Journey into Mystery 90

Trapped by the Carbon-Copy Man!

by

Stan Lee, Larry Lieber & Al Hartley

On the planet Xarta, a father and son, named Ugarth and Zano, lead a fleet of spacefaring, barbarian type people to attack Earth. Ugarth declares this mission to be his last. Once successful, he will give complete reign over to his son. The soldiers are wary of defeat, but Ugarth reminds them of their special abilities to insure their victory.

On Earth, Donald Blake is pacing in his lab. He wants to tell Jane Foster how he feels about her, but cannot come to grips with his situation of being weak and his secret of being Thor. Slamming his cane down in frustration, he turns into Thor and finally decides to tell her the truth. The next day, as Don arrives at his practice, he begins to talk to Jane. Suddenly Odin appears, visible only to Don. He tells him that he strictly forbids his son to reveal his secret identity to any mortals. Crushed, Blake brushes off his conversation with Jane. He then makes an excuse to work away from her for the afternoon at a charity hospital. Jane watches him exit, wishing he would be more brave like her idol Thor.

As Doctor Blake walks outside, he notices some very strange happenings on the street. The commissioner has apparently ordered for cars to now drive exclusively on sidewalks, forcing pedestrians to walk in the gutter. Elsewhere in the city, posters are being displayed on buildings instead of on billboards, bridges have been painted in polka dots and it has been declared “trust people week;” forcing everyone to keep their doors unlocked.  When Don has returned to his office that afternoon, he tells Jane that he now has a court summons.  Apparently treating charity patients is now against the law.

Suddenly Jane Foster starts uncharacteristically arguing that it should be against the law. She says, if people are so poor, they don't deserve medical treatment. So enraged at her employer, Jane quits. This alerts Blake that something must be going on for Jane to act so out of character. The whole city seems to be going mad. He decides to seek out the mayor in order to get to the bottom of it. Slamming down his cane, Don changes into Thor and takes off for city hall.

When Thor arrives in mayor Harris’s office, the mayor immediately calls for the guards to take him away. Thor spins his hammer around before the guards can nab him and flies back out the window. Outside, Thor gets his bearings. He uses his hammer to activate a specific moment in his life that he can’t recall. At some point in the distant past, Odin had taught him the lesson that the simplest answer is usually the obvious answer. This makes Thor realize that since these people are acting weird and not themselves, they must not actually be themselves at all. With this in mind, Thor makes a search of the city.

As twilight falls, Thor finds a group of felled trees on the outskirts of town. Behind these trees, Thor discovers a spaceship in hiding. He realizes it must be from another planet, because it is made up of metals not native to Earth. Laying his hammer down to feel along the hull for a hidden door, Thor is suddenly seized in some kind of magnetic pull that forces him against the ship. With Mjolnir out of reach, Thor reverts back to the lame-legged form of Dr. Blake.

Two Xartans appear to capture Don Blake. They haul him into their ship, where the mayor and Jane Foster are also held prisoner. Ugarth shows the captives their power of changing shape into any being. Zano demonstrates, changing into an imposter of Don. He goes on to explain that their plan is to impersonate people in key positions throughout the nearby city, in order to keep everyone distracted by the ensuing chaos as the waiting Xartan armada invades the world. They will repeat this process until the entire world is conquered. The mayor and Jane protest that they will never succeed as long as Thor is around. Don concurs, agreeing to lead the aliens to Thor’s capture; leading to more protest from mayor Harris and Jane.

Outside of the spacecraft, Don leads the aliens away. When their back is turned, he reaches for the uru hammer and turns back into mighty Thor. The aliens approach the thunder god. Ugarth calls for the other humans to come out and bear witness as he defeats their champion. As Thor turns to fight, Zano shapeshifts into an angular being made out of ice. He encases Thor in a block of ice, blasted from his fingertips. Before he is completely frozen, Thor throws his hammer so that it boomerangs back and shatters the frozen prison.

Zano transforms into a roman style gladiator. He tosses a steel net over Thor, but he counters by blasting a bolt of lightning at the alien. Kneeling in agony, Zano admits defeat as Thor easily tears the net apart and Jane cheers him on.

Ugarth swears to avenge his son and confronts the Norse god. As a more seasoned warrior, he promises more of a challenge. Ugarth fades from their very eyes. Like the Invisible Girl, Ugarth starts striking Thor as he can't see him. Thor struggles to come up with a plan. While he is pummeled about, Jane and the mayor grow more anxious. Suddenly, Thor has it. He uses his hammer to summon a rainstorm down. Paying attention to the water droplets, Thor is able to make out the space that Ugarth inhabits.

Pinpointing Ugarth, Thor takes up the steel net and wraps it around the Xartan leader. Secured in the net, Ugarth is flung around Thor’s head like his hammer. Thor lets go, slinging Ugarth out into space, right past the Xartan armada. The entire fleet retreats to rescue their leader.

Back on Earth, Jane and mayor Harris congratulate Thor on rescuing them. They wonder what to do about the remaining aliens. Thor has an idea. They will keep them here on earth as hostages to insure the Xartans will never invade again. Thor orders Zano to retrieve all of his agents still disguised in the city. Once that is done, Thor commands all of the aliens to take the form of trees. The thunder god explains that once the Xartans take on a form, they take on their entire traits. Meaning that now that they are trees, they cannot think to become anything else.

With the threat neutralized, Jane and the mayor praise Thor yet again. Before he leaves, Thor explains that Don Blake’s seeming betrayal was actually beneficial to them, so they shouldn't be mad at him. The two of them take him at his word. Soon after, Don returns to his office with Jane. She explains to him what Thor said about his help, but assumes he meant he just wanted Don out of his way.  Don turns to the audience with a smug look, saying, “we can’t all be as brave as Thor.”


Notes

This is the first time Thor is told by Odin that he is forbidden to reveal his secret identity to anybody. The first in a series of forbiddings.

Jane Foster continues her idolization of Thor.

Don Blake almost reveals his secret to Jane as well as his feelings for her.

Thor’s hammer has the power to recall past events, even if Thor has forgotten them.

Review & Rank

Why do Ugarth and his race care so much about earth? There is no explanation given beyond them wanting to conquer. The plot reason they attack Earth is because it is Thor’s book and he lives on Earth and if they attacked some other planet we wouldn’t have much of a Thor story. They try to add an additional layer to their personalities with Ugarth & Zano’s father/son dynamic, but they are still very bland, boring enemies. It would be a little better if they could have juxtaposed their relationship with that of Odin and Thor’s, but there is none of that.

I had trouble with Thor’s memory hammer. I guess it makes sense if Thor can’t recall specific events from his past just yet with him still being within a year of being reactivated. The explanation still seems a bit convoluted and it doesn’t really come across well in the narration boxes.

This is the worst art we have seen so far in these early Marvel issues. Al Hartley is a perfectly capable artist, who worked mostly in the romance/teen genre. I’m not trying to blame him at all because he does a few panels that show he knows what he’s doing (specifically during the Thor/gladiator fight sequence,) I just think his style really clashes with Thor. Don Blake and Thor look really cartoonish and off-model this whole issue. Jane isn’t too bad. The Xartans are just very generic humanoid aliens, there’s nothing that stands out about them to make them memorable at all. It might be fine if this were a humor or teen series, but it isn’t. The last panel of Don Blake looking right into the “camera” is so off putting, I just want to punch him in his stupid smug face.

This issue isn’t helped by Stan & Larry Lieber completely recycling a plot that was done so much better in Fantastic Four #2; Just replace Xartans with Skrulls and trees with cows. It also really feels like a story that they had sitting around and just tacked Thor onto it to make it a superhero comic.

I am giving this issue of Journey into Mystery the lowest rank so far in the entire list. It’s so convoluted. Nothing of value happens this issue. The one somewhat noteworthy thing happens in a cartoonish, off-model panel of Odin, when he should be one of the most dramatic figures of them all. The thing that tips it over for me to make it worse than Strange Tales #101 is the art and the really poor expositions. The explanation of Thor’s hammer memory is really confusing and comes across as silly. It really seems like a leap in logic to me from Thor  remembering Odin’s moral, that “the simplest explanation is the obvious explanation,” to realizing that everyone is an imposter.

If I had written this, I would have waited until after Jane Foster had been replaced for Don Blake to then try to reveal his secret to her, and then Odin interferes to forbid him and reveal that Jane had been replaced instead of this memory nonsense. It would juxtapose the father/son dynamic a little bit with the villains’. Bottom of the barrel for Thor and Marvel so far.

Next Issue: We say goodbye to the Incredible Hulk’s own title for awhile.

Fantastic Four 12

The Incredible Hulk!

by

Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers

Alicia Masters and Thing are on a date. As the couple leave a performance of Beethoven’s 5th, their conversation about music is interrupted rather rudely by a man pointing out the soldiers patrolling the Manhattan streets in front of them.  Thing starts to accost the rude man for his interruption, when the man’s shouts of panic are heard by a passing military unit. Witnessing his vast strength, the soldiers mistake Thing for their intended target. The troops surround Thing, who after making sure Alicia is safe, pulls out a fire hydrant next to him in order to slam his weight down on top of the water, making it geyser all over the soldiers.

Before Thing can escape the soldiers, they fire an entrapping device that shoots out of a bazooka style gun. After he easily busts out of the confines of the device, the soldiers shoot a heavy gas at him to knock him out, just in time for the captain of the unit to realize the mistake they’ve made. Minutes later, Thing comes to and the army captain profusely apologizes, explaining that they mistook him for the Hulk. As a frustrated Thing tries to retaliate, Alicia holds him back. After she manages to calm him down, Thing walks her home.

Leaving Alicia at her place, Thing arrives at the Baxter Building. Realizing he lost his special elevator belt beam thingy, he decides to tear open the elevator doors and climb up the cable, through the elevator shaft, to the 35th floor where the Fantastic Four’s headquarters are. When he arrives, the group notices his foul mood. The Thing tells them what happened on his date. This leads Reed and Sue to reveal that they just got a call from a General Ross, who is on his way to meet them about the Hulk. The Thing exclaims that he doesn't even believe in a Hulk, when suddenly their buzzer rings. Sue notices it is General Ross and lets him in.

General Ross and his aide, Captain Nelson, meet everybody before they get down to business. He explains there has been a national alert out for the Hulk. They suspect him of sabotaging certain missile defense systems in the southwestern region of the US. He points out that the mistake with the Thing happened because one of the main ways of recognizing the Hulk is his tremendous strength much like his. Showing the group a picture of the Hulk, Ross says he wants their help to capture and destroy him.

In the living room, General Ross continues his presentation. He runs the most recent footage captured of the Hulk destroying military equipment. The image of the Hulk frightens Sue, so that she loses control of her powers and starts to fade. When Reed comforts her, the team describes the various ways they plan on taking out the Hulk; Thing by brute force, Human Torch by making a maze of flame to confuse him and Reed by stretching himself flat on a ceiling and then dropping over the Hulk like a tarp. Sue makes a comment about how useless she’d be, but General Ross assures her that she’d be useful in keeping the men’s morale up and Reed concurs. Johnny gets so caught up in his fantasy that he forgets to turn his flame off before it burns out. Thing catches him and Ross admonishes Reed for having such a young member on his team. Reed explains that his powers are one of their most important weapons and he has great mechanical skills.

The Fantastic Four lead General Ross into their garage. There they show off their new and improved Fantasticar, which Johnny helped design. They all get into the vehicle and fly off towards General Ross’s base in the American Southwest. On the way there, Ross points out an example of some of the wreckage caused by the Hulk. After they land, they meet with Ross’s scientific executive, Bruce Banner, and his assistants, Rick Jones and Dr. Karl Kort. Bruce argues that the destruction couldn’t be the work of the Hulk because all of the equipment he supposedly destroyed happened from the inside out, not the other way as the Hulk would do. General Ross explains that he put this team together to go after the Hulk and that is what they are going to do. Reed and Bruce shake hands, expressing their admiration of each other’s work.

Out in the hall, the rest of the Fantastic Four wait for Reed and Bruce Banner to come up with a plan. Karl leaves to get back to work. As he passes by, a bored Thing and Human Torch tease him with their powers. The assistant flees from them and accidentally drops his wallet in his hurry.  Torch picks it up with a flaming lasso trick he’s been working on. Thing gets fed up with waiting and bursts into the meeting room with his teammates.

Thing, Human Torch and the Invisible Girl all burst into the office, startling those within. Sue snatches a gun out of one officer’s hand to prevent him from shooting them. General Ross has trouble calming them all down. Bruce Banner points out to the general that the team was invited there to help him, so they should all be in on the plan. When General Ross comments that he thinks Thing is afraid of the Hulk, Thing proves his might by taking Ross’s bound set of telephone books from a shelf and tears them all in half. Reed promises to reimburse him to calm the general down. Bruce informs the team that he and Rick believe the saboteur to not be the Hulk, but somebody they have dubbed “The Wrecker.” They can’t reveal that they know the Hulk is innocent because Bruce fears what would happen if his secret identity as the Hulk is exposed. Before the two of them take off, Johnny stops Rick to hand over the wallet Karl dropped in the hallway.

Bruce Banner and Rick Jones make their way to Banner’s secret lab in the caves. Bruce tells Rick that they are going to have to figure out how to expose The Wrecker in order to convince the FF and General Ross of the Hulk’s innocence. Rick is shown the scale model of project 34, the latest device Bruce has invented that The Wrecker has destroyed. It would be placed in the center of a city and produce electro-magnetic waves to blanket the area as an invisible shield against enemy missiles and aircraft. As Bruce continues to ponder, Rick realizes he still has Karl’s wallet. He heads out to return it to his home at the military base. As he approaches the building, he snoops through the wallet to find a card registering Karl as a foreign communist agent. Karl opens his door as Rick realizes this and pulls a gun on the boy.

Back at the main base, the Fantastic Four are helping General Ross out. Reed has repaired an experimental rocket sled for him and Thing is giving it a test run. Enjoying himself in the sled, it whizzes smoothly across the rails, until it comes upon a twisted up section of metal. The rocket sled slams into the busted rail, sending Thing careening through the sky from all the pressure built up behind him. Johnny flames on and immediately takes off to the rescue. He manages to grab hold of Thing, but his weight drags them both down. Human Torch falls in spirals to slow their descent, but his grip on Thing loosens. Reed stretches like a trampoline under his best friend, bracing his impact as he hits the ground. After they’ve gathered their wits, they argue with Ross that it was sabotaged. Suddenly Bruce Banner appears to inform them all that Rick Jones is missing and he suspects The Wrecker has kidnapped him. However, Thing is now convinced the Hulk is behind it all due to the twisted rail tracks. Bruce insists it is The Wrecker, but decides not to show them the note he found to Hulk, from The Wrecker, that says if he doesn’t get the Fantastic Four out of the area, he will harm Rick.

Bruce returns to his secret lab. Believing there is no way he can convince the Fantastic Four without revealing his secret identity, Bruce steps on his device that duplicates the gamma rays from the gamma bomb. Within seconds, he turns into the green, brute form of the incredible Hulk. Elsewhere underground, Karl Kort leads Rick from his own secret lab in the desert, through the catacombs to beneath a ghost town. Stalking the catacombs himself, Hulk is searching for project 34. Before he can go further, he hears voices just around a corner of the tunnel. It is the Fantastic Four, lead by Thing. He had a hunch there were tunnels below the rocket sled rails due to the ground having a hollow sound. As the Thing rounds a corner, he suddenly stands face to face with the Hulk.

Hulk throws the first punch, striking Thing off his feet. Human Torch blocks Hulk’s way, but the green behemoth scoops up a load of sand and dirt into him to extinguish his flame. With those two taken care of, Hulk emerges to the surface of the ghost town, assuming Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl have escaped there. After Hulk buries Torch and Thing in the rubble when he digs to the outside, Reed stretches his arms up through the cracks in the dirt to coil around Hulk. Hulk easily frees himself from Reed’s limbs to find the whole group free. He picks up an entire building structure and hurls it at them, but Thing manages to block it.

Believing his only hope is to beat the group separately to get to Rick, Hulk leaps to smash Thing. Reed curls around him again, but Hulk spins so fast that the centrifugal force unwraps the FF’s leader, leaving him sprawled on the ground. Human Torch proceeds to renew his attack, but Hulk slams his hands together with such might to create a sonic boom, powerful enough to knock everyone but Thing out. The two of them start really going at it, when suddenly a beam from underground strikes Hulk which knocks him out too.

Robbed of his victory, Thing burrows the ground up to find a giant robot which he quickly turns into scrap. Sue, who has awoken by now, tells Thing that she saw the beam of light that hit Hulk. Realizing it has been sabotage all along, Thing follows the tunnel to The Wrecker’s lair. Invisible Girl fades away and follows as Thing bashes the door to Karl’s lab open. Karl threatens to blast Thing with the ray he shot Hulk with, when the invisible Sue knocks it from his hands. Thing grabs Karl while Sue unties Rick Jones. Sue has to remind Thing not to harm Karl, the general will want to question the spy. Reed and Human Torch run in to find everything settled. Sue wonders what became of the Hulk.

Directly above the Fantastic Four, Hulk overhears their conversation. They all realized that Karl was the Wrecker and Hulk is completely innocent of any sabotage. Alone and weary from the ray blast, Hulk leaps to his underground lab to turn back into Banner. As the Fantastic Four and Rick Jones search for him on the surface, General Ross appears with Bruce to take Karl into custody. After Reed and Bruce exchange goodbyes, Bruce tells Rick he suspects Reed might know his secret. Before the Fantastic Four leave for New York, the military holds a ceremony in their honor. The next day, Hulk wonders if they will ever meet again as he watches the Fantasticar fly home.

Notes

Thing and Alicia Masters are definitely a couple in this issue. Their early romance works the best out of all of them because there are no confusing secret identity issues, there are no complicated triangles at this time and Alicia role isn’t diminished to being a nag.

So begins the biggest question in the Marvel Universe. Who wins between Thing and Hulk? More seriously, this begins the relationship between Thing & Hulk, which is a thing that gets developed over time.

In 12 issues, the Fantastic Four have gone from being feared and pursued by the government, to having ceremonies conducted in their honor by the military.








There is a miniseries that came out in 2004/2005 called Hulk & Thing: Hard Knocks by Bruce Jones & Jae Lee that completely revisits this whole fight between Hulk & Thing. It was around this time that my interest in modern Marvel comics started to wane, so I don’t have a lot of memory of it.








This is the very first comic to show that the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Marvel Universe is a shared universe. Two separate, established Marvel characters during the Marvel age. The very beginning of the Marvel Universe as a whole.

There was one very minor crossover before this. In the issue of Journey into Mystery/Thor 86 that introduced Tomorrow Man there is a panel of someone who looks just like General Ross, but he has one panel of dialogue, appears for only the one panel and isn't mentioned by name.






This is the first Marvel age crossover, however it is not the first crossover. During the golden age, when Marvel was Timely, Sub-Mariner and the original human-android Human Torch/Jim Hammond had a really neat crossover in the pages of Marvel Mystery Comics #8-10. We see the events from the Human Torch’s eyes and we see them from Sub-Mariner’s point of view and then they clash.





Review & Ranking

This is a very strong story. It sets up the Hulk/Thing dynamic in a good way. It’s a bit more layered of a story than we are used to in these early stories. The theme of mistaken identity runs throughout the whole issue.

Thing seems to be the main character focus of the story; it starts with him, he gets the most battle out of the Hulk and it’s mainly him with Sue’s help that resolves the main conflict. We learn more details, that he prefers jazz music to a symphony. The pathos always manages to center around either him or the Hulk.

Sue Storm is at her best in this issue. She is more alert and helpful than she’s been in the past couple of issues, helping to defeat the real villain.  We didn’t see her do this, but I imagine she’s the one who rescued Thing and Johnny when they got buried by Hulk, much like she rescues Rick at the end.

Johnny Storm is pretty much sidelined this whole issue; his attacks against Hulk are pretty weak, he doesn’t contribute much beyond getting the plot device (Karl’s wallet) from point A to point B.

Reed is in typical leader/genius mode, but for the first time he doesn’t have to know everything. Perhaps he has been a bit humbled by his switch with Doctor Doom a couple issues ago. I like that he is late to the resolution of the story (instead of having him explain everything because he’s the leader) for once.

Hulk seems a little toned down in his anger, but not too far off-character this early on. I think all of the Hulk related stuff is pretty good, except they are missing Betty Ross. By far the weakest element of this whole story is the villain, Karl Kort. We don't get a satisfying reason of how he got to be Banner’s aide or why he is sabotaging things beyond him being a communist spy, which is pretty much the definition of being shoehorned in.

The artwork in this starts out about average, but midway through it becomes really simple with a lot of empty backgrounds. There’s no real definition in most of the Hulk fight. It feels like Kirby or Ayers didn’t have a lot of time working on this one. It makes the main Hulk battle feel less intense overall.

I’m slipping this issue right below Fantastic Four #8. They both have a similar layered story structure, but FF 8 has much, much stronger artwork throughout. And I’m more interested in the Hulk crossover element than the Impossible Man story below it.

Next Time: Thor gets a new artist and has one of his worst adventures to date in a contender for worst Marvel Comic of the era.