Invaders #15
Tommy Lightning and Spitfire are really bigidge!
Someone from the UK can pipe in; but, Kirby's geography of London looks off.
Creative Team: Roy Thomas-writer/editor, F & Express-art, John Costanza-letters, Don Warfield-colors
Interior cover:
Sigh.........................................
Synopsis: The Invaders are having a planning conference, at Falsworth Manor; and, apparently, Lord Monty is a bit of an Airfix nut.....
They are debating whether to step aside and let the Crusaders be the honor guard to King George VI, as he christens HMS Hornblower (um........................do the British really name characters, especially ones who only just appeared 4 years before?). Torch and Namor are actually in agreement that they are not comfortable with ceding the duty to a group that just appeared and has no known background. Spitfire argues in favor of it, since they are mostly British (Ghost Girl probably takes exception to that). Spitfire remarks about the likely geographic origin of the Crusaders members....
Spitfire ends up making the decisive argument and the team votes to step aside, though Jacqueline gets a bit nasty with the Torch and he goes off to cry somewhere, because even an android can cry. Lord Monty rolls up and tells Jacqueline he has something astonishing to tell her and they go out to the garden for privacy.
Meanwhile, on a river barge, on the Thames, the Crusaders have their own discussion.
Alfie turns up and they question the need for secrecy and also why they still know little about how they gained their powers. He has Ghost Girl demonstrate hers, then he shuts it down, with a control button on a weird belt. It provides power to all of the devices that give them their special abilities. They were recruited by him and were all unable to resist, for various reasons (Captain Wings had a heart murmur). The question whether the Invaders couldn't handle things and Alfie says they are Nazis and provides photo evidence.
The images are from when they were under the Red Skull's control or taken greatly out of context (before there was an internet to do that). They bring up official explanations but Alfie bats that aside. They question the organization behind him and he claims secrecy; but asks, logically, would the Nazis give super powers to British citizens instead of Nazis? They see the logic in that, though Dyna-Mite questions the gizmos vs his physical size, which has been that way as long as he can remember, which isn't very far back. Alfie evades the issue and says he has to report in and starts to let slip the word "Admiralty," but catches himself. The group takes that to mean he reports to the Royal Navy. He leaves, but doesn't go far, to a wharfside warehouse, where he speaks on the phone, saying it has all been arranged then gives the Nazi Party salute. Dyna-Mite stowed away in Alfie's car and witnesses this and confronts Alfie and gets clobbered.....
He falls through a gab in the floorboards and into the Thames below. Alfie drives away, cackling, but he misses seeing Dyna-Mite emerge from the river and snag onto the fender of a passing lorry.
At Falsworth manor, the butler answers the door, to find no one, until he looks down and sees Dyna-Mite. The Invaders are summoned and Dyna-Mite tells them the truth.....
The next day, at the christening ceremony, the king prepares to strike the new ship with the bottle of champagne, when the Invaders turn up to stop him....
This leads to a battle between the Invaders and the Crusaders, which is neck and neck. An aid pulls the king to safety, though he decides to christen the ship anyway, when the Torch severs the ribbon and catches the bottle, tosses it to namor, as he emerges from the water, who hurls it off into the distance, where it explodes in an open area. The Crusaders are stunned and cease fighting. Torch goes after Alfie, who ends up crashing his car into the railing of Tower Bridge and goes over the side, exploding before he hits the Thames. He does not survive. The Crusaders toss away their now dead gizmos and walk away in shame.
The Invaders return to Falsworth Manor, only to find Lord Monty and Jacqueline gone, with orders for the others not to follow (so you can guess what happens next issue).
Thoughts: Excellent part 2, which explains all of the mystery and intrigue from the first issue and reveals that Alfie is a Nazi agent, who has duped the Crusaders. he controls the devices that give them powers, except for the diminutive size of Dyna-Mite. That has been caused by something else; but, Dyna-Mite has no memory of it.
Torch is still acting like a scorned teenager, mooning over Jacqueline, which is starting to get old. Thankfully, the events which will follow will relieve us of the sugar-choked soap opera.
We bigger mystery at play here; so this is more than just a two-part adventure where they battle Nazi dupes. Dyna-Mite holds some key to a past that affects Lord Montgomery and Jacqueline and it is important enough for them to head out and warn the Invaders to stay away from them.
Robbins & Springer do a nice job with everything and the Thames locale is nicely done, apart from maybe their geography, though it is hard to say, completely.
I find it odd that the king would be launching a ship on the Thames, near Tower Bridge, rather than in Portsmouth or at least the Docklands area. Looking at maps, it would seem more likely that they would have been well East of Tower Bridge' but, I assume Roy wanted identifiable landmarks, even if they are in the wrong locale. Few readers would probably have any idea and you couldn't just google a map of London.
So, the Crusaders are done, which means no more adventures for them. Dyna-Mite will stick around through the continuing storyline and Spirit of '76 will make an appearance in a companion story, which I will cover a bit later.
Next time, we will look at the DC side of this unofficial crossover, as the Freedom Fighters bunch of Crusaders, whop bear familiar names. Then, we pick up the story back in Invaders #16.
The letters page has a note from Marv Wolfman, addressing questions about Baron Blood's reaction to a cross, vs perceived vampire lore (which depends greatly on your source, especially other than filmed versions of Stoker). He reminds them that a crucifix is deadlier than a cross and it depends on the vampire's own belief in such things, which is a point used in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series, as is the idea that for someone to be turned into a vampire, the original vampire must share their own blood with the victim, as well as take blood from them. So, vampires can bleed a person without turning them or killing, if they don't take too much. The series also suggests that the sun doesn't affect all vampires the same. It depends on the bloodline. Also, power is relative to bloodline and age. In the series, Genvieve Dieudonne dates back to the 1400s and is as old or older than Dracula and her "father in darkness" was an older and more powerful vampire;' so, don't mess with the lady.
Anyway, Kim Newman's works make great reading, especially as things progress. Genvieve Dieudonne was created for the Warhammer series, and appeared in 4 books, with Newman writing as Jack Yeovil. Anno Dracula represents a different universe where Genevieve is a parallel character, in a world where Dracula survived Bram Stoker's novel events and became Prince Consort to Queen Victoria, setting up a vampire-friendly regime. The series starts with a Jack the Ripper riff, where Jack is killing vampire prostitutes, in Whitechappel, with a silver scalpel. The Diogenes Club sends Charles Beauregard to investigate and he meets Genvieve, who helps operate a clinic in the Whitechappel area. The Diogenes Club opposes Dracula's rule and Mycroft Holmes has schemes within schemes to rid Britain of Dracula. The series progresses to WW1, the late 1950s, the late 1970s and early 1980s and to the turn of the Millennium, with a pit stop to japan, in 1899, in one novel.
Newman also has his Diogenes Club stories, where a parallel club investigates paranormal happenings, in the UK, with Charles Beauregard as an early agent, soon followed by others, including Richard Jeperson, a flamboyant figure in the 1960s and 1970s (inspired by the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who and the adventurer Jason King).
He has stories that deal with derek leech, a satire of Thatcher Era Britain and just after and associated figures and events. He appears in The Quorum and several shorts stories. He also wrote a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, about Prof Moriarty and Col Sebastian Moran, as Consulting Criminals, in The Hound of the D'Urbevilles. Then, there are the Angels of Musik, a sort of Charlie's Angels, where Charlie is the Phantom of the Opera and the Angels are female figures from Victorian and later literature. If that wasn't enough, there is The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School and The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School, set at a school for girls with amazing abilities, either physical or mental or are just very exceptional ladies, who will be major figures in various fields, as adults.
All kinds of pulpy, superheroish, secret agentish, horrorish adventurous fun.
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