September 1976: The Short Flight of the Human Rocket

What do you get when you cross Spider-Man with Green Lantern? Nova, the Human Rocket.

Introduced by writer Marv Wolfman and artist John Buscema in Nova 1 (Sept. 1976), the character was an attempt to recapture the teenage superhero lightning of Spider-Man in a bottle 14 years later. 

But instead of a bitterly alienated science nerd, Richard Rider was an ordinary high schooler, good-hearted but not overly bright. As with the Silver Age Green Lantern, his super powers are transferred from an endangered and dying alien champion. 

But the dying Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814, Abin Sur, had time to find the bravest man on Earth, Hal Jordan, and to use his power ring to check that he was also honest. The mortally wounded Centurion Nova-Prime Rhomann Dey just picked a kid at random.

And that angle gave the feature something of a Greatest American Hero vibe, with Rider learning to use his super powers on the job. And those were the satisfying if typical Standard Operating Procedure powers for a superhero — flight, super-speed, durability and super-strength.

His first run lasted only an unimpressive 25 issues. But I always thought Nova had potential, and at least his exit was as stylish as his entrance — for the final issue, his cover tag line was altered from “He’s here! The Human Rocket!” to “He’s gone! The Human Rocket!”

July 1968: Politics and Power

The month before the new magazine appeared, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of the recently martyred JFK, entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, citing “deep … divisions within our party and country” that made it  “…unmistakably clear that we can change these disastrous, divisive policies only by changing the men who make them.” And President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not seek that same nomination.

The very month the magazine appeared, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot on the balcony of a Memphis motel. Riots in more than 100 cities nationwide left 39 people dead, more than 2,600 injured and 21,000 arrested over the next week.

Meanwhile, back in the Marvel universe, New York City mayoral candidate Richard Raleigh is alliteratively named, like many Marvel heroes including Peter Parker himself, and appears to share their values.

Apparently an honest, crusading “law-and-order” candidate, the handsome Raleigh is in fact a power-mad schemer who is orchestrating super villain attacks against himself to put his election over the top.

“To me, you’re just another sheep … like all the unthinking masses,” Raleigh sneers at an aide. “One day, all who live will be my slaves!” This was the superhero version of Elia Kazan’s prophetic film A Face in the Crowd, released a decade before.

The new magazine reflected Stan Lee and John Romita’s zest for the zeitgeist. The real-world themes of political hypocrisy and an easily conned American public — even Peter’s friends MJ and Harry and his Aunt May support Raleigh — show that Lee and artist Romita were probably hoping this 35-cent magazine might appeal to a slightly more “grown-up” audience than the comic book.

The Spectacular Spider-Man was a first — the first Marvel magazine and the first such magazine devoted to a superhero — and one “second” (the second Spider-Man title).

Although the magazine was short-lived, the story was retooled for Amazing Spider-Man 116-117 (Jan.-Feb. 1973). By then, Nixon was terminally embroiled in Watergate.

1968 was, in several ways, a peak year for Marvel Comics.

March 1967: From Spiders to Beetles

Having left Spider-Man behind with issue 38 (July 1966), artist Steve Ditko, at the height of his powers, was in a perfect position to provide us with a capstone in the career of a surprisingly long-lived superhero, the Blue Beetle.

“Surprisingly” because the character began as Fox Comics’ cheap rip-off of the popular radio hero Green Hornet in Mystery Men Comics 1 (Aug. 1939).

I could understand criminals being afraid of a hornet. But a beetle?

Really?

In his debut story, dressed in a blue suit, mask and fedora, the Blue Beetle posed as a criminal mastermind and felled gangsters with gas, just like the Green Hornet.

Quickly re-imagined as beat cop Dan Garret (one T), and empowered by an armored costume and Vitamin 2X, the character gained his own title and even had brief exposure in a Jack Kirby newspaper strip and on radio.

Charlton Comics revived the superhero in the 1950s, and revamped him in 1964. This time, the Beetle was archaeologist Dan Garrett (two Ts) who acquired an array of powers — flight, telepathy, strength, the ability to project lightning and who knows what else — from an Egyptian scarab amulet when he pronounces the magic words “Kaji Dha.”

That’s the character Ditko used as a springboard for his own version, an imaginative one that reflected some of his Objectivist philosophical principles.

Introduced in Captain Atom 83 (Nov. 1966), genius millionaire industrialist Ted Kord inherited the identity but not the powers of the Blue Beetle from the dying Garrett.

Ditko seemed concerned to demonstrate that a person wouldn’t need super powers to handle whatever menaces appeared, but could rely on his own rationality, ingenuity and training.

Ditko’s story in Captain Atom 85 (March 1967) illustrates that theme. Disabling an enemy sub with his underwater bazooka, Kord fights off frogmen in hand-to-hand combat. And with the help of his versatile “Bug” air-sea craft, the Beetle rescues a falling jet and even fights off a giant octopus.

March 1966: Home is the Hunter

Many of Spider-Man’s early foes were animal-themed costumed adventurers, like him. And one of them was a thrill-seeking, macho master of such beasts.

“In all fairness, Amazing Spider-Man 34 isn’t a bad comic by any stretch,” observed the Marvel in the Silver Age blog. “It has some great developments — Peter (Parker) trying to strike up a conversation with Gwen Stacy for the first time and getting knocked back, and the plotline with Betty Brant exiting Peter's life —  but it can only compare poorly with the issues that immediately preceded it (the Master Planner plot). It does, however, bring back an old foe.”

Introduced in Amazing Spider-Man 15 (Aug. 1964), Kraven the Hunter was the orphaned son of Russian aristocrats. Living in Africa for 10 years, Kraven acquired superhuman strength and speed from an herbal potion he stole from a witch doctor in the Belgian Congo. Kraven was inveigled into stalking the superhero by one of Spidey’s first enemies, the Chameleon. Capturing Spider-Man represented a kind of ultimate challenge for the jaded swashbuckler.

“The villains Peter fights in the course of (Steve) Ditko’s Spider-Man stories are almost entirely older men who are inventors or scientists: the Vulture, the Tinkerer, Doctor Doom, the Lizard, the Beetle, and on and on,” observed Douglas Wolk in All the Marvels. “In particular, Doctor Octopus, a hilariously nasty old scientist named Otto Octavius, whose eight-limb motif echoes the spider design, represents the most horrible version of what the Peter Parker we saw in Amazing Fantasy 15 could have become: embittered, lonely, angry, condescending, really creepy about women. Kraven the Hunter isn’t a scientist, but he’s the jock-father sort, macho in a way Peter can’t be, and very much a pro-wrestling type in presentation.”

Kraven’s jungle milieu provided variety for the play of Ditko’s imagination.

“The jungle animals that surrounded Kraven the Hunter as he battled Spider-Man fascinated me,” recalled Jack C. Harris. “(T)hese beasts came to life under Steve’s pencil and pen.”

February 1965: How Grey Was My Gargoyle

Journey Into Mystery 113 (Feb. 1965) was equal parts soap opera and super heroics. 

Dr. Don Blake attempts to reveal his secret identity to nurse Jane Foster, not knowing that the perpetually pissed-off Odin has already robbed him of his power to transform into Thor. Jane naturally thinks he’s mentally unbalanced for claiming to be a thunder god. 

Then, when the Medusa-themed Grey Gargoyle invades Blake’s office trying to trace his enemy Thor, the mortal physician and his lady love find themselves on the run with a monotone monster hard on their heels.

“Anybody who can make a paper airplane into a dangerous weapon is a force to be reckoned with!” noted David Brosky.

The ensuing chase sequence by artist Jack Kirby, which wrecks a good part of Blake’s office building, has the vibe of one of Kirby’s pre-hero monster stories such as Monster at My Window (Tales to Astonish 34, Aug. 1962).

“Among other things, this well-done sequence reaffirms my sense that Thor worked better as a comics character when he was still vulnerable to shifting into mortal form,” observed Matthew Grossman. “Given the character’s power level, it made sense to me for him to have a weakness reminding him that mortality was, literally, always just a minute away.”

“Good on Jane!” remarked comics historian Mark Engblom. “Despite thinking Don may be mentally unstable, she still won’t ditch him... Also, as humble as this sequence appears to modern eyes, it can’t be overstated how radically different this approach was for superhero comics of that era! Could you imagine ANY DC superhero revealing his secret identity to his girl for ANY reason? Marvel once again turns the conventional superhero comic completely upside down!”

This story anticipates the 1981 film Superman II. In both, the protagonist renounces his superhuman powers for love of a woman, only to face an immediate superhuman threat that teaches him that he must sacrifice his own happiness for the safety of humanity.

January 1965: Failure’s Not an Option

This 1965 house ad features four issues that typify characteristics that made Marvel Comics unique.

At Marvel, superheroes were rarely permitted to fail. Instead, they were revamped and recycled until they clicked.

For example, after his own comic book ended with its 6th issue in March 1963, the Incredible Hulk was a monster without a title, wandering in the wilderness both literally and metaphorically. But Stan Lee kept him in readers’ sight, and in October 1964 the Hulk returned to share Tales to Astonish with Giant-Man.

That character had his own troubles, and in Tales to Astonish 70 (Aug. 1965) he’d be replaced by the Sub-Mariner — another super-antihero like the Hulk. But Giant-Man, too, wouldn’t be gone long. He returned in a new costume with a new name, Goliath, in The Avengers 28 (May 1966).

Fantastic Four 34 features the protagonists fighting each other, something they’d done frequently since their first issue. Conflicts between and within Marvel’s superheroes were one of the company’s innovative dramatic strengths.

And Spider-Man — seen here in Amazing Spider-Man 20 — became popular by exemplifying that very soap opera quality. Like all superheroes, he tended to battle villainous mirror images of himself — super-powered animal men like Dr. Octopus, the Vulture, the Chameleon, the Lizard and, here, the Scorpion.

In Tales of Suspense, Iron Man and Captain America flirted with real-world international politics. You didn’t see that at DC.

 “I liked Iron Man because I liked the idea of taking a guy who nobody’s ever made a hero of before — a guy who’s a member of the military-industrial complex — and making a hero out of him,” Lee recalled in 1983.

And here in Tales of Suspense 61, Captain America wades into communist Vietnam to rescue a missing pilot from the Viet Cong leader-cum-sumo wrestler General Wo.

But after all, Cap had worn his politics on his star-spangled sleeve ever since he was introduced giving Adolph Hitler a well-deserved punch in the snoot in 1941.

February 1964: The Men With the Power

In the early 1960s, Steve Ditko created two super-electrified characters, one for Charlton Comics and the other for Marvel Comics. Ironically enough, they were polar opposites.

In Strange Suspense Stories 48 (July 1960), Ditko gave us The Human Powerhouse, an ordinary accountant named George Clinton who finds himself mysteriously charged with electrical power.

Suddenly capable of torching trees and exploding boulders, Clinton somehow senses an approaching menace, “…a flock of gruesome living entities bearing new and terrible diseases to Earth from another galaxy.”

The supercharged accountant unleashes all his electrical power at once, destroying the cosmic threat and restoring some mysterious natural balance. 

The story is another example of Ditko’s recurring “Hidden Protector” theme, in which some obscure person wields uncanny powers but remains unheralded and unrecognized by those whom he shields from harm. 

And in Amazing Spider-Man 9 (Feb. 1964), Ditko and writer Stan Lee gave us The Man Called Electro, a villainous variation on the same theme.

“Even before he becomes Electro, (Max) Dillon is scum,” comics historian Jeff Rovin observed. “A lineman in New York, he refuses to help a fellow electrician trapped on a pole unless the foreman pays him a bonus; only after the man promises to pay him $100 does Dillon go up and help his tangled coworker.  However, while Dillon is lowering the man to safety, lightning strikes.”

Dillon not only survives, but finds that he’s become a living battery who can “…throw powerful bolts as weapons, set up electrical barriers, ride his bolts into the sky and control anything which operates electrically (including time-lock bank vaults),” Rovin noted.

Naturally, he becomes a costumed villain, and not a subtle one — he wears a green bodysuit decorated with lightning bolts and a five-pointed lightning bolt mask. And naturally, his schemes are thwarted by Spider-Man.

Ditko clearly had an affinity for the visual extravagance of people hurling bolts of energy — that was one of the appeals of his Dr. Strange feature. 

December 1963: The Senior Citizen Soars Again

The first old enemy to demand a return bout with Spider-Man was a really old foe — the elderly felon who called himself the Vulture.

As metaphors of energy, action and freedom, superheroes and super-villains generally skew pretty young — and so, after all, did their original audience. That made artist Steve Ditko and writer/editor Stan Lee’s decision to spotlight a clearly aged villain interesting and visually arresting. Even his name — Adrian Toomes — subtly suggests someone approaching the grave. 

The Vulture’s return in Amazing Spider-Man 7 (Dec. 1963) signaled that Spidey, like Batman and the Flash, would have a rotating rogue’s gallery.

Flight is a dream metaphor for freedom, a concept long dear to Ditko’s heart. So it isn’t surprising that he designed flying figures of a particular grace and visual appeal.

Superheroes’ archenemies are often their reversed mirror images, and that may explain part of the idea behind the Vulture — the teenaged animal-man hero versus the senior citizen animal-man villain.

Both hero and villain shared attitudes tinged by alienation, bitterness and isolation. But by his seventh issue, perpetually put-upon Peter Parker wasn’t quite so bitter. He even managed a humorous and happy ending with Betty Brant. Lee and Ditko were exploring the right balance between superhero action and soap operatic angst.

Had the Tobey Maguire movie series continued, John Malkovich would have been the first Vulture on screen, appearing in the fourth Spider-Man film. But two reboots later, the Vulture turned out to be Michael Keaton.

As in the comic book clashes between Spider-Man and the Vulture, 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming explored the theme of maturity versus youth.

The villains in these superhero films have been becoming progressively more relatable, building up to Keaton as the Vulture, a working-class antagonist who has what is finally a largely legitimate point of view. He’s right when he tells Peter Parker that, good lad though he is, there are certain sad facts about adult existence that he does not yet understand.

November 1963: The Amazing Snake-Man

In Journey Into Mystery 98 (Nov. 1963), the Mighty Thor faced a reptilian replica of Spider-Man.

Turns out radioactive snake bites have much the same effect as radioactive spider bites. Gaining super strength, super speed and the ability to cling to walls, treacherous research assistant Klaus Voorhees styles himself as the costumed criminal Cobra.

I enjoyed artist Don Heck’s run on the Thunder God’s early adventures. Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko couldn’t draw everything, obviously, so Heck and Lee gave us some stories crucial to early Marvel.

The Cobra didn’t pose much of a threat to the god of thunder, of course — nor did the villain who immediately followed, Mr. Hyde. They would eventually team up to provide a more credible menace, but even then Daredevil, a costumed acrobat, could kick their asses.

“The Cobra and Mr. Hyde pairing must have been an attempt to give an illusion of a threat to the Mighty Thor,” Vincent Mariani wrote. “But the real threat to the Thunder God was always the soap opera dynamic of Loki’s manipulative wiles and Odin’s patriarchal obliviousness.”

However, by this point, Thor’s feature wasn’t relying entirely on the villainous antagonists to sustain interest. 

Plotter Stan Lee had upped the dramatic ante with soap opera elements when he took over the actual scripting of the feature from Robert Bernstein the previous issue (Journey Into Mystery 97, October 1963). The story improvement was immediate and noticeable.

When the Lava Man attacks the city, nurse Jane Foster is comforted by Dr. Andrews because her employer, Dr. Don Blake, has suddenly disappeared (gee, I wonder why). After his alter ego averts the threat, Blake finds that the woman he loves has left him to work for Dr. Andrews.

Will Blake tell Jane he loves her? Will he reveal to her that he’s really Thor? Will Odin relent and accept their romantic relationship?

To find out, you’ll have to part with a dime and two pennies next month.

September 1963: The Web and the Flame

When Spider-Man co-starred in Strange Tales Annual 2 (Sept. 1963), the fourth issue of his own title appeared alongside it on newsstands. 

Even that early in his career, Spidey was clearly a star. And even then, I remember how odd I found it to see Spider-Man drawn by someone other than Steve Ditko. Rarely was an artist more completely identified with a character.

But then this was a Strange Tales Annual, not a Spider-Man Annual, and Jack Kirby often drew the Human Torch feature in Strange Tales. Ditko does ink the story, but it’s the Kirby style that stands out.

“It’s a fun issue that sparks off a nifty Marvel Universe tradition. Spidey and the Torch continue to get on each other’s nerves even after they team up, providing us with some funny banter,” observed Tim DeForest. “It’s the beginning of a mildly adversarial friendship that will be the springboard for many entertaining stories in the years to come. A minor corollary to this is that they meet atop the Statue of Liberty after they decide to join forces —this would become their usual meeting place whenever one of them needed to contact the other.”

And once the Torch and Spidey teamed up, the Fox — a vulpine-looking mastermind art thief named Reynard Slinker — didn’t have a chance.

The two teens were a study in dramatic contrast — one blond, well-off and show-offishly confident, the other dark-haired, financially strapped and somewhat unsure of himself, despite his super powers. The uncertainty of Peter Parker's life, in and out of costume, came through strongly and proved to be a solid reader hook.

I remember that I was also fascinated by another Kirby story in this annual, a reprint from Strange Tales 67 (Feb. 1959). I Was the Invisible Man! is the first-person narrative of scientist Adam Clayton, who creates a device that will accelerate his atomic structure, permitting him to move at invisible super speed and pose as a superhero.

March 1963: A New Universe of Marvels

By the time Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck and Jack Kirby debuted Iron Man in Tales of Suspense 39 (March 1963), the outlines of what would become the Marvel Comics universe had emerged.

That same month, Ant-Man was battling the extra-dimensional tyrant Kulla and Thor was trapped by the Carbon-Copy Man (like DC superheroes, Marvel’s champions tended to run into a lot of mirror images of themselves).

The Incredible Hulk, battling the Metal Master in his last issue, also crossed over to the Fantastic Four’s title to fight them. 

Meanwhile, in his first issue, Spider-Man also dropped in on the FF to put in a job application (after fighting them, of course). In his solo feature, the Human Torch got conned by criminal Carl Zante, the Acrobat, into leaving the FF.

This interconnected Marvel universe, now established, was expanding into both future and past. Zante would return with another con in Strange Tales 114 (Nov. 1963), disguising himself as a long-vanished hero named Captain America.

Each Marvel superhero was distinctive — a monster, a myth, a miniature man, an alienated teenager and a knight in technological armor. Even the character’s initial bulky, robot-like armor was intriguing. Though hardly stylish, it was the opposite of the customary cape and tights.

March 1963: A Quarter Well Spent

Yes sir, I can tell you exactly what my 8-year-old self was up to in December 1962.  

I was spending my weekly allowance of a quarter to buy the first appearance of Iron Man and the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Cover-dated March 1963, the two titles looked quite exciting to me. But even the adults at the time would have been excited – and astounded — if they’d known what those issues would someday be worth.

Wish I’d kept them.

One of the covers didn’t make sense to me. The Fantastic Four were fighting some weird character named “Spider-Man,” but the comic book wasn’t about them. It was about him! 

I had to know what the heck was going on here, so I invested half my 25-cent weekly allowance and hauled Spider-Man 1 home from the downtown newsstand in Effingham, IL.

Turned out Spider-Man had dropped in on the FF to put in a job application (after fighting them, of course).

I had missed Spidey’s actual debut in the last issue of Amazing Fantasy months before, but I was already familiar with this then-small and unnamed but distinctive line of superheroes. Only the FF, the Incredible Hulk and the not-yet-costumed Ant-Man had preceded Spidey, and Thor debuted simultaneously with him.

Oh, by the way, I got a penny’s change back from my quarter, too.

Marvel Comics on sale in December 1962

September 1941: Another Arachnid Avenger, a Lass

In the chill of night, at the scene of a crime, like a streak of light, she arrives just in time!

Wait, she?

Yes, that mysterious figure firing a web line to swing from buildings and capture awestruck criminals is Spider Queen, a Fox superheroine who debuted in the early 1940s.

“Of all the arachnid-related superheroes of that decade, only the Spider Queen actually anticipated one of ‘our’ Spidey’s familiar shticks,” observed comics historian Don Markstein. 

“The Spider-Man shtick this Spidey practiced in advance of its current use was to swing from ‘webs’ produced by squirting liquid from nozzles attached to her wrists. She got the stuff when she straightened out some old records left by her husband, Dr. Harry Kane, a chemist working on the upcoming war effort for the U.S. government (who) was murdered by the country’s enemies. Harry had been unable to find a use for the fluid, which dried instantly into a sticky, string-like substance that was strong enough to hold her weight, but the widow, Shannon, did. She made small spray containers for it and went into the superhero business.”

Stronger than steel, her webbing was fired from a pair of bracelets.

“Fetching in her anachronistic mini-skirt and go-go boots, the leggy vigilante formed an alliance with straight-arrow cop Mike O’Bell in The Eagle 2 (Sept. 1941) to bring down his corrupt superiors,” wrote Kurt F. Mitchell in American Comic Book Chronicles.

The superheroine made only three appearances in the 1940s. But no matter how obscure they may be, superheroes rarely stay dead, so in 2023 the Spider Queen reappeared to star in a novel by Austin McConnell and Elizabeth McIvor.

Other spider-themed characters of the 1940s included the Spider Widow, the Web, the Tarantula, Spider Woman and that tempestuous pulp hero, the Spider.