by Josh Powell, Editor-at-Large

This month Penguin Classics released a new batch of Silver Age shenanigans from Marvel’s toddler days.  The venerable highbrow-for-your-home collection Penguin Classics that started with The Odyssey in 1946 finally expanded to include modern mythology last year when they printed curated compilations of Spidey, Cap, and the Black Panther’s earliest adventures.  This year Marvel’s section of the canon grows to six with the inclusion of core “team” books, The Avengers, The X-Men, and, or course, The Fantastic Four.

It is, of course, debatable whether throwaway children’s entertainment from sixty whole years ago really deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with Don Quixote and The Aeneid, though lord knows they reference them enough (as the introduction points out, former high school English teacher Roy Thomas, Stan Lee’s successor as Editor-In-Chief when he headed west to conquer Hollywood was a particular lover of the “classic” Classics), but what is unquestionable is that each of these handsomely curated time capsules are fascinating cultural artifacts in their own right, worth owning for Marvel fans or students of the genre who are interested in seeing the origins of all the crazy lore continuing to unfold at a faster and faster pace at a bookstore, movie theater, and streaming service near you.

Each volume of Penguin Classics Marvel Collection reprints the series introduction by comics historian and academic Ben Saunders (Do The Gods Wear Capes) and an individualized foreword and volume introduction by academics and writers who all clearly know their way around a comic book.  The stories themselves are faithfully reprinted with all of the continuity boo-boos, forgotten topical references, and then-radical-now-reactionary political stances gloriously intact.  Even the letters pages are reprinted, providing a narrow but interesting look at what was going on in The World Outside Your Door when Kennedy was still alive and only proto-hipsters had heard of the Beatles or Vietnam.

About 15 issues are reprinted in each volume of Penguin Classics Marvel Collection, with a couple of relevant bonus featurettes (Ant-Man’s real first appearance in the pre-Marvel days as your standard 50’s scientist-cipher who hammers himself with his own invention is representative), and the only (merciful) concession to revisionism is reprinting the artwork with modern processes on much higher-quality paper so as to spare us the tiny-dots-on-newsprint look that Lichtenstein co-opted around that time.

The selections in each case are carefully chosen, covering approximately the entire first decade of each title’s run, an issue or a short sequence here and there, showcasing the origin of the character and major villains and supporting cast, and even significant changes in the production team, like when other writers and artists replaced Lee and/or Kirby.

Stan and Jack’s fingerprints are of course all over the entire Penguin Classics Marvel Collection series, even after both had taken their leave of actual production duties.  Both men’s shortcomings are written into the DNA of Marvel and comics in general at this point, but their weird chemistry, the main reason anybody still cares, is also on full display.  For one thing, the famed Marvel style of production that led to their notorious later squabbles over authorship, is clearly in operation.  Comics readers often assume that the writer bangs out the script with relevant descriptions and hands it off to the artist who brings it to life, embellishing here and there.  But since for all intends and purposes Lee and Kirby were the early production team, for productivity reasons (mainly) Stan would sketch out a story idea and maybe a few key scenes and then Kirby would actually compose the book as seen while he drew it, making most of the decisions of blocking and staging.  He would then give it back to Lee to add captions and dialogue, putting him in the odd position of interpreting the story before him as much as writing it.  Stan used to maintain this peculiar method of collaboration made the art sync with the action precisely and leant the Marvel mags their distinctive vitality.  Probably it did, but there are numerous instances where you can catch the writer explaining (over overexplaining, as when some split-second event happens and the characters with their lightning-fast reflexes have no time to do anything- but describe it) to themselves things that just make no sense, desperately trying to figure out along with the reader what is going on as the artist hurdles pell-mall into chaos.  (“Suddenly, fireballs shoot in from the left of the panel as the villain’s lair proves itself a combatant as well!  Deftly, the Fastest Man in the Room explodes into action, his incredible agility saving him from harm as he rushes to stop <somebody’s> gauntleted hand from pushing a fateful button!!  Whoops, no, wait, somebody else is here now, having escaped from the deathtrap that would have destroyed any lesser being a few panels ago…”)

The other really interesting thing about reading these old stories is that the characters act very differently at times with what readers familiar with them will expect.  Part of that is differing baseline norms of what a hero would be and do, but also just simply are that their creators are still trying to figure out who these people are, similar to Leonard Nimoy as Spock the “Vulcanian” excitedly shouting for Dr. McCoy to stop fooling around and kill the creature that was menacing Kirk in an early episode of Star Trek.  Taking the Avengers volume as an example, they spend an inordinate amount of time fighting each other, of course a popular super hero pastime to this day, but here incessant as the Hulk switches from being a member of the team to the object of their pursuit literally from issue to issue, and sometimes within the same issue.  I thought it might have to do with his variable number of fingers and toes, and maybe I could have carried home one of the first No-Prizes for my theory, but alas, too late.  Namor is also a recurring antagonist, both for the Avengers and FF; what would later be downgraded to mere hauteur is here outright genocidal rampaging in between attempts to woo and/or simply carry off the not-entirely-not-into-it Sue Storm.

 Speaking of Sue, women fare about as poorly as you would expect in what is essentially a Shonen mag overseen by a couple of guys from the 20’s.  The Wasp in particular gets it really badly as basically an adjunct to her boyfriend’s power set.  Hank Pam is a true jerk in almost every line of dialogue with her, at one point literally interrupting himself to tell her to shut up.  Janet herself does get her share of hero moments but doesn’t really have opinions about anything except how dreamy Thor is.  For which she is duly shamed.  But hey, the thunder god is a hunk, as Chris Hemsworth adequately displays, and anyway, let’s look at her options: sitting around the meeting table when she makes this observation, there is, clockwise, her actual boyfriend (dick), Iron Man (completely concealed, may be a robot), the Hulk (outright monster, and also dick), and Thor.  A clear case of an “office 10” if there ever was one.

And then there are the ideas that just didn’t work, from window-dressing characters like Rick Jones and his whole Teen Brigade of ham radio operators show up with dismaying regularity purporting to be useful, as already middle-aged Stan and Jack cast about desperately for some unnecessary Modern Youth angle despite having no real idea what they were like.  The virtual love triangle that prevails between him, Cap, and the Hulk over who will have benefit of his sweet, sweet sidekickery is also a strange spectacle to 21st-century eyes.  Alter-egos were also scrupulously observed, like the now-discarded Dr. Don Blake, lame in more ways than one.  The FF did quite well in the Villains sweepstakes, with everyone from Dr. Doom to the Molecule Man to Galactus showing up in the first 50 issues, while the X-Men (plus one chick) largely had to content themselves with Magneto and his Brotherhood (plus one chick) of Mutants Who Strangely Considered Themselves Evil.  The Avengers come in last, typically fighting amongst themselves (not surprising when you realize how many members of their variable roster are or were villains (Vision, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, arguably Pym, and of course the Hulk).  When not fighting each other, they pretty much had to content themselves with who-cares villains like Attuma, basically Genghis Khan of the sea, who were good for a beatdown or two, but are not exactly the Red Skull.

Anyway, pick up Penguin Classics Marvel Collection, if you can.  Any one of them is hours of good reading, both for the comics themselves and for the thoughtful reflection on what it all means by modern scholars.  A legitimately fascinating look at the earliest roots of a juggernaut that for better or worse has almost completely taken over popular culture.  Here’s hoping Dr. Strange, Daredevil, and Millie the Model make the cut for the next batch.

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives the Penguin Classics Marvel Collection edition of circa 1960s Marvel-ry 6/5 decades (and counting) of the strange hybrid mythology of our times.

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