgeon flown in from Vienna. Stark is disturbed to realize that Pepper blames him for what’s happened to Happy and hates him for it. At dawn, the doctors report that Happy survived the operation but is still dangerously weak and must remain hospitalized. Thoroughly disheartened, Stark and Pepper return to the United States without him. Iron Man is celebrated upon his arrival in New York, but he is in no mood for the ticker-tape parade the mayor wants to throw in his honor. Pepper makes his excuses to the city government and, retreating to his private lab, Stark broods on the irony that Pepper has developed a new hero-worship for his armored alter-ego.

Iron Man receives a call from Captain America, asking why he would vouch for a known criminal like the Swordsman, who used the pretense of joining the team to nearly kill the Avengers. Confused, Iron Man assures Cap that he’s never met the Swordsman. They determine that the holographic transmission Cap received of Iron Man recommending the Swordsman must have been a sophisticated fake.

August 1963 – When the Avengers are charged for needlessly wrecking a subway line and destroying a commuter train, Tony Stark reimburses the transit authority for the damages, since the team has already exhausted its emergency funds to pay for earlier mishaps.

Days later, Tony Stark is kidnapped by the Mad Thinker’s Awesome Android. Having battled the artificial creature at Reed and Sue’s wedding a few weeks ago, Stark recognizes it instantly. Though unable to get his armor on before being captured, Stark hangs on to his attaché case as he is carried off. When he is brought to the villain’s hidden lair, Stark learns that the Mad Thinker is in the employ of Countess Stephanie de la Spiroza. She is still intent on getting back at him for being rude to her in Austria. Curious about its contents, the Thinker tries to force the lock on Stark’s attaché case, which causes it to emit a powerful sleep gas. With his foes unconscious, Stark dons his Iron Man armor and battles the Awesome Android. The Thinker soon revives enough to activate additional defensive systems, but Iron Man disables the android and blows up the master control panel. The resultant chain reaction of explosions destroys the base, but Iron Man flies the Thinker and Countess de la Spiroza to safety.

After turning the Mad Thinker over to the NYPD, Iron Man returns to Stark Industries. There, Stark learns that Senator Byrd is threatening to call him before Congress to force him to divulge Iron Man’s true identity and turn over the secrets of his armor to the United States military. Stark knows that mass-producing the Iron Man armor would be a recipe for disaster, so he resolves to stall the senator’s committee until he can think of a solution to his dilemma.

September 1963 – Not long after he has installed a new secure messaging system in Avengers Mansion, Tony Stark meets with Nick Fury and his two closest advisors, Timothy “Dum-Dum” Dugan and Gabe Jones, to plan a strategy to safely disable the betatron bomb HYDRA has launched into orbit. Stark suggests they use a prototype robotic aircraft he calls the “Braino-Saur.” However, as Stark and Fury head to the lab for a demonstration, a squad of HYDRA shock troops invades Stark Industries and captures Fury. Not having his attaché case handy, Stark can only seal himself into a bulletproof cubicle and wait for the villains to depart. Stark immediately prepares the Braino-Saur ship for launch and meets with the S.H.I.E.L.D. executive council to outline his plan. Then, as HYDRA holds the world hostage, Stark blasts off and pilots the Braino-Saur to a rendezvous with the betatron bomb in orbit. He successfully deactivates the bomb as a S.H.I.E.L.D. taskforce rescues Fury.

With HYDRA defeated and many of their agents taken into custody, S.H.I.E.L.D. impounds a good deal of the terrorist group’s advanced technology. While examining the cache of weapons, Tony Stark discovers a device called an “image inducer,” which they had used to torture Fury. Intrigued by the potential of such a device, Stark decides to experiment and see if he can improve upon it.

Stark is forced to assume command of S.H.I.E.L.D. operations when two villains called Mentallo and the Fixer hijack the Helicarrier and capture Nick Fury. He orders Dugan and Jones to ready their assault force, then meets with Dr. Niles Nordstrom, head of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s ESP division. Nordstrom’s telepaths have been unable to detect the villains for some reason, and attempt instead to make mental contact with Fury. While there, Stark collapses into a chair with intense chest pain. Nordstrom assumes Stark is having a heart attack, but Stark merely swears him to secrecy and slips off to recharge his chestplate in private. When the telepaths reach Fury, Stark orders the assault force to retake the Helicarrier as he activates a device to neutralize the miniature hydrogen bomb Fury has warned them about. The villains are taken into custody and Fury soon arrives at the ESP division to debrief Nordstrom and Stark. Fury is surprised to see how haggard Stark looks, but Stark blows it off and changes the subject. Fury reports that the device Stark had invented to allow him to communicate so clearly with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s telepaths was too uncomfortable to be practical, so Nordstrom agrees to discontinue its use. Later, back in his laboratory, Stark discovers that Mentallo and the Fixer had installed devices in their helmets that shielded them from psychic attack, and he decides to try and reverse-engineer the technology.

Stark develops a prototype of a device he calls a “coaxer,” which can influence the behavior of others by hacking into their central nervous system. He gives the device to an earnest young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, expecting him to merely deliver the device to Fury for testing.

Soon after, Iron Man rushes to the New York hospital where Happy Hogan was transferred after the doctors in Austria determined he was strong enough to travel. Happy has vanished without a trace, and Iron Man determines that the Black Knight must have kidnapped Happy on his flying steed. Iron Man tracks the villain to a lonely castle on Oyster Bay, some thirty miles away. As Iron Man enters the darkened castle, the Black Knight shorts out the hero’s armor with his energy lance, putting a tremendous strain on Stark’s injured heart. The Black Knight then carries his foe high into the sky upon his winged horse intending to drop him to his death. Iron Man’s systems come back online in time for him to grab a stirrup to save himself, but their struggling causes the saddle strap to come undone, sending both men plummeting toward the ground. Iron Man manages to maneuver himself over the bay and lands in the water. Making it to the surface and back to shore drains his power reserves to dangerous levels. With no time to search for the Black Knight, Iron Man staggers back to the castle and finds Happy, unconscious and near death. After calling the police, Iron Man collapses into a shadowy corner. He is unable to recharge his armor since the building’s power has been shut off. When the authorities arrive, they take Happy away in an ambulance, but fail to see Iron Man, who is too weak to even call for help. He uses his dwindling power reserves to send a mayday message to Stark Industries.

About forty-five minutes later, Pepper Potts arrives in one of Stark’s sportscars and finds Iron Man lying helplessly on the floor. She helps him to the car so he can plug his recharger into the dashboard cigarette lighter. He draws enough power from the car battery to keep himself alive for the drive back to the factory. Once there, Pepper helps him get set up to recharge his armor properly. However, he stops the recharging process early when Pepper informs him that Happy is to be treated with Stark’s highly experimental enervator device. Concerned about possible side-effects, Iron Man jets to the hospital at once, where he discovers that the enervator’s radiation has caused Happy to mutate into a savage, superhumanly strong freak. Devoid of reason, Happy attacks Iron Man, then smashes through a window and stalks off into the darkness. His power levels dropping rapidly, Iron Man lures the brutish Happy back to Stark Industries, hoping to find some means to reverse his transformation. Unfortunately, just outside the main factory complex, Stark passes out from the strain on his heart.

Iron Man is awoken by the sound of gunfire and sees several policemen firing at Happy in an upper window. After rescuing Pepper from her deranged beau, Iron Man renews their battle. Inside the lab, Iron Man is surprised to find Senator Harrington Byrd lying unconscious on the floor. Iron Man then leads Happy to another section of the lab and lures him into a device which finally reverses his transformation. A massive energy feedback nearly destroys Iron Man’s armor, and Stark must remove it quickly before it becomes red hot. Stark then revives Happy, who proves to have developed temporary amnesia. The police suddenly break down the door and enter with Senator Byrd. The senator reveals that he thinks “The Freak” was a thug hired by Stark to keep him from personally delivering his subpoena, and has now fled the scene with Iron Man. Furthermore, Byrd mistakes Stark’s exhaustion for a hangover and demands that the industrialist accompany him immediately to Washington, DC to testify before Congress. Stark complies, leaving Pepper to see that Happy receives proper medical attention.

Stark grabs an attaché case containing a spare suit of armor and rides next to Senator Byrd in the back of a police car. However, while driving out of the factory complex, the squad car is suddenly enveloped in a nimbus of light and Stark finds himself teleported to the Mandarin’s fortress in China. Fearing the attaché case might be booby-trapped, the Mandarin blasts it with one of his rings, sending it flying out a window and into the moat. Stark is thus forced to watch helplessly as the Mandarin activates a gigantic android he calls Ultimo. While the villain is occupied with the Red Chinese Army troops advancing on his castle, Stark tries to slip out of the room. Unfortunately, the Mandarin hears him and blasts him full in the chest with a force beam. Stark is pushed out of the room and falls down a flight of stairs, though his chestplate takes the brunt of the blast, allowing him to survive. He dives into the moat to retrieve his attaché case, then dons his Iron Man armor and goes to intercept Ultimo, who, to his surprise, is 25 feet tall and blue. Iron Man manages to dodge the disintegrator beams from Ultimo’s eyes, but finds he is unable to damage the android with any of his offensive weaponry. Instead, Iron Man tricks Ultimo into firing a blast into the dormant volcano from which he just emerged. The volcano erupts and Ultimo is consumed in the lava. Iron Man then fights his way out of China until being intercepted by the U.S. Air Force on his way to Formosa. He arranges military transport back to the United States.

The next evening, Tony Stark finally returns to Stark Industries in New York, only to discover it has been closed down by order of the federal government. Finding a newspaper on the ground, Stark learns that Senator Byrd has cited him for contempt of Congress, his defense contracts have been suspended, his assets have been frozen, and there is a warrant out for his arrest. Desperate, Stark makes his way to Avengers Mansion, but the place is deserted. He walks to Pepper’s apartment, but she is not home either. He puts his armor back on and wanders around the city streets aimlessly, trying to decide whether he should give Senator Byrd’s congressional committee what they want. While at the waterfront, Iron Man is suddenly fired upon by an Atlantean warship in the harbor. Iron Man drives the ship off, but then must break into his factory to repair the damage to his armor. Minutes later, the Sub-Mariner appears, seething with rage, and attacks him. Barely able to defend himself, Iron Man tricks Namor into hurling him into his high-security laboratory. He seals its ten-ton vault door before Namor can stop him and dons a brand-new suit of armor. Fully charged and ready to face his foe, Iron Man emerges from the lab to find the Sub-Mariner has departed. However, their battle has drawn the attention of the police guarding the complex, and they attempt to arrest Iron Man for unlawful entry. The Sub-Mariner suddenly attacks again, and while they fight, Iron Man realizes that Namor was in pursuit of the Atlantean warship and blames Iron Man for interfering. The battle rages throughout the complex, until Namor spots the warship surfacing in the harbor again. He breaks away from Iron Man and sets off after it. Iron Man decides to let him go and flies off to get a few hours’ sleep. First thing the next morning, Stark makes a call to Senator Byrd’s office, ready to testify before Congress.

While flying down to Washington, DC, Iron Man is intercepted by the Titanium Man, who is intent on getting revenge for his humiliating defeat two months ago. Worried about collateral damage, Iron Man leads his foe to a less populated area outside the city. Unfortunately, a crowd soon gathers there as well, among them Happy and Pepper. The Titanium Man tries to use Pepper to force Iron Man to surrender, but the Golden Avenger rescues her and risks his life to get close enough to cause the Titanium Man’s armor to short-circuit. A last devastating blow sends the Titanium Man crashing to the ground. Senator Byrd arrives on the scene to congratulate Iron Man on defeating his Soviet counterpart a second time. However, the Titanium Man activates his boot jets and soon disappears over the Atlantic Ocean before Iron Man can capture him.

Tony Stark finally takes his seat before Senator Byrd’s congressional committee. He is worried after hearing talk that the military wants to deploy platoons of soldiers in Iron Man armor on the battlefields of Vietnam. However, just as the session is about to get underway, Stark suddenly feels a sharp stabbing pain in his chest. He realizes his heart has become too weak for his life-support system to compensate, then blacks out.

Stark regains consciousness some time later, finding himself in a hospital’s intensive care unit. The doctors have managed to get his chestplate working again and stabilized his condition, though his health remains extremely fragile. When Happy and Pepper arrive to see him, Stark learns that his injured heart has become public knowledge, and has been traced to his misadventure in Vietnam sixteen months ago. Also, Stark Industries has been allowed to reopen, and Senator Byrd is content to postpone the hearings until Stark has made a full recovery. Unfortunately, he also realizes that this revelation has undone all his efforts to make Pepper despise him, and her infatuation with him is as strong as ever, much to Happy’s disappointment. For the rest of the month, Stark is too weak to get out of bed.

October 1963 – Over the next few weeks, Tony Stark makes a slow recovery after being transferred from the ICU to a private room. He is worried about a rash of stories in the press suggesting that he and Iron Man are one and the same, following investigative reporting into his relationship to the Golden Avenger. One day, Happy comes to see him, confirming that he does indeed know that Stark is Iron Man but wants to help him preserve that secret by wearing the armor himself. Stark is reluctant, but sees no other way. He shows Happy how to access the armor in the attaché case and how to put it on. He then communicates with Happy remotely during a number of test flights around the Washington, DC area to ensure that Iron Man is seen by as many people as possible. The gambit works, as the public takes it as evidence that the bedridden industrialist cannot possibly be the armored superhero. As Happy is returning the armor, he suddenly disappears in a nimbus of light, and Stark realizes the Mandarin’s teleportation beam has struck again. Desperate to save Happy, Stark leaves the hospital and makes his way back to Stark Industries. He immediately retreats to his private laboratory and constructs a suit of armor powerful enough to compensate for his weakened state, at the cost of minimizing its offensive capabilities.

Iron Man then rides a multi-stage rocket launched from Stark’s missile-testing complex until its capsule splashes down in the South China Sea. From there he jets to the Valley of the Spirits and storms the Mandarin’s fortress, fighting his way past the villain’s guards and automated defenses. He finally confronts the Mandarin in a dungeon where the helpless Happy is being tortured for information. Iron Man overcomes both the Mandarin’s kung fu and his alien rings to batter the villain into unconsciousness. He then programs the armor Happy is wearing to fly him safely to the nearest U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan. Before leaving, Iron Man discovers the Mandarin is still trying to trigger a nuclear war between China and the United States, having hijacked a Chinese missile and sent it to strike an American military base in the region. Hacking into the missile’s guidance system, Iron Man redirects it at the Mandarin’s fortress. Despite the Mandarin’s renewed attack, Iron Man escapes from the castle seconds before it is obliterated by the missile strike. After surveying the smoking rubble from the air, Iron Man flies off to catch up with Happy. From Okinawa, they arrange transport back to New York.

November 1963 – Stark realizes that his health is continuing to deteriorate, and as his new armor requires so much power to compensate, it is largely impractical to continue acting as Iron Man. Thus, he devotes himself primarily to his research projects, hoping to secure a lasting legacy before his seemingly imminent death. When his former teammate Giant-Man, now called Goliath, phones for help finding a qualified lab assistant, Stark recommends Bill Foster, a biochemist at his Baltimore facility. Foster soon accepts the job and resigns from Stark Industries.

Iron Man agrees to attend a special executive meeting of the Avengers, called by Captain America to discuss making an offer of membership to Spider-Man. Thor joins them as well, along with currently active members Goliath, Wasp, and Hawkeye. After a contentious debate and a consultation with Daredevil, the Avengers agree to give Spider-Man a readiness test before making an official offer. They split up to search the city for the wall-crawler, and some hours later, Thor reports that he found Spider-Man and made the proposal. The next day, at the appointed time, Spider-Man arrives at the mansion and the Avengers greet him warmly. However, Spidey becomes impatient when he realizes the Avengers haven’t even decided what manner of test to give him. Hawkeye goads him into a fight, which quickly escalates into an all-out brawl. As Thor intervenes, Iron Man suggests that they send Spider-Man to track down the Hulk, who’s been spotted in the city recently, and bring him back to Avengers Mansion. The web-spinner sets off, brimming with confidence, but a few hours later, he returns empty-handed, claiming he was unable to even locate the Hulk. Before the Avengers can question him further, he quickly swings away. Iron Man is puzzled by Spider-Man’s attitude, and his teammates are suspicious and disappointed.

Tony Stark receives a request to create a restraining suit to protect astronaut John Jameson from his own super-strength, which he gained after exposure to strange spores during a spacewalk. Within a couple of hours, Stark has a team of his technicians build a prototype suit and deliver it to the military research installation where Jameson is being studied.

Days later, Stark is stunned when President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He immediately confers with Nick Fury, who tells him that the situation is under control and Iron Man is not needed. Stark later learns that Fury likewise refused to let Captain America assist in the investigation, but he remains confident that S.H.I.E.L.D. will get to the bottom of the plot to kill the President.

December 1963 – Stark passes a quiet month working diligently in his laboratory complex. He is relieved that his recent reclusive behavior has encouraged Pepper to spend more time with Happy. He makes only one appearance as Iron Man, to attend the Second Annual Avengers Christmas Charity Benefit. While he enjoys socializing with his fellow heroes, he is less than pleased to see the Black Widow is there as Hawkeye’s date. He cannot help but remain suspicious that she has truly abandoned her allegiance to the Soviet Union. As the party winds down, Tony Stark finds himself wondering if he will survive to see another Christmas, or if his failing heart will soon give out once and for all.

Notes:

January 1963 – The official launch of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier occurs behind the scenes a couple of months before we first see it in Strange Tales #135. For further background on Marvel’s super-spy agency, see Whence Comes... S.H.I.E.L.D. We pick up Iron Man’s adventures in Tales of Suspense #53 and following. The Avengers interrupt Thor’s temper tantrum in Journey Into Mystery #101, and the team’s failed attempt at socializing is seen four issues later. Iron Man is called to account for his negligence in Avengers #7, then helps out his teammates against the Masters of Evil. Tony Stark remains behind the scenes as Don Blake and friends deal with the Grey Gargoyle in Journey Into Mystery #107. The Avengers work out together at the beginning of Tales to Astonish #59, then offer Thor some help in Journey Into Mystery #108. For Hawkeye’s version of events, see Hawkeye & the Black Widow. Like most of Marvel’s heroes, Iron Man makes a cameo appearance in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1. Iron Man’s capture by Kang the Conqueror in Avengers #8 sets in motion all the events to follow. The Avengers discuss Spider-Man’s reputation in Amazing Spider-Man #18, and respond to the Mole Man’s actions in Fantastic Four #31. The team meets Wonder Man in Avengers #9, and is seen returning his body to the United States in a flashback in West Coast Avengers #2. Iron Man and Giant-Man make their recording of Simon Williams’s brain patterns in a flashback in Avengers #58. Iron Man and Thor apprehend a gang of thieves at the beginning of Avengers #13, which seems to occur a few weeks before the main story. The Avengers battle Immortus and the Masters of Evil following their meeting in Avengers #10, but the Enchantress erases those events from the timeline following the villains’ defeat. Finally, Iron Man and his teammates run into the X-Men in Germany in Uncanny X-Men #9.

February 1963 – The Avengers’ battles with the Mole Man and the Red Ghost, Count Nefaria, and the alien Kallusians are chronicled in Avengers #12–14.

March 1963 – Tony Stark is on hand as Nick Fury is recruited to lead S.H.I.E.L.D. in the agency’s debut story in Strange Tales #135. As is often the case in these early S.H.I.E.L.D. stories, no mention is made of Tony’s superhero identity. Interestingly, the spy agency’s robotic doppelgängers, called Life Model Decoys (LMDs) are already standard issue, but at this point all they seem able to do is walk around. The engagement party at the Baxter Building is held in Fantastic Four #36.

April 1963 – Rick Jones takes a spill in an odd little back-up story in Captain America #221. It’s possible that Tony Stark is actually responsible for “Weasel” Wills losing his mind at the end of Tales of Suspense #65. As we learned later when Jim Rhodes took over using Stark’s Iron Man suit, the cybernetic interface can adversely affect the operator’s sanity if not properly calibrated. We can assume that the cybernetic systems were much more crude at this early stage and the effects therefore much more pronounced. Wills may have already had a fragile mind, allowing for a total psychotic break after only a week or so of heavy usage.

May 1963 – Iron Man wraps up his first stint with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in Avengers #15-16. The Sub-Mariner’s service in the Invaders is not mentioned in the original story, as that team was not created until about a decade later. The original Avengers’ final meeting is shown in Journey Into Mystery #116, and the new members are introduced to Jarvis in a flashback in Avengers #280. While saying goodbye to Giant-Man and the Wasp in Avengers #16, Iron Man mentions Thor being off in “the place he calls Asgard.” This would seem to indicate that at this point Tony Stark does not believe that Thor is really the mythological god, but is merely a mortal superhero using the legends of the Norse deities as his shtick. I’m curious how long it took Thor’s teammates to realize he was exactly what he said he was. Avengers #17 makes it clear that Stark has provided the team their first private aircraft, so they no longer have to hitch rides on commercial flights. In Tales of Suspense #67, Iron Man is unaware that his hallucinatory battles are induced by Count Nefaria using a sinister new technology.

June 1963 – In the following issue, Tony Stark remains unaware that Count Nefaria is responsible for the illusions that bedevil him. He also fails to suspect that his cousin Morgan has been forced to act as Nefaria’s agent and is the one operating the illusion-projector. Luckily for Tony, and by the wildest of coincidences, he encounters some real aliens, called the Froma, just in time to salvage his reputation. Happy and Pepper are still in Monte Carlo when Tony attends the wedding of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Girl in Fantastic Four Annual #3.

July 1963 – In Tales of Suspense #69–72, Austria, which maintained official neutrality during the Cold War, is obfuscated as “Alberia” for some reason, though the surgeon being flown in from Vienna is kind of a tip-off. The SMR component is first called a “sub-miniature reducer” and then a “sub-miniature reverser,” so I took the easy way out. Captain America would certainly have contacted Iron Man following the events depicted in Avengers #20.

August 1963 – Tony Stark remains behind the scenes in Avengers #21 when he forks out some bucks to pay for the Avengers’ mistakes when they are being manipulated by the Enchantress.

September 1963 – Tony Stark is again behind the scenes in Avengers #26, having just installed the team’s new messaging system. He appears next in the S.H.I.E.L.D. stories in Strange Tales #138–140, 143, and behind the scenes in #144. I was surprised to discover that Tony did not actually invent the image inducer used later by Nightcrawler and other members of the X-Men, but developed his version from tech confiscated from HYDRA. This suggests further that the device originated as alien technology stolen from the Gnobians during World War II. It is possible that the “coaxer” device Jasper Sitwell demonstrates in Strange Tales #144 is also based on HYDRA tech. Sitwell claims that Tony Stark gave him the device personally, but since Tony does not recognize him when Sitwell is later assigned to Stark Industries, it is likely that Tony assumed he was merely a courier and forgot about him as soon as he left the office. In Tales of Suspense #73, it is said that the Black Knight’s castle is located on Chesapeake Bay, some thirty miles from Washington, DC. Given the rest of the story, however, this makes no sense. It would take Pepper about five hours to drive there from Flushing, Long Island, and another five to drive back, all while Tony is supposedly on death’s door. And clearly the Freak did not walk from Maryland all the way back to Stark’s factory in New York. Thus I assume the castle was really located on a bay thirty miles from Stark Industries, and Oyster Bay on Long Island Sound seemed the ideal candidate. Iron Man is unaware that the Black Knight was fatally wounded and died soon after their encounter, as revealed in Avengers #48. When Tony stops at Avengers Mansion in Tales of Suspense #79, the team is off rescuing the Wasp from the Collector. His subsequent battle with Namor crosses over into the Sub-Mariner feature in Tales to Astonish #82. When Tony collapses during the congressional hearing in Tales of Suspense #84, a doctor on the scene discovers his chestplate. Luckily, it is only a dull gray metal bodice and not the distinctive red and gold front of his Iron Man armor.

October 1963 – Fortunately, Happy Hogan doesn’t wear Iron Man’s helmet long enough for the cybernetic systems interface to affect his sanity.

November 1963 – Tony Stark makes a cameo appearance in Avengers #32 to recommend Bill Foster to Hank Pym. Iron Man then appears in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3. Stark remains behind the scenes when John Jameson copes with his newfound superpowers in Amazing Spider-Man #42. The Kennedy assassination occurs behind the scenes, naturally.

December 1963 – This brings us up to Tales of Suspense #86.

Next Issue: Daredevil – Year Two

Jump Back: Iron Man – Year One

OMW: Zanda

2011-07-24T11:10:00.004-05:00

We continue our series featuring the Obscure Marvel Women of the Original Marvel Universe with an African queen who proved herself to be vicious, avaricious, and pernicious while showing off Jack Kirby’s flair for avant-garde fashion design.

Princess Zanda was the only child of the Emir of Narobia and was born during World War II. She was raised amidst opulence and indulgence, as her small African nation had grown rich from exploiting its petroleum and diamond deposits. Her father was both shrewd and ruthless, and Zanda inherited these qualities, channeling them into her passion for collecting priceless and mysterious artifacts. Her lust for acquisition was so insatiable that in the early 1960s she conspired to have her ailing father removed from power so she could devote all her nation’s resources to building her collection. Zanda feared that her country’s Muslim population would not accept her atheistic and hedonistic reign, so she hired an army of foreign mercenaries to enforce her will. Zanda understood the value of fear in maintaining absolute power, and she soon brought her subjects under her heel.

Zanda became involved with a cabal of wealthy collectors who collaborated only so long as it served their individual interests. The five men called themselves Abner Little, Alfred Queely, Count Zorba, Colonel Pigman, and Silas Mourner. Though they found Zanda’s imperious attitude and unflagging arrogance to be grating, they agreed that Narobia was perfect as a haven from international authorities and as a launching pad for their campaigns of plunder, thus they tolerated her. Zanda, however, was ready to betray any and all of them to further her own ends.

In the spring of 1968, Zanda learned that Alfred Queely had discovered the legendary Brass Frog, an ancient artifact believed to possess the power of time-travel. She sent a squad of mercenaries to take it from him, but Abner Little got there first. With more of her men, Zanda quickly headed to Little’s secret headquarters in Mongolia and was waiting for him when he arrived. She was surprised to find that Little had recruited the help of T’Challa, king of Wakanda, better known throughout the world as the Black Panther.

During the ensuing scuffle, the Brass Frog was inadvertently activated, and it caused a strange creature to materialize from the distant future. The creature’s psionic powers were so overwhelming that Zanda’s mercenaries fled in terror. However, T’Challa managed to knock the creature out, and then agreed to cooperate with Zanda and Little to retrieve the Brass Frog’s twin from King Solomon’s tomb in order to send the dangerous creature back to the future. The trio took one of Little’s advanced aircraft and flew across the Sahara Desert to the Atlas Mountains, where the tomb was located.

Upon arrival, the creature from the future revived and menaced Zanda, T’Challa, and Little as they frantically searched for the hidden burial chamber. With the inadvertent help of the creature’s psionic disintegrator beam, the trio soon found the cache of treasure and, locating the second Brass Frog, was able to send the creature home before it could destroy them. Zanda was nearly overwhelmed with greed when faced with King Solomon’s immense storehouse of unique objects, and she struggled with T’Challa to gain possession of the Brass Frogs. He threw them across the chamber and they exploded on impact, forcing the three fortune hunters to flee before the crypt collapsed on top of them.

After a harrowing escape from the mountain, Zanda, T’Challa, and Little were picked up by Zanda’s men and flown to Narobia in a jet-copter. Back at her palace, Zanda learned that one of her mercenary squads had captured a samurai in a remote region of the Himalayas, confirming legends of a band of ronin who had fled Japan hundreds of years ago and discovered the Fountain of Youth. She immediately summoned Count Zorba, Colonel Pigman, and Silas Mourner, and they agreed to recruit the Black Panther to find the lost samurai city and seize the fabled waters of immortality for them. When T’Challa rejected her appeals and resisted her attempt to seduce him, Zanda resorted to blackmail, threatening to drop a nuclear bomb on Wakanda unless he complied. Thus, the Black Panther spent the next several weeks as an unwilling guest in Zanda’s palace as preparations were made for his expedition to the Himalayas. During this time, Zanda tried repeatedly to seduce T’Challa, but he was unmoved by her feigned charms.

Finally, T’Challa set off on his mission, accompanied by Abner Little. However, they returned about a day or so later, claiming to have been unable to overcome the samurai warriors. Zanda was furious, believing T’Challa was merely trying to keep the secret of immortality for himself. She threatened to launch the nuclear missile, but T’Challa called her bluff, reminding her that the nations of the world would never allow her to remain in power if she launched a nuclear first strike against a peaceful neighbor. She argued with her co-conspirators until Little confirmed her suspicions by revealing he had smuggled a vial of the water out in his pocket. The collectors instantly pounced on Little to wrest the vial from him, but he managed to toss it to T’Challa. They immediately attacked him as well, with Zanda vowing to kill him unless he surrendered the vial to her. However, the Black Panther easily overpowered his four assailants, fought his way to one of Zanda’s jet-copters, and escaped back to Wakanda. The vial of water was shattered in the melee, and the secret of immortality was lost.

Thoroughly disgusted with each other, the collectors went their separate ways, and Zanda was left to pursue her acquisitive schemes on her own. She spent vast sums of money attempting to rediscover King Solomon’s tomb, but never succeeded.

First Appearance: Black Panther #1

Final Appearance: Black Panther #7

Next Portrait

Reboot the Marvel Universe!

2011-07-01T12:32:00.005-05:00

With DC Comics hyping the upcoming relaunch of their entire line of superhero titles, perhaps this would be the ideal time to reboot the Marvel Universe as well. After 50 years, Marvel continuity is a big mess, and rather than just piling on more events, more revelations, and more retcons, I think they should just take the opportunity to chuck it all out and start over again. Marvel actually considered taking such drastic action around the time of their 25th anniversary, but decided against it. Curiously, DC did do a major continuity reboot at that time, spearheaded in their mega-crossover series Crisis on Infinite Earths. Well, I think the day has finally come for Marvel to follow suit. In 2011, the stars have aligned and historical patterns have overlapped, making now the perfect moment to forge a brand-new Marvel Universe.

Rather than start with a completely blank slate, however, I would advise building the new Marvel Universe on a solid foundation based on the Original Marvel Universe, and structuring it to forego the infamous “sliding time-scale” to proceed instead in “real-time.” Forget “the Illusion of Change” and let the characters grow and evolve so they remain fresh and interesting as the years go by. If it was good enough for Stan Lee in the 1960s, it should be good enough for Marvel in the 21st century.

In order to be as helpful as possible, I present a handy “Who’s Who” guide to the new versions of the characters, where we would find them today, and some of the backstory that the new continuity can germinate from.

It would not be necessary to force the new Marvel Universe to develop strictly along the lines chosen by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (and all those who followed in their footsteps). Instead, take the information below and let your imagination run wild!

The New Marvel Universe—2011

Aarkus was a green-skinned alien from another dimension who was drawn to earth in 1940 by Dr. Enoch Mason, a scientist. Dubbed “The Vision” by the press, Aarkus fought crime until becoming disgusted with the human race. In 1943, he returned to his home dimension and has not been seen since.

St. John Allerdyce is an Australian journalist with a couple of novels to his credit. He is also secretly a mutant with the ability to control and manipulate fire.

David Angar is a radical social activist in San Francisco, California.

Amara Aquilla is the 5-year-old daughter of Senator Lucius Antonius Aquilla in Nova Roma, a lost colony of the Roman Empire hidden deep within the Amazon rainforest. Amara is a mutant with as-yet latent geothermal powers.

Todd Arliss is a 19-year-old Olympic swimmer from Pasadena, California. His older sister Diane thinks he is selfish and spoiled.

Bruce Banner is a 31-year-old nuclear scientist from Dayton, Ohio, who currently works for the United States Defense Department at an Air Force Base in New Mexico designing a new weapon powered by gamma radiation. In 1986, his mother was murdered by his father, who was subsequently committed to a mental institution, leaving Bruce severely traumatized. He was taken in by his aunt, and in 1998 Banner enrolled in Pennsylvania State University’s pre-med program, where he befriended a Canadian student named Walter Langkowski. After a year, however, Banner transferred to New Mexico State University to major in nuclear physics. There, he became roommates with Peter Corbeau, another science major. In 2003, Banner started graduate school at Cal-Tech. He took his job with the Defense Department in 2008 and then met the base commander, General Thaddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross, a veteran of the Iraq War, and the general’s introverted daughter Betty, who is now 22. Banner finds Betty attractive, but is too withdrawn – and too intimidated by her father – to pursue the relationship.

Betty Barstow was the secretary to a private detective named Dan Hurley. In 1941, she became a costumed crimefighter known as “The Silver Scorpion,” relying on her martial-arts skills. The following year, however, the mob discovered her secret identity and murdered her and Hurley.

Clint Barton is a 20-year-old archery expert who performs at a circus under the name “Hawkeye the Marksman.” He and his older brother Barney were orphaned in 1999, and after five years in foster care in Iowa, they ran away with a traveling carnival. While Clint worked with circus performers Jacques Duquesne and Buck Chisholm to develop his skills with a bow & arrow, Barney drifted into a life of petty larceny. In 2009, Clint became very disillusioned when he discovered Duquesne stealing from the circus to pay off a gambling debt. Duquesne tried to kill him and then fled the country, but Clint survived thanks to Barney’s intervention. After recovering from his injuries, Clint returned to work and soon replaced Duquesne as the star attraction.

Georges Batroc is a French mercenary and a master of savate, a form of kickboxing.

Jeanne-Marie Beaubier is a 16-year-old student at Madame DuPont’s School for Girls in LaVelle, Quebec. She was separated from her twin brother Jean-Paul after their parents were killed when he was adopted by their mother’s cousin, RCMP officer Louis Martin. The Martins could not afford to keep Jeanne-Marie as well, so they placed her in an orphanage run by nuns. After Martin was transferred to northern Quebec, the family lost contact with Jeanne-Marie and she grew up unaware of her brother’s existence. In 2009, the harsh conditions at the school led Jeanne-Marie to attempt suicide by jumping off the roof. However, her mutant powers of supersonic flight emerged and saved her life. Believing it to be a sign of divine intervention, Jeanne-Marie told the nuns what had happened, only to be punished for blasphemy. This caused Jeanne-Marie to suffer a psychotic break, entering a fugue state in which an uninhibited alternate personality took over for several days. The further punishment she received as a result caused Jeanne-Marie to repress this second personality, and she has become more withdrawn than before.

Quentin Beck is a disaffected special-effects designer and stunt man working in Hollywood.

Jerome Beechman is a 17-year-old mutant who began to resemble a mandrill when his powers manifested at puberty. However, he also gives off powerful pheromones that allow him to control women. A runaway, he lives life on the streets with his partner, a mutant “goth chick” named Nekra Sinclair.

Tania Belinskya is a 27-year-old medical doctor in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Black Widow was a psychic who called herself “Claire Voyant” until the demon Mephisto manipulated her into becoming an immortal killer who made evil men her victims. She disappeared during World War II and has not been seen since.

Alison Blaire is a 10-year-old girl from Long Island with latent mutant abilities, who dreams of becoming a pop singer and achieving international fame and fortune.

Johnny Blaze is a 17-year-old orphan from Waukegan, Illinois, who lives with his father’s old Army buddy and business partner, Craig “Crash” Simpson. Blaze’s father and Simpson started a motorcycle stunt show in 2002, but Barton Blaze was killed attempting a spectacular leap. It took two years for Johnny to overcome his fear of motorcycles and begin learning stunt-riding techniques alongside his foster sister, Roxanne Simpson. However, in 2009, Johnny Blaze crashed his bike while trying a dangerous pyrotechnic stunt, and his foster mother was fatally injured when the bike’s gas tank exploded. On her deathbed, she made Blaze promise to never ride in the stunt show, and he has tried to honor that promise ever since, though “Crash” and Roxanne both think he is just a coward.

Emil Blonsky is a soldier and intelligence operative in the Croatian Army.

Tandy Bowen is a 7-year-old girl living with her divorced mother in Shaker Heights, Ohio, who dreams of being a dancer when she grows up.

Brian Braddock and Elizabeth Braddock are 15-year-old twins going to school in the English county of Essex. Their older brother Jamie is a famous racecar driver, and their father, James Braddock, is a noted scientist. The children are unaware that their father is from the dimension of Otherworld and is an associate of the wizard Merlyn.

Boris Bullski is an officer in the Ukrainian army, known for his harsh and belligerent manner.

Carl Burgess was a brilliant young District Attorney in New York City who, in 1940, became a costumed crimefighter known as “The Falcon.” However, after only a few weeks, he was beaten to death by a gang of hoods.

William Burnside discovered the formula for Abraham Erskine’s super-soldier serum during the Korean War, and offered it to the U.S. government in exchange for the chance to be the new Captain America. Burnside underwent plastic surgery and legally changed his name to Steve Rogers in preparation for his role. However, the war ended before the project could be completed, so the government cancelled the deal. Rogers, as he was now called, became a history teacher and met another Captain America fan, Jack Monroe, among his students. When a new Red Skull threatened the United Nations building in 1955, Rogers and Monroe injected themselves with his super-soldier serum and became the new Captain America and Bucky to fight him. They continued going after communist spies and other criminals until flaws in the formula caused them to suffer psychotic breakdowns in 1956. The pair began targeting anyone they considered not “pure-blooded” Americans, and were subsequently arrested by the FBI and exposed as frauds. After serving his sentence, Burnside/Rogers was institutionalized and died in a fire in 1979.

Cable is a cyborg from the distant future marooned in the present day. He makes his living as a soldier-of-fortune and keeps his true identity a secret.

Davy Cannon is a minor crook who uses his mutant ability to spin at high speeds to help him commit his robberies and elude capture.

Jerry Carstairs was a ham radio operator who tried to become a costumed crimefighter called “The Thunderer” in 1941. That winter, though, he slipped off an icy roof and fell to his death.

Sharon Carter is a 23-year-old from Richmond, Virginia who just started her career at the Central Intelligence Agency. She is inspired by the World War II exploits of her grandmother, Peggy Carter.

Sean Cassidy is a 31-year-old detective in the New York Police Department. Born and raised in Ireland, he started his career with Interpol but resigned in 2008 after his wife Maeve died while he on an undercover assignment. Wanting to distance himself from painful memories, he immigrated to the United States. Since reaching puberty in 1994, he has possessed the mutant ability to create powerful sonic waves with his voice, but not wanting to be thought a “freak,” he keeps this power a secret. Cassidy is unaware that he has a 4-year-old daughter called Theresa Rourke being raised by his cousin Tom, a known criminal.

Frank Castle is a 24-year-old soldier in the United States Marine Corps serving in Afghanistan. His wife and child live in New York City.

Issac Christians is a 59-year-old student of the occult who serves as mayor of his hometown of Christiansboro, Virginia. After fighting in the Vietnam War, he refused to return to the United States for many years, wandering Southeast Asia and India to study with mystics and sorcerers. Eventually, his family responsibilities drew him home, but he has never gotten over his youthful resentments.

Maximilian Q. Coleridge is a 22-year-old college student who has majored in law and criminology, having dedicated his life to fighting crime after his parents were gunned down by crooks in 1999. After graduation, he plans to travel to Nepal to study the martial and mystic arts.

Rusty Collins is a 5-year-old boy with latent mutant abilities living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Commandos were four costumed superhuman adventurers who teamed up in 1993 to handle missions too dangerous for conventional law-enforcement or intelligence operatives. The Crimson Commando, Stonewall, Super Sabre, and the Yankee Clipper meted out their own harsh brand of justice until the Yankee Clipper was killed in action a year later. Her death led her partners to develop deep feelings of bitterness toward the world. They offered their services to the government following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as special agents against terrorism. Knowing the trio were loose cannons, the government declined the offer and persuaded them to retire from crime-fighting. The disgruntled adventurers retreated to a private estate in New England, and have not been seen since.

Curt Connors is a herpetologist who lost his right arm to a grenade while fighting in the Iraq War. In his Florida laboratory he is attempting to develop a serum to rejuvenate his lost limb, as many lizards do.

Peter Corbeau is a 32-year-old Nobel-Prize-winning scientist known for his work studying the sun. In 1999 he met Bruce Banner when they became roommates at New Mexico State University. His research on solar radiation has recently led him to correspond with Charles Xavier, an expert on mutations.

Roberto da Costa is a 4-year-old boy with latent mutant abilities living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Carl “Crusher” Creel is a hardened criminal doing time in the New York State Penitentiary.

Lorna Dane is a 12-year-old girl in San Francisco who was adopted by her aunt and uncle after her parents were killed in an accident. She possesses latent mutant powers of manipulating magnetic fields. Though her hair is naturally green, her parents have been dying it brown since she was a small child.

Drew Daniels is a 20-year-old cattle hand from Amarillo, Texas.

Carol Danvers is a 26-year-old intelligence operative for the United States Air Force who grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. She has been working with her partner, Colonel Michael Rossi, since he began training her in 2003. In the last year she has started working occasionally with Nick Fury of the CIA and a Canadian intelligence agent known only as Logan.

Raven Darkholme is a mutant with the ability to alter her appearance. Her natural form features indigo skin, yellow eyes, and blood-red hair. She uses her abilities to earn a living as a covert operative.

Wilbur Day is an inventor and engineer from New York City, who is getting tired of being pushed around.

Esteban Diablo is an alchemist who has been artificially extending his life since the mid-9th century. Though born in Spain, he had long been ruling a small province of Transylvania until 1926, when his subjects revolted and sealed him inside a massive crypt. He waited several years for his lover, Lillian von Loont, to free him, but she never did. His elixir of immortality has kept him alive ever since, though he remains hopelessly trapped.

Bruce Dickson was a scientist exploring the Himalayas in 1940 when he stumbled upon the lost civilization of Kalahia. The denizens of this realm used their mysterious technology to grant Dickson the ability to make his body paper-thin. He returned to America and became the costumed crimefighter known as “The Thin Man.” In 1942, he was a founding member of the Liberty Legion, which formed in order to rescue the Invaders from the Red Skull. He remained with the group until they disbanded after the war. He returned to Kalahia, only to find it had been destroyed by an old enemy, Agent Axis. Abandoning his heroic identity, Dickson spent the next forty years trying to track down Agent Axis and get revenge. He finally accomplished his goal in 1989, smothering his elderly foe to death. Dickson was charged with murder, but died before being sentenced to prison.

Max Dillon is a lineman for the New York Power Authority.

Victor von Doom is the 39-year-old dictator of the nation of Latveria, located in the Balkans. Known to his subjects as “Doctor Doom,” he rules through fear and the power granted him by his highly sophisticated suit of armor. The rest of the world, however, is unaware of Doom’s coup d’état and thinks Latveria is still a constitutional monarchy ruled by a prime minister. After growing up in Europe, Doom enrolled at the State University of New York in 1995, where he became rivals with another science major, Reed Richards. Doom was convinced he could develop a technology to contact his mother’s spirit in hell. Two years later, Doom was expelled after an unauthorized experiment he was conducting exploded. Seeking a mystical means to contact his dead mother, Doom traveled to Tibet, where a group of reclusive monks provided him with his first suit of armor. The mask was still red hot when Doom put it on, thus destroying his already scarred face. Some years later, Doom returned to America and engaged in a secret collaboration with Nathaniel Richards, Reed’s father, to build a time machine. Doom believed he could use the time machine to cross the dimensional barrier and reach his mother. In 2005, Richards succeeded in making the device operational, but was lost in an alternate universe. Within two years, Doom had built a copy of the device for himself and used it to acquire knowledge, wealth, and technology from the past and the future. Finally, in 2009, he seized the throne of his native country to establish a power base for his nefarious schemes.

Lemuel Dorcas is a marine biologist based in Florida, interested in the potential of generic engineering.

Heather Douglas is a 17-year-old native of Los Angeles being trained in the martial arts by a group of Eternals living on Saturn’s moon Titan. The Eternals are also helping Douglas develop her latent psionic powers, which has enabled her to convince herself that she is a goddess. She was taken in by the Eternals in 1998 after a renegade member of their society, Thanos, killed her parents while on a reconnaissance mission to Earth. Unknown to Heather, the Eternals changed her dead father, Arthur Douglas, into a tremendously powerful being called Drax the Destroyer, who has been battling Thanos ever since.

Bobby Drake is a 13-year-old boy with latent mutant powers living with his parents in Fort Washington, New York.

Jessica Drew was born in 1978, but due to radiation poisoning, she was placed in suspended animation in 1981 by her scientist father, Jonathan Drew, and his colleague Herbert Wyndham at their Citadel of Science on Wundagore Mountain in the tiny Balkan nation of Transia. Though she was meant to be in stasis for only a few months while an experimental treatment based on spider venom took effect, events have conspired to keep her there up to the present day. Since being placed in her stasis tube, Drew has aged at an extremely slow rate.

Anthony Druid is a 38-year-old researcher of the occult and a master hypnotist.

Jericho Drumm is a 31-year-old psychiatrist who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He left the island in 1997 to attend college in the United States and has not returned. His twin brother, Daniel Drumm, has become the Houngan Supreme of the island of Haiti, and is known there by the title Brother Voodoo.

Zelda DuBois is a snake charmer from Darlington, South Carolina, who recently hooked up with Maynard Tiboldt’s crooked circus.

Fred J. Dukes is a mutant from Lubbock, Texas, who works at a traveling carnival, performing a routine based on his enormous girth, invulnerability, and ability to make himself immovable. Unaware of the scientific explanation for his strange appearance and abilities, Dukes considers himself a freak of nature.

Paul Duval is a chemist from Fontainebleau, France.

Sybil Dvorak is a 14-year-old girl from Focşani, Romania, whose mutant powers of telekinesis have recently manifested. Living with a Romani tribe, Dvorak is training herself in using her powers to manipulate fabrics and other “soft” materials.

Norbert Ebersol is an unscrupulous engineer and mechanic from Dayton, Ohio, who works odd jobs while peddling his inventions to the criminal underworld.

Electro was a famous robot built in 1940 by Professor Philo Zog, who used it as the main weapon of the crimebusting operation he organized and financed. A year later, Zog and most of his agents were killed when Nazi spies attempted to steal Electro for use by the Third Reich. The robot was destroyed and Zog’s laboratory exploded, burning up all his blueprints and research notes.

The Enclave is a group of four world-renowned scientists who began faking their own deaths in 1993 in order to withdraw from the world to pursue their shared goal of ruling the Earth. Maris Morlak, Carlo Zota, Wladyslav Shinski, and Jerome Hamilton have established a research installation on an island in the North Atlantic, completed in 2003, which they call the Beehive. Since then they have labored to discover a process by which to create artificial life in order to engineer a slave race to fight their wars of conquest for them.

Jacqueline Falsworth-Crichton is an 86-year-old English aristocrat who fought with the Invaders during World War II as the super-speedster known as “Spitfire.” Her father, Montgomery Falsworth, was the costumed commando called Union Jack during the First World War, an identity her brother Brian inherited in the war against Hitler. She gave up her costumed identity at the war’s end in 1945, and by the end of the decade her powers had completely faded away. In 1951 she married the British nobleman Lord Crichton, and their son, Kenneth Crichton, is now 59 years old. As far as anyone knows, Lady Crichton is the last surviving superhero from World War II.

Montgomery Falsworth became the first superhero of the 20th century when in 1914 the British government asked him to become a costumed commando called “Union Jack.” Later in World War I, he joined with other masked men to form Freedom’s Five, including the Phantom Eagle, Sir Steel & Silver Squire, and La Chevalier Cramoisi. Their greatest foe was Falsworth’s own brother, a vampire who called himself Baron Blood. When the war ended in 1918, Falsworth retired his costumed identity and settled down to raise a family, having two children, Brian and Jacqueline. In 1939, Falsworth and his son had many bitter arguments about Nazi Germany, which led Brian to go to Germany with his friend Roger Aubrey. When war was declared in September, the young men were arrested and sent to prison camps. In 1942, Falsworth and his daughter befriended the Invaders, which led Falsworth to don his Union Jack costume for a final showdown with Baron Blood. However, Falsworth’s legs were crushed during the battle, leaving him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Jacqueline then joined the Invaders as Spitfire, and they soon learned that Brian had been fighting the Nazis inside Germany as the Mighty Destroyer. Brian then joined the Invaders as the new Union Jack, and Aubrey assumed the role of the Destroyer. In 1945, Baron Blood was at last destroyed, and his remains were entombed in the Tower of London. Falsworth and his family retired to their country estate, and in 1952 Jacqueline gave him a grandson, Kenneth Crichton. Sadly, a year later, Brian was killed in an automobile accident. Montgomery Falsworth died in 1981 while fighting a resurrected Baron Blood. He was 90 years old.

Wilson Fisk is a New York City crime boss with numerous investments in legitimate businesses as well. He passes himself off as an importer of spices to cover his criminal activities. In 1992 he married a beautiful and sophisticated woman named Vanessa and they have an 18-year-old son Richard. Though already wealthy and very successful, Fisk still has plans to bring all of New York’s criminal rackets under his control.

Flexo the Rubber Man was a robot created in 1940 by scientist brothers Joel and Josh Williams. Though intended to help the brothers with their research, Flexo ended up being used to prevent various acts of sabotage by enemy agents. Ultimately, the Nazis tried to steal Flexo for their own use, murdering the Williams brothers in the process. Unable to make Flexo obey them, the Nazis destroyed the robot and burned down the Williams’ laboratory. All their research was lost.

Marvin Flumm is a shoe salesman in Watford City, North Dakota, and a mutant with low-level telepathic ability.

Dominic Fortune is a 54-year-old retired costumed adventurer who was active between 1983 and 1996 and currently lives in New York. In 1984 he prevented the East German spy Wolfgang von Strucker from assassinating a United States senator, and he encountered Strucker again in 1991 while helping Logan and the Russian soldier Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov rescue Natasha Romanova from a group of ninja assassins. Fortune enjoyed his celebrity and was the closest thing America had to a superhero during that period.

Bill Foster is a 22-year-old college student from Los Angeles, California, studying to be a biochemist.

Bob Frank became a costumed superhero called “The Whizzer” in 1940 after gaining super-speed in a bizarre incident involving his scientist father, Dr. Emil Frank. In 1942 he was a founding member of the Liberty Legion, where he met the superheroine Miss America. The two soon fell in love, and later in the year they both joined the Invaders. After the war ended, they served in the All-Winners Squad to fight domestic crime, but retired in 1948 when Miss America got pregnant. They got married and took jobs at a nuclear power plant in New York, but his wife was exposed to high levels of radiation when the plant was sabotaged by an old enemy. As a result, their son was born a dangerously radioactive mutant. The government took custody of Robert Frank, Jr., and encouraged the grief-stricken parents to take an extended vacation. Unfortunately, Frank’s wife soon got pregnant again and died in childbirth. Unable to cope with so much tragedy, Frank became a drunken derelict and a drifter. He finally died in 1982 at the age of 63.

Emma Frost is a 20-year-old mutant telepath from Boston, Massachusetts.

Nick Fury is a 46-year-old agent of the CIA who is renowned for having led the Army’s “Howling Commandos” during the Gulf War in 1991. His father, Jack Fury, was a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War who was killed during the Tet Offensive. Nick and his brother Jake then grew up on the mean streets of Manhattan, often brawling with members of the notorious Yancy Street Gang. Nick joined the Army in 1990 and soon rose to a leadership position. While serving with the Howling Commandos, Sgt. Fury fell in love with a nurse named Pamela Hawley, but she was killed during an attack. He also received an injury to his left eye, which has been slowly failing ever since. After the war, the Howling Commandos were sent to apprehend the freelance mercenary Wolfgang von Strucker. Though their quarry escaped, Fury and his men were able to wipe out Strucker’s infrastructure and seize his assets. Strucker tried to get revenge on Fury in 1993 by kidnapping and torturing him after Fury was involved in a helicopter crash in Somalia. Fury escaped and, after recovering from his injuries, returned to active duty with the Howlers. The squad disbanded after a few years, but the surviving original members regrouped following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A year later, now-Colonel Fury retired from the Army and took a position with the CIA, having been recruited after assisting the agency in Afghanistan. In 2010 he began working occasionally with Carol Danvers and Michael Rossi of Air Force Intelligence and the Canadian secret agent known only as Logan.

MacDonald Gargan is a hard-boiled private investigator in New York City.

Nathan Garrett is a scientist from London, England, who conducts research into genetic engineering at his family’s ancestral castle. In his spare time, he tinkers with electronic weapons based on the medieval implements found throughout the castle. His financial situation is growing increasingly desperate.

Dirk Garthwaite is a construction worker in New York City with serious antisocial tendencies. He’s been known to threaten people with a crowbar.

Alexander Gentry is a scientist and engineer who has been unsuccessful in finding a buyer for the bulky battlesuit he has designed.

Greer Grant is an 18-year-old native of Chicago, Illinois. She is looking forward to starting as a science major at the University of Chicago in the fall.

Louise Grant was a secretary from Hoboken, New Jersey, who worked for the Mark Mason Detective Agency in Manhattan. In 1946 she developed the glamorous masked identity of “The Blonde Phantom” to assist her boss with his cases. Within three years, she retired from costumed crimefighting to marry Mark Mason. They soon had a daughter Wanda. Louise died in 1995.

Robert Grayson was the son of German astrophysicist Horace M. Grabsheid, who changed his name after immigrating to the United States in 1984, when Robert was an infant. Seeing nuclear war as inevitable, Dr. Grayson planned to build his own spaceship so he and his son could remain safely in orbit during the conflagration. However, after making radio contact with the colony of Eternals living on Uranus, Grayson built a more advanced ship with their help. In 1988, Grayson and young Robert flew their ship to Uranus and joined the Eternals, believing their society to be a Utopia. Robert was then educated amongst the Eternals’ advanced technology and philosophy. In 2000, Robert was given a pair of energy-manipulating wristbands and sent back to Earth to spread the Uranian way of peace and justice. Called “The Millennium Boy,” Robert soon became the preeminent superhero of the day. In 2001, Millennium Boy learned that his father had fallen ill and the Eternals lacked the knowledge of sickness and infirmity needed to treat him. Unable to get a bank loan to purchase medical supplies, Millennium Boy faced a significant delay while he raised the funds he needed. By the time he made it back to Uranus, he found the Eternals’ colony has been destroyed and everyone there was dead. Driven insane with grief, Millennium Boy set a course back to Earth, intent on taking vengeance on everyone who had delayed his departure. However, while en route, a malfunction in the ship caused him to enter a state of suspended animation, and the ship slowed to the point that it will take 15 years to reach Earth.

Jean Grey is a 14-year-old mutant with telekinetic powers who lives with her parents and older sister in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Her telepathic powers first manifested in 2007 when her best friend, Annie Richardson, was hit by a car and died in Grey’s arms. After withdrawing into herself, Grey was eventually referred to Charles Xavier, who had had success in the past with similar cases. Xavier used his own telepathic powers to suppress Grey’s until she is old enough to handle them. He then began training her to control her remaining telekinetic abilities, encouraging her to keep these powers a secret. Grey has made several visits to Xavier’s mansion in Westchester County to assist him with his research into human mutation, and has met his colleague from Scotland, Dr. Moira MacTaggart. Recently, Xavier revealed to Grey and MacTaggart the prototype for a mutant-detecting machine called CEREBRO.

Ben Grimm is a 36-year-old test pilot from New York City who recently resigned from the Air Force to take a job at Richards Laboratories in California, at the urging of his college roommate Reed Richards. Grimm had once promised to pilot Richards’ spaceship should he ever manage to actually build it, and the project is rapidly nearing completion. Though trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with a woman he met at his last Air Force base, Dr. Linda McGill, Grimm has developed something of a crush on Richards’ gorgeous young girlfriend Sue. Her little brother Johnny, though, is just an annoying pest. Grimm grew up on the streets of Manhattan, and in 1992 had become the leader of the notorious Yancy Street Gang, but left the gang a year later to join the Air Force. He enjoyed his time in the military and in 1994 he was involved in missions with Captain Simon Savage’s Leatherneck Raiders and Sgt. Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos. He then went to college on the G.I. Bill at the State University of New York, where he met Reed Richards and Victor von Doom. Upon graduation in 1999, Grimm returned to the Air Force to become a test pilot. He nearly died in a crash in 2008, but was saved by his friend Desmond Pitt. Nevertheless, the two began to lose touch after Pitt took a position at NASA. Earlier this year, Grimm was surprised to hear from Richards, who was finally ready to take him up on the offer Grimm had sort of meant as a joke.

Sam Guthrie is a 7-year-old boy with latent mutant powers who lives with his parents and siblings in Cumberland, Kentucky.

Henry Peter Gyrich is a government agent with the National Security Administration.

Frank Hall is a 48-year-old physicist from Banff, Alberta, Canada, who is investigating the properties of gravity at a research installation in the Rockies.

Thomas Halloway was a costumed adventurer called “The Angel,” who made his debut in 1939 and inspired a host of imitators. After a very successful career, he was killed while fighting crime at the end of 1946.

Felicia Hardy is a 14-year-old girl in New York City whose father is a notorious cat burglar.

Quincy Harker is a 66-year-old vampire hunter from London, England, who dedicated his life to destroying all vampires after Dracula killed his parents in 1961. After successfully staking Dracula’s daughter Lilith in 1995, Harker was crippled by Dracula as an act of revenge. Undeterred, Harker built a special wheelchair containing an anti-vampire arsenal and continues to seek the final destruction of Dracula himself.

Daimon Hellstrom is a 20-year-old college student majoring in Religious Studies and already an expert demonologist. He is the son of a demon called Marduk Kurios who disguised himself as a human in the early ‘90s to sire half-breed children. His mother, Victoria Wingate Hellstrom, committed suicide in 1998 after discovering her husband’s true nature. Marduk Kurios then left Daimon in foster care and took his three-year-old daughter Satana with him to his infernal realm. Hellstrom is determined to prevent his father from carrying out any more sinister schemes on earth.

Bruno Horgan is an industrialist from New York City who is not above ripping off his customers for his own profit.

James MacDonald Hudson is the 29-year-old head scientist for Department H, a top-secret research and development agency within the Canadian Ministry of Defense, formed in 2008, which is concerned with developing high-tech weapons for the government. Hudson’s 20-year-old wife Heather serves as his secretary. On their honeymoon in 2009, the Hudsons discovered Logan, reduced to a feral state, in Wood Buffalo National Park and brought him to Department H to study his mutant healing factor and adamantium skeleton and claws. Though Logan has since been recruited into Canadian military intelligence, the Hudsons continue to feel protective of his physical and emotional well-being. James MacDonald Hudson is currently searching for inspiration for a positive new direction for Department H to take.

The Human Torch was an android created in 1939 by Professor Phineas T. Horton that could burst into flame, fly, and control and project fire. The Torch initially worked with the NYPD to bring down racketeers and other dangerous criminals and created a civilian identity for himself under the name Jim Hammond. In 1940, he met a 12-year-old mutant boy named Thomas “Toro” Raymond who possessed similar abilities. They became a successful crimefighting duo, and a year later were founding members of the Invaders. The Human Torch and Toro served with the team throughout the war, and nearly apprehended Adolf Hitler in his bunker in 1945. To stop Hitler from blowing up the bunker and killing everyone inside, including Toro, the Torch was forced to incinerate him. After the war, the Torch and Toro fought crime with the All-Winners Squad and partnered briefly with the mysterious Sun Girl. Then, in 1949, a gang of mobsters used an experimental solution to neutralize the powers of the Human Torch and Toro, but the chemical caused the Torch’s artificial body to shut down. He was awakened four years later by a nuclear bomb test, discovering that the criminals had buried him in the desert. He tracked down Toro and found he had been brainwashed to serve the Communists and was currently blowing up ammo dumps in Korea. After rescuing Toro, the two resumed their crimefighting crusade. In 1955, however, the Human Torch realized the radiation that freed him from his grave was causing him to lose control of his powers. Rather than be a threat to mankind, the Torch said goodbye to Toro and flew out to the Nevada desert. There he tried to destroy himself by going nova, but merely deactivated himself again. His body fell to the ground and was soon covered by the desert’s drifting sands, where it remains to the present day.

The Inhumans are a race genetically engineered by the alien Kree in prehistoric times, whose society has evolved along Kree lines separately from mainstream humanity. Since 2005, the Inhumans have been ruled by the usurper Maximus, brother to the rightful king, Black Bolt. Maximus masterminded a civil war in their hidden city of Attilan, which is located in a remote area of the Himalayas, by turning three of their worker drones (called Alpha Primitives) into super-intelligent energy beings known collectively as the Trikon. The 29-year-old Black Bolt was driven into exile, and is currently hiding out in New York. His consort, Medusa (age 27), was lost in the Himalayas during the battle and, suffering from amnesia, has made her way to the south coast of France. Their cousins Triton, Gorgon, and Karnak (all in their mid-twenties) have been forced to serve Maximus. The youngest member of the royal family, Medusa’s sister Crystal, is 19. The outside world remains unaware of the Inhumans’ existence.

Jack Frost was discovered in the Arctic by a scientific expedition and brought to the United States in 1941. Researchers dubbed this “ice elemental” Jack Frost, but he soon escaped from their facility and became an outlaw and killer vigilante. His reputation was rehabilitated somewhat when he joined the Liberty Legion in 1942 and served as a spy-buster and crimefighter throughout the war. Following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, he returned to the Arctic, disgusted by humanity, and has not been seen since.

J. Jonah Jameson is the 47-year-old publisher of the New York City newspaper the Daily Bugle. He started at the Bugle as a copy boy in 1979, became a full-time reporter in 1984, and steadily worked his way up to the top. His son John Jameson, born in 1986, is an Air Force test pilot training to be an astronaut.

Abner Jenkins is a mechanic from Baltimore, Maryland, who works a low-paying job at a factory making airplane parts.

Tyrone Johnson is an 8-year-old boy with a bad stutter, who lives in a ghetto neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts.

Angelica Jones is a 3-year-old girl with latent mutant powers.

Rick Jones is a 16-year-old orphan from Scarsdale, Arizona. He has been moved around a variety of state institutions due to disciplinary problems, and has just taken up residence with his aunt in a small rural town in New Mexico near an Air Force base. Rather than getting a job, Jones hangs out with other local teens, taking often risky dares to prove himself.

Erik Josten is a mercenary from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army after being caught working as a smuggler. He is currently in the employ of Helmut Zemo and based in Brazil.

Madeline Joyce acted as the costumed superheroine “Miss America” from 1941 until 1948, serving in the Liberty Legion, the Invaders, and the All-Winners Squad. She became romantically involved with her teammate Bob Frank, the Whizzer, and they both retired from their costumed identities when she accidentally became pregnant. To make ends meet after getting married, they both took jobs at a nuclear power plant in New York. Unfortunately, Joyce was exposed to high levels of radiation when the plant was sabotaged by an old enemy, and their son was born a dangerously radioactive mutant. The government took custody of Robert Frank, Jr., and encouraged the grief-stricken parents to take an extended vacation. Unfortunately, Joyce soon got pregnant again and died in childbirth in 1950, at the age of 30. Her second baby was stillborn.

Bonita Juarez is an 18-year-old student in Taos, New Mexico, who is looking forward to starting college. She plans to major in social work.

Eugene Judd is a 47-year-old soldier-of-fortune from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who is considering retirement. Formerly a very tall man, Judd encountered an ancient Persian sorcerer in the Middle East in 1989, whose spells left him only about one meter tall. Furthermore, Judd has realized that he has not aged appreciably since that fateful encounter. Judd has had run-ins with his fellow Canadian Logan on several occasions, both before and after his transformation, and though they sometimes work for opposing sides, they have developed a mutual respect.

Jennifer Kale is an 11-year-old girl from Citrusville, Florida, who lives with her younger brother Andy at the Kale family farm near a swamp that contains a mystic portal called the Nexus of All Realities. Since the death of their parents, Jennifer and Andy have been raised by their grandfather, Joshua Kale, who is the head of a group of minor sorcerers called the Cult of Zhered-Na. Jennifer is very curious about her grandfather’s books of spells and other magical artifacts.

Karl Kaufman served the Allies in World War I as the mysterious flying ace known as “The Phantom Eagle.” He kept his true identity a secret to protect his parents, who were still living in Germany. He soon joined the other mystery men Union Jack, Sir Steel & Silver Squire, and La Chevalier Cramoisi in a special commando squad known as Freedom’s Five. Near the end of the war, Kaufman attempted to get his parents out of Germany, but was discovered by the German pilot Hermann von Reitberger, who machine-gunned the Kaufman family to death. The Phantom Eagle was 26 years old.

Spencer Keen was a superhero known as “The Blue Blaze,” active for several months in 1940. After lying in suspended animation for nearly 90 years following a freak accident in a college science lab, Keen awoke to find himself super-strong and basically invulnerable. However, while Keen was battling a villain called Dr. Vortex, the two men tumbled into a flooded limestone quarry and drowned.

Zebediah Killgrave is a former spy born in Rijeka, Yugoslavia. While conducting industrial espionage, Killgrave was exposed to an experimental chemical that gave him the ability to control other people. However, the chemical also changed his skin color to purple, and so he is often referred to as “the Purple Man.” Killgrave mainly uses his powers to force others to support his life of indulgence and leisure. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with a beautiful woman he mind-controlled into marrying him and their infant daughter Kara.

Hannibal King is a novice private detective from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Ulysses Klaw is a scientist and international criminal from Vlaardingen, the Netherlands. In 2003, he led a band of mercenaries into the African kingdom of Wakanda to steal the ultra-rare mineral vibranium. After killing King T’Chaka, Klaw and his mercenaries were driven off in defeat when the king’s son T’Challa attacked them with their own sonic disruptor weapon. Klaw continues to covet vibranium and is currently scheming to make another attempt at invading Wakanda.

Misty Knight is a 21-year-old college student in New York City who plans to enter the police academy.

Ivan Kragoff is a 56-year-old scientist who was born in Leningrad, U.S.S.R. He currently studies cosmic rays for the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Sergei Kravinoff is a big-game hunter and mercenary from Russia, known professionally as Kraven the Hunter.

Valentina Allegra de La Fontaine is a 33-year-old Italian countess. In 1993, her parents were murdered by the Maggia and Val spent many years waging a vigilante war against organized crime. She was then recruited as an intelligence operative for the Italian government, but became disillusioned after a few years and resigned. She has since used her private fortune to live the life of a transcontinental party girl, but secretly harbors an ambition to once more serve the cause of international justice.

Scott Lang is a 20-year-old college student from Coral Gables, Florida, who is majoring in electrical engineering.

Walter Langkowski is a 30-year-old scientist from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. In 1999, he entered Pennsylvania State University on a football scholarship and there met Bruce Banner, who inspired Langkowski with his passion for science. Though Banner soon transferred to another university, Langkowski decided to follow in his footsteps and major in nuclear physics. Upon graduation in 2003, Langkowski was drafted to play professional football for the Green Bay Packers. After three years, Langkowski retired from sports and used the fortune he had earned to pursue his true goal of becoming a nuclear physicist.

Ebenezer Laughton is a contortionist and entertainer from Rhinebeck, New York, who bills himself as “Umberto the Uncanny.”

Jubilation Lee is a 1-year-old girl with latent mutant powers who lives with her parents in Beverly Hills, California.

Rachel Leighton is a sales clerk at a boutique in Austin, Texas.

Logan is a Canadian mutant of indeterminate age who knows no other name for himself. After growing up in the wilderness of northwestern Canada, Logan became a merchant marine in 1976 and sailed around the world. Reaching China the following year, he had several adventures with a beautiful Chinese girl named Rose. By 1980 he had moved on to Japan, where he began studying the martial arts under a ninja master named Ogun. In the process, he became an enemy of a cult of assassins known as the Hand. In 1986, Logan broke with his sensei and left Japan severely disillusioned. He wandered the world for several years, until settling on the island of Madripoor. There, in 1991, Logan helped a Russian soldier named Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov and the American adventurer Dominic Fortune rescue a young girl, Natasha Romanova, from the Hand. Logan soon left Madripoor and made his way back to Canada, where he enlisted in the Army and received commando training. Four years later, he became a field agent for Canadian Intelligence, and in 2000 was recruited into a black-ops unit, where he met Victor Creed, Silver Fox, and a handful of other agents. After making many enemies in the CIA during missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, Logan and his team were soon targeted as potential test-subjects for the clandestine Weapon X program. In 2008, the CIA arranged an accident that got Logan cashiered out of the intelligence service, then promptly kidnapped him. He was taken to a facility in Windsor, Ontario where, along with his team, he was subjected to a mental reprogramming procedure. Then he was transported to a secret research installation in Canada’s north woods, where the Weapon X scientists fused the unbreakable metal adamantium to his skeleton and implanted six bionic adamantium claws in his forearms. However, Logan managed to escape from the complex during his subsequent training regimen, though his mind had been shattered, leaving him little more than a savage animal. Logan was discovered by James and Heather Hudson in 2009 when the couple was honeymooning in Wood Buffalo National Park. They took him to Department H and nursed him back to health, though he had no memory of his life before meeting them. After receiving psychiatric treatment, Logan was then recruited back into Canadian intelligence and retrained as a secret agent. He has recently begun working occasionally with Nick Fury of the CIA and Carol Danvers of Air Force intelligence.

Lillian von Loont met the alchemist Esteban Diablo in 1923, after her husband was killed in a car crash. Lillian was also badly injured, but Diablo used his arts to restore her to health, and they soon fell in love. She studied the secrets of alchemy until 1926, when Diablo’s subjects, fed up with his tyrannical rule, imprisoned him within a massive crypt. Von Loont killed Diablo’s treacherous servants and fled back to England, where she continued her studies. In 1936, she finally discovered the means to transform other elements into gold, and returned to Transylvania to take revenge on the peasants who imprisoned her lover. Subsequently, she traveled the world until she had tracked down every one of her targets and transformed them into golden statues. Eventually, old age caught up with her, but Von Loont used her arcane arts to preserve her life within an artificial body, fashioning a beautiful golden mask to hide her now ghastly features. Taking up residence in a mansion on Tamarind Island near Vancouver, Canada, she became known to the curious locals as “Gilded Lily.”

Chen Lu is a scientist from Lanzhou, China, who specializes in working with highly radioactive materials.

Carl Lucas is a 24-year-old inmate at Seagate Prison, a maximum-security facility on an island off the coast of Georgia. Growing up in Harlem, Lucas and his friend Willis Stryker had become small-time crooks. Eventually they both fell for the same girl, Reva Connors. Having made money as a racketeer, Stryker was initially the more successful suitor, until his savage beating at the hands of Maggia goons scared Connors off. She began dating Lucas, who was trying to go straight, but Stryker saw it as a betrayal and framed Lucas by planting uncut heroin in his apartment. Shortly after Lucas was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Connors began seeing Stryker again, only to be killed in a drive-by shooting by more of Stryker’s enemies. Lucas vowed to avenge Connors’ death, and his constant escape attempts have landed him at Seagate, where he is constantly mistreated by the racist guard Albert “Billy Bob” Rackham.

Cornelius van Lunt is a financier with a vast personal fortune who lives in New York City.

Dan Lyons began his career as the superhero called “The Black Marvel” in 1941 after being enhanced to nearly superhuman levels of fighting skill by a secret Native American ritual. Within a year, he became the chief nemesis of a gang of mobsters called the Order of the Hood, which eventually managed to capture Lyons and torture him to death.

Jeff Mace was a reporter for the Daily Bugle who, inspired by Captain America, became the costumed crimefighter called “The Patriot” in 1941. After America entered World War II, Mace became a founding member of the Liberty Legion, and served with them until the Axis powers were defeated. In 1946, he became the third Captain America when the second was killed while fighting the android Adam-II. Mace immediately joined the All-Winners Squad as his replacement. When the second Bucky was shot in 1949, Mace recruited Betsy Ross to become his new partner, as the Golden Girl. The following year, they retired their costumed identities and got married. Mace resumed his career as a newspaper reporter in Boston, Massachusetts. He died of cancer in 1983 at the age of 64.

Jamie Madrox is a 12-year-old boy living on a farm in Kansas, with the mutant power to create duplicates of himself. His father, a scientist, has created a special skin-tight suit to dampen his powers, although the suit itself makes Jamie feel “different.”

Magnus is the alias of a 32-year-old man from Yugoslavia whose Croatian family was wiped out by Serbian forces engaged in “ethnic cleansing” in 1990. The terror of this incident prematurely activated his mutant power to manipulate magnetic fields and he survived by deflecting the bullets away from himself. Five years later, he met his wife, a Romani called Magda, as they were fleeing from Serbian soldiers. Together they escaped into the Carpathian Mountains and eventually made their way to Vinnitsa, Ukraine, where their daughter Anya was born. In 1999, Magnus ran afoul of some local gangsters, who prevented him from saving his daughter from a burning inn. The trauma of her death caused Magnus’ mutant powers to manifest again and he killed everyone at the scene. Witnessing the event, Magda fled into the night, thinking her husband had become a monster. Magnus went into hiding to escape from the police and was unable to follow her. By 2006, he had wandered to Israel, where he was volunteering at a psychiatric hospital. Here he met Charles Xavier, whom Magnus soon began to suspect was a mutant like himself. They teamed up to rescue one of Xavier’s patients, Gabrielle Haller, from the terrorist Wolfgang von Strucker and his HYDRA organization. With Xavier’s help, Magnus defeated Strucker, but then stole the fortune in Nazi gold Strucker had been after, to use for his own campaign to ensure that mutants become the new rulers of the earth.

The Mandarin is a former businessman in China who lost his fortune in 1999. Refusing to do manual labor to earn a living, he set off in search of a way to restore his former power and status. Wandering China, he eventually came upon the fabled Valley of Spirits, where he discovered a crashed spaceship. Using the alien technology he found inside, particularly ten weaponized rings, he has recently set himself up as a warlord amidst the rugged terrain of western China. His nickname “the Mandarin,” which was originally used to mock his arrogance, is now spoken in fear by the people he has subjugated.

Xi’an Coy Manh is a 9-year-old girl with latent mutant powers living with her parents and siblings in Vietnam. Her twin brother Tran shares the same latent powers. Her uncle, Nguyen Ngoc Coy, is a local crime lord.

Mantis is the nickname of a 15-year-old girl in Vietnam who is being trained in the martial arts at the temple of the Priests of Pama, a group of monks descended from the alien Kree. Her uncle is a local crime lord known as Monsieur Khrull, whose intense racism led him to murder her mother for marrying a German man. Gustav Brandt, a mercenary, escaped from Khrull’s men by fleeing into the jungle with his baby daughter, though he soon went blind from his injuries. The Priests of Pama took them in, suspecting that the girl was in fact the Celestial Madonna. After Brandt learned to compensate for his blindness, he departed, leaving Mantis with the priests, who have educated her in their own unique philosophy.

Flint Marko is the alias of a professional criminal in New York City, who was born in Queens as William Baker. He adopted his nom du crime in 1999 to protect his mother, who had taken up residence in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Jean-Paul Martin is a 16-year-old mutant with the power of super-fast flight who lives in Quebec, Canada. He is unaware that he has a twin sister, Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, living in an orphanage near Montreal, who has developed identical mutant powers. When their parents were killed in 1995, Jean-Paul was adopted by his mother’s cousin, RCMP officer Louis Martin. Unable to afford to raise Jeanne-Marie as well, the Martins placed her in a Catholic girl’s home. They intended to stay in touch with her, but soon after the family was relocated to northern Quebec. Then, in 2001, the Martins were killed in an accident and Jean-Paul was placed in foster care. When his mutant powers began to emerge in 2009, Jean-Paul realized he had the potential to be a world-champion downhill skier, and is currently working toward his goal of competing in the next Winter Olympics.

Milos Masaryk is a soldier born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, who is currently doing intelligence work for the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic.

Philip Masters is a 57-year-old scientist who was born in Dragorin, Transia, though he has been living in the United States since 1960. On a research trip to the country of his birth in 1979, Masters discovered a radioactive clay on Wundagore Mountain, and took several samples home with him to study. He soon learned the substance had almost magical properties and stockpiled as much of it as he could get his hands on. By 2000, Masters had fallen in love with the wife of his research partner, Jacob Reiss, and arranged an accident to get Reiss out of the way. Masters soon married Reiss’s widow, Marcia, and adopted his daughter, legally changing her name to Alicia Masters. Alicia had been blinded in the accident that killed Reiss, and out of guilt Masters has striven to be a good father to her ever since. Following his wife’s recent death, Masters has become unhinged and has started experimenting with the radioactive clay’s more dangerous properties.

Wanda Maximoff and Pietro Maximoff are 11-year-old fraternal twins with latent mutant powers living with their adoptive parents, Django and Marya Maximoff, among a Romani tribe in the Balkans. They are unaware that their biological parents are Magnus and Magda. Their mother was pregnant when she fled from her husband after he slew the people who prevented him from rescuing their daughter Anya from a burning inn in Vinnitsa, Ukraine. Magda made her way back to the Balkans, and her pregnancy had nearly come to term when she reached Wundagore Mountain. She was taken in by the High Evolutionary’s servant Bova, an artificially-evolved cow-woman, who served as Magda’s midwife and delivered her twins. Magda named them Wanda and Pietro, but, as soon as she was able, she left her babies behind and fled into the night, terrified that her husband might be following her. Bova took the infants to her master, and, realizing they needed a human family to nurture them, the High Evolutionary took them to a nearby Romani camp. The Maximoffs had recently lost their own twin children and agreed to raise Wanda and Pietro as their own. Wanda’s mutant power to alter probabilities has only just begun to manifest, and she is considered a jinx by the other members of her tribe.

Hank McCoy is an 18-year-old student from Dunfee, Illinois, whose mutant powers give him a somewhat ape-like physiognomy and gymnastic ability. Brilliant at science, he is starting college in the fall on a football scholarship.

Alejandro Montoya is a 16-year-old student in Madrid, Spain, with the mutant ability to generate electrostatic charges within his body. His fascination with swashbuckling heroes has led him to study swordfighting and hand-to-hand combat techniques.

Danielle Moonstar is a 7-year-old girl from Boulder, Colorado with the latent mutant ability to generate psychic projections. Her father, William Lonestar, saved Charles Xavier’s life during the Iraq War, and Xavier was present for Danielle’s christening a little over a year later. Her grandfather is a shaman called Black Eagle.

Michael Morbius is a 37-year-old scientist from Greece, who has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Elton Morrow served in the Liberty Legion during World War II as the superhero known as “The Blue Diamond.” He discovered a giant azure diamond during an expedition to Antarctica in 1941. The diamond exploded, embedding minute particles in Morrow’s skin, when his ship was attacked by a Nazi submarine. Morrow suddenly found himself to be invulnerable to injury, and when he returned to America, he created a costumed identity for himself. When the war ended in 1945, the Liberty Legion disbanded and Morrow retired from his role as the Blue Diamond to return to his career as a research scientist. He disappeared in 1981.

Barbara Morse is a 26-year-old graduate student from San Diego, California, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is working with Dr. Wilma Calvin, who is attempting to recreate the legendary super-soldier formula from World War II.

Ororo Munro is a 12-year-old girl with emerging mutant abilities to control the weather. After being orphaned in Cairo, Egypt in 2004, she lived on the streets as a pickpocket and petty thief. She recently left Cairo and is walking south towards Kenya. She has just saved Prince T’Challa, heir to the throne of Wakanda, from a gang of kidnappers, and he has decided to accompany her on her trek until he must return to his own country.

Matt Murdock is a 24-year-old student at Columbia Law School, pursuing his Juris Doctor degree. In 2002, Murdock was blinded in a traffic accident when he was exposed to strange radioactive chemicals. However, he soon discovered that his remaining senses had been heightened to superhuman levels. For a few years Murdock studied with a blind martial-arts master called Stick, who helped him develop a “radar sense” that allows him to navigate through the world better than a sighted person. In 2005, Murdock enrolled in Columbia University and met his roommate Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. He also fell in love with fellow student Elektra Natchios, but during their sophomore year, her father, a Greek ambassador, was murdered, so Elektra dropped out of school and left the United States. Murdock had tried to save her father using his superhuman abilities but failed, and is heartbroken at having lost Elektra as well. Matt’s father, “Battling” Jack Murdock, is a washed-up prizefighter who is getting mixed up with a crooked manager.

Namor is the 41-year-old heir to the throne of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis, known on the surface world as the Sub-Mariner. In the year 2000, he disappeared from the public eye and has been living as an amnesiac vagrant in New York City ever since. Namor’s father, ship captain Leonard McKenzie, and his mother, Princess Fen of Atlantis, met in 1969 when McKenzie’s ship, the Oracle, was conducting research off the coast of Antarctica, directly above the submerged kingdom. Depth charges from the ship had threatened the Atlanteans, and Fen took it upon herself to investigate. When she learned that McKenzie’s actions were not meant to be hostile, she decided to get to know him better. She soon became pregnant, but the lovers were separated when Thakorr, Emperor of Atlantis, assumed Fen was being held against her will and sent a strike force to rescue her. McKenzie, unaware that Fen was pregnant, recovered from his injuries and returned to the United States. Nine months later, Fen gave birth to Namor, a mutant hybrid of Homo sapiens and Homo mermanus. As he grew up, Namor was popular with most Atlanteans, but a few hated him for his “fishbelly” pink skin and the “freakish” wings that sprouted from his ankles when he hit puberty. Thus, in 1989, two of his childhood friends conspired to get rid of Namor. Meranno and Byrrah hired a mercenary army to attack Atlantis in the name of the surface world, causing extensive damage to the kingdom. Emperor Thakorr was injured in the attack and was left comatose. As acting emperor, Namor decided to attack the surface world in retaliation. His destructive rampages through coastal cities terrified the surface-dwellers, who dubbed him “The Sub-Mariner.” In the early ‘90s, Namor had several battles with the flaming hero of World War II, Toro, who came out of retirement to try to defeat him. Eventually, Namor learned of the treachery of Meranno and Byrrah, and that not all surface-dwellers were his enemies. He made efforts to understand the ways of the surface people and to protect Atlantis’s interests, though his volatile personality made him unpredictable. Finally, in 2000, Namor lost a battle with the telepath Paul Destine, who used the mystic artifact known as the Serpent Crown to destroy Atlantis, killing Thakorr and Fen, and then erased Namor’s memory and left him in an alley in a New York ghetto. The Atlanteans were left a disorganized band of refugees, wandering the ocean’s depths.

William Nasland fought for the Allies during World War II as the costumed superhero “The Spirit of ’76,” beginning in 1942. After the original Captain America disappeared in the winter of 1945, Nasland was asked to take over as the new Captain America, and he was honored to do so. Joined by Fred Davis as the new Bucky, Nasland fought alongside the Invaders until the end of the war. Subsequently, he became a founding member of the All-Winners Squad to fight domestic crime. However, in 1946, Nasland was killed in action while trying to stop the evil android Adam-II from assassinating a young politician named John F. Kennedy. He was 28 years old.

Luchino Nefaria is a 48-year-old crime boss from Rome, Italy, who is currently the head of the international crime syndicate known as the Maggia. His wife Renata died in childbirth in 1986, and Nefaria secretly arranged for the baby to be raised as the daughter of wealthy New York financier Byron Frost, who launders money for the Maggia. The girl, Whitney, now 25, still has no knowledge of her true parentage.

Peter Noble fought in World War II as the costumed adventurer called “The Fin.” Originally a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, Noble’s ship sank during a training exercise in 1941, but he discovered that he could breathe underwater and survive the crushing pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Fearing he was some kind of freak, Noble did not return to the surface world, but wandered the ocean’s depths until coming across the small subsea kingdom of Neptunia. When Neptunia became a target of Nazi submarines, Noble’s heroic efforts earned him the Neptunians’ loyalty and they crowned him their new king. Neptunia then declared war on Germany, and Noble made many daring attacks against the Nazis on both land and sea using an enchanted cutlass he had discovered in an ancient shipwreck. Due to his distinctive headgear, he was dubbed “The Fin” by the American press and considered a sea-faring super-hero. At the end of the year, he joined Captain America and the Human Torch in forming the Invaders and fought as a member of that team throughout the rest of the war. In 1946, Noble helped form the team’s post-war counterpart, the All-Winners Squad. That team disbanded in 1949, but Noble continued to fight evildoers at home and abroad until his death in 1958.

Otto Octavius is a research scientist from Schenectady, New York, who is developing a new technology to safely handle hazardous materials.

Shanna O’Hara is a 28-year-old veterinarian at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Born in Zaire to American parents, O’Hara was traumatized in 1989 when her father accidentally killed her mother while trying to shoot a leopard. Since taking her job at the zoo last year, she has demonstrated a specially affinity for big cats.

Norman Osborn is a research scientist and business executive in New York City. He came to prominence in 2004 after stealing the research of his partner, Mendel Stromm, and then arranging for Stromm to be sent to prison for 10 years. Osborn’s son Harry is 16 years old.

Leland Owlsley is a financier in New York, nicknamed “The Owl” for his uncanny financial wisdom. However, his success is largely due to illegal manipulations and other shady dealings.

Peter Parker is a 16-year-old high school student from Forest Hills, Queens, New York. Since 1998, Parker has been living with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May, after his parents were killed while on assignment for the CIA. He is unaware of the nature of his parents’ work and the exact circumstances of their deaths. He is a gifted science student but shy and withdrawn.

Arthur Parks is a college student from New Brunswick, New Jersey, who is studying lasers.

Peter Petruski is a petty criminal from Gary, Indiana, who is fascinated with pastes and glues.

Kevin Plunder is the 21-year-old son of an English lord, and has been marooned since 1999 in the Savage Land, a hidden jungle filled with otherwise extinct flora and fauna, including dinosaurs, located on the continent of Antarctica. His father was killed shortly after their arrival in the artificially-maintained rainforest, and his only companion since that time has been a sabertooth tiger he calls Zabu. Having reached manhood, Plunder is in the process of hunting down the primitive “man-apes” who killed his father. Only vaguely remembering his childhood in England, Plunder has adopted the name given to him by the man-apes, “Ka-Zar,” which means “Son of the Tiger.” He is unaware that his younger brother Parnival, left behind in England, has turned to a life of crime to support himself.

Alex Power is a 1-year-old boy living with his parents in Richmond, Virginia.

Jonathan Powers is an actor from Hoboken, New Jersey, who has failed to make it big in either New York or Hollywood, and had turned to petty crime to support his extravagant lifestyle.

John Proudstar is a 14-year-old boy from Camp Verde, Arizona, with emerging mutant powers that give him heightened senses and reflexes. Though he feels ashamed of his freakish abilities, John knows his 7-year-old brother James looks up to him. He looks forward to the day he can leave the reservation and join the Army.

Kitty Pryde is a 6-year-old girl from Deerfield, Illinois, with the latent mutant power to phase through solid objects. Her grand ambition now is to be a dancer.

Henry Pym is a 25-year-old genius-level research scientist from Elmsford, New York, who has already finished his education and begun his career. In 2010 he met Maria Trovaya, the daughter of a brilliant geneticist from Chechnya, who had fled from the violence in that region following the breakup of the Soviet Union. They quickly fell head-over-heels in love and decided to get married. Maria convinced Pym to take her back to her hometown of Grozny for their honeymoon. Believing the fighting had ceased, Pym agreed. However, shortly after their arrival, Maria was killed in a terrorist attack. Pym became distraught and, returning to the U.S., retreated from his grief into ever-more bizarre research projects. Though his new theories have been ridiculed and he has been ostracized by the scientific community, Pym has recently discovered a subatomic particle that he believes has the power to cause objects to change their physical size.

Abdul Qamar is a 16-year-old student living in Saudi Arabia.

Doug Ramsey is a 6-year-old boy with the latent mutant ability to decipher any language.

Danny Rand is a 13-year-old boy from New York City who is currently studying the martial arts in the extradimensional city of K’un-Lun, where he has been since 2007. His father, a native of K’un-Lun, had brought the family to the Himalayas in search of the dimensional portal, which was opening at that time, describing K’un-Lun only as a mystical realm. However, his father’s business partner, Harold Meachum, betrayed them, leading to the death of both of Danny’s parents. Danny alone made it to K’un-Lun, where the inhabitants agreed to raise him and train him until the portal reopens in 2017.

Calvin Rankin is a 15-year-old high-school student from Passaic, New Jersey, with an abrasive attitude.

Peter Rasputin is a 10-year-old farmboy in Siberia with the latent mutant power to turn his flesh into organic steel.

Red Raven fought for the Allies during World War II as a member of the Liberty Legion. As a baby, he was the sole survivor of a plane that crashed into the floating island of Aerie, concealed in a cloudbank, that was the home of a population of avian Inhumans. In 1940, he decided to leave the Aerie to explore the world of his birth parents, using the artificial wings the “Bird-People” provided him. He soon became a costumed crime-fighter, and in 1942 was a founding member of the Liberty Legion. However, in 1944, he learned of a plot by the rulers of the Aerie to take advantage of the turmoil caused by the war to conquer the human race. Fearing the Bird-People would be wiped out in such a battle, a desperate Red Raven released a gas that put everyone on the island into suspended animation. After securing the comatose population, Red Raven hid the island on the bottom of the ocean and then placed himself in suspended animation as well. They have remained so ever since.

Thomas Raymond was a mutant with the ability to burst into flame, fly through the air, and project fire from his body in various forms. In his youth, he acted as sidekick to the Human Torch, an android possessed of the same abilities. Known by his nickname, Toro, Raymond met the Human Torch in 1940, when he was only 11 years old. After Toro’s parents were killed by a criminal known as “the Asbestos Lady,” the Torch became his legal guardian. At the end of 1941, they became founding members of the Invaders, and fought against the Axis powers throughout World War II. In 1945, the Torch and Toro cornered Adolf Hitler in his underground bunker, meaning to bring him to justice. However, the Torch was forced to incinerate the Nazi leader to prevent him from blowing up the bunker and killing everyone inside, including Toro. With the war over, Toro joined the Torch in forming the All-Winners Squad to battle domestic crime. However, in 1949, a gang of mobsters used an experimental solution they had obtained from Soviet agents, which allowed them to neutralize Toro’s flame powers and deactivate the Torch. Toro was taken behind the Iron Curtain and brainwashed into becoming a secret weapon for the communists. He was finally rescued in 1953 after the Torch had been revived by a nuclear bomb test. Back in America, Toro’s mental conditioning was broken, and he and the Torch resumed their crimefighting crusade as equal partners. Unfortunately, the radiation that had revived the Torch slowly caused him to lose control of his powers, and in 1955 he said goodbye to Toro and disappeared into the desert. Disheartened, Toro retired from crimefighting and stopped using his powers. He eventually met and married a woman named Anne and lived a relatively normal life for many years. In 1990, Toro came out of retirement to battle the Sub-Mariner, who had recently begun staging attacks on cities along the Atlantic coast, and eventually persuaded Namor that not all surface-men were his enemies. Sadly, these adventures proved too strenuous for Toro and he soon suffered a fatal heart attack. He died in 1992 at the age of 63.

Owen Reece is a janitor at a scientific research installation in New York City.

James Rhodes is a 20-year-old airman in the United States Air Force.

Reed Richards is a 39-year-old beyond-genius research scientist from Central City, California, and head of the California-based Richards Laboratories, which he inherited from his father. Richards began taking college-level courses at Cal Tech in 1986. He was recruited by U.S. Army intelligence in 1991 as an encryption expert and served during the Gulf War. After his tour of duty, he resumed his education at SUNY, where he became roommates with football star Ben Grimm. Richards spoke often of his ambition to build a spaceship, and Grimm half-jokingly promised to pilot it should he ever succeed. Richards had a rival of sorts in Victor von Doom, also a brilliant scientist, who was expelled after one of his experiments went badly awry. In 2003, Richards enrolled in Columbia University to pursue yet another advanced degree. It was here that he met Susan Storm, the niece of his landlady. Though she was much younger, they stayed in touch after Richards graduated in 2005 and returned to California to work for his father. Two years later, after working obsessively on a secret project, Richards’ father vanished without a trace. However, he had made arrangements for his son to take over the family business. Richards immediately devoted all the company’s resources to his starship project. In early 2011, as the project was nearing completion, Richards contacted Grimm to take him up on the offer he made in college. Grimm resigned from the Air Force and took a position at Richards Laboratories to train for the mission to space. In the spring, Susan Storm, now working as a model in New York, flew out to spend the summer with Richards and they quickly fell in love. Recently, however, Richards encountered an alien monster that was intent on wiping out the human race. Using his scientific knowledge and ingenuity, Richards defeated the alien by dispersing its molecules over a wide area. Convinced that advanced extraterrestrial races pose a clear and present danger to the planet Earth, Richards now sees his starship project as vital to the survival of the human race.

Kyle Richmond is a 21-year-old reluctant business executive in New York City. Following his mother’s death in 1999, Richmond was sent to boarding school, since his father was constantly away on business. He soon developed a reputation as a troublemaker. Despite his poor academic record, Richmond was accepted to the exclusive Grayburn University in 2008 due to his father’s wealth and influence. However, Richmond was expelled the next year after a drunk-driving accident which he believes to have killed his girlfriend Mindy. His father died in a plane crash soon after that, and, rejected from military service due to a heart murmur, Richmond agreed to take over the family business. Leaving the actual running of the company to others, Richmond now lives the life of a playboy, while searching for a means to cure his heart condition.

Richard Rider is a 9-year-old boy living with his family in Queens, New York.

Steve Rogers served the Allies during World War II as the symbolic super-soldier Captain America. Born in New York City in 1921 and orphaned at the height of the Great Depression, Rogers was a frail and sickly youth. When he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army in late 1940, Rogers was classified 4F and rejected. However, he was immediately recruited by General Chester Phillips for his super-soldier program, Operation: Rebirth. Rogers was flown to Washington D.C., where he met the mastermind behind the project, Dr. Abraham Erskine. Within a few weeks, Rogers was injected with Erskine’s super-soldier serum and subjected to high-energy vita-rays, emerging from the process as physically perfect as a human being could be. Unfortunately, a Nazi spy had infiltrated the proceedings and shot and killed Dr. Erskine. Unable to duplicate Erskine’s success, the government decided to make Rogers into a patriotic symbol and a special-missions commando, similar to Britain’s Union Jack of World War I. Given a red, white, and blue costume and a bulletproof shield, Rogers became the masked hero Captain America. A few months later, Rogers acquired a teen-aged sidekick, Bucky, and the pair quickly became a media sensation. After America entered the war, Rogers fought alongside other super-heroes in the Invaders, as well as conducting numerous solo missions. In 1944, Bucky reached his 18th birthday and gave up his costumed identity to join the Army as a regular soldier. Soon after, while in France, Rogers fell in love with an American girl fighting in the French Resistance, although he knew her only by her code-name, “Mademoiselle.” She disappeared during the liberation of Paris, and Rogers was unable to find her. Then, in the winter of 1945, Rogers had his final battle with his arch-nemesis, the Red Skull, who was buried under tons of rubble in a collapsing bunker in Berlin. Returning to England, Rogers was assigned to stop the theft of an experimental drone plane from a base on the North Sea, where he was reunited with Bucky. His old enemy, Baron Heinrich Zemo, launched the plane towards Germany, but when Rogers and Bucky leaped aboard to stop it, they discovered it was booby-trapped. The plane exploded, killing Bucky and throwing Rogers down into the icy waters below. The super-soldier serum in his blood caused Rogers to go into suspended animation, and he was carried by the current into the Arctic, where he remains, entombed in ice, to the present day.

The girl who will be known as Rogue is currently a 7-year-old with latent mutant powers living with her family in Mississippi.

Natasha Romanova is a 27-year-old spy born in Stalingrad, U.S.S.R. (now St. Petersburg, Russia). Orphaned as a young girl, she was discovered living on the streets of Madripoor in 1991 by Russian soldier Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov. Realizing the girl was descended from the Russian royal family, Bezukhov vowed to raise her as his own daughter. However, she was soon kidnapped by the terrorist Wolfgang von Strucker, who was working with the group of ninja assassins known as the Hand. With some help from Logan and Dominic Fortune, Bezukhov rescued Romanova and took her back to Russia. He enrolled her in the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg and got himself a job in electronics. Bezukhov married in 1997 and soon had a son, Yuri. In 2003, Romanova graduated and became a professional ballerina in the famous Kirov ballet company, which put a tremendous strain on her relationship with her boyfriend, a brilliant college student named Andrei Rostov. A year later they broke up and Romanova took the hotshot jet pilot Alexi Shostakov as her lover. They married in 2005 and became something of a celebrity couple. However, two years after that, members of the Russian intelligence community decided that the Shostakovs would make excellent covert operatives. Incidents were arranged to convince each one that the other had died and then they were recruited separately. Shostakov was taken to Siberia for training while Romanova was assigned to the KGB’s former Moscow training facility, the infamous Red Room. There she was trained by a former KGB agent named Alexi Bruskin and proved highly adept at spycraft. In 2008 Romanova was sent on her first mission outside Russia, to assist an operative called Danny French in stealing an experimental device from the Project Four installation in Nevada. Since she was successful, she was sent to New York to infiltrate Stark International under the alias “Natalie Rushman.” She has been passing the secrets of Stark’s technology to the Russians ever since.

Jack Russell is a 14-year-old student living in the suburbs of Los Angeles with his mother, step-father, and sister Lissa. He is unaware that his biological father, Gregory Russoff, was a werewolf and that he will inherit his father’s ancestral curse on his 18th birthday. He is equally unaware that he was born Jacob Russoff in Transylvania and that his step-father Philip is really his father’s brother. Nor does he know that his grandfather, Baron Gregor Russoff of Transylvania (also a werewolf), obtained the Darkhold, the ultimate book of black magic, in 1971 from the sorcerer Taboo. In 1999, Gregory was killed by a hunting party while in his werewolf form, and a year later Gregor died while battling the demon Chthon on Wundagore Mountain. Jack and his mother fled Transylvania for California, where she married Philip shortly after Lissa was born, changing their names from Russoff to Russell. The Darkhold is currently in a California warehouse along with the rest of the contents of Castle Russoff.

Ted Sallis is a 34-year-old chemist from Omaha, Nebraska. In 2007, he initiated a research project at Empire State University that the United States military soon classified top-secret and codenamed Operation: Sulfur. Its aim was to alter human biochemistry to enable people to survive even the most toxic industrial pollution. By 2010, however, Sallis determined that his serum would mutate people into horribly disfigured pollution-breathing monsters. He convinced a review panel to condemn the project and the government had no choice but to shut it down. Sallis has recently received overtures from Dr. Wilma Calvin to join her project to recreate Abraham Erskine’s super-soldier formula, and he is considering it.

Leonard Samson is a psychiatrist from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who currently practices in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Basil Sandhurst is a research scientist from Kittery Point, Maine, who is developing mind-control technologies.

Mark Scarlotti is a college student from Cleveland, Ohio, studying electrical engineering. He has been awarded a summer internship at Stark International in New York.

Larry Scott was a masked vigilante known as “Father Time” in 1941-1942. His father was executed in the electric chair after being convicted of murder, though Scott maintained he was innocent. Unhinged by the experience, Scott took up a scythe and began killing criminals. Eventually someone overpowered him and killed him with his own weapon.

Shang-Chi is a 14-year-old student of the martial arts at a retreat in Honan, China. He is the son of an international criminal mastermind and his American-born wife, though Shang-Chi is unaware of his father’s illegal activities.

Gregor Shapanka is a research scientist from Szombathely, Hungary, who works in the cryonics division at Stark International in New York.

Sebastian Shaw is a 33-year-old multi-millionaire industrialist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the CEO of Shaw Industries, and a mutant with the power to absorb kinetic energy. Shaw keeps a love-slave named Tessa, who is also a mutant.

Nekra Sinclair is a 17-year-old mutant from Los Alamos, New Mexico, with the power to convert negative emotions into strength and invulnerability. A “goth chick” runaway, she lives on the streets with her partner, Jerome Beechman, a mutant with ape-like features and powerful pheromones.

Rahne Sinclair is a 4-year-old orphan girl in Scotland with the latent mutant ability to shapeshift into a wolf.

Marrina Smallwood is an 8-year-old girl, hatched from an alien Plodex egg mapped with human DNA, living in a small fishing community in Newfoundland, Canada. Despite her strange appearance, Smallwood has been accepted by the locals since they find her amphibious abilities useful.

Tabitha Smith is a 2-year-old girl in Roanoke, Virginia, with the latent mutant ability to generate explosive energy spheres.

Samuel Smithers is a gardener and groundskeeper. Born in London, England, he is currently employed by the wealthy Evans family of Long Island.

Karla Sofen is a 25-year-old graduate student from Van Nuys, California. She is studying to become a psychiatrist, but is financing her education by dallying with various gangsters.

Marc Spector is a 21-year-old heavyweight boxer from Chicago, Illinois. Feeling his career is winding down, he is considering joining the U.S. Marine Corps.

Gwen Stacy is a 16-year-old high-school student in New York City. Her father, George Stacy, is a captain in the NYPD.

Tony Stark is a 25-year-old genius-level inventor and head of Stark International, a company he inherited in 2007 after his parents were killed in a car crash. Stark is currently constructing the massive flying fortress called the Helicarrier for the nascent international security agency S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division), among other weapons and hardware.

Elihas Starr is a research scientist from Queens, New York. Though brilliant, he is bad-tempered and his co-workers mock him with the nickname “Egghead.”

Samuel Sterns is a manual laborer from Boise, Idaho, who works at a nuclear research facility.

Johnny Storm is a 17-year-old high school student from Glenville, New York, on Long Island. He lost his mother in 2005, and his father was convicted of manslaughter and sent to jail in 2007. Since then, Storm has been raised by his sister Susan, with help from an aunt who lives nearby. In the summer of 2011, Storm has gone to California to hang out with Sue and her boyfriend Reed Richards. Thanks to his interest in fast cars, Storm has quickly made a number of new friends.

Susan Storm is a 22-year-old model from Glenville, New York, on Long Island. After the death of her mother in 2005, her father went into a downward spiral and was finally convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison in 2007. Storm has been raising her younger brother Johnny ever since, though she has help from an aunt who runs a boarding house near Columbia University. It was at her aunt’s boarding house that Storm met Reed Richards, a much older college student, in 2003. She fell in love with Richards and has kept in touch with him since then. In the spring of 2011, Richards invited Storm to spend the summer with him in California, and she happily accepted. After a few weeks together, they decided to get engaged. After school let out, Johnny came out to California to join her. Storm recently assisted Richards in destroying an alien menace that had come to wipe out the human race, and understands why he works so obsessively on his project to build an interstellar spaceship.

Stephen Strange is a 49-year-old sorcerer who lives in a mansion in Greenwich Village, which he calls his Sanctum Sanctorum. Strange went to medical school in the 1980s at the University of Pennsylvania and studied to be a neurosurgeon. He went into private practice in 1995, by which time both his parents had died. Earlier in the ‘90s, he had been engaged to a woman named Madeleine Revell, but she ended their relationship when she realized he was becoming too arrogant and cold-hearted. In 1997, Strange crashed his sports car and sustained nerve damage that ended his surgical career. Too proud to work as a consultant, Strange then squandered his fortune seeking a cure for his condition, alienating his few friends in the process. By 1999, Strange was desperate enough to travel to Tibet in search of a miracle-worker known only as “The Ancient One.” Within a year, Strange found his way to the Ancient One’s remote retreat in the mountains, where the weird old man refused to help him. However, a sudden blizzard prevented Strange from leaving. While there, the former doctor discovered that the Ancient One’s pupil, a Transylvanian called Baron Mordo, was trying to kill his master. Mordo used his spells to prevent Strange from revealing the plot, so Strange asked the Ancient One to teach him magic. Seeing the good in Strange, the Ancient One agreed and released Strange from Mordo’s spells, of which he was already aware. Strange experienced an epiphany and dedicated himself to the study of the mystic arts. Strange soon got to know the Ancient One’s devoted manservant, Hamir the Hermit, and his son Wong. Months later, Mordo tried to kill Strange, but the novice sorcerer defeated him. The Ancient One then banished Mordo from the temple, and he returned to Transylvania, vowing revenge. Strange studied with the Ancient One until 2008, when he was ready to return to the world as a Master of the Mystic Arts. Accompanied by Wong, Strange moved to Greenwich Village and established his reputation as an expert on the occult. Doctor Strange currently uses his magic powers to aid people who seek him out, though he occasionally assists the police with particularly mysterious cases.

Wolfgang von Strucker is a 61-year-old mercenary and terrorist and leader of the international criminal organization HYDRA. He was recruited by the East German intelligence services in 1984, but went rogue soon after when a mission to assassinate a United States senator was thwarted by Dominic Fortune. Strucker retreated to the western Pacific and made a name for himself there as a freelance mercenary. In 1991, on the island of Madripoor, he agreed to assist the clan of ninja assassins known as the Hand in kidnapping a young Natasha Romanova, whom the Hand wanted for a mystical ceremony. However, his plans were again ruined by Dominic Fortune, along with a mysterious Canadian called Logan and a Russian soldier named Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov. In 1992, Strucker suffered a major setback when Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos wiped out his infrastructure and seized his assets. Left nearly destitute, Strucker learned that an associate of his knew the location of a cache of Nazi gold, hidden during the closing days of World War II. Unfortunately, the man was fatally wounded by his enemies, so he tried to use an experimental hypnosis technique to implant the information in the mind of an Israeli prostitute named Gabrielle Haller, but the process left her catatonic. Foiled again, Strucker hid out in Japan, where he infiltrated and took over a secret society bent on world domination. After assassinating the group’s leader, Strucker renamed it HYDRA and established a new headquarters on a lonely island in the Pacific Ocean. In 1993, this base, called Hydra Island, was destroyed by Captain Simon Savage and his squad of Navy SEALs, “The Leatherneck Raiders.” Strucker was on the run again, and caught up with Nick Fury in Somalia. Knowing the Howling Commandos thought Fury had been killed in a helicopter crash, Strucker tortured his foe until Fury managed to escape. Strucker then returned to Europe and organized a secret group of scientists to create high-tech weapons for HYDRA, setting up a dummy corporation called Advanced Idea Mechanics as a front. In 1994, while in Bosnia, Strucker discovered a group of extraterrestrials hiding out while repairing their spaceship. Strucker killed the aliens, as well as everyone else in the village, and seized their otherworldly technology for use by HYDRA. Five years later, one of Strucker’s lovers gave birth to twins. Strucker was proud of his offspring and named them Andrea and Andreas von Strucker, unaware that they were mutants with latent powers. In 2006, Strucker learned that Gabrielle Haller had finally been brought out of her catatonic state by an American therapist named Charles Xavier. Strucker and a squad of HYDRA mercenaries attacked the psychiatric hospital in Israel to capture her. They took her to Kenya and forced her to reveal where the Nazi gold was hidden. However, they were attacked by Xavier, a telepath, and another mutant called Magnus, who possessed impressive magnetic powers, who had come to rescue Haller. Strucker was no match for their mutant powers, and Magnus took all the Nazi gold for himself. Nevertheless, Strucker got away, and has been at large ever since, slowly building up HYDRA’s power base, until they are ready to take over the world.

Leopold Stryke is a manager at the New York Aquarium on Coney Island. His brother Jordan is an advertising executive on Madison Avenue. Both have criminal tendencies and are suckers for a get-rich-quick scheme.

Scott Summers is a 15-year-old orphan living in a state-run institution in Omaha, Nebraska. His younger brother Alex is living in a foster home not far away. Although he doesn’t remember the event, Summers’ parents were kidnapped by aliens from the Shi’ar galaxy in 2004. Both Summers boys are mutants with emerging powers. Scott had been experiencing severe headaches and eye-strain until discovering that ruby-quartz crystals alleviated his symptoms. An optometrist agreed to make a pair of goggles out of the substance, which Summers wears all the time, day and night. When he needs to remove them, he keeps his eyes tightly closed for fear the headaches will return. His caretakers believe Summers was brain-damaged when his parents were killed. Deeply unhappy, he is planning to run away to New York City.

Sun Girl was a mysterious super-heroine who appeared one day in 1948, became a media sensation, then disappeared just as abruptly in 1949. She worked briefly with the Human Torch while his regular partner, Toro, was on a leave of absence. Many theories surround Sun Girl, but the truth was never discovered.

Kevin Sydney is a mutant shapeshifter able to mimic the appearance of other people.

Will Talltrees is a 22-year-old soldier in the U.S. Marine Corps from Wolf Point, Montana.

George Tarleton is a technician for the subversive organization Advanced Idea Mechanics.

T’Challa is the 24-year-old heir to the throne of Wakanda, a remote African kingdom. In 2003, the unscrupulous Dutch scientist Ulysses Klaw invaded Wakanda with a heavily-armed band of mercenaries, intent on capturing the source of the ultra-rare mineral vibranium. They killed the king, T’Chaka, but the teenaged prince T’Challa attacked them with their own sonic disruptor weapon and drove them off. T’Challa was then sent abroad to complete his education at the finest universities of Europe and America, accompanied by his friend B’Tumba. In his absence, Wakanda has been ruled by B’Tumba’s father, N’Baza, as regent. Having just graduated, T’Challa was touring eastern Africa on his way back to Wakanda when an attempt was made to kidnap him. He defeated the kidnappers with the help of a 12-year-old girl called Ororo, a mutant with limited control over the weather. Fascinated by her, T’Challa has decided to accompany her on her trek through Kenya before returning to his native land.

Thor is the mythological god of thunder worshipped by the Vikings a thousand years ago. Since 1999, he has been banished from his extradimensional realm of Asgard and has been living on Earth with no memory of his true identity. Odin, king of the Asgardians, took possession of Thor’s enchanted hammer, Mjolnir, and forced Thor to assume the mortal guise of Donald Blake, a medical student with a bad leg. Blake trained to be a neurosurgeon and far surpassed the skill level of his peers. In the summer of 2011, he went into private practice in New York City and hired Nurse Jane Foster to work at his office.

Maynard Tiboldt is the ringmaster of a traveling circus, which is really just a cover for a gang of thieves. They mainly target small towns along rural highways.

Mark Todd, a former newspaper reporter, fought the Japanese Army as the costumed commando known as “The Blazing Skull,” beginning in 1939. He was killed in action in 1942.

Adrian Toomes is a 59-year-old mechanic and inventor from New York City, who has nearly perfected a rig to allow a person to fly like a bird.

Topaz is a 12-year-old girl from India who serves as the familiar for a sorcerer called Taboo. In 2005, Taboo found Topaz in a refugee camp and learned how to harness her empathic powers to serve his own selfish ends.

Mortimer Toynbee is a 19-year-old mutant from York, England, with superhuman agility and a fawning, obsequious manner.

Michael Twoyoungmen is a 46-year-old former surgeon from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In 2003, his wife died from a terminal illness, and Twoyoungmen blamed himself for failing to save her with his medical skill. Their young daughter Elizabeth blamed him also, and Twoyoungmen sank into a profound depression. Leaving Elizabeth with his neighbors, the large McNeil family, Twoyoungmen retreated to a remote cabin in the wilderness to be alone with his grief.

Angelo Unuscione is a 23-year-old professional wrestler and a mutant with the ability to generate a force-field around his body. He bills himself as “Unus the Untouchable.”

Janet Van Dyne is a 20-year-old socialite in New York City, the daughter of the wealthy scientist Vernon Van Dyne. Her father has been one of America’s most noted scientists since the 1980s.

Rachel Van Helsing is a 29-year-old vampire hunter.

Wendell Vaughn is a 16-year-old high-school student in Wisconsin.

Seth Voelker is an economic analyst from Kenosha, Wisconsin. He has recently begun working for the Roxxon Oil Company.

Klaus Voorhees is a research assistant from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who works for the internationally renowned herpetologist Ezekiel Shecktor.

Kurt Wagner is a 13-year-old circus acrobat in Germany with a number of bizarre mutations that have been present since birth, including dark-blue fuzz all over his body, yellow eyes, a prehensile tail, and six fingers and toes. He has only recently developed the ability to teleport short distances, disappearing and reappearing in a puff of smoke. Abandoned at birth, Wagner has been raised at the circus by Margali Szardos, a sorceress posing as a gypsy fortune-teller, alongside her own children Jimaine and Stefan. The circus folk accept Wagner despite his strange appearance, and audiences assume he is just wearing an outlandish costume.

Patsy Walker is a 19-year-old former reality-TV star from Centerville, California. She has a strained relationship with her mother, Dorothy Walker, the ultimate “stage mom,” and is dating her former co-star, Buzz Baxter.

Jennifer Walters is a 24-year-old student at the UCLA School of Law pursuing her Juris Doctor degree. As a child she was close to her cousin, Bruce Banner, but they have since drifted apart.

Miles Warren is a biology professor at Empire State University in New York City, interested in cloning.

John Watkins was a British Army lieutenant who was believed killed by the Nazis in 1940. He survived and adopted the masked identity “Citizen V” to wage a one-man guerilla war against the Axis powers across Europe. He left the “V” symbol at the site of his victories to inspire the local resistance movements. He was killed for real during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

Dane Whitman is a 23-year-old graduate student in physics from Gloucester, Massachusetts. He was inspired to pursue a career in the sciences by his uncle, Nathan Garrett.

Simon Williams is a 24-year-old business executive from Paterson, New Jersey. He has recently inherited the family business, Williams Innovations, a technology firm. He and his brother Eric are frustrated that the company is unable to compete with the much larger Stark International.

Jim Wilson is a 12-year-old boy living with his family in a Los Angeles ghetto. He is unaware that his uncle, Sam Wilson, has recently moved to the city and joined a criminal gang.

Sam Wilson is a 19-year-old from Harlem, New York, who has moved to Los Angeles in the wake of his parents’ murders. Angry with the world, Wilson has renounced his former devotion to community service to join a street gang, going by the nickname “Snap.” Though his older brother Gideon lives in the city with his wife and son, Wilson avoids them out of shame.

Colleen Wing is a 17-year-old girl being raised by her grandfather in the mountains of northern Japan, where she is learning the martial arts. Her father teaches Asian history at Columbia University in New York City.

Wyatt Wingfoot is a 17-year-old high-school student living on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. His father is a famous athlete, and though talented at sports, Wingfoot worries about living up to everyone’s expectations.

Bentley Wittman is a “celebrity genius” who makes frequent television appearances, often showing off his bizarre inventions along with his knowledge of arcane trivia. Though his cable-TV show Wizard! has been quite successful, he has grown increasingly bored and searches for new ways to challenge his vast intellect.

Jimmy Woo is a 36-year-old FBI agent who, since 2006, has been trying to apprehend the international criminal mastermind known as the Yellow Claw.

Warren Worthington III is a 15-year-old student at a private boarding school on Long Island, who goes to great lengths to conceal the feathery white wings that have been growing out of his back since puberty. He fears that they will soon be too large to hide beneath his clothes.

Wundarr is an alien from the planet Dakkam, who was an infant when his ship crashed in the Florida Everglades in 1997. Though he has been growing physically at a normal rate within the ship’s womb-like interior, his cognitive development has been severely retarded.

Herbert Edgar Wyndham is a research scientist from Manchester, England, who works at his private research facility on Wundagore Mountain in the tiny Balkan nation of Transia. In 1978, Wyndham attended a genetics conference in Geneva, Switzerland, at which he met Jonathan Drew, Wladyslav Shinski, and Arnim Zola. Shortly afterward, a mysterious visitor presented Wyndham with a document detailing the advanced genetic science of the Inhumans. This allowed him to take his experiments to a new level, and Wyndham soon succeeded in artificially evolving a dog into humanoid form. However, the dog-man escaped from Wyndham’s laboratory and terrorized Manchester until the police hunted it down and killed it. Wyndham realized he would need to conduct his future experiments in a remote area, and in 1980 he partnered with Jonathan Drew to build a research facility on land Drew had acquired in Transia. They hired Horace M. Grabsheid to design the installation for them, and funded the project by mining the uranium from Wundagore Mountain. The following year, the facility was plagued by a werewolf, who killed Drew’s wife. Drew became further distraught when his daughter Jessica succumbed to radiation poisoning. He administered an experimental treatment derived from spider venom, then placed her in suspended animation. Leaving her in Wyndham’s care, Drew abandoned his research and returned home. A month later, Wyndham succeeded in capturing the werewolf, learning that his name was Gregor Russoff. Struck by the similarities between Russoff’s werewolf form and the dog-man he had once created, Wyndham made a deal with Russoff—Wyndham would prevent his murderous rampages if Russoff would agree to be a research subject. By 1998, Wyndham had perfected his genetic accelerator and created a race of “New Men” by evolving various animals into sentient humanoids. Drew finally returned and helped harness the creatures’ animalistic instincts by training them in medieval chivalry as the Knights of Wundagore. In 2000, the Knights of Wundagore battled the demon Chthon, who had been imprisoned within Wundagore Mountain in the days of Camelot. During the battle, Gregor Russoff was killed. However, at the same time, the cow-woman Bova was acting as midwife to Magda, who had made her way to Transia after fleeing from her husband’s terrifying magnetic powers. Magda gave birth to mutant twins, naming them Wanda and Pietro. Sensing potential in the baby girl, Chthon imbued Wanda with some of his magic before being driven out of Earth’s dimension, planning to use her in the future to escape his imprisonment. Magda abandoned her babies, so Wyndham found them a foster family among the Romani living at the foot of the mountain. Drew left shortly afterwards to take a job at the British Museum, and Wyndham continued his experiments. Having slowly become something of a “mad scientist,” Wyndham now insists on being referred to as “The High Evolutionary.”

Jason Wyngarde is a middle-aged mutant in England with the ability to generate convincing illusions. He makes his living as a stage magician and supplements his income with the occasional petty larceny. He also uses his powers to trick beautiful young women into sleeping with him.

Charles Xavier is a 35-year-old researcher of genetic mutation in humans, who works primarily at his home, a large estate in Westchester County, north of New York City. He is also a mutant with highly developed telepathic powers. Both he and his stepbrother Cain Marko were orphaned in the early ‘90s. Arrangements were made for Xavier to attend a private boarding school, where he pursued an accelerated course of study. He attended Bard College and received a degree in Biology in 1997, then enrolled in Oxford University for graduate study. There he met Moira MacTaggart, an unhappily married student of genetics, and they had a passionate affair. When the Iraq War broke out in 2003, Xavier decided to enlist in the U.S. Army to serve his country. He found himself serving alongside his stepbrother Cain Marko, though Marko soon disappeared in a cave-in while they were patrolling an ancient archaeological site. Not long after, Xavier was badly wounded in combat, but his friend William Lonestar saved his life. While in the hospital, Xavier received a letter from MacTaggart ending their relationship. Depressed, Xavier retreated to the Greek island of Kirinos to recover from his injuries after receiving a medical discharge. Trying to lose himself by traveling the world, Xavier would find himself in Colorado in 2004 to attend the christening of William Lonestar’s daughter Danielle; in Cairo, Egypt in 2005 where he battled another mutant telepath named Amahl Farouk; and in Haifa, Israel in 2006 doing consulting work at a psychiatric hospital. There he met the man called Magnus, who proved to be another mutant, possessing impressive magnetic powers. Xavier succeeded in using his telepathy to bring a young woman, Gabrielle Haller, out of a catatonic state. However, she was immediately kidnapped by Wolfgang von Strucker and his HYDRA mercenaries and taken to Kenya to help them find a cache of Nazi gold hidden during World War II. Xavier and Magnus teamed up to rescue her, though Magnus took the gold for himself and left. Xavier returned Haller to Israel and she became his lover for a time, but within a few months, he left her to continue his travels, unaware that she was pregnant. While exploring Tibet in 2007, Xavier encountered an alien being who tried to kill him. Xavier survived, but his legs were crushed and he was confined to a wheelchair. Utterly defeated, Xavier finally returned home to Westchester and devoted himself to studying genetics, becoming something of a recluse. In 2008, Xavier’s success in treating Gabrielle Haller led to him being asked to meet with a traumatized local girl named Jean Grey. Xavier discovered Grey was also a mutant telepath, and helped her deal with her emerging powers. In 2009, Xavier took a position at Columbia University, where he met a medical researcher named Karl Lykos. They collaborated briefly when Xavier believed Lykos to be a mutant, but when he discovered he was wrong, Xavier distanced himself from Lykos. He renewed his association with Moira MacTaggart, who had founded her Mutant Research Centre on Muir Island, off the coast of Scotland, in 2006. They continued to work with Jean Grey while Xavier perfected his mutant-detecting CEREBRO machine. He recently demonstrated the prototype for MacTaggart and Grey, though there are still bugs to be worked out.

The Yellow Claw is an international criminal mastermind from China who is over 120 years old. He uses arcane chemicals to unnaturally extend his lifespan, which have given his skin and eyes a sickly yellow hue. Since 2006 he has been plagued by the FBI agent Jimmy Woo, who has disrupted most of the Claw’s schemes in America. His grand-niece Suwan, inspired by her love for Woo, has also interfered with his plans, but the Yellow Claw is unwilling to kill his only living relative. For the last couple of years, the Yellow Claw has been keeping a low profile.

Shiro Yoshida is a 14-year-old student in Agarashima, Japan, with emerging mutant powers to generate blasts of flame from his body. His father is an ambassador to the United Nations.

Calvin Zabo is an unscrupulous medical assistant from Trenton, New Jersey, with a checkered employment history.

Helmut Zemo is the 25-year-old leader of a mercenary army based in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil, where he was born. His father, Baron Heinrich Zemo, fled from Europe at the end of World War II, and his mother was one of Heinrich’s many Brazilian concubines. Already quite elderly, Heinrich Zemo died when Helmut was still a boy, but he did pass on his intense hatred of America to his son.

Arnim Zola is a 66-year-old geneticist who conducts his experiments at his ancestral castle on Weisshorn Mountain in Switzerland. In 1978 he attended a genetics conference in Geneva along with Wladyslav Shinski, Herbert Edgar Wyndham, and Jonathan Drew. However, he made little significant progress with his theories until 1987, when he discovered a cache of scientific papers left by the ancient race known as the Deviants. He began a radical new line of research into the creation of artificial life. Zola’s project was developed further in 1991 when a mysterious visitor presented him with a document detailing the advanced genetic science of the Inhumans. Aware of his own mortality, Zola is currently working on engineering a new body for himself, hoping to thus prolong his life indefinitely.

The possibilities are endless! Another 50 years of exciting comic book stories could easily be mined just from the information presented above, let alone with all the new ideas that would be added to the mix by today’s most talented writers and artists. Hit the kill switch, Marvel. It’s time to reboot!

How I Would Do It

Marvel History: Avengers 1963

2011-06-21T07:27:00.001-05:00

The 2nd Annual Avengers Christmas Charity Benefit, December 1963.

Click on image to enlarge.

L to R: Bill Foster, Goliath, Wasp, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Natasha Romanova

OMU: Ant-Man -- Year Two

2011-05-13T16:08:00.007-05:00

Although the feature in Marvel’s Tales to Astonish starring Henry Pym, known variously as Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, and Yellowjacket, was in a downward spiral in terms of quality, the stories become fascinatingly rich in subtext with the benefit of hindsight. There is a great deal of unintentional foreshadowing of major events to come in Henry Pym’s life; i.e., his creation of the killer robot Ultron, one of the Avengers’ greatest enemies, and Ultron’s subsequent creation of the Vision, one of the Avengers’ most steadfast members. A close reading reveals numerous details of both characters’ origins that have not been uncovered before, to my knowledge. After the cancellation of their solo feature, Pym and his crime-fighting partner and girlfriend, the Wasp, would take up residence in The Avengers, thereby escaping the dreaded comic book character limbo they languished in for nearly eight months. Studying the checkered career of Hank Pym is always more rewarding than I think it’s going to be, and the next year of the character’s life is no exception.

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.

Continuing with The True History of Ant-Man!

January 1963 – In his penthouse laboratory complex in Lower Manhattan, Hank Pym receives a warning from his ant communications network that his Avengers teammate Thor is tearing up the streets in a fit of rage. Pym immediately becomes Giant-Man and summons his partner, Janet Van Dyne, a.k.a. the Wasp. Joined by Iron Man, they intervene with the rampaging thunder god, but he refuses to explain his destructive behavior. Giant-Man is insulted, but Iron Man reminds him of their pledge not to interfere in each other’s personal business. Later, when Janet is late for a dinner date, she claims to have been delayed while trying to apprehend a jewel thief. Knowing that the media is giving credit for the capture to the Invisible Girl, Pym teases Jan that she must have made her dinner plans with Mister Fantastic instead. However, when Jan explains that she had to resort to subterfuge due to her lack of any kind of offensive weaponry, Pym sets out to rectify the situation.

A few days later, Pym presents Jan with a new “wasp’s sting” device she can wear on her wrist. Suddenly, the ant communications network reports that Spider-Man is about to attack them. Giant-Man sends the Wasp out to reconnoiter the area, but when he catches up to her, he finds her battling Spider-Man. Incensed, Giant-Man attacks the web-slinger and they fight. Before long, a police riot squad appears on the scene, and Giant-Man promises them he will capture Spider-Man. However, the three heroes soon work out that they have been duped as part of an elaborate scheme by Egghead. Tipped off to the villain’s hideout by the ants, Giant-Man, Wasp, and Spider-Man team up to defeat Egghead and his gang. Jan takes an instant dislike to Spider-Man, leading the wall-crawler to leave in a huff, and so Giant-Man and the Wasp get all the credit for Egghead’s capture. Unfortunately, the villain soon escapes from custody.

Determined not to let his teammates down, Giant-Man works diligently at his duties as Avengers chairman. One of his first projects is converting an abandoned railway tunnel into a secret emergency headquarters for the team, in case Avengers Mansion should be compromised. Having been alerted to the tunnel’s existence by the ants, Pym considers its remote location in a forest to be ideal. He has more difficulty managing the team’s meetings, though, as their reticence to discuss their personal lives often leaves the Avengers with not much to talk about. Pym spends the rest of his time experimenting with his size-changing powers, soon learning to trigger his changes in stature at will, without the need for releasing gasses or swallowing capsules. For her part, the Wasp redesigns her costume for the first time, making a number of minor modifications.

Captain America recruits Giant-Man and the Wasp to investigate reports of a 30-foot-tall “Colossus” terrorizing a region of Africa, causing them to cancel their plans to go skiing at Lake Placid. Upon arrival, they find the Colossus apparently trapped on top of a tall, steep butte. However, during the ensuing battle, they discover that a structure near him is really his spacecraft. Using their size-changing powers, Giant-Man and the Wasp manage to spook the superstitious alien, and believing them to be sorcerers, he flees to his ship and blasts off for outer space. Assured that the earth is safe once more, the heroes return to New York. A day or so later, Pym is unhappy to learn that the Wasp battled their old foe the Magician all by herself, though she defeated him quite decisively. Seeking revenge, the Magician had played on her vanity to lure her to a department store by creating a phony line of women’s fashions inspired by her costume. Luckily, his scheme was undone when she got his cape caught in the escalator mechanism. Pym warns Jan to be more careful in the future.

Learning of the threat of a new super-villain called the Unicorn, Giant-Man tries to recruit Iron Man to deal with him. He calls Stark Industries and speaks to Tony Stark’s executive assistant, “Pepper” Potts, but when she asks Stark about Iron Man’s whereabouts, he gives a flippant reply about sending his armored bodyguard on a long vacation. Pym is irked that Iron Man would take a leave of absence without notifying the team, and so, despite the fact that Iron Man later battles the Unicorn on his own, Giant-Man calls an official hearing to demand that his ally explain himself. When Iron Man refuses to offer any defense beyond citing “personal problems,” the team decides to suspend him from active duty for a period of one week. Feeling he has demonstrated how seriously he takes his duties as Avengers chairman, Pym then plans a research trip to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. However, the trip is delayed when Thor is hypnotized by an Asgardian sorceress called the Enchantress and made to attack his teammates. Despite his suspension, Iron Man arrives on the scene and breaks the hypnotic spell. The four heroes are suddenly strafed by gunfire as Baron Zemo rockets past in one of his airships, and when Thor leads them to the Enchantress’ penthouse apartment, they find that she and her associate, the Executioner, have joined forces with Zemo. To prevent the villains’ escape, Thor envelops the airship in a space-time vortex that carries it into another dimension. Giant-Man and the Wasp find Captain America unconscious on the patio, and when they revive him, he is annoyed that Zemo has escaped justice once again.

After returning from Cape Cod, Giant-Man and the Wasp attend an Avengers training session, where the team discusses the Hulk, who reportedly disrupted the filming of a movie involving Spider-Man a couple of weeks ago. Afterwards, Pym studies the team’s records of the Hulk and decides to go to New Mexico and search for him, hoping to talk the green behemoth into rejoining the team. And so, the next morning, Giant-Man and the Wasp fly out to the Air Force’s Desert Base to confer with General “Thunderbolt” Ross. They soon meet an uncooperative physicist named Bruce Banner and the general’s high-strung daughter Betty. After a few hours, Giant-Man tracks the Hulk to a nearby town, where he is forced to fight his former teammate when the Hulk attacks him. Their battle is interrupted when the Air Force fires a low-yield nuclear missile at the evacuated town, hoping to kill the Hulk. Receiving a cybernetic warning from the Wasp, Giant-Man alerts the Hulk, who leaps up, intercepts the missile, and causes it to explode in the hills outside of town. The Hulk does not return, and Pym considers his mission to be a failure.

Back in New York, Giant-Man and the Wasp return to their usual crimefighting duties, such as apprehending a gang of criminals on the waterfront. Later, Pym receives a message from his ant communications network that Captain America and Iron Man are fighting each other in the city. When he and the Wasp go to intervene, they discover the master-of-disguises known as the Chameleon is responsible. Giant-Man apprehends the enemy agent and turns him over to the police. The sinister scheme revealed, Iron Man apologizes to Cap and introduces everyone to his associates from Stark Industries, Pepper Potts and “Happy” Hogan, who had blundered into the scene of the battle.

Early one evening, Giant-Man and the Wasp join the Avengers for a special conference-call with the top brass at the Pentagon, where they learn of the menace of Kang the Conqueror. Traveling to Virginia aboard a specially-chartered DC-8 from Idlewild Airport, the Avengers find Kang relaxing outside his massive time-ship. Thor notes the conqueror’s air of absolute confidence, and when Iron Man questions him, Kang announces that he has claimed their world for his dominions and easily repels the Avengers with his fantastic technology. Soon, an undersecretary from the Defense Department arrives on the scene and takes charge, prompting Kang to reveal that he is a time-traveler from the far future, who had been known in the distant past as Pharaoh Rama-Tut. After a chance encounter with Doctor Doom, Kang explains, he decided to assume a new identity and conquer the 20th century. Having heard enough, the Avengers charge again, but Kang captures and imprisons them within his ship using various energy beams. Many hours later, Giant-Man is freed when Thor smashes open his holding cell, saying they owe their freedom to Rick Jones and his Teen Brigade and that the Wasp escaped capture. The Avengers storm out of the ship, finding it is now morning, and attack Kang once again. Using a weapon the Wasp retrieved during the night, Giant-Man is able to overcome Kang’s defenses, driving the despot to flee to his ship and escape into the timestream. Confident that Kang has been beaten, at least for a while, the Avengers head for home.

At their next meeting, the Avengers discuss Spider-Man’s public act of cowardice during a fight with the Green Goblin at a New York supper club. The Wasp persists in her negative attitude toward Spider-Man, saying he’s creepy and deserves no sympathy, which Pym finds puzzling.

Soon after, Hank Pym learns that his friend, former FBI agent Lee Kearns, has been arrested in East Berlin on espionage charges. After rudely driving away the members of the Giant-Man Fan Club who are hanging around his headquarters, Pym tells Janet that he must rescue Kearns on his own, without involving the Avengers. Further, he finally reveals the details of how his wife, Maria, was murdered by the KGB on their honeymoon in Budapest, and explains that he couldn’t face losing Jan the same way. Moved by his tale, she agrees to remain at home. Thus, Pym flies to Germany alone and crosses the Berlin Wall at ant-size, so he is too small to be detected. The local ant population leads him to the installation where Kearns is being held. Once there, Kearns reveals that the East Germans have developed a device to increase the intelligence of gorillas to near-human levels, and these enhanced gorillas are being trained as commandos. After breaking Kearns out of his cell, Pym becomes giant-size to battle the gorillas, and during the fight he determines that the device’s effects are only temporary. Giant-Man then wrecks the machine and carries Kearns back to the safety of West Berlin. Upon arrival in the United States, Pym is pleased to learn from Jan that his victory over the East Germans has been widely reported in the media.

Pym becomes concerned about Captain America’s state of mind when the strain of his obsession with bringing Baron Zemo to justice starts to take its toll on the star-spangled Avenger. The mood around the mansion is lightened when the team’s departure for an out-of-town charity benefit is delayed by the Wasp’s primping. Afterwards, Pym is eager to get back to his research, but Jan pesters him to take her out dancing.

A series of seeming earthquakes strike New York as whole city blocks vanish underground. The Avengers assemble to investigate one of the impossibly deep shafts, but find that the Fantastic Four are already on the case. The Avengers agree to give them twenty-four hours to stop the Mole Man’s scheme before intervening. Several hours later, after the city blocks have returned to their proper places, the FF report that the Mole Man’s underground kingdom has been destroyed by a chain-reaction of explosions.

Giant-Man and the Wasp respond to an Avengers emergency signal when reports come in that Baron Zemo, the Enchantress, and the Executioner are robbing a bank. The battle has barely begun, though, when a new super-hero calling himself Wonder Man intervenes, overwhelming the villains and forcing them to retreat. Curious, the Avengers question the stranger, who claims to want to join the team. They take Wonder Man to Avengers Mansion for further discussion, where he explains that he was empowered by Zemo, but escaped and now needs help to find a cure for the deadly side-effects of Zemo’s experiment. The Avengers are glad to offer their assistance. Giant-Man takes some cell and tissue samples to his downtown laboratory to see if he can find a treatment for Wonder Man’s condition, but the answer proves elusive.

After a few days of intensive research, Pym learns from Iron Man that both Wonder Man and the Wasp have been kidnapped by Baron Zemo and are being held in South America. Giant-Man and Captain America take a chartered jet down to Brazil for a rescue mission and find Iron Man already battling the villains. However, as soon as Thor arrives, Wonder Man betrays them, taking out Thor and Giant-Man in rapid succession. Pym revives moments later to find Wonder Man has switched sides again and is now defending the Avengers. Locating the Wasp, Giant-Man frees her and they rush to stop Cap and Thor from pursuing the villains into a booby-trapped tunnel. With the fighting ended, the Avengers find Wonder Man lying on the ground near death. He tells them he wanted to do one noble thing in his life before he died, and then succumbs to the toxins that Zemo used to empower him. Giant-Man is determined to do something to save him, and so when the Avengers bring Wonder Man’s body back to the United States, Pym takes it to his downtown lab. There, Iron Man assists him in conducting a thorough examination of the corpse and making a recording of Wonder Man’s brain patterns. A fingerprint match identifies Wonder Man as notorious embezzler Simon Williams, and arrangements are made for a proper burial.

Pym finishes work on a compact flying vehicle of his own design, which he dubs the “Converti-Car,” and takes it on a test flight to a local children’s hospital where he and the Wasp are giving a demonstration of their powers. The next day, Janet is excited to receive a letter from a television producer who wants to do a series based on their adventures. Pym is not interested, but Jan talks him into at least hearing the pitch. However, when they arrive at the “studio” building, it turns out to be a trap set by Egghead. Sealed into an air-tight chamber, Giant-Man and the Wasp are attacked by a 12-foot-tall android with the ability to control its own density. Though the android proves to be a surprisingly formidable opponent, Giant-Man is able to strike at Egghead through the android’s cybernetic control interface. Overcome with motion sickness, Egghead surrenders. Bereft of control, the android follows Giant-Man and the Wasp outside, but stumbles off a pier into the river. Later, Pym retrieves the android and takes it to his laboratory, determined to study the technology it used to alter its density.

While on monitor duty at Avengers Mansion, Giant-Man informs Iron Man that the masked archer Hawkeye is holding Pepper Potts hostage at Stark Industries. Iron Man decides to handle the situation on his own. Meanwhile, the Wasp modifies her costume a second time, adding a mask to better conceal her identity. Later, back at his laboratory, Pym is knocked out by an accidental explosion. When he comes to, he finds that not only has an experiment using his enlarging gas on plant tissue gotten out of control, but someone has stolen his costume and size-changing capsules. He manages to contact the Wasp through their cybernetic communications system and learns that she is fighting the Ant-Man impostor in a jewelry store. Pym commands the ants to bring the impostor to his lab, where he forcibly returns the crook to normal size before giving him chemically-induced amnesia. Regaining his costume, Pym then becomes Giant-Man and destroys the gigantic plant wreaking havoc outside. While relaxing afterwards, Janet reads in the newspaper that Count Luchino Nefaria, reputed to be one of Europe’s wealthiest noblemen, is having his castle moved stone-by-stone from Italy to the New Jersey Palisades.

A few days later, Giant-Man presides over the Avengers’ latest meeting, during which Iron Man proposes that they give Rick Jones some kind of costume and make him an official member of the Avengers. Captain America is not ready to take on that responsibility, however, so the motion is put on hold. Soon after, Thor leads the Avengers to a mountainous region of Bavaria when his enchanted hammer detects the mystic emanations of some great evil. There, the team stumbles upon the X-Men, who are already on the case and tell the Avengers not to interfere. When the Avengers do not readily comply, the X-Men suddenly attack them. After a brief scuffle, Thor stops the fight, claiming to have been in telepathic communication with the young mutants’ mysterious leader, Professor X. Now convinced that the X-Men should be allowed to deal with the situation, the Avengers take their leave and return to New York.

February 1963 – Giant-Man and the Wasp assist the NYPD in unmasking the leader of a ruthless protection racket. The hooded gangster, known on the street as “the Wrecker,” turns out to be the owner of a hardware store in the afflicted neighborhood. Then, after Iron Man goes missing, the Avengers receive information from Spider-Man that their armored teammate has been kidnapped by the Masters of Evil and is being held at a remote temple in Mexico. Giant-Man and the Wasp are the first to arrive on the scene, and are surprised when Spider-Man appears and attacks them. As Thor joins the fray, Pym begins to suspect that their foe may be an impostor. Spider-Man manages to ensnare the three heroes in his webbing, then goes off to ambush Captain America. A little while later, though, Cap frees them and confirms that they had been fighting a highly sophisticated robot. Thanks to the timely intervention of the real Spider-Man, Cap reports, the robot has been destroyed. Speculating that the robot must have been a product of Kang’s future technologies, Giant-Man collects its remains and ships them to his Manhattan laboratory. Pym spends the next week or two immersed in the study of robotics. Janet finally gets fed up with being ignored and leaves on a solo trip to the Caribbean Islands. However, when her plane is hijacked by the undersea marauder Attuma, Giant-Man speeds down in his Converti-Car to rescue her. Attuma and his barbarian hordes are driven off, and the heroic couple has a chance to make up during a romantic weekend getaway.

Back in New York, Giant-Man reports to his Avengers teammates that his ant communications network has revealed a potential cataclysm brewing deep underground. However, they misinterpret his warning as a call for the team to “rescue the ants.” Iron Man and Captain America assume he is pulling a prank, but Thor is in one of his foul moods and starts a bitter argument. When his theory that the Mole Man might be stirring up trouble is dismissed out of hand, based on the Fantastic Four’s report last month, Giant-Man loses his temper and tells his teammates that he’ll handle this case on his own. Thor storms out angrily, and the others leave as well. Even the Wasp, embarrassed by his temper tantrum, refuses to help, so Pym goes off alone, making his way down through an ant hill all the way to Subterranea. There, he discovers that the Mole Man and his new accomplice, the Red Ghost, are indeed readying a fantastic doomsday weapon, but, after a brief battle, Giant-Man is defeated and taken prisoner. Many hours later, the Avengers come to his rescue, after the Wasp traces his cybernetic signals. Giant-Man rejoins his teammates as they sabotage the weapon and rout the villains’ sub-human legions. Though the Mole Man and the Red Ghost slip away, Thor destroys their citadel and all its weapons. Returning to Avengers Mansion, the team offers Giant-Man an official apology for doubting him earlier.

The Avengers lose 24 hours when they are hypnotized during a charity event hosted by Count Luchino Nefaria at his recently transplanted castle overlooking the Hudson River. When they leave the premises, the heroes are suddenly attacked by the U.S. Army and a squadron of Air Force fighter jets. Confused, the Avengers defend themselves and disable the military’s weapons as best they can without injuring any of the soldiers. Unwilling to fight American forces, Giant-Man calls for a full retreat. The Avengers soon reconvene in their secret emergency headquarters in the abandoned railway tunnel, learning from the radio that they are wanted for treason after trying to seize the reins of power from the government yesterday. Returning to the castle to investigate, the team discovers that Nefaria is actually the head of the international crime cartel the Maggia. Giant-Man, Wasp, Thor, and Iron Man are temporarily paralyzed by Nefaria’s defensive systems, but Rick Jones and the Teen Brigade free them in time to rescue Captain America from the castle’s dungeon. The villains are defeated and the Avengers’ names are cleared, but the Wasp receives a gunshot wound to the chest while fighting the Maggia thugs. Giant-Man frantically races her to the nearest hospital as his teammates follow close behind.

The Wasp is taken into emergency surgery, and Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America sit with the distraught Giant-Man in the waiting room. After about half an hour, they receive the grim news that she likely has about 48 hours to live due to the severe damage to her lungs. Pym teeters on the edge of despair as Thor races to Norway to fetch a surgeon named Svenson, who has pioneered a new lung-restoration procedure. However, when the thunder god returns, Svenson refuses to cooperate, causing Giant-Man to grab him in anger. Shockingly, the man turns out to be an alien in disguise, and as his mask is pulled off, he dies of asphyxiation right on the spot. The bewildered Avengers determine that they must track down the real Svenson to save the Wasp’s life. They split up to search the planet by various means, and Giant-Man returns to his downtown laboratory to interface with his ant communications network. For the next eight hours, he pushes the system to its limits and beyond, driving ants in every corner of the globe to search for extraterrestrial lifeforms. The artificial-intelligence computer he created to manage the data coming in from billions of ants struggles to adapt to the strain, but Pym is relentless. Ultimately, though, the ants come up with nothing, and Pym goes berserk until succumbing to exhaustion.

Sick at heart, Giant-Man rejoins his teammates, who were equally unsuccessful. However, Captain America realizes the aliens must be hiding in a remote region of the Earth where ants cannot live. Thus, they decide to begin their search at the North Pole. There, they finally locate the aliens, who have built an enormous city in a cavern of ice. The Avengers learn from Ogor, leader of the Kallusians, that they are a peace-loving race from a distant galaxy, driven to take refuge on Earth by an intergalactic war even though its atmosphere was poisonous to them. Dr. Svenson had stumbled upon them, Ogor reveals, and agreed to help them with their respiratory problems. Ogor refuses to turn over Svenson, prompting the Avengers to attack the aliens, but Svenson stops the fight, reminding Ogor that he stayed with them of his own free will, not as a prisoner. The matter is settled suddenly when an alarm indicates that the Kallusians’ enemies have discovered them. Realizing the Kallusians cannot waste time fighting the Avengers now, Ogor sends Svenson with them to New York via a teleportation device. The heroes rush the doctor to the hospital, and Svenson performs his experimental surgery on the Wasp. After several grueling hours, Svenson emerges from the ER and announces that the operation was a success.

With the Wasp convalescing, Giant-Man steps down as Avengers chairman, and Thor is elected to take over those duties. When Jan is finally released from the hospital, Pym devotes himself to caring for her until her strength returns.

March 1963 – Though still in a weakened condition, the Wasp insists on attending the engagement party for Reed Richards and Susan Storm at the Fantastic Four’s headquarters in the Baxter Building. Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and Rick Jones are also in attendance, as are the X-Men and other friends of the happy couple. During the party, Giant-Man is excited to learn from Reed Richards about the “Dragon Man,” a monstrous android that the FF battled only a week before. Privately, Pym wishes he could have had the chance to study the artificial creature, but it was lost at the bottom of a lake. After socializing for a while, Giant-Man takes the Wasp home early so she can rest. The remainder of the month passes uneventfully as Janet recuperates.

April 1963 – Finding he’s having trouble communicating with the ants, Hank Pym upgrades the cybernetic systems in his costume, though this necessitates using a bulky helmet again. Janet is feeling stronger, but is terribly bored, so he charges her with coming up with a new look for Giant-Man. She happily designs a new costume for him, but while he’s trying it on, one of his experiments goes haywire and he must fend off an attack by a gigantic spider. Later, Pym gets a crew cut so his new helmet will fit better. The Wasp attends the next meeting of the Avengers and is welcomed back by her teammates, but Rick Jones provides an unwelcome distraction when he trips, hits his head, and is knocked out for a few minutes. Pym is relieved that no one has brought up Iron Man’s idea of giving Rick full membership status.

Pym’s curiosity is piqued by news reports of a Chinese woman calling herself “Madam Macabre,” who reportedly has the ability to change the size of inanimate objects at will. She soon pays him a visit at his downtown laboratory and claims to be the protégé of the Mandarin, one of Iron Man’s enemies. When Giant-Man refuses to join her in taking over the world, she storms out, vowing to destroy him. Pym and Jan both dismiss Madam Macabre as a nutcase, but she proves to be dangerous later that evening when she kidnaps the Wasp after luring her to a new art exhibit at a gallery in Central Park. Coming to see why Jan has not returned, Giant-Man discovers his partner has been chloroformed and tied up while thieves are stealing the museum’s treasures. He tries to intervene, only to be trapped by Madam Macabre inside a rapidly shrinking plastic box. Luckily, he is rescued by the Wasp, who has gotten free and defeated Madam Macabre on her own. During their struggle, the Wasp discovered that the woman’s “shrinking powers” were technologically based and actually quite limited, and Giant-Man easily captures their fleeing foe by shooting up to his full 100-foot height. Madam Macabre is then turned over to the police in connection with the museum robbery.

May 1963 – Captain America succeeds Thor as Avengers chairman, and he soon leads the team into action when Rick Jones is kidnapped by the Masters of Evil. Iron Man requisitions an XL-750 rocket plane from Stark Industries so the Avengers can pursue Zemo’s airship. However, Thor and Iron Man soon leave the ship to confront the Black Knight and the Melter. When the plane is then caught in the grip of a strange force emanating from the ground, Giant-Man and the Wasp also leap out to investigate. Finding the Enchantress and the Executioner are responsible for the phenomenon, the couple pursues the Asgardian villains through the back alleys of the city. While Cap flies off in pursuit of Baron Zemo, the rest of the Avengers finally surround the four criminals on a busy Manhattan street. Afraid that many of the gawking bystanders might be harmed in an all-out battle, the heroes are reluctant to attack until Thor uses his enchanted hammer to transport them all to another dimension. Unfortunately, the Enchantress and the Executioner recognize what he’s trying to do and escape from the space-time vortex. Carried to an alien world, the Black Knight and the Melter remain defiant, but quickly learn their technology no longer functions and are easily captured. After turning the two hapless villains over to the police, the Avengers decide to call it a night.

The next morning, Giant-Man, Wasp, and Iron Man meet at Avengers Mansion to see if there is any word from Captain America. In Cap’s absence, Iron Man assumes the role of acting chairman. The Wasp reports that Thor had stopped in briefly, muttered something about a “Trial of the Gods” and rushed off again. She then changes the subject, announcing that she is ready to take a leave of absence from the Avengers. Giant-Man immediately supports her decision, glad for the opportunity to spend more time on his research without worrying about his duty to the team. To their surprise, Iron Man decides to take a leave of absence also. The meeting is interrupted then by the masked archer Hawkeye, who says he wants to join the Avengers. After Hawkeye explains how he fell under the sway of the sexy super-spy known as the Black Widow and now wants to redeem himself, the Avengers agree to give him a chance and he is officially inducted as the team’s second recruit.

Over the next few days, the Avengers start a recruitment drive, realizing they’ll need new members to keep the team viable. Though the Sub-Mariner turns down an offer of membership, which is made based on his service in the Invaders during World War II, the Avengers soon receive a letter from Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, two young mutants who until recently were in the service of the infamous terrorist Magneto. Like Hawkeye, they claim to have been victims of circumstance and are looking for a chance at redemption. Giant-Man and the Wasp agree that they seem like good candidates, and after a lengthy interview at the mansion, the super-powered siblings are accepted as the team’s next two recruits.

At that point, Captain America and Rick Jones finally return from their confrontation with Baron Zemo in the Amazon jungle. Cap reports that the Nazi war-criminal perished in the battle, but is then shocked to learn of his teammates’ decision to quit and leave him with three raw recruits. They try to assure Cap that it is only temporary, with Giant-Man claiming to owe the Wasp a real vacation, but she jokes that if she can convince her partner to marry her, they may retire permanently. Pym is surprised by her comment, so when Iron Man leads the new Avengers outside for a press conference, he and Jan remain in the conference room to talk about their decision to leave the team. He admits that for several months he’s been considering resigning and is relieved to learn that she now feels the same.

After the press conference, Giant-Man, Wasp, Iron Man, Captain America, and Rick Jones conclude their final meeting. They are concerned by Thor’s absence, but decide that he must be occupied with personal matters and would surely contact them if he needed help. When their business is concluded, they go out to inform Jarvis of their decision and introduce him to Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. The butler is a bit taken aback by the sudden change of roster, but accepts the situation with his characteristic professionalism. Finally, Giant-Man and the Wasp say their farewells and slip out the back door to avoid the reporters, returning to their own penthouse headquarters downtown.

A week or so later, Giant-Man is hit by a strange green ray, fired from a station wagon, that makes him feel weak and dizzy. Though the driver escapes, Pym discovers the car is filled with fantastic alien technology. He later learns that several scientists have recently reported being struck by a green energy beam that somehow stripped them of their scientific knowledge. He reasons that his giant stature reduced the ray’s effectiveness. However, a further attack by the green ray while he is insect-sized leaves Pym unable to shrink any smaller than his normal six-foot height. As Giant-Man, he tracks the station wagon using his cybernetic helmet to detect its distinctive electronic impulses. While searching the city streets, he is struck by the green ray again and weakened further, but sees that it is now being fired from a nearby rooftop. After capturing the hypnotized driver of the station wagon, Giant-Man climbs up to the roof and confronts the strangely garbed man wielding the ray gun. The villain proves to have appropriated his ability to shrink to ant-size, confirming Pym’s hypothesis about the nature of the energy beam. Nevertheless, Giant-Man captures his foe, only to be suddenly overcome by a bright green light from above that renders him unconscious. When Giant-Man finally wakes up, the Wasp has arrived and is tending to his injuries. Pym surmises that his mysterious enemy was an alien, taken back into space aboard a flying saucer. Befuddled by the bizarre incident, he takes the discarded ray gun back to his lab for study, but is unable to fathom its technology.

In the days that follow, Pym realizes that the physical strain of frequently changing size has taken its toll on his body and now poses a serious health risk. He determines that he must attain one target size gradually, choosing 35 feet as a safe median, and remain so for about 15 minutes at a time. Furthermore, he remains unable to shrink below his normal six-foot height. After remodeling his laboratory headquarters to better suit his 35-foot form, Pym is forced to deal with his new limitations when the Human Top attacks and kidnaps the Wasp. In the time it takes Giant-Man to safely reach his full size, the villain has gotten such a head start that he is able to make a clean getaway. Luckily, Pym is able to track his partner’s cybernetic signals, but they are reunited only to fall into a trap set by the Human Top to freeze them to death. Some quick thinking allows Giant-Man and the Wasp to escape and capture their foe, but as the police arrive to take the Human Top into custody, Pym makes up his mind to retire his super-hero identity and return to full-time laboratory research. Reluctantly, Jan agrees to follow suit.

June 1963 – Janet convinces Pym to don his costume one last time so they can attend the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm as Giant-Man and the Wasp. They arrive at the Fantastic Four’s Baxter Building headquarters and meet up with the rest of the Avengers. They are also introduced to Doctor Strange, a purported master of sorcery. Suddenly, a veritable army of super-villains attack, and the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men, Daredevil, and agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. meet them in what quickly becomes a brawl in the street. Among the villains are Attuma and his barbarian hordes, the Black Knight, the Enchantress, the Executioner, the Human Top, Kang the Conqueror, the Melter, and the Porcupine. However, Pym is reluctant to change size, so he and Jan remain at the Baxter Building with Doctor Strange and the Scarlet Witch to protect Sue Storm and her blind bridesmaid Alicia Masters, as well as the ordinary people in attendance. Finally, Mister Fantastic produces a strange device that creates a time vortex that sends all the villains into the past. The ceremony proceeds without further incident. The guests enjoy a lavish wedding reception that evening in the Baxter Building’s grand ballroom, though Pym is embarrassed by his failure to join in the fighting.

Hoping to get Jan to accept that their super-hero days are over, Pym gives up his penthouse headquarters in Lower Manhattan and buys a more modest research facility out in Cresskill, New Jersey. His ant communications network is dismantled, and its various components are put into storage. Before getting his new lab up and running, though, Pym accepts an offer to spend the summer working on a government research project in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The lead scientist, a Dr. Barnes, explains that they will be drilling into the Earth’s crust in hopes of learning more about the origins of life, and they need a biochemist of Pym’s caliber on hand. Thinking it will be like an ocean cruise, Jan agrees to go with him, though she soon becomes disenchanted with the facilities aboard the floating research platform. While at sea, Pym lets his crew cut grow out again.

August 1963 – Hank Pym is excited to learn that the android Dragon Man has resurfaced again and has been captured by the Fantastic Four. Further inquiries reveal that the government has relocated the creature to a desert island, where it can be studied in safety. Though still working in the middle of the ocean, Pym begins a campaign to gain custody of the creature for his own research.

September 1963 – One day, the research project’s undersea drill is destroyed by the Sub-Mariner, who storms into the control center and orders them to leave the area at once. Pym is annoyed by Namor’s imperious attitude and argues with him, but a trigger-happy guard lets off a round that strikes an oxygen tank and starts a raging fire. As Pym and the guards try to douse the flames, the Sub-Mariner suddenly seems to go into a trance, dives into the ocean, and swims due west. The fire is brought under control, but not before it has damaged their communications equipment. Realizing Namor is heading straight towards the United States, Pym wishes he could warn the authorities of his approach. Janet volunteers to become the Wasp again and fly to the mainland to alert the Avengers. Pym isn’t happy about the idea, but Jan admits that she’s found their retirement to be extremely dull. Dressed only in her swimsuit, she sets off on her long flight. Many hours pass, and Pym busies himself with repairing the radio equipment. Finally, he receives a transmission from Jan from Avengers Mansion. She reports that while en route to New York, she was captured by Attuma and taken to his flagship, though the barbarians didn’t recognize her from their previous encounter. She managed to contact the Avengers using Attuma’s equipment, then easily escaped while insect-sized. By the time she reached the team’s headquarters, no one was there, so she assumed they’d gone off to intercept Attuma. Pym is relieved that she’s all right, and she assures him she’ll be back with him as soon as she can. However, a fierce storm blows up suddenly, with 100-foot waves threatening to sink the research vessel. After a few hours, the ocean quiets again, and Pym begins to worry when Jan does not return. Finally, he radios the Avengers to report her disappearance and request assistance. After Pym reveals to the team that he is Giant-Man, Captain America agrees to send Hawkeye to pick him up and bring him back to the mansion.

Back in New York, Pym is greeted warmly by his former teammates, but they grow suspicious when he is reluctant to prove he is who he says he is by changing size. Suddenly, the team receives a radio message from a man calling himself “The Collector,” who tells them to come to a certain set of coordinates if they ever want to see the Wasp alive again. Captain America insists Pym prove he is really Giant-Man before he’ll allow him to accompany them on the rescue mission. Pym hesitates, explaining the new limitations on his powers resulting from the strain on his body of so much size-changing in the past year. Seeing the team is not prepared to take his word for it, Pym accepts a new blue-and-yellow costume from the Scarlet Witch and enlarges himself to 25 feet tall. The others are finally convinced, and when Cap describes him as “a real goliath,” Pym decides to adopt Goliath as his new code-name, saying he now thinks “Giant-Man” was kind of corny. During the 15 minutes he must wait before becoming normal-sized again, the Avengers prepare one of their jet-powered airships for take-off. Finally, they are underway, heading for the Collector’s coordinates in the Adirondack Mountains.

Upon reaching the site, the Avengers discover a hidden castle, but as soon as they enter, they are gassed into unconsciousness. When Goliath revives, he finds himself shackled alongside his teammates, with the odd-looking Collector ranting at them. Not recognizing Pym in his new costume, the Collector is demanding to know where Giant-Man is. Fueled by anger over the Wasp’s kidnapping, Goliath shoots up to 25 feet, breaking free of his shackles, and lunges at the Collector. The villain evades his clumsy attack, so Goliath frees his teammates and they pursue their foe into the dungeons, where they encounter his henchman, the Beetle. After a lengthy battle, Goliath manages to grab the Collector and demands he produce the Wasp. Grinning, the Collector draws from his pocket a tiny vial in which she is trapped and threatens to crush her between his fingers unless the Avengers surrender. However, Quicksilver grabs it away from him at super-speed. Realizing he’s lost, the Collector activates a device that allows him and his stooge to vanish into thin air. Freed from the vial, the Wasp returns to normal size. When Pym tells her that he’s revealed his true identity to the other Avengers, she tells them her name is Janet Van Dyne. The happy moment is suddenly shattered when Pym collapses into a coma while trying to shrink back to his normal height.

Goliath revives several hours later, finding himself in Avengers Mansion. Jan, still in her swimsuit, is at his bedside, along with a Doctor Carlson. The doctor grimly informs Pym that he must remain at his current height of ten feet tall, for if he attempts to change size again, the strain could kill him. Pym takes the news hard and sinks into a profound depression. After having a temper tantrum, he storms out of the mansion to wander the back alleys of the city, fearing he’ll be a “freak” for the rest of his life. Many hours later, an Avengers emergency alert brings him back to their headquarters, where the Wasp, now wearing her old costume, reports that their teammates have disappeared. A homing signal takes them to a darkened mansion on the southern shores of Long Island, where they battle three of the team’s recent enemies, the Black Widow, the Swordsman, and Power Man. The Wasp frees the other Avengers, but the villains manage to escape. Nevertheless, Captain America officially welcomes Goliath and the Wasp back to active duty.

The Avengers create some makeshift living quarters for Goliath, and though Jan is clearly delighted to be back on the team, Pym becomes increasingly reclusive. He barely pays attention when a military liaison briefs them about the new XPT1 atomic submarine.

October 1963 – After Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch have taken a leave of absence to return to their native country in Europe, Pym finds he can no longer bear to see the sadness in Janet’s eyes or to be an object of her pity. He knows that unless he can find a cure for his condition, they can never have a normal relationship. He decides to seek out one of his old college professors, Dr. Franz Anton, whose new line of research might help him. Without a word to the others, Goliath jets down to Anton’s laboratory in Peru, only to find that his former mentor has disappeared. An attack by a squad of men in strange armor leads Goliath to the lost civilization of El Dorado within the Andes Mountains, where he becomes embroiled in a power struggle between the deposed Prince Rey and a high priest called the Keeper of the Flame. Captain America, Hawkeye, and the Wasp soon come to his rescue and together they neutralize the city’s power source, the highly unstable Sacred Flame of Life, and rescue Dr. Anton. On the way back to his mentor’s lab, Goliath explains his problem, and is crushed when Dr. Anton says the only person who might be able to cure him is a former student named Henry Pym. On the flight back to New York, Pym broods in silence.

When they reach Avengers Mansion, Captain America proves he is sick and tired of Pym’s defeatist attitude. Pym’s refusal to take over as Avengers chairman leads Cap to start a fight, mocking and goading him until Pym loses his temper. As soon as Pym defiantly determines to prove himself, though, Cap stops the fight. Goliath is grateful to Cap for helping break him out of his funk of self-pity and decides to finally get his new laboratory set up and start working on a cure for himself. In the days that follow, Pym stocks his lab in Cresskill, New Jersey, and begins his research. However, he quickly realizes that, despite her good intentions, Jan is just not qualified to act as a real lab assistant. Pym starts looking for a trustworthy colleague to help him, but doesn’t have much luck at first. He is intrigued, though, by reports of the Fantastic Four’s encounter with the original Human Torch, which sparks a renewed interest in androids. As a result, Pym steps up his campaign to gain possession of the Dragon Man for research purposes.

November 1963 – Following Tony Stark’s recommendation, Goliath hires biochemist Bill Foster as his lab assistant, and is immediately impressed by Foster’s talents. Realizing that keeping secrets from Foster would be a hindrance to their project, Goliath reveals that he is Hank Pym. In the days that follow, the two scientists develop a genuine friendship, and so Pym is infuriated when Foster is savagely beaten by the racist hate-group known as the Sons of the Serpent for being a black man in a white neighborhood. Goliath convinces the Avengers that they should go after the Sons of the Serpent, and the team holds a press conference the next day to denounce the group after it is implicated in an assassination attempt on a high-ranking military officer from North Vietnam, one General Chen. However, shortly afterward, the Sons of the Serpent kidnap Captain America and threaten to kill him unless the Avengers publicly endorse their xenophobic ideology. Taking charge, Goliath plays along at first, a strategy that nearly destroys his friendship with Foster, until the Avengers can locate their foes’ hidden headquarters. Goliath agrees to Hawkeye’s suggestion that they recruit the now-reformed Black Widow for the mission to rescue Cap, though Pym does not fully trust the former Soviet spy. With her help, the Avengers storm the terrorist organization’s airborne command center, defeat the Sons of the Serpent, and free Captain America. When they unmask the group’s leader, the Supreme Serpent is revealed to be General Chen himself. Landing the ship in Central Park, the Avengers expose Chen’s plot to score a propaganda victory against the United States by stirring up bigotry and intolerance, and the Sons of the Serpent are discredited as a “fifth column” attack by the Communists. After making their statement to the press and handing Chen over to the police, the Avengers walk back to their Fifth Avenue mansion.

Days later, Goliath and the Wasp join Captain America and Hawkeye at Avengers Mansion to examine a robotic shape-changer called the Adaptoid, which Cap has defeated and captured. However, Pym is in the middle of a critical experiment at his lab in New Jersey, so he can only give the Adaptoid a cursory inspection. He promises to return for a more thorough investigation, but is disappointed to learn later that the Adaptoid revived, overcame Cap, and escaped into the night. However, this brief encounter with the Adaptoid leads Pym to theorize about a type of artificial humanoid which he terms a “synthezoid,” being a synthesis of android and robot. He tries to discuss his ideas with the other Avengers, but they don’t understand what he’s talking about.

Goliath and the Wasp attend a special executive meeting of the Avengers to discuss whether to make an offer of membership to Spider-Man. They are happy to see Thor and Iron Man at the meeting, along with Captain America and Hawkeye, though neither is willing to place himself back on the active roster yet. After a contentious debate, and a positive character reference from Daredevil, the others agree to Goliath’s suggestion that they give Spider-Man a test to see if he is really Avengers material. They split up to search the city, and later Thor reports that he found Spider-Man and made the offer. At the appointed time the next day, Spider-Man appears at the mansion. The Avengers greet him warmly, though Pym is annoyed that Jan insists on being unfriendly to the wall-crawler. After Hawkeye goads the impatient Spidey into a fight, which quickly turns into an all-out brawl, Iron Man suggests that they send the web-slinger to track down the Hulk, who’s been spotted in the city recently, and bring him to Avengers Mansion. Spider-Man sets off, brimming with confidence, but a few hours later, he returns empty-handed, claiming he was unable to even locate the Hulk. When he quickly swings away with no further explanation, Goliath suspects there must be more to the story than that, and even the Wasp admits to feeling disappointed.

A few days later, Goliath and the Wasp are shocked and saddened by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Pym finds himself wishing his ant communications network wasn’t in mothballs, as the insects might have valuable information related to the crime.

December 1963 – Goliath finally agrees to take over from Captain America as Avengers chairman, since Cap has had to serve for seven months. His first order of business is a request from the NYPD for assistance in investigating a bank robbery committed by a man with some kind of disintegrator ray. While at the bank, Janet is recognized by a childhood friend, Lucy Barton. Unable to find any clues, the Avengers return to their headquarters, deciding they must wait for the crook to strike again. After working out with Cap and Hawkeye, Goliath heads back to his lab in Cresskill, where he finds Bill Foster is waiting. Foster apologizes for losing faith in his friend during the Sons of the Serpent affair, and Pym is glad to have him back. Catching up on the project, they agree that their latest avenue of research is extremely promising, and they are ready to set up a test. Jan leaves for an appointment at the hairdresser, but the scientists’ work is soon interrupted by a costumed criminal calling himself “The Living Laser,” whose wrist-mounted laser beams seem capable of cutting through anything. Nevertheless, Goliath soon defeats his foe and ties him up. When Cap and Hawkeye arrive, they conclude that the Living Laser is the most likely suspect in the bank robbery. Goliath asks his teammates to take the Living Laser to the police so he can get back to his research. The project has reached a critical stage, so even when the Living Laser later escapes and goes on a rampage in the city, Pym leaves Captain America, Hawkeye, and the Wasp to search for their foe while he and Foster test their possible cure.

The initial test is successful, but Goliath is then called away by an emergency alert signal from the Wasp. He tracks it to the basement of an apartment building in New York City, where Captain America and Hawkeye have been caught in a laser-beam trap. After he frees them, Goliath is furious to learn that the Living Laser kidnapped the Wasp while his teammates were helpless. Back at the mansion, they can detect no trace of Jan’s homing signal, and Pym is not reassured by Cap and Hawkeye’s observations that the Living Laser seemed to have something of a crush on Jan. Unable to just wait around for leads, Pym goes back to his laboratory in Cresskill and administers the cure he and Foster have developed. Though the initial signs are positive, Pym realizes the only way to know for sure if it worked is to try shrinking. Worried that he might die, Pym decides to wait until they’ve rescued Jan.

Returning to Avengers Mansion in the morning, Goliath learns that during the night, the Living Laser staged a coup in the tiny Central American country of Costa Verde. The three Avengers immediately jet there to rescue the Wasp, but upon arrival their airship is shot down by the villain’s powerful laser cannon. Their first attempt to storm the centuries-old fortress that is the seat of government fails and they are forced to retreat. After regrouping, they make a second attempt. Although the trio manages to get inside the fortress, Cap and Hawkeye are overcome by the numerous rebel troops and captured. Goliath makes it to the throne room, where he finds the Wasp trapped behind laser beams. Before he can free her, the Living Laser shoots him in the back with a stun blast. Pym revives sometime later, finding himself bound in heavy chains and locked in a dungeon. Realizing he has no other choice, he takes a life-or-death gamble and shrinks down to ant size. He succeeds with no ill effects, easily escapes from the cell, and returns to the throne room to free Jan. She is amazed to see him insect-sized once again, but warns him that the villain is about to use his laser-cannon to blast the tower in which Cap and Hawkeye are still imprisoned. They race to the laser-cannon and Pym slips inside to sabotage it while Jan attacks their foe with her stingers. The Living Laser tries to fire his weapon, but it overloads and blows up, knocking him unconscious. Pym then finally returns to his normal six-foot height and he and Jan celebrate.

While bringing the Living Laser back to the United States, Jan explains that their foe is a man named Arthur Parks, an ex-boyfriend of Lucy Barton’s, who suffers from delusions of grandeur. Back in New York, after turning Parks over to the police, Pym and Jan learn that Lucy has exposed their secret identities after gossiping with her society friends. Though inconvenienced by the ensuing media frenzy, the couple realizes that, since neither of them has any living relatives, it doesn’t really matter. Pym returns to his Cresskill facility and asks Bill Foster to stay on as his lab partner, as he has several ideas for new avenues of research. Foster happily accepts, and, towards the end of the month, Pym invites his new friend to the Avengers’ second annual Christmas charity benefit. At the party, Hank Pym speaks excitedly about his plans to do some experiments with androids, robots, and his old artificial intelligence program.

Notes:

January 1963 – Giant-Man and the Wasp have a brief cameo in Journey Into Mystery #101 before their solo adventures continue in Tales to Astonish #57 and following. It is noted that the Wasp back-up story in that issue occurs a few days before the main feature. The Wasp’s instant dislike of Spider-Man was chalked up to the natural enmity between wasps and spiders. The Avengers’ secret emergency headquarters is first seen in Avengers #13, but it seems likely that it was set up sometime before those events. A routine team meeting is shown at the beginning of Journey Into Mystery #105. Giant-Man, Wasp, and Thor appear briefly in Tales of Suspense #56 when they try unsuccessfully to call Iron Man at work. Hank & Jan’s team adventures then resume in Avengers #7 and following. Between the Avengers’ training session and the encounter with the Hulk depicted in Tales to Astonish #59, Giant-Man and the Wasp have an irrelevant cameo in Journey Into Mystery #108. While Giant-Man is dealing with the Hulk, he remains unaware that his arch-enemy, the Human Top, is influencing events behind the scenes. Hank & Jan apprehend a gang of criminals on the waterfront during their brief appearance in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1. They catch the Chameleon and stop Captain America and Iron Man from beating the stuffing out of each other in Tales of Suspense #58. Spider-Man’s public disgrace is discussed by his fellow super-heroes in Amazing Spider-Man #18. Apparently, the Giant-Man Fan Club got fed up with their idol’s abuse, because after he sends them packing in Tales to Astonish #60, they never return. I would assume they disbanded shortly after. During the events of Avengers #9, Giant-Man and the Wasp also appear briefly in Tales of Suspense #59 and Fantastic Four #31. The Avengers are seen returning Wonder Man’s body to the United States in the flashback in West Coast Avengers #2, and the recording of Simon Williams’ brain patterns occurs in a flashback in Avengers #58. The Converti-Car, introduced in Tales to Astonish #61 is an early prototype for Pym’s “Rover” vehicle seen much later during his stint with the West Coast Avengers. I speculate that Pym retrieved Egghead’s android on the assumption that its density-altering technology was later incorporated into the Vision. Next, Hank & Jan contact Iron Man in Tales of Suspense #60. The Wasp reads about Count Nefaria’s castle being moved across the ocean at the beginning of Avengers #13, a scene which clearly occurs some weeks before the main story. After the meeting in Avengers #10, the team battles the minions of Immortus, ruler of Limbo, and the Masters of Evil, but in the end, the Enchantress weaves a spell that eliminates those events from the timeline. Thus, it “never happened.” Finally, after a very busy month, Giant-Man and the Wasp join the Avengers for a crossover appearance in Uncanny X-Men #9.

February 1963 – I speculate that the wreckage of Kang’s futuristic robot from Avengers #11 inspired Pym when later constructing the robotic body of Ultron-1. As evidence, he is seen working on a large robotic ant at the beginning of Tales to Astonish #64. Furthermore, I see the origins of Ultron’s instant animosity towards Pym in Avengers #14. When the distraught Pym pushes his ant communications network to its limits and beyond while searching for Dr. Svenson’s alien captors, this kick-starts the evolution of its artificial intelligence computer into the mind of Ultron. It is likely the world’s ants resisted or objected in some way to being forced to do Pym’s bidding, and there is textual evidence to suggest that Pym subsequently had difficulty communicating with the ants on a large scale, as if they had rejected him. The computer would have absorbed this negativity towards Pym, which manifested as hatred when Ultron was activated. This also explains Ultron’s fixation on Janet Van Dyne, since it was the desire to have and keep her that motivated Pym during this cybernetic interface, which the computer would have absorbed as well. Finally, Ultron’s homicidal disregard for human life can be traced to Pym’s insistence that the ants disregard all humans in their search for the aliens, or, significantly, the “non-humans,” as Pym puts it. After Pym dismantles his cybernetic communications network in June and puts the artificial-intelligence computer into storage, it continues to evolve, though it becomes twisted from the lack of new input, just as prolonged sensory deprivation adversely affects the human mind. Thus, the menace of Ultron is really and truly Henry Pym’s fault.

March 1963 – The Avengers attend Reed and Sue’s engagement party in Fantastic Four #36. The FF encountered Dragon Man in the previous issue, and Hank Pym would finally get his chance to study the creature in Avengers #41.

April 1963 – Rick Jones demonstrates his clumsiness in an odd little back-up story in Captain America #221.

May 1963 – Giant-Man and the Wasp take their first leave of absence from the team in Avengers #16. Their final meeting wraps up in Journey Into Mystery #116, and they introduce the new members to Jarvis in a flashback in Avengers #280. Tales to Astonish #69 brings the lackluster “Giant-Man & the Wasp” feature to an end. It would be replaced in the next issue by a series starring the Sub-Mariner. Hank and Jan would appear mainly in Avengers from this point forward. It would seem that over-exposure to Pym particles can be detrimental to one’s health, but since they never seemed to adversely affect the Wasp, who only used them to shrink, I suspect that it was using them to make himself a giant that caused Pym to become ill. Ironically, if he had remained Ant-Man, Pym might have had a much better time of it. Note that Pym’s physical health seemed to improve after he adopted his Yellowjacket identity, though he still struggled with depression.

June 1963 – Giant-Man and the Wasp remain behind the scenes during the wedding story in Fantastic Four Annual #3, but they confirm their presence at the event in Avengers #141.

September 1963 – We catch up with Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne in the Sub-Mariner story in Tales to Astonish #77. Interestingly, this issue makes no mention of their former super-hero identities. The following issue crosses over with Avengers #26 and sets up their return to the team. The fierce storm and high waves are a result of Attuma’s tide-manipulating device, which Cap’s Kooky Quartet destroys after the Wasp escapes. Pym adopts the new identity of Goliath, along with a new costume (his fourth), in Avengers #28. The Wasp soon acquires a new costume for herself as well, a slightly modified version of her earlier one. The Avengers are briefed about the new atomic submarine in a flashback in Tales of Suspense #91.

October 1963 – The lost city of El Dorado, seen in Avengers #30-31, was built long ago by the Deviants and eventually taken over by descendants of the Incas. Both Prince Rey and the Keeper of the Flame would return to bedevil several super-heroes some time later as members of They Who Wield Power. Around this time, the Wasp decides to stop wearing her helmet, since it messes up her hairstyle, thus making her much easier to recognize. It is clear she is no longer particularly interested in protecting her secret identity. The Fantastic Four’s encounter with the android Human Torch is depicted in Fantastic Four Annual #4.

November 1963 – Bill Foster would later use Pym’s growth serum himself, first as Black Goliath and then, at Ben Grimm’s suggestion, as the second Giant-Man. Goliath and the Wasp have a quick look at the Adaptoid in the Captain America story in Tales of Suspense #84. “Synthezoid,” of course, is a term coined later by Roy Thomas to describe the Vision. The Avengers put Spider-Man through his paces in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3. The Kennedy assassination occurs behind the scenes, of course, and this satisfies my initial research question as far as Hank & Jan are concerned.

December 1963 – It becomes clear soon after this that the secret identities of both Goliath and the Wasp have become public knowledge, and Lucy Barton is the most likely culprit. She immediately recognizes Jan while she’s in costume with the Avengers, and they have a conversation about Arthur Parks in the bank. Jan visits her again at the conclusion of the mission to explain that Parks has become a super-villain. Once Lucy blabbed to her friends about Jan being the Wasp, the story would have been all over the newspapers, with Pym’s identity exposed in the process. This brings us up to Avengers #35. Pym’s creation of Ultron is only a few weeks away.

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Jump Back: Ant-Man – Year One

Marvel History: Avengers 1962

2011-04-30T23:45:00.002-05:00

The First Annual Avengers Christmas Charity Benefit, December 1962.

Click on image to enlarge.

L to R: Wasp, Giant-Man, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Rick Jones