INVADERS #36

"CRUSHED BY THE IRON CROSS!"
Writer/Editor: Roy Thomas | Illustrators: Alan Kupperberg & Chic Stone
Letterer: Joe Rosen | Colorist: Carl Gafford | Consulting Editor: Jim Shooter

The Plot: The Liberty Legion confronts Iron Cross, who holds Miss America captive. Iron Cross easily defeats the team and then has his henchmen load them into a truck, along with his prisoner, Professor Schneider. Meanwhile, Whizzer, Captain America, the Human Torch, and Namor spot a train in trouble and stop to aid it. By the time they arrive at the site of the Liberty Legion's battle with Iron Cross, all participants are gone. But Namor is able to use Miss America's still-active distress signal to trace her location.

Meanwhile, Iron Cross and all his prisoners are aboard a German submarine, where Schneider deduces Iron Cross's true identity as his childhood friend, Helmut Gruler. Gruler threatens to kill the Liberty Legion if Schneider doesn't aid him in upgrading his armor, which Schneider himself had originally created. But at that moment, Namor's flagship arrives, and the Sub-Mariner disembarks to attack the U-boat. He battles Iron Cross underwater, and the submarine suffers collatoral damage. But in addition to the sub springing a leak, the impact also awakens and frees the Liberty Legionnaires. The group subdues Iron Cross's henchmen, while Cross himself boards the ship and grabs Schneider.

Iron Cross flees to the surface with Schneider, leaving Namor behind to deal with the sinking submarine and trapped Legionnaires.

Continuity Notes: A footnote reminds readers that Iron Cross captured Professor Schneider last issue. Later, Schneider recaps his past with Helmut Gruler: They grew up together, best friends, but drifted apart when Hitler took power and Gruler began to sympathize with him. Gruler then continues the story, describing how the two lost touch for years until Gruler looked up his old friend, but found that he had already defected to America, leaving the Iron Cross armor, which he had designed for a true, freedom-loving German to wear after Hitler was toppled, behind.

Gruler states multiple times that he is a German, but not a Nazi -- i.e., that he serves the interests of his country whether he agrees with those leading it or not.

On the final page, Whizzer suggests that Cap submerge Namor's flagship so it can rescue the Liberty Legion, but Cap exclaims that, unfortunately, in all the many months the Invaders have been together, cruising around Europe and across the Atlantic in the craft, Namor never bothered to show anybody how to perform that simple function.

My Thoughts: And that's a wrap on Roy Thomas! As of next issue, frequent guest-writer Don Glut will take over for the remainder of the series (which, as I've noted a few times, is not that much longer -- only five issues after this one). I kind of imagine Thomas had intended to come back to the series, though. He remains as editor through to the end, and he's leaving here on a cliffhanger -- I would think he had planned to finish this story but was unable to. And then, with the series limping to an end (and with an impending departure from Marvel upcoming due to disagreements with Jim Shooter), he probably just decided to step away and let it run out the clock without him.

Way back last year, when I started this project, I commented that I have never really enjoyed Thomas's writing all that much. I will admit this is based on a small sample size, however, both coming when I was in college: I believe my first encounter with Roy was in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #100 and the few issues immediately following. I distinctly remember literally nearly falling asleep as I struggled through his walls and walls of prose in those issues. And my next exposure to him was in an AVENGERS: KREE/SKRULL WAR trade paperback. I couldn't even make it through that thing. The prose was so dense, so flowery, and, for the most part, so absolutely unnecessary beside the imagery it accompanied, that I couldn't take it. To this day, I have never finished the "Kree/Skrull" storyline.

After those two experiences when I was around nineteen or twenty years old, I went out of my way to avoid Roy Thomas. I'm sure I still encountered him here and there as I read various random back issues and stories over the years (the debut of Iron Fist comes to mind), but I actively avoided any extended storylines or runs from him. (With one exception: maybe about ten years ago, I read all of the original run of RED SONJA, which I mainly wanted to check out for Frank Thorne's artwork. I found Thomas just as eyelid drooping then as I had a decade earlier.)

To me, over the years, based on those brief exposures, Thomas had become the poster child for over-writing a comic book. More than Chris Claremont. More than early Stan Lee, who could be rather verbose as well. More than anyone else, Thomas exemplified, in my mind, the somewhat full-of-himself comic book writer who would not -- could not -- let the artwork tell the story with minimal assistance. One of those writers who needed to see his words on the page to show how important his job was to the process. Which is totally unfair to Thomas; from what I've seen in various columns and interviews over the years, he has nothing but the utmost respect for his artistic collaborators. Yet I've never quite been able to figure out how "respect for the artist" and "cram as many words as possible into every panel, including descriptions of things the artwork shows perfectly well" can co-exist in one single writer -- yet somehow, I guess they do.

So I picked up INVADERS with some trepadition. It was a series I had long fancied reading, but had long put off due to Thomas's participation. But, ultimately, I figured it was only about forty issues, and it was created during Marvel's era of the seventeen-page story, so it couldn't be that bad. I took the plunge and gave it a try. And, as I hope I've made evident over the past several months, I've really enjoyed it. Do I still think Thomas overwrites? Absolutely. Do I think, circa 1979, that he's a Silver Age writer who hasn't evolved into the Bronze Age style? Definitely. Did I find his obsession over certain minutiae of continuity distracting? Certainly. (And I love continuity minutiae!)

But did I find any of this a slog? Did I drop off to sleep mid-issue at any point? No! I really liked most of the stories. And, though I've mentioned several times that I don't quite think Thomas had a grasp on pacing his stories for a seventeen-page runtime, I do think that shorter length generally helped me cope with him. The only issues where I really found myself bored were, not surprisingly, GIANT-SIZE #1 and the annual -- both extra-length installments.

So here we are. I survived thirty-six Roy Thomas comics, less a few fill-ins. (Hey, that would look good on a T-shirt!) And I enjoyed the ride pretty much all the way through. That said, I did generally think Don Glut was a better scripter than Thomas, and I look forward to finishing out the series with him.

Oh, what about this issue? Well, it's about time Namor got a showcase! Cap and the Torch have had most of the big moments lately, with Namor relegated to their background muscle. Seeing him dive in and battle Iron Cross one-on-one makes this issue worth the price of admission.