CAPTAIN AMERICA #253 & #254

So, since we just wrapped up the entirety of the original INVADERS series last week, and since today happens to be Independence Day, the most patriotic holiday here in America, I figured I'd take advantage of the happy coincidence to dust off a couple of Captain America-themed posts from the early days of the blog which serve as a bit of a coda to the adventures of the Invaders.

In 1980/81, Roger Stern and John Byrne had an acclaimed and all-too-brief turn as the creative team on CAPTAIN AMERICA. And their final real story (not counting the retelling of Cap's origin they did an issue later) revisited the Invaders. I have to admit, it never really dawned on me how soon these issues came along after INVADERS ended! That series' final issue was cover-dated September of 1979, and this two-parter is from January and February of 1981. A mere fifteen months separated the conclusion of INVADERS and Stern's and Byrne's epilogue to the series!

(I suspect in part that's simply due to the fact that INVADERS feels like a Silver Age throwback to me. The artwork, the scripting style, even some of the plotting -- it's all incongruous with the Bronze Age that was in full swing alongside it. So even though I know when INVADERS was published, it feels like it was published about a decade earlier.)

So, without further ado, here are two posts that originally went up eight years ago, showing us whatever happened to the greatest heroes of World War II:

CAPTAIN AMERICA #253
CAPTAIN AMERICA #254

Okay, I actually do have one final bit of ado: I didn't reference it in the continuity notes for CAP 253, but you'll see it in a screenshot there: Jacqueline Falsworth (-Chrichton) mentions that her brother, Brian -- a.k.a. the Union Jack we just spent several weeks reading about -- died off-panel in a car accident after the war. Kind of an inauspicious end! Mind you, it makes sense that Stern and Byrne wanted the second U.J. off the table to tell their story of the mantle being passed. And yeah, it does add a bit of unfortunate realism to the proceedings -- not every hero goes out in a blaze of glory. But it still feels like a waste to see the character done away with via an offhanded remark like that.

See you in a week, when I reveal what's next on the schedule! (Though if you were reading the earliest INVADERS reviews last year, I already spoiled way back then.)

SONS OF THE TIGER PART 15 - MEANWHILE...

And now we wrap up the saga of the White Tiger with a couple of "reruns" from the earlier days of this blog. Way back in 2014, I looked at one of my all-time favorite Marvel runs -- Roger Stern's tenure on SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN from the early eighties. As part of his work on the former title, Stern decided to revisit Hector Ayala and, at least at the time, give his story a conclusion. Stern did a story about a hero-killing vigilante called Gideon Mace, and I suppose he needed to show that Mace was serious business, so he decided to have him cripple Spidey's pal from SPECTACULAR's earlier days.

When I read this at the time (and previously, in my younger days), I didn't think much of it since the Tiger was a curiosity and not a character with whom I was terribly familiar. But now, with the benefit of having seen his earliest appearances in DEADLY HANDS and some of his struggles in SPECTACULAR, Stern's callous treatment of the Tiger and his family, characters into whom Bill Mantlo clearly had invested a great deal of his energies and interest (and into whom George Pérez had injected biographical tidbits from his own life and family), reads differently, and is perhaps a blemish on his otherwise wonderful run.

But I'll let you decide! Following are my looks at the White Tiger backup serial Stern used to set up his Gideon Mace tale, and then Spider-Man's battle against Mace himself, originally posted here way back in the summer of '14:

PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN: THE WHITE TIGER SERIAL
PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #52

But if, after reading these stories, you think Roger Stern was rough on the Tiger, just remember that a couple decades later, in the pages of DAREDEVIL, Brian Bendis had him framed for a crime he didn't commit, after which he was gunned down and killed by cops while trying to clear his name.

So that's it for the White Tiger, but we're not quite finished with this saga yet. There's still one last big dangling plot left over from the final days of DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU, so I broke out the Comicraft fonts and prepared a little "primer" to get you ready for it: