Monday, December 7, 2015

Groovy Age Gold: "The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner Fighting Side-by-Side!" by Burgos and Everett

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! Ya know, back during the Groovy Age, the Dread Deadline Doom was an unwelcome visitor to many a Marvel mag. It always meant a reprint instead of a new adventure, and that, baby, was a big-time bummer. Usually. Sometimes, that reprint was something so cool that it actually made that reprint ish desirable. Case in point: Invaders #24 (October 1977) and "The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner Fighting Side-by-Side!" Not only did we get a cool team-up, written and illustrated by two honest-to-Irving legends, Carl Burgos and Bill Everett...Not only did we get a feature length Golden Age tale featuring Marvel's two original heroes, Torchy and Subby, natch (sans 7 pages, thanks to comics 17 page ceiling at the time--which was stretched to 19 pages just this once)...But we learned that this was the very first "Marvel Team-Up" (though Marvel was Timely back in 1941)! How cool is that! Stick that bad-boy under a Gil Kane/Frank Giacoia cover, and you have thirty-five cents worth of WOW!!




















Oh, yeah, the full version of this classic first appeared in Marvel Mystery Comics #17 (cover-dated March 1941).
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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousDecember 7, 2015 at 9:19 AM

    Hi Folks, Help me out here... Did Marvel ultimately decide that this Human Torch was an android and stick with that? Also was his sidekick Toro an android or human? Finally, wasn't Sad Sack part of the Invaders team, too? It's tough getting older...

    ReplyDelete
  2. William PrestonDecember 7, 2015 at 4:13 PM

    I think the Vision inherited the Human Torch's android body. Toro is a human.

    And Sad Sack was Harvey comics.

    ReplyDelete
  3. RussDecember 7, 2015 at 8:51 PM

    Wasn't Sad Sack the guy from the Microverse who could control your emotions?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownDecember 10, 2015 at 11:14 PM

      No, that's PyschoMan from the microverse... Sad Sack was an army GI in Harvey comics.
      There is a schism in Marvel comics over whether the original Human Torch was recycled into the Vision's construction by Ultron...OR, if the Mad Thinker burried him in a grave marked as Toro...

      Toro was always depicted as a human boy, until Sub-Mariner #14...a key silver age Marvel book...and Human Torch was recovered in West Coast Avengers #50.

      For more on the diverging timeline that split into different realities, read the incredible "Avengers Forever" TPB by Kurt Busick

      Delete

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


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