9. Dr. Doom and every Marvel villain extant, in 1965, that is. Fantastic Four Annual 3

“The Forces of Evil”*

   

I’m hard-pressed to think of any team-up like “Bedlam at the Baxter Building.” Nothing like it had ever appeared in the Silver Age, or the Golden Age for that matter, with the possible exception of the masters of Evil saga. Here were villains spanning the entire cosmos of one publisher attacking the good guys on Reed and Sue’s wedding bay, fer cripes’ sakes, and staging in a knock-down-drag-out Pier Six brawl, all masterminded by the hyper-insecure, ultra-needy, super-narcissistic, immensely immature Latverian string-puller, Dr. Doom.

The closest thing to it at the time were probably the summer team-ups of the JLA and JSA, but as wonderful as those were, they were sedate, structured affairs, not the chaotic warfare between good and evil that marked the wedding of Sue and Reed.

From the arresting cover, which sucked me into a swirling vortex depicting most of the population of Marvel Comics (And the bomb in the story is a frikkin’ vortex bomb! Retrospect is so cool) to the splash page (Doom simmering as he reads the Bugle’s big story), to the finish (Stan and Jack refused admittance by the SHIELD security staff), this story packed more into its meager 23 pages than entire series do today into 23 issues!

It moved at what is often termed “a headlong pace,” but was actually just a hair under light speed. That pace was crucial to the story’s success because it enabled Stan to whisk readers over plot holes like he was skipping stones across a lake. And thanks to Kirby, the action never stopped, with every panel a new battle between good and evil. Even the “still-life” panels had an energy you just never saw in a John Forte Legion story.

And there sure was action, courtesy the Marvel Universe’s already impressive Rogues Gallery! The Mole Man attacks from underground; Attuma launches an invasion from New York Harbor; Hydra tries to drive a “vortex bomb” into the Baxter Building. (Btw, why does an undersea warlord wear a Bottom donkey mask? Is he a Shakespeare fan?)

And all this in addition to constant incursions by all kinds of villains from all over the place: Asgardians; mutants; a guy on a flying horse; Super-Apes led by the Red Ghost, who liked like the unholy spawn of Khrushchev and Larry Fine; a giant faceless, blockheaded android in tighty-whities gone gray (Shame on the Mad Thinker’s maid service!); the Unicorn and the Melter shooting blasts from head and chest; the Grey Gargoyle, a statue with a moustache(!); the Executioner, looking as crazy as Telly Savalas did in “The Dirty Dozen;” the Mandarin, with more rings than Bill Russell and wearing a bathing cap with big goggles. Hell, even the Super-Skrull drops in from distant space! Oh, yeah, and Kang pops in from the future! Of course, all these menaces and more have been whipped into their simultaneous lather by Dr. Doom’s emotion-charger.

As a Marvel rookie, I was on sensory overload, because taking it to all these nefarious evildoers was a legion of good guys. I mean, you had you grown-up Nick Fury looking way cool with his eyepatch; the X-Men (what th’?! Who’s the dude with the huge feet coming right at me?) slamming hordes of Mole Man’s minions back into the earth; Dr. Strange materializing to dispatch the Super-Apes to a “distant netherworld;” Captain America, who at first glance still looks to me as if he has no right arm; some blur called Quicksilver; and the Watcher (Hey, he may be God or something… I thought this was a comic book!) and, hey, Holy Jeez, Marvel has a Green Arrow-guy, too!

And what the h-e-double hockey sticks was up with page 20? (A Kirby photo-montage!) This page would never pop up in the middle of a Curt Swan Superman story, even if it featured a team-up of Bizarro and Mr. Mxyzptlk! Then the Watcher lets Reed choose one device from his collection of cool Kirby gimcrackery in the scene that somebody eventually stole for “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” Lucky for everybody that Reed chooses… wisely. (If I’d been a quicker thinker, I might have remembered this scene when I read Adventure 341 a few months later and saw how Brainiac 5 defeated Computo…)

Of all this inspired craziness, though, the moment that still sticks with me is Daredevil – the BLIND guy! – atop the truck full of Hydra goons with the vortex bomb strapped to the flatbed and steering it right into the Attuma’s USMC (Under Sea Marine Corps) hordes and then leaping off at the last moment before blowing the water-born warlord and his troops into what seemed to be a serious lack of existence. “Wicked!” as we would have said – and did – in 1965.

This story left me breathless each time I read it, and delighted, too, as I got a crash course in Marvel Universe 101. How many times did I pore over that cover trying to identify every one of the characters swimming in that maelstrom on the cover? How many times did I search the story to see if Kid Colt was somewhere in its pages? How many times did I wish DC Comics could have pulled off something this big, this new, this thrill-a-minute exciting?

This really was a crossover compressed, a mini-series in miniature, an unbloated epic with a score of battles between heroes and villains culminating in a donnybrook ended by a hero’s cleverness. A couple of decades later, we would have Secret Wars and Age of Apocalypse, Armageddon and Invasion, Identity Crisis and House of M, ad infinitum. Dozens of issues linked by little more than the title of the “maxi-series,” “crossover event,” or whatever brand the marketing people gave it, the plots galumphing to their conclusions, action scenes rendered impotent by repetition as one-panel pin-ups, and all those world-shattering events reversed in the next “company-wide event” a month or two later.

“Bedlam at the Baxter Building,” in 23 glorious, audacious, madcap, trailblazing pages was far, far less, but so much more.

Plastic Man 29, 1955*

#4 - The Lizard and Stegron (Amazing Spider-Man 165-166)



It's two reptiles for the price of one.  This was MY period of Spider-Man and The Lizard was my second favorite Spidey villain at the time.  So getting Lizzy along with a dinosaur themed villain (who I was not familiar with) was just long-underwear funnybook gold.  To be fair, this is maybe not as much of a team-up as it seems from the cover of #166.  It's more of a three-for-all battle royale.  But it made a huge impression on my young psyche...so here we are.  

They are certainly appropriate to the season.  

Thanks. I didn't think this would be on anyone's radar. Just felt like these ghouls deserved a spot. My next 3 were locked down on my list. Another outside the box selection is coming soon....

4. The Masters of Evil - Avengers #6

My first issue of Avengers, and one of my first super-villain teams. A true Marvel Age classic. The cover's been posted, so here's the splash page, Check out the note in the upper left - "We have a hunch you'll want to save it as a collector's item for a long, long time!" Yes, Stan, I did!