The Avenger #1This series is a carbon copy of WWII Era superhero stories with an anti- warlike dictatorship private citizen taking it upon himself to fight evil wrong-doing, only set during The 1950s Cold War against The Russian Communists. The book is divided into 3 short episodes, which, to me, though related, should be longer, to provide more plot development, detailed setting, and character development. The stories have interesting premises, action, suspense, and intrigue. But, are too sketchy due to the shortage of pages. The artwork is decent, but nothing special. To my taste, this book is also too political and too much of a propaganda tool for teaching the value of allegiance to the government to the US children who would read it. All in all, it was mildly entertaining, but not my cup of tea.
The Fog RobbersA high school teacher working on making an air-blackening chemical fog is weird enough. But what are the odds that foreign agents would find out he was working on that before he reveals his discovery to The American civil (police) or military authorities? Are they watching ALL the high school chemistry teachers in USA???
Death Has Three FacesThis episode is way too ridiculous for my taste, unless it happens to be played for comedy, which, for me, would also require wild, comedic-looking drawn figures, rather than realistic style. A man falls into the caldera of a volcano and is not burned to a crisp by the several thousand degree heat.
Riding a sea turtle several miles and directing it to an island where he wants to go, is already quite far-fetched. But taking a land tortoise, with legs and feet, rather than flippers, is way too ridiculous for my taste, and unnecessary for getting that effect.
The Red Hand of TerrorI think this story, taking place in Berlin, should have had more pages to show more of the city, and should have shown several bombed-out areas, and skeletons of buildings, as many were still around from 1945 all the way into the mid 1950s. The story of The Avenger rescuing a scientist from his Russian captors, and delivering him safely to USA, and keeping his valuable discoveries away from the enemys hands, and delivering them to the US military, has already been used earlier in this book.
The Birth of The AvengerThis is somewhat of an origin story of The Avenger. As it is very short, and doesn't have all that much information in it, I'm guessing that there might have been a more official, longer, main origin story, IF the series was around for a decent number of years. But knowing that Magazine Enterprises wasn't operating very long, as comic book publishers go, maybe this was the ONLY origin story?
The Avenger's origin is mildly interesting; and partly for that reason, and its lack of ridiculous story elements, this story was more interesting to me than the first three.
Its shortness, and the often sparse backgrounds in most panels wastes the possibility of giving the setting, post WWII Vienna, the meeting place of Communist and Western spies and special agents, and opportunistic profiteers, defeat the great possibility for giving this story the feeling of suspense and intrigue of the 1950s film,
The Third Man. As a writer and artist, I'd have wanted to use the full 30 pages of a 36-page comic book, to tell such a story in a lot more detail, and really make the reader feel like he or she is living the storys events, right there with the main characters.
I think the author should have told the reader that The Avenger dared the dangers of going into The Red-held sector of Vienna, rather than implying that ALL of Vienna was in the hands of The Communists. That city was divided between the Russian, British, French, and US Zones, just as Berlin was.
Captain Flash #1The BeginningI like the first book named for the lead character having his origin story as the first, and introduction story (regardless of whether or not that character was previously introduced in a mixed-feature anthology series).
This appears to be a clone of Batman and Robin. Same old story of the superhero being soaked with atomic rays in an accident, and becoming super strong (and, in THIS case, invincible - which I really detest!). So we always know who will win in the end, and that nothing can hurt him. I wonder if a single element is later found to be dangerous to him, as Kryptonite is to Superman? Otherwise, we NEVER get the suspense of worrying about his safety and well-being.
The Iron MaskLos Palmos?
? Palm tree is a feminine noun in Spanish. These New York writers must never have gone to Spanish Harlem!
This story has a clever plot line, that the villain has used robots to mimic the tribulations experienced by Odysseus and his crew during their adventurous travels on their return to Greece from Ilium in Homer's Odyssey. But this story has too little space, so it is way too choppy, and unsatisfying, because it could have been so much better with development of the Greek and Italian islands' settings, and more action scenes of conflict between Captain Flash and the robots, and some character development showing some motivations of The Mask, and some more space to include more despicable deeds by the latter, to build up the danger of his power to the people of Atom City (an incredibly bad choice of a name for the city where The Hero resides, and performs his magnanimous deeds to help its population). I understand the need to use a made up city name. But that choice is ridiculous, and the camp, comedic value of the gag is lost after the first page one reads it. All in all, it's too short a story to introduce such a promising villain. We can't feel or appreciate the danger he is to the people and their way of life. I hope he is developed a lot more in subsequent stories (episodes).
TomboyA pre-teen, or early teenaged girl as a superhero! Personally, I think it's a lousy idea, and it reeks of an early form of political correctness, with a vain effort to try to attract some young female readers added on. And, of course, the secret superhero's father is the Chief of Police, or, at least a high-ranking officer. Again, this story suffers from being too short. I'm assuming that The Claw escaped his almost certain death in the plane crash, to show up again in another episode. I hope his character gets developed more, because it has some nice possibilities (of which we saw NONE). What a waste!
The Young Brave (2-Page Text Story)This is the best story I've read in both books, so far. It is realistic, and could really have happened some 200+ years ago. And, other than the made-up tribal names (which probably were a necessity to avoid any complaints from existing tribes), there were no inaccuracies related to history, geography or the way The real World works, which are so often found in comic book stories. And the story had suspense and held my interest to the end. It is one of the best filler text stories I've ever read in a comic book.
The MirrormanHaving the mirror monster kill a human to drain the silicon from his body is absurd, given that there is an extremely low level of silicon in the average human body(possibly less than 1000th of a percent of ones total mass, and the likelihood that almost all, if not all that exists there is only a contaminant, rather than a material essential for life, AND the fact that 90 percent of The Earth's crust is composed of silicate compounds. The monster would be MUCH, MUCH better off to chew rocks, than try to suck ALL the microscopic tiny dose of silicon from humans, one at a time.
The human body is made up mostly of oxygen (65%), with Carbon a distant 2nd (18%), and nitrogen again a distant 3rd(3%). Everything else is in minute quantities (including Calcium in the bones and teeth-(1%)). And there are FAR, FAR, more convenient sources of those 4 gasses and minerals than human's bodies. This makes absolutely no sense at all!
Trying to kill people by sucking the trace quantities of silicon (a bodys contaminant) is a strange strategy. If the crocodilian-looking monster wants to kill scientists, he could just bite their heads off. And, of course, this story has the oft-used, ridiculous premise that a being from a mirror dimension can enter it from our Earthly dimension through one mirror and come back into our dimension through ANY other mirror in our dimension!
Captain Flash fends off Mirrorman (the monster) sending him back into his mirror dimension, and saves the police chief (lieutenant), and we hear the verbal threat from the monster that the 2 of them will see each other again. Again, this story has too few pages to start developing the villain as a horrible threat, and as a mystery that can't wait to be solved. It is really a lot tougher to get an emotional response from the reader actually living in the story when the stories have just a handful of pages.
Author
Topic: Reading Group #253 - The Avenger & Captain Flash: 1950s Heroes (Read 1823 times)
