INVADERS ANNUAL #1

"OKAY, AXIS--HERE WE COME!"
Writer/Editor: Roy Thomas
Illustrators: Frank Robbins & Frank Springer (Chapters 1 & 5),
Alex Schomburg (Chapter 2), Don Rico (Chapter 3), Lee Elias & Frank Springer (Chapter 4)
Colorist: Sam Kato | Letterers: Darn Near Everybody! | Consulting Editor: Archie Goodwin

The Plot: In London, the Invaders meet with their British and American liaisons and are informed that three of their old enemies have resurfaces, working for the Axis powers, in the United States. Captain America, Namor, and the Human Torch head for the East Coast, where they split up to search for their sparring partners.

First, the Torch finds his foe, the Hyena, out to hijack a shipment of valuable medical supplies. The Torch lays a trap and intercepts the Hyena's ambush, but the Hyena has a trap of his own waiting for the Torch. After capturing his enemy, the Hyena extracts some of the Torch's blood for use in making super-powered Nazi agents, and then prepares to kill the Torch -- but the hero vanishes into thin air before the Hyena can finish him.

Elsewhere, Captain America arrives at the Statue of Liberty to meet an FBI contact, but is shocked that the man is a mere puppet of the sinister Agent Axis. Axis has come to take Captain America's shield, and already has his originial triangular shield with him, which he has determined has no special properties. Cap fights back against Axis, and their battle takes them up the statue. Cap flings his shield at the villain, but it's magnetically pulled to a nearby autogyro. Seconds later, with only his triangular shield in-hand, Cap vanishes, to reappear in a featureless void beside the Human Torch.

Namor jumps from his flagship to protect a British ship from an attack by the Shark. But the Shark's electrified torpedo knocks out the Sub-Mariner, and when he comes around, he finds himself a prisoner of the Shark, who has taken his special scaled trunks for study. Namor manages to get free, but vanishes, reappearing with the Human Torch and Captain America. The trio then mateiralizes in front of the Lourve in occupied Paris, face-to-face with three costumed characters who they assume to be Axis agents.

The Invaders battle these strangers, Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and the Vision, but the strangers, who identify themselves as the Avengers, are victorious. Briefly, the Avengers explain that the battle is part of a contest between cosmic beings called Kang and the Grand Master, then both groups vanish. The Grandmaster returns the Invaders to their proper time, where they confront Agent Axis, the Shark, and the Hyena aboard the Shark's boat. The Invaders win the day, recover the blood, shield, and trunks, and head home.

Continuity Notes: This issue is cover-dated August of 1977, while the last issue we read (#15) was the April of '77 installment. However, a continuity note early in the story specifically places this adventure between INVADERS 15 and 16 -- and that is precisely where the INVADERS COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 1 trade paperback places it. And since I try to follow the recommended reading order whenever possible, here we are! Next week will warp us back in time to the May of '77 issue.

Due to the story's placement in continuity, Cap and the Torch comment on Spitfire and Lord Falsworth's disappearance with Dyna-Mite, with the Torch mentioning that he knows what they're up to but hasn't had time to fill the other Invaders in. The team then spends a couple hours aboard Namor's flagship en route to the U.S., during which the Torch apparently doesn't bother to explain further, and neither Cap nor Namor deigns to ask him to do so.

The Invaders meet their liaison officers, Major Rawlings of the U.K. forces and Colonel Farrow of the U.S., inside Big Ben, which the officers identify as the team's new offical rendezvous point.

The villains the Invaders are sent to face all have histories with the three heroes, but Cap's enemy, Agent Axis, is a new creation making his first appearance here (Cap states that he wrapped up Agent Axis so quickly that not even his comic book creators knew about it to publish a story). The other two, however debuted in the Torch's and Namor's respective Golden Age eras: the Hyena in HUMAN TORCH #30 from 1948, and the Shark in 1947's SUB-MARINER COMICS #23 -- which, interestingly, chronologically places both villains' appearances in this issue prior to their first appearances, since it's still only been a few weeks (or maybe a couple months) since the December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor at this point in continuity.

Agent Axis's origin is a doozy! A plane was carrying three agents from the three respective Axis powers: one German, one Japanese, and one Italian -- and the craft was struck by a thunderbolt, which caused it to crash and fused the trio into one being with all the strength and intelligence of all three men!

The final chapter features the Invaders' side of a story originally told by Roy Thomas, Sal Buscema, and Sam Grainger in 1969's AVENGERS #71. I've never read the issue, but as I understand it, it featured the Avengers tossed through time, where they found themselves in conflict with Marvel's big Golden Age trio, Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner. But at the time it was a simple lark for Thomas, not intended to tie in with any retroactive continuity. Buscema drew Cap with this triangular shield and Namor in a pair of non-scaled trunks. So in this issue, Thomas decides he simply must explain both those little goofs -- and while I can buy a need to figure out why Cap had the wrong shield, I don't think anyone would've batted an eye over Namor's trunks. But, as they say, Roy gonna Roy.

(And, of course, this results in one of those creepy comic book moments where a hero is apparently stripped and changed into different clothes while unconscious.)

My Thoughts: One cool thing about this issue is that the pencilers of the three solo chapters all have histories with the respective charactrs. Alex Schomberg, artist on the Human Torch chapter, was a prolific cover artist (and, very rarely, an interior penciler) for Marvel in the forties and fifties, contributing some work on the Torch during that period. The Captain America chapter's artist, Don Rico, penciled a number of Cap comics in the forties. And penciler Lee Elias has the most tenunous connection with his character, illustrating one single Sub-Mariner tale during the Golden Age. (It actually appears that aside from that single story, Elias did no work for Marvel in the forties, fifties, and sixties, but he eventually penciled a couple dozen issues across various series for the company in the seventies!)

Outside of that, though, there's not really a lot more to rave about here. I like seeing the three main Invaders split up to fight their three respective enemies, but when it eventually becomes a case of Roy Thomas jumping through a bunch of weird, self-indulgent hoops in order to get the characters into precise position for a single short scene that he already wrote eight years earlier, it's just silly. And I'm on record of stating often that I love continuity excavation and patches. But in a case like this, I can't find that Thomas's ridiculous acrobatics really add anything to the story.

Perhaps he felt he had written himself into a corner by forming the Invaders after Cap had switched to his triangular shield and after Namor's trunks had been redesigned, yet he presented the trio working together in AVENGERS 71. But he also couldn't just state that this story took place prior to the formation of the team, since they already had their battle cry, "Okay Axis, here we come!" (which I've been meaning to note for some time is a ridiculously inelegant thing for a group to shout as they charge into action) in the AVENGERS issue, too. All of which, to me, would suggest that the group presented in AVENGERS 71 could've simply been an illusory creation of the Grandmaster. That would've been much easier to swallow than the scenario Thomas presents here.

Nonetheless, again -- I like the chapters starring the individual Invaders! I just wish this annual had been limited to those three solo missions, with the heroes coming together to face their united enemies in the final chapter, without the unnecessary and gratuitous chunk of AVENGERS continuity forced into the story!