INVADERS #30

"FIVE AGAINST THE FLYING DEATH!"
Guest Writer: Don Glut | Penciler: Alan Kupperberg | Inker/Embellisher: Frank Springer
Colors: George Roussos | Letters: Jim Novak | Editor: Roy Thomas

The Plot: Aboard Namor's flagship in the British skies, the Invaders battle the Teutonic Knight's "Flying Death" -- or der Fliegentod. When the craft blasts a building, Namor flies out to save it from toppling. Meanwhile, the Human Torch distracts the Flying Death from without, while Captain America, Union Jack and Spitfire board the craft. They easily dispatch its crew, but the Teutonic Knight appears, holding Doctor Barrow hostage. The three Invaders save Barrow and knock out the Knight, while the Torch takes out the Flying Death's final blaster. But the ship suddenly begins shaking. Doctor Barrow realizes the engine is disabled, and the Flying Death is about to crash.

The Torch helps Namor get the damaged building fused back together, but Spitfire arrives a second later, having bailed out of the falling ship. She enlists the pair to stop its fall, and then the Invaders turn the Teutonic Knight over to the British authorities. But their mission is not finished: having been informed by the Knight that Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery are in town for a secret meeting and are the targets of a Nazi kidnapping squad, the Invaders find the meeting spot and rescue the British leaders, capturing the squad as well.

Their mission now complete, the Invaders head home aboard Namor's flagship, content that the Flying Death has proved an unfeasible experiment for the Germans.

Continuity Notes: Two footnotes to last issue explain that the Teutonic Knight met Cap, the Torch, and Namor all individually in 1941, and that those meetings allowed him to steal and/or kidnap ever resource necessary to construct der Fliegentod. There's also a footnote a page later, referencing Spitfire's blood transfusion from the Human Torch in issue 12.

When they board the Teutonic Knight's craft, Cap and Union Jack are shown to explicitly understand the Nazi soldiers when they speak in German. It's not clear, however, whether Spitfire can comprehend the language as well.

Following his capture, the Knight is unmasked as a well-known German religious fanatic.

The Nazi kidnappers are led by Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, with a footnote directing readers to SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS #14 for more on the villain.

My Thoughts: I'm rarely one to complain about long-term serialization in my comics. But just the same, there's something nice, sort of "palate-cleansing" when you get to the end of a long, drawn-out storyline -- or even multiple storylines linked together by a common thread -- and find yourself with a simple done-in-one (or, as the case may be, done-in-two) story before moving on. Case in point: the Invaders set out to rescue Private Biljo White in issue 16, which led into a multi-chapter epic behind enemy lines, running through issue 21, where Toro was shot -- and that, in turn, led to Bucky's quest for Doctor Sabuki and the subsequent fight with Agent Axis in issues 26 through 28.

In between, of course, we had a couple sidebars with the origin of Toro and the appearance of the Scarlet Scarab (plus a pure reprint issue in #24) -- but nonetheless, the Biljo White story directly resulted in Toro's injury, which occupied the series, whether in the background or at the forefront, for several more issues. That's basically a year of continuous storytelling! Which means this two-parter, with no continuity threads tying to issues either before or after, feels downright quaint. Naturally, part of the reason it stands alone and separate from the ongoing saga is that it's written by a guest scripter, but I think the point stands.

And speaking of our writer for these two issues (plus the next, as we'll soon see) -- I like him! I've complained more than once about Roy Thomas somehow having a poor grasp of the seventeen-page story format, either padding things out for multi-parters, or cramming too much into single-issue tales -- but I feel like Don Glut gets it just about right, here. The first issue is entirely setup, as Thomas often does, with the second issue being the main action of the story -- but where Thomas's part ones often tended to feature gratuitous action scenes just to meet whatever quota he had in his head for those sorts of things, Glut simply uses a flashback device to both set up his story and provide the requisite action. It works way better than the Thomas style.

Which is a good thing, because Thomas will, before too much longer, step away entirely from writing INVADERS and turn the job over to Glut on a permanent basis. But we're not there yet! We've got one more Glut "guest" issue before Thomas comes back, so let's reconvene next week to check it out.