INVADERS #20 & #21

"THE BATTLE OF BERLIN!" | "THE BATTLE OF BERLIN! PART TWO!"
Writer/Editor: Roy Thomas | Illustrators: Frank Robbins & Frank Springer
Letterers: Tom Orzechowski (#20) & John Costanza (#21)
Colorists: Don Dickens (#20) & Sam Kato (#21) | Consulting Editor: Archie Goodwin

The Plot: (Issue 20) As Union Jack battles the Nazis, the Invaders shake off the effects of their drugs and join the fray. But Toro is shot, sending the Human Torch into a frenzy. As soon as Master Man and Warrior Woman are married, Hitler sends them into the fight, running off with Captain America's shield. Hitler and his scientist, Colonel Dietrich, board a plane and fly off, unaware that Dyna-Mite has hitched a ride.

(Issue 21) Dyna-Mite reveals himself and takes out Hitler's guards, but the dictator bails out of the plane, which is actually being piloted by Lord Falsworth and his aide, Oskar, to evade capture. On the ground, the Invaders are on the defensive against the Nazi army, Master Man, and Warrior Woman. When the plane comes back around, they board it and fly out of Germany, barely making it back to the English Channel. There, the crashed heroes are rescued by a British patrol boat, as the Torch declares that Toro needs medical care.

Continuity Notes: A brief note at the bottom of issue 20's final page states that the story has been cut in half, "...so that we can re-present, for the first itme in nearly 40 years, the origin of the Sub-Mariner..." And, sure enough, Namor's inaugural story from MARVEL COMICS #1 immediately follows. Issue 21 also features a reprint, of another early Namor tale, from MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #10. There's a note in issue 20 telling readers to see the letters page for more details, but as my reprints don't include that page, I'm not sure what the deal was here.

However I can confirm that if you add up all the pages of issue 20's story and issue 21's story, then remove issue 21's splash page, you get seventeen pages -- the precise length of a normal issue. So clearly something happened here that necessitated Thomas and Robbins to split apart issue 20, create a new splash page for insertion at the beginning of the second half, and then publish all of it over two issues. What that something was, though, is a mystery, at least to me.

Moving along -- you may recall that when I announced this project, I mentioned that as a child, I owned one single issue of INVADERS, and that I had no idea how I came by it, since it was published before I was born. Well, that issue was #21. As I mentioned at the time, I don't think I actually ever read it, but the dramatic Gil Kane cover and some of the interior pages remain very familiar to me, even all these years later.

And now for some actual continuity notes! It's revealed in issue 20 (in surprisingly short order, with an editorial caption from Thomas stating that he had intended to keep the secret longer but figured readers were way ahead of him) that the man in the Union Jack costume is Brian Falsworth, not killed by a grenade after all in the prior installment. In issue 21, he reveals that he escaped the blast and rescued his father, Dyna-Mite, and Oskar, then accepted his father's bequeathal of the Union Jack costume before returning to the fray. When Brian unmasks for the group, Dyna-Mite's full memory returns.

Namor takes longer than expected to recover from the Nazis' drugs, while Toro remarks that the drugs had a stronger than expected effect on him. While the Torch promises to explain the latter, the former goes unexplained for now.

When Toro is shot, the Torch burns the gunman to a crisp -- the first time, so far as I can recall, that an Invader is explicitly shown to kill an enemy in this series.

The minister marrying Master Man and Warrior Woman is crushed by debris during the fight, leaving it to Hitler to hastily pronounce them man and wife as he flees.

The Invaders escape Germany with Colonel Dietrich as their prisoner, and he promises to restore Dyna-Mite to normal size after they get back to England.

My Thoughts: As noted above, I have no idea why this story was split into two nine-pagers. Part 1 ends suddenly with no warning, and part 2 opens just as abruptly. It's quite clear the story was intended to fill one issue. But, taken together as the single story it was meant to be, this is a satisfying conclusion to the epic that began way back in issue 16 with the kidnapping of Private Biljo White (remember him?!). The Invaders go from England to Germany and back again, teaming up with the mighty Destroyer, battling Nazi spies, Master Man, Warrior Woman, and Hitler himself, over the span of no more than two nights across six issues. And the saga isn't over yet! Toro's fate still hangs in the balance, and will be resolved next issue.

And along the way, they gain their newest and final member, Union Jack (II). I have no idea if, when they introduced Lord Falsworth as Union Jack in issue 7 and then immediately crippled him in #9, Thomas and Robbins intended to reveal a son to take his place -- or whether they were perhaps responding to positive fan-mail in creating Brian and giving him his father's mantle. But in any case, Jack is back, as they say, and the Invaders are complete. This is the group I'm most familiar with from the various flashbacks and retroactive stories I've mentioned before: Captain America, Bucky, the Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch, Toro, Spitfire, and Union Jack. It took twenty-one issues to finalize the lineup, but it's been a great (if occasionally uneven) ride so far -- and I look forward to watching this group in action for the remainder of the series -- which, for those who like to keep count, will amount to another twenty or so issues.