With the dawning of the New Millennium (the time period, not another bad DC crossover event), we get a lot of efforts to modernize characters, which also leads to a bunch of retcons. Trademarks are maintained with new versions of old characters, appearances of old characters or reworkings of old characters. For its part, Marvel was trying to capture a new younger audience by creating an alternate universe where the Marvel Universe is just starting out, rather than being 40 (or 60, if you prefer) years old, with complicated continuity. Many of the changes that came into this alternate universe were prompted by things being seen in Hollywood movies, in an attempt to appeal to those fans. Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men were the lynchpins of the line and they established a back story of the modern heroes with a 1930s and 40s that heavily revolved around the development of the super-soldier formula and Wolverine, as one of the earliest known mutants (Mutant Zero)and one of the key factors in the search for the super soldier formula. Ultimate Origins would reveal that everything in the modern world was interconnected with the search for a super soldier, during the war. In the US, Nick Fury is an early subject, allowing him to take the place of Isaiah Bradley, as the early African-American test subject, before the final version is developed. Wolverine is subjected to the Weapon X experiment, in which the project directors discover that he is a mutant, whose healing powers making their use of adamantium work, when it would kill other test subjects. Steve Rogers is then given the formula and becomes Captain America, but ends up frozen, after leading an attack on a Skrull/Chitauri base, in the North Sea. The Hulk is the result of an attempt by Bruce Banner to recreate the formula and other experiments that lead to super powers result in new heroes. This premise became somewhat central to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Captain America becoming the first mystery man, thanks to the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner film rights being tied up elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Ed Brubaker had been doing a bit of retconning on Captain America, via the Winter Soldier storyline, which returned Bucky from the dead, as a programmed assassin for a Russian general. It is revealed that Bucky was found alive, by the Soviets and the used him for experiments, giving him a mechanical prosthesis, to replace the arm he loses in the explosion of the drone plane, and then program his mind to become an assassin for them, kept is suspended animation, between missions. Eventually, thanks to the Cosmic Cube, Bucky's memories are restored. During Brubaker's run, he did some tweaking, via flashbacks, of Cap and Bucky's adventures, as well as the role of the Timely mystery men, in the Marvel Universe history. We see the Invaders and others in more active combat, alongside military formations. We see Cap pushed away from the premise that he maintained a secret identity within his own unit and, instead, was always directed by military intelligence in his missions. Bucky goes from being a mascot to being a deadly marksman and commando, who does the dirty jobs, while Cap's hands are kept relatively clean, for propaganda purposes. That was an evolution from the Sentinel of Liberty mini-series, which revamped Cap's origin, modernizing it a bit, to show him training, along with other potential test subjects, as part of Operation Rebirth. Bucky is shown to be a young soldier, who is a "fixer" and "scrounger," a soldier who knows how to use the system to get his hands on anything and always has his own side operations going. This was used for more comical effect, in the mini, to contrast with Steve Roger's more True-Blue All-American personality. Now, Bucky is made more of a killer, to contrast with Steve's determination to preserve life, as much as possible, balancing "soldier" and "hero."

Now, Brubaker, along with collaborator Steve Epting, applies that same mindset to the greater Timely Universe, to set the stage for the more modern marvel Universe and his take on Captain America and Bucky, while matching some of the alterations made in the Ultimate Universe and in the burgeoning MCU. So, we now turn to The Marvels Project.

The Marvel's Project #1)



Right there, we have the beginning of what would become Marvel Comics; The Trinity of Marvel Comics #1: The Human Torch, The Sub-Mariner, and the less remembered Angel. This series will recount some of the exploits of the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch, from their battles against each other, to teaming up on covers, inspiring the future Invaders. What's more, it will introduce the exploits of The Angel, to an audience mostly ignorant of them. The ironic thing is that The Angel had more appearances than just about every other Timely character, except Torch, Namor and Captain America, yet their seemed little interest at Marvel to revive him, along with the others, besides giving his name to Warren Worthington III.

Creative Team: Ed Brubaker-writer, Steve Epting-art, VC's Chris Eliopoulos-letters, Dave Stewart-colors, Tom Brevoort-editor

Synopsis: In New York, in the year 1938, an old man is in a hospital, dying. One of the doctors treating him is Thomas Halloway, a young idealist, who enjoys talking to the old man and his ramblings, with talk of time travel and a future filled with heroes in bright costumes, with shields and armor. The old man is Matt Hawk, a name from The Old West, a lawyer, by trade. Dr Halloway notes in his journals that he had never heard such pulp-tinged concepts in dementia patients. He talks of having seen this future, after travelers came back in time to his period, and took him back with them. While doing his round, Dr Halloway learns that Matt Hawk died, in the night, and left him a gift......



Thomas opens the box at home; it's a pair of Colt Peacemakers and a black mask, with a note from Matt Hawk. Tom realizes what a fool he has been. Matt Hawk was a lawyer, from Boston, who went out West, to practice law and ended up becoming the masked hero, The Two-Gun Kid, whose exploits thrilled the young Thomas Halloway, in pulp novels and historical accounts. He recalls his youth, as the son of a prison warden, growing up at the prison, reading everything he could about the masked gunfighter. He wishes, now, he had told the old man how much his exploits had meant to him, how he idolized him. Then, he reads the card.....



The story moves ahead to 1939, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spends his vacation aboard a private yacht, owned by his friend Vincent Astor, heir to the Astor fortune and one of the richest men in America. He is also part of a group, informally known as The Room (and The Club) a group of influential businessmen who maintain a private intelligence gathering network, which FDR used to keep tabs on developments around the world. Astor, himself, had observed Japanese military buildups around the Marshall Islands. Kermit Roosevelt (FDR's cousin) reports on a German Project Nietzsche and the danger is presents and recommends sending some soldiers, clandestinely, to sabotage it. Astor updates him on a secret Brooklyn lab they have been funding and says "The creature keeps catching fire." Roosevelt ponders this and Kermit suggests that such a thing might still be useful. They also talk about German warships near Bermuda, dropping depth charges for some unknown reason.

We cut to the Sargasso Sea (before the lizard Men conducted their laser experiments there...... ) and a German ship, which is dropping depth charges, then hauling in nets, with a catch of fish and humanoid creatures. The humanoids are their mission, as they are taking specimens back to Germany for study. However, this ship will not be returning to the Fatherland, as they are about to face the wrath of the Avenging Son of Atlantis.....



Namor caatches the ship in massive swells and boards and sees his dead people and takes vengeance on the crew.

WE cut to a report to President Roosevelt, detailing Professor Phineas Horton's unveiling of his "synthetic man"......



...who bursts into flame, as oxygen is introduced into his chamber.

Horton's assistant, Dr James Bradley had left the project, before the demonstration, in a dispute with Horton. The press eat it up, but the general population reacts in fear. The President orders the creature to be sealed in concrete and buried, to bring an end to potential civil unrest.

Meanwhile, the press story reaches Germany, where a newspaper account is shown to Dr Abraham Erskine, who mostly feels that this development will likely lead to more pressure from the SS, on their own project. He and his assistant walk to a lab, where we see the dead sea humanoids, as he remarks that there was a problem with the latest ship, so they won't be seeing more specimens.

Later, in London, we see the ruins of bombed buildings (we must be up to 1940) as radio intercepts are decoded by intelligence agents and one comes across something he says must be delivered to the Home Office, immediately, to show it to an "American friend."

Meanwhile, in New York, Thomas Halloway goes to a night out, at the movies, where he observes newsreels of the Nazi march across Western Europe, with the fall of France and the launching of attacks on England. We see him step past a rather determined looking skinny young man....



Over in England, a pair of uniformed soldiers, one British, one American go to a pub and observe two other Americans inside, as they horse around over who is going to ask out a pretty bar maid. The American lieutenant is skeptical about the pair; but the British soldier assures him that they are good men, who have been helping train their paratroops. They go inside and the British officer puts a stop to the horseplay an introduces the pair of Americans to Lieutenant Sam Sawyer, US Army, who has a job for them. He then introduces Lt Sawyer to the American training specialists, Red Hargrove and Nicholas Fury. The sit down, in a quiet corner booth and Sawyer makes his pitch.....



They are going to parachute into Occupied Europe and help a German scientist to defect.

Meanwhile, in New York, the synthetic man lies in his chamber, underneath layers of concrete, as headphones feed the voice of his creator, educating him about the world. Eventually, he wants to see for himself and he leaves his prison.....



In the wake of his escape, fire spreads across the city, as the synthetic man is unable to control his flame and he cautions people to stay away from him. The police rush forward and he panics and takes to the sky, flying away from them, to a place of safety, away from others, as fires rage across neighborhoods.

In one of those neighborhoods, looters attack a woman and Dr Thomas Halloway tries to intervene. A knife-wielding man tells him to go back to his penthouse, but he didn't recon with Halloway's resolve.



He sends the woman to safety and does his best to defend the stores and property from other profit-seekers. He grabs a blanket and helps a family get out of a burning building, moving from one calamity to another, helping as best he can.

Eventually, Thomas Halloway returns home, face covered in grime and soot, clothes disheveled and torn. He goes over to the box left to him, by Matt Hawk and looks at the pistols and mask again and he knows what he will do.

Thoughts: In this packed issue, Ed Brubaker unveils a lot of information and sets a lot of things in motion. He retells past stories and mixes in new details and nuances. The bulk of the story retells the origin stories of The Human Torch and The Sub-Mariner, from Marvel Comics #1, plus the debut, as a hero, of Thomas Halloway, The Angel. He plays around with the timeframe, a bit. Marvel Comics #1 debuted in 1939 and our story ranges from 1939 to 1940, assuming that the damage seen in London is supposed to be bomb damage, from the Blitz. The caption do not give a timeframe, by that point. The initial meeting of Roosevelt and his private advisers, Kermit Roosevelt and Vincent Astor occurs in 1938, while Namor's attack on the German vessel is 1939 and we can assume that debut of the Human Torch is also 1939. However, it gets a bit murky. France fell in 1940 and the Battle of Britain began soon after. Those events need to occur for young Steve Rogers to see events in the newsreels and resolve to join in the fight against the Fascists and join the US Army, leading to being declared 4F. The only problem is we see parallel events from before that, placing that event as earlier, but that runs into history. We can only assume that in the Marvel Universe, France fell earlier, leading to the Battle of Britain occurring earlier.....or, that the events of Marvel Comics and subsequent stories happened over a later period, of undetermined time, likely across 1939 and 1940. This is less about World History than it is Marvel History, which means we just have to accept a somewhat murky chronology.

What is clear is that events are tied together. The Germans are conducting experiments on humanoid sea creatures, for some unknown purpose; but, the appearance by Namor and the power he demonstrates in attacking the German ship suggests that the sea humans have special abilities. Therefore, it is likely that the Germans are working on replicating that, for likely military purposes. The Name Project Nietzsche sugegsts that it is tied to Nietzsche's idea of the "ubermansch," the super being who would rule all, as he outlined in Also Sprach Zarathustra. Nietzsche's work had great influence upon Nazi ideology and references to the SS cement the idea that this research is to develop a living weapon. At the head of this project is Dr Abraham Erskine, the man we know developed the super soldier formula. Obviously, this is an earlier phase in his research. We can also infer that he is not happy with the potential Nazi use of his science and he is looking for a way out, word of which reaches intelligence officers in the UK. They, in turn, contact an American lieutenant.

Here is where it gets a bit cross-eyed with history, again, as the US was still officially neutral, though Roosevelt was able to push through the Lend Lease Act, in 1941, to aid the British (and Soviet Union) with arms and material in their efforts to fight the Germans and this Axis allies. Again, we are in some murky period, between 1939 and 1941. Brubaker is more interested in the Marvel events and is massaging history to make it fit within, again suggesting an alternate history, with events playing out somewhat differently, in the Marvel Universe, than the real world.

We can assume that Sam Sawyer represents President Roosevelt's agreement to commit some soldiers into sabotaging Project Nietzsche and what better way than to aid the chief scientist in defecting to the Allied side.

Brubaker is now mixing in Marvel History, with Timely History. In Sgt Fury #34, from 1966, we learn the "origin" of the Howling Commandos. Nick Fury and his friend Red Hargrove are experienced barnstormers, with Hargrove doing the flying and Fury doing parachute stunts. They are in England training paratroops in parachuting techniques, as technical experts (of a sort). Sawyer is actually serving in the British Army, despite the US Neutrality Act, which prohibited such things. It was not unknown for some Americans to join the Allied cause, via Canada. We can assume Happy Sam did just this. He encounters Hargrove and Fury, during his training. Meanwhile, Sawyer is tapepd to lead a team into Holland, to get an Allied agent out, before the Nazis over-run the country and he is cut off. He recruits Hargrove and Fury in aiding him. Red flies them across the channel, in a small aircraft, which is spotted by an E-boat, who fires on them. Fury returns fire with a Thompson (at too great a range to be of use, but this is Sgt Fury) and they travel on to Holland and spot the markings on the roof of the agent's car. They are forced down after snagging telephone lines, while surveying the wrecked car. The agent is alive, but he tells them that his chauffer was a Nazi agent and is headed to the coast withhis briefcase, containing important secret documents. The group try to regain it and end up encountering circus performer Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader "Dum-Dum" Dugan. They eventually find the man, only he is the British agent and the man in the car was the Nazi spy. They retrieve the plans and escape. We learn that Fury and Red returned to the US and joined the US Army, while Dugan served with Sawyer, in the British Army, in North Africa. Red is killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, at Hickam field and Nick is determined to avenge his death. Sawyer ends up transferring back to the US Army and is tasked to put together a commando squad, for special missions. Nick Fury is recruited to be the leader of the squad, with Dum-Dum his second and then the other members of the 1st Attack Squad, aka The Howling Commandos: jockey Reb Ralston, movie star and singer Dino Manelli, mechanic Izzy Cohen, jazz trumpeter Gabe Jones and college boy "Junior" Juniper, who will be the Howler's first casualty.

Here, Sawyer is in England because of Roosevelt, working with British intelligence, investigating Project Nietzsche. Red Hargrove and Nick Fury are still there, training paratroops and are recruited; but, the mission is to aid a defecting German scientist: Abraham Erskine. So, now, that first "Howling Commando Mission," is actually to aid in Dr Erskine's escape from Germany, to the United States, where he will head Operation Rebirth and test his super soldier formula on young Steve Rogers, before being shot by a Nazi spy. We even get a brief glimpse of the young Steve, before his entry into the project.

Rounding all of this out is the debut of The Angel and the inspiration for his career as a hero, Matt Hawk, The Two-Gun Kid. In Avengers #142-144, the Avengers travel back in time, while battling Kang, and meet Two-Gun Kid and other western heroes. Matt Hawk travels to the modern period, with the Avengers and experiences the future, while hanging out with Hawkeye, before eventually returning to his own period. Brubaker takes that continuity and brings Matt Hawk forward, to his old age, as he is in New York, in a hospital, dying. He speaks of hoping to live to see the spark that launches the heroic age, The Age of Marvels; but, he also knows, thanks to historical records, when he will die. He knows that his doctor, Thomas Halloway, becomes The Angel, one of the first costumed mystery men. He tells him stories of the tiem ahead, helping to put ideas in Halloway's head, though he has already steeped himself in the lore of the Two-Gun Kid and his fellow western heroes. Hawk bequeaths his matched Colt Peacemakers to Halloway, and his mask, "From one hero to another." This gives the inspiration for The Angel.

The Angel was created by Paul Gustavson and an unknown writer. He is the son of a prison warden, whose wife died in childbirth. Thomas is raised in the prison and learns criminology from experts, as well as about the underworld, from inmates. He earns the nickname, The Angel, when he saves an innocent man from the electric chair. He becomes a costumed vigilante, but wears no mask, despite being a noted physician. Here, Brubaker gives him a mask, though he starts out committing acts of heroism without it. Of the three heroes in Marvel Comics #1, The Angel was the closest to the pulp heroes that preceded comic books. In his stories, the Angel is just called the Angel and he is a very pulpish avenging figure, killing without remorse. It is only later his backstory of growing up in a prison is added and he gains a civilian name, Thomas Halloway. Later, his stories are retconned to be twin brothers who act as The Angel, at different times. The Angel has a lot in common with characters like The Phantom Detective and The Shadow, which might explain why only his name was later revived, apart from his appearance in The Kree-Skrull War, when Rick Jones manifests old Timely characters. His stories were also more run of the mill mysteries and adventures, when compared to The Human Torch or Sub-Mariner and it is easy to see how he got left in the dust, despite continuing on through the 1940s, far outlasting the likes of Citizen V, The Thunderer, Black Marvel and the bulk of the Liberty Legion. It's about time he got his due, in the Marvel Age.

So, our maguffin for the launch of heroes in the Marvel Universe is the parallel German and American projects to develop living weapons, leading to Captain America's birth, while tying that research to the German attacks on Atlantis, drawing the wrath of the Sub-Mariner. The US side is Professor Horton's research into an artificial lifeform, resulting in the Human Torch. The debut of the Torch lights the fire f heroism in The Angel (after some nudging by the Two-Gun Kid) and we will see others who will take up the call, in the subsequent issues.

One area where Brubaker isn't playing too loose with history is Kermit Roosevelt and Vincent Astor and The Room. The Room, later knwon as The Club, was a loose group of friends and advisors to Franklin Roosevelt, who maintained a private intelligence network, along with other industrialists involved in international commerce. William J Donovan was also part of that loose association, though he was not a political ally of Roosevelt and had been a major critic of him, as governor of New York. Astor was the managing director of Western Union and used their network to read cables sent between foreign agents and diplomats, feeding that information back to Roosevelt, which was kept hidden from J Edgar Hoover and the FBI, who were tasked with counter-intelligence (while foreign intelligence mostly fell under Army and Navy Intelligence). Brubaker makes The Room the source of intelligence about Project Nietzsche, setting up the mission that leads to Sam Sawyer meeting Nick Fury and tweaking that into the mission to aid Dr Erskine in defecting from Nazi Germany.

As we will see in subsequent issues, the German project continues, leading into things like the experimental serum that gives Brian Falsworth his abilities, as he becomes the Destroyer, as well as Master Man and Warrior Woman. We will also see how a German agent is able to infiltrate Operation Rebirth.

Steve Epting is in his element and I love how his style captures key moments, while his eye for detail helps set the period, with authentic buildings and locations, fashions and vehicles. He also handles the superhero aspects well, and is able to carry over some of the visual flavor that Alex Ross brought to Marvels, especially that first issue, which covered the debut of heroes and the Invaders attacking the Germans, along with other mystery men, recreating some of those Alex Schomburg covers. He recreates Ross' vision of the human Torch, with the more developed and dense flame, with hints of the man underneath, rather than the older, flatter look seen before and in The Invaders. No hatched lines here, just rolling flames. He also capture the power of Namor's anger and his attacks on those who attack his people. Mixed with that are thue human monents, such as Matt Hawk in the hospital, or Nick and Red engaging in horseplay and wise-assing.

This is terrific stuff, which kind of erases the sour taste left bey Roy Thomas attempt to revisit the Invaders and some of the other dodgy revivals and uses of the old characters. It's a nice blend of respect for what came before, while adding modern touches and character development. It is rather similar in approach to how James Robinson revamped some of the past, in Starman, both in Ted Knight's adventures and some of the other JSA members and Golden Age heroes. This helps add that generational feeling that DC always had, from the Silver Age onward, that Marvel kind of lacked, aside from Captain America and Namor, and, to a lesser extent, the Torch. Kurt Busiek also added to that, with Marvels (which greatly informs this mini-series) and Thunderbolts.