Review: The Invaders Classic Vol. 1

The Invaders Classic Vol. 1 TPB
Written/Edited by Roy Thomas
Penciled by Frank Robbins, Don Heck, Dick Ayers and Rich Buckler.
Inked by Vince Colletta, Jim Mooney and Frank Springer.
Published by Marvel Comics. $24.99 USD

Oof. Another legend refuted. I remember being intrigued by The Invaders ever since I was a kid and saw references to them in stuff like The Mighty Marvel Jumbo Fun Book. It seems like a natural--getting to see Captain America and Bucky in action in WWII, with Submariner, the original Human Torch and his sidekick, Toro, as told by a fairly respected writer at the time in Thomas, who was also a serious Golden Age comics buff. What could go wrong?

As it happens, just about everything. These comics were produced during a period where Marvel wrongheadedly allowed some of their writers to also be the editors of their books, so that there was no voice of dissent, nobody to rein in a writer or help him focus. Now, Thomas wasn't someone like a Steve Gerber who was going to get wild with concepts, but he often displays a tin ear for dialogue. Consider this opener from Invaders #1, the second appearance of the team after Giant-Size Invaders #1 a month earlier. Captain America is lecturing Bucky: "The English won't be caught napping like the rest of Europe, Bucky--or like America herself, a few weeks back at Pearl Harbor!" Napping? That's kind of an insensitive gerund from the Living Legend, isn't it? This panel is immediately followed with a boring bit of Cap blather where he explains why they're called the Invaders, but he'd prefer something else, and blah blah blah. Come on, Roy--get to the good stuff! Who wants to hear Cap whine? Thomas' idea of punching up the scene is a contrived argument with nonentity Toro trying to mix it up with Bucky.

Thomas seems to be a writer who struggles to be entertaining and often is happy enough to have shoehorned a lot of research into the work, even if it's not particularly interesting. Invaders #1 and 2 use some characters from Wagner's Ring Cycle (here titled "The Ring of the Nebulas" because they're actually hypnotized aliens!) and it really doesn't amount to much, and the identity of supervillain Brain Drain that was built up in GSI#1 is also anticlimactic.

Robbins was apparently a controversial choice for the series, as a lot of readers didn't like his style. I think I've discovered why that is--he's not very good. Oh, sure, he's the most interesting artist in this collection, but who is he up against? Don Heck and Rich Buckler. I mean, Rhoda was a better sitcom than Phyllis, but neither were as good as Mary Tyler-Moore, right? Robbins' characters actually aren't that different from Heck's style, but it's as if they're a kind of stringier, junkie version of Heck's style. Colletta mostly succeeds in eradicating Robbins' individuality, though, which is a shame in that at least Robbins is different even if he's not to many people's tastes. But what really bugs me is that Robbins drew every male character besides Namor with wavy, blow-dried '70s hair. I understand that may have been the readership, but they surely understood this series took place in 1941, right? Was this just his wacky, bad idea, or an editorial suggestion? I'd love to know.

After the forced Ring stories, there are a couple where Namor, unsurprisingly, acts like a dick and goes off on his own because a Nazi villain called U-Man is clearly an Atlantean and so Namor feels he has to bring him down by himself, so the Invaders fight him over it. Sometimes Thomas is unintentionally funny, like when Namor makes clear he hates all surface dwellers but then when he sees a hot woman he practically sports a boner with tiny wings on it. I also got a kick out of Namor ranting and bragging to a couple Nazi pilots--while he was outside their speeding fighter jet! What he thought was really good chastising was probably heard as, "WHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR" to them, but in German.

Thomas crafts a rather blunt couple of scenes where Bucky has his feelings, so he goes and does what any of us would do and rounds up some rightfully forgotten Golden Age heroes and forms The Liberty Legion, which is always-too-literal Roy's excuse for a team to cover the U.S., since "Invaders" would always have to be overseas, invading Hitler's Fortress Europa. They get Marvel Premiere #29 and #30 to cross-over with Invaders #6 and #7. What to say about those issues? Well, I guess if you're getting this Invaders trade, it makes sense to have these issues, but they're pretty bad. When you read a comic featuring a character described as "dynamically ductile," run. For some reason I have a bit of fondness for The Whizzer, though. When I first saw him, it was a Vision and Scarlet Witch miniseries, at which point he was of an age where he couldn't control his whizzing, so to speak. But characters like The Blue Diamond, The Patriot (he actually thinks of himself as "Jeff Mace, Reporter) and Miss America are utterly forgettable and make one think our current era of Marvel and DC fan fiction can probably be traced right back to Roy Thomas.

On the plus side, the book does end on as close to a high note as you're likely to get, with a fairly entertaining vampire starring with the first appearance of Baron Blood as well as Union Jack, which ended up inspiring Paul Grist's Jack Staff series. Robbins is here inked by Springer, who is much more faithful to his weirdness than Colletta. It could easily have been two issues, but still, it isn't bad. It doesn't really justify buying the book, though.