Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up #1, March, 1975

“Encounter at Land’s End”
Roy Thomas, Writer/Editor
John Buscema, Penciler
Joe Sinnott, Inker
Janice Cohen, Colorist
Artie Simek, Letterer.

Summary:


In a framing story, we see the previously-untold answer as to how Doom survived an explosion in space in Fantastic Four #144 only to return in #155: Namor rescued him after his armor protected him during re-entry. Namor, whose city of Atlantis is mostly comatose due to events in his recently-cancelled series proposes an alliance. Despite Doom’s previous betrayals, Namor argues that the pair could at a minimum conquer the cities near the oceans, and Doom finds the prospect of commanding New York, Los Angeles, London, and Japan enticing. Still, the proposal leads him to reminisce about his first one-on-one battle with Namor, and his ill-fated forced alliance with the villainous alchemist, El Diablo. Doom rejects the proposal, and after a very brief battle with Namor, retreats, operating at a disadvantage due to damage from his meteoric descent from space. Namor remains confident that Doom will eventually reassess the idea and that their alliance is inevitable.

Comments:

The cover, by Ron Wilson and Frank Giacoia, is awkward, unappealing, and makes poor use of the sometimes enticing blurb overloading we often saw at the House of Ideas. We’re stuck with the “Giant-Size” branding in the logo, which I never objected to, but the “Super-Villain Team-Up” part of the logo was weak. I’d have advised following the Brave & Bold template, with the leads’ individual logos paired beneath a smaller formal title banner; both characters had strong logos with distinct appeal that this bland logo sorely lacked. Congrats on setting the record for hyphen usage in a comic book title, though!

So what’s the deal with a majority-reprint debut? In the text page, Roy blames an artist shortage (?) and further explains that the already-scheduled G-S S-V T-U #1 would have interrupted the ongoing Dr. Doom storyline running in Fantastic Four, and that Rich Buckler proposed filling in the gaps between Doom’s previous two appearances. Convincing? I’m not sure. Obviously there was a lot of behind the scenes instability with this line, with the Giant-Size titles changing names and page counts, and series—like this one and Invaders—debuting as Giant-Size before quickly downsizing
It does make for an inauspicious premiere. In early 1975, the other Giant-Size comics on Marvel’s schedule did include reprints, but the new lead stories were usually long (30 pages or so, excepting Giant-Size Kid Colt, which appeared to be burning some unused inventory from Kid Colt and Western Team-Up). Here we get 10 pages of new content, but the reprints are strong, relevant ones:

From Sub-Mariner #20 comes the title’s conceptual ancestor, Doom’s first guest-starring appearance in Namor’s solo book, written and drawn by the framing story team of Thomas and Buscema, inked by EC legend Johnny Craig.

Then comes a reprint of Doom’s first solo outing, “This Man…This Demon” from Marvel Super-Heroes #20, by Thomas with art by Larry Lieber and Vince Colletta.

Upon cancellation of Namor’s comic, readers were promised that he wouldn’t be homeless for long. It had taken a year, but in 1975, he found two new homes, this one and Giant-Size Invaders, which promised to tell his exploits during WW II. His fans may have balked at his portrayal as a “super-villain”, but his solo series, never one of Marvel’s most popular, had taken a turn in that direction prior to cancellation, and it was consistent, of course, with his earliest stories.

This first issue doesn’t provide much hint at a direction, beyond assuring us of an alliance. In the text page, Roy offers a promise of both new and old heroes villains and heroes, and asks whether the focus should be on FF characters or a broader spectrum. One would think that the direction would be firmly established before beginning publishing, but the first few issues will provide little evidence of that.

Hm, I was about to take umbrage at your rather disparaging assessments of the series, since I've always considered it one of those odd-ball pieces of the Marvel mosaic in the 1970s that I love so much, but I have to admit: I have the series in the aforementioned Essentials volume, and after my first read-through many years ago (I only had a few actual issues of the series way back in the day), I've never gone back and read it again. Rather, I've only occasionally pulled the book for reference purposes only. Heck, to counter your point about character debuts, I was all ready to point out the Shroud, but then remembered that he hardly set the world on fire, and STVU #5 has not appreciated in value like, say, Hulk #181.
Overall, despite a few enjoyable stories here and there, I'd have to agree that it was a mostly mediocre series.

However, I will say that I'm not sure why you say Marvel "rather improbably" reprinted this run in an Essentials phonebook. What's so improbable about it? Given that we live in a world in which Skull the Slayer got a handsome tpb reprint a few years ago, I'm actually surprised that STVU series only has a b&w reprint, and not a few color tpbs or even a Masterworks edition.

Ha! Didn't even know about the color reprint, but it just goes to prove my point.

Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up #2, June, 1975


“To Bestride the World!”

Roy Thomas, Writer/Editor

Mike Sekowsky, Penciler

Sam Grainger, Inker

Phil Rachelson, Colorist

John Costanza, Letterer

Summary:

Part I, “The Slaying of a Titan!”

Namor, the Sub-Mariner, halts the oil tanker Typhoeus, whose Patagonian Navy crew fires on him in refusal to return to home port. An older hand on board reminisces about seeing Namor attack a German U-boat in WWII, and convinces the hands to abandon ship, and the crew joins them after Namor sinks the “unsinkable” ship. Namor returns to nearby Atlantis, where, currently, the population is in suspended animation, unable to protect themselves, as a consequence of events in the then-recently cancelled Sub-Mariner series. But suddenly, the undersea city is shaken by an explosion, and Namor heads off to confront the unknown attacker.

Part II, “When Monarchs Meet!”

Namor finds Atlantis under siege by invaders in underwater fighter craft, firing “high-voltage rifles” which have little effect on him, as he attacks the “nameless, unspeaking buffoons” manning the vehicles. These are robots, and only one of them speaks, its facemask projecting the image of Dr. Doom, who has staged this attack to draw Namor out of hiding. Namor surfaces to join Doom in a hovering craft, where Doom agrees to the partnership he refused in the first issue. With a veiled threat to reveal Atlantis’s helplessness to the vengeful surface world, Doom proposes a plan of world conquest, as the pair travels to Doom’s castle from which he rules Latveria.

Part III, “The Armies of Andro!”

Doom’s castle is run by an army of androids, a pair of whom are ordered to fight to the “death” at Doom’s whim. Namor is disgusted by the display, but Doom doesn’t notice. He dismisses the androids’ curious practice of worshipping at altars dedicated to their fallen mates, and does not notice that the androids appear to express hatred of their creator. As Doom shows Namor the chamber in which the androids are created, hundreds of them outside are bowing to the strange altar, where a blue android appears, whom they give a special uniform.

Meanwhile, Doom reveals his greatest secret: “the world’s first workable array of solar batteries!” Namor notes, quite correctly, that practical harnessing of solar energy is still decades away, but Doom had it first! Doom merges Atlantis’s trident seal with Latveria’s symbol, a “sun-rimmed thunderbolt” which looks rather familiar to the DC fans in the readership:



Then, to Doom’s surprise (but not ours), the blue android, “Andro, Lord of the Androids” leads the artificial slaves in rebellion, who reveals himself to be “The Doomsman”, from Dr. Doom’s short-lived series in Astonishing Tales by Wallace Wood. Andro relates how he escaped from the limbo world to which Doom had previously banished him—by hitching an invisible ride when Lockjaw and the Thing happened through there in Fantastic Four #160:



Doom defeats the android army by flooding the room; he had designed the androids to be “air-breathers”(?). Namor intends to destroy Andro, justifying his target’s death for Andro’s having used the androids like slaves (then wouldn’t Doom just as rightly deserve to die?), but Doom insists on the sole right to finish off Andro. The two are evenly matched, and Andro teleports away, leaving Doom, Namor notes, to wonder when he will strike next.

His android army destroyed, Doom reactivates his older, pure metal robot army, “immune” to Andro’s seductions…but a glint in a robotic eye in the final panel suggests that they, too, might have more of a soul than Doom suspects!

Comments:

For a 32-page story, this was pretty slim on plot. It did serve to set up the flimsy premise to launch the series: Doom and Namor declare an official alliance to rule the world. It sets up a potential recurring opponent in Andro, but accomplishes nothing else that a legitimate debut might be expected to establish, such as a supporting cast. It doesn’t kick off an ongoing storyline, but Marvel’s Giant-Size issues were (almost?) always self-contained (they may have been perceived to more often be “special purchases” than series followed issue-to-issue). This may have factored into Marvel’s conversion of the title to a regular-sized series, which, as we shall see, led to an awkward start.

It’s definitely weird to see Mike Sekowsky penciling at Marvel. It was in my opinion a poor fit, and I doubt Roy Thomas was particularly happy with awkward action scenes like this one:



We get a more familiar Sekowsky look early on with these “character actors” Mike was so good at:



This story didn’t have much long-term impact, but may have influenced some of the later interpretations of Dr. Doom’s robotic duplicates, who could clearly pass the Turing test and might well have been considered to have a “soul.”

I don’t know that this series satisfied the readers left behind when Sub-Mariner was cancelled, but the issues to follow would do their best to pick up on Namor’s dangling plot threads. I’m sure some fans assumed this series would feature a rotating cast, as did the other “team-up” books on the stands contemporaneously, but this issue makes clear that this will be, for the foreseeable future, a Dr. Doom/Sub-Mariner book.

The Watcher did return as the host of What If? but I guess Marvel didn't have another sci-fi oriented anthology title for him to host besides that, and he would have seemed weird hosting anything else.

Hooray! Team-Up books are my favorite!

Contrarily, I like the team up to GSSVTU # 1. It gives you a good sense of what each character is about (water, castles, energy blasts, what more do you need) and communicates head-to-head visceral struggle quite well. It's a little reprint-y, but the whole comic was a solid package - Although it is annoying that this ish leaves out the cool-as-heck double page splash from the original Doc Doom story.

Count me in! I started buying SVTU as of #4 and didn't miss an issue until it was canceled. And I somehow got the Giant-Size issues and one or two of the issues of the regular series that I missed pretty early on. (I think I traded with a friend for the Giant-Size issues and got the regular issues at a used-book store that had comics two for a quarter.)

SVTU is pretty awesome! (Even if it's pretty easy to admit that it's pretty dumb at times. But I won't go into it! No spoilers from me!)