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Did Roy Thomas figure out how to indulge his Golden Age obsessions more smoothly when he did All-Star Squadron, or is some other factor at work? (Does DC simply have better Golden Age characters to mine? My own personal nostalgia for the "A-SS" title? Or we've just seen so many and better examples of digging up semi-forgotten old characters since then that we're jaded?)

But I've generally had a similar reaction to yours when encountering examples of Thomas' Golden Age homages/retreads/reintroductions at Marvel. They often seem self-indulgent and/or tiresome to me today. (Yet I still really like All-Star Squadron....)

Arh great article. Shame you missed the one I've always really been intrigued by. Marvel Premier 28 - Legion of Monsters has always been one of those comics I've wanted to own but suspected that if I did I'd actually be a bit disappointed (and it seems to always sell for quite a bit, well compared to other issues in the series).

But that cover and that line-up man on man was that a concept I'd have loved 70s Marvel to have run with.

Also looking forward to the next part as there's some GREAT comics in there (I hope)

Great article. Just a shame that you missed the issue I've always been really intrigued by but never owned. I've always loved the cover of issue 28 and that concept 'Legion of Monster' in my mind at least, would have been 70s Marvel gold. Never owned or read it. That said I suspect that I've build it up in my mind so much over the years that it could only disappoint.

Really looking forward to the second part as there should be some GREAT comics in there.

Opps sorry thought my PC eat the first go at that. My mistake...

I own the Legion of Monsters issue, and was equally fascinated by it as a kid, and was always on the lookout for further issues of the title that never appeared. What a great concept for a kid monster fan! Though the comic itself is... not very good, to be honest.

http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2005/11/where-they-went-wrong-legion-of.html

Astonishingly enough, though, Marvel actually *reprinted* Marvel Premiere #28 a couple years ago (as a stand-alone book, not part of a collection or anything), so it should be relatively easy to find.

yes this is a series i wish Marvel would collect in Essential Format. That would make a great many people happy, i suspect.

The Weirdworld characters ended up in a run in Epic Illustrated. Not sure if they were in Marvel Fanfare or not.

suedenim:

Interesting idea, that of DC's Golden Age heroes having an edge over Marvel's. During the "silver Age", I was much more intrigued by Marvel's GA heroes. I suspect a lot of it had to do with the familiarity of the DC heroes. Not only was the JSA teaming with the JLA for several issues every year, but the GA Atom, Flash and Green Lantern would also pop up as guest stars in their Earth 1 counterparts' books. Other than Cap & Namor , the Marvel GA heroes were a mystery. Their reprints in Fantasy Masterpieves (and later Marvel Super-Heroes) were quite limited and other than the one issue of Avengers when Rick Jones channelled several golden age heroes during the Kree-Skrull War, Red Raven in an issue of X-Men and Jim Hammond showing up in a Fantastic Four Annual, it wasn't until Invaders that we caught any post GA writing of the heroes.

I actually liked the Invaders better than All-Star Squadron. What started as a GA fan's dream book, ASS soon deteriorated into a muddy, unlikable series. Young All-Stars started off fresh, but soon reverted to the drab existance suffered by it's parent title. The whole Spear-of-Destiny and the DC superheroes being supernaturally prevented from taking the war to the Nazis got old real fast. Perhaps Superman, Dr Fate and The Spectre would have been affected, but the Batman (and the other non-powered heroes), Green Lantern (whose only antithesis was wood), Robotman and the majority of other should not have been affected. The Invaders were right dab in the middle of the war. Machine gunning Captain America and Bucky, leading a unit of infantrymen, Namor lifting a U-Boat right out of the ocean and The Torch, whom we all knew would eventually fry Adolf Hitler himself right out of his goose-steppers - now that was fun. The Marvel GA's were indeed warriors. The All-Star Squadron looked acted more like they were playing dress-up.

I don't know. I find Invaders and All Star Squadron equally unreadable. On the other hand I love Thomas' Conan and his Avengers and his co-written Avengers West Coast, and so much of his other Marvel work it's not even funny, but yeah, I can't get into the golden age stuff at all and it's not like I don't love the Robinson/Goyer/Johns JSA stuff plenty.

Wait! Did he write the 90s Invaders mini? THAT I liked.

i guess what i loved about All-Star Squadron over Invaders is that while the Invaders felt to me like a contemporary Marvel team book that just happened to be set during WWII, All-Star really had a Golden Age atmosphere to it (especially when Ordway was penciling).

also i believe All-Star was a bit more fastidious and creative with the "retroactive continuity" (back when that meant methodically adding to and expanding upon history rather than willfully deleting chunks of it on a whim) and i found that fascinating since i was just discovering those Golden Age stories at the time and Roy Thomas's work in A*SS invested those simple strips with what seemed like such a greater meaning and importance.

yeah... i guess the storylines did get kind of muddy and the art a bit shoddy towards the end, but i still remember reading that series as one of the most rewarding comic book experiences of my life.

(haven't re-read any of the issues in almost 20 years so i don't know if i'd still feel that way reading it today... probably not.)

Matt D:

I agree with you concerning Thomas' non-golden age work. Arak was just awesome. His Thor, Man-Thing and Avengers were very strong. Funny how good Thomas was at creating new continuity, but seemd to put so much effort into trying to explain golden age, non-continuity. When he went overboard, (such as trying to tie the Frankenstein Monster and Gladiator into A*SS), it all seemed way too forced.

Weird world did appear in Marvel Fanfare, issues 24-26, but I think they were reprints.

Loved Invaders, and actually picked up Marvel Premiere Woodgod and Monark of the back of the Liberty Legion tie-ins!

I really enjoyed both Invaders and All Star-Squadron (huge Robotman fan), but that could just be because I was a kid of the 70s and WWII movies, books and comics were HUGE then!

I've recently been re-reading my Invaders collection, and loved how the 90s mini carried on pretty much straightaway from the last issue of the original series. (Yes, Thomas did write the mini as well!)
I agree that both All-Star Squad and Invaders became a bit tired quite early on, but they both gave us some great characters - my favourite? UNION JACK - Invaders issue #8 (although technically issue #7 was his first appearance) and Baron Blood...

Really felt let down by New Invaders...

Have to say I dropped Premiere after Monark Starkiller... I just thought the logo was too much of a cash-in. bit pathetic of me really, but I had just moved onto Detective Comics and Captain America...

Monark Starstalker is the worst comic book hero name ever.

Honestly, just say it out loud. If you can.

Oh, this brings back memories. I remember buying 30, 31, and 36 when they came out. Of course, I was just a kid, but I loved Woodgod back then. Thanks for this post!

Loved this comic as a kid! One of the first comics I ever read was the Weirdworld issue. It was very hard for my not-quite-10-year-old brain to understand. That issue was actually my friend's, but when he stopped collecting a few years later, he gave me all his comics, including that issue. The Woodgod issue was awesome in its uniqueness, I thought, when I picked it up a few years later. I had never read a comic like it before. The Chaykin issues were great fun. I was surprised at how much I liked his art since I was only familiar with his work on Micronauts where his delicate linework was obscured by the ham-fisted inking of Al Milgrom. I don't think I ever got the Liberty Legion issues even though I was a big fan of the Invaders (my friend's copy of Invaders #19 was my gateway to collecting comics). Not sure why I didn't bother to find those issues. The 3-D Man ones are darn near unreadable. Bad writing, bad art. 'Nuff said.

In the early 1990s, Dave Cockrum drew a Woodgod story for Marvel Comics Presents. One time when I met him at a convention, he had a page of the original art for sale, and when he saw I was looking at it, he jokingly referred to it as "Woodgoat."

Anyway, it was a credit to Cockrum that he could draw a throwaway eight page filler story featuring an obscure character and still make it look good.

>Stevenson’s Dr. Moreau

My great-uncle appreciates the credit, but that should be "Wells'."

>3 issues in the color mag Marvel Super Special and then onto Marvel Fanfare (I think).

4 issues of Epic Illustrated in-between. The Marvel Fanfare story was originally written and part 1 drawn after the Marvel Premiere story, but was shelved when Ploog quit Marvel.

>Marvel probably should collect all of these stories just to appease the handful of fans knocking themselves out trying to put together a collection.

A recommendation I have made many times.

MH

I have no idea why I said RL Stevenson. Total brain fart.

I work as securities lawyer (and I've got two kids under 3) so I just frantically type up these columns when I'm eating lunch at my desk. You will all have to forgive me my typos and messed up facts.

I've got to say, I think a lot of the Roy Thomas-hate of the last few years, blaming him for the over-the-top continuity wankfests of those who followed in his footsteps, is just plain silly.
The Liberty Legion stuff, for instance, is well within "let's have some fun with some obscure old characters" territory, certainly nowhere near the anally-retentive everything-must-fit "illness" zone.
Just because he was one of the first to think "hey, we've got these old characters sitting around, it might be fun to tie them in somehow, like a game" doesn't make him in any way to blame for those who later took it to ridiculous lengths.

Also, this statement is a falsehood:
"Once again, Roy Thomas tries to convince readers that the past is better than the present..."
Nonsense. I can't even slightly agree that he ever in any way did this. It was only ever "it's kind of fun to play around with the past" nothing more.

Unfortunately, my violent aversion to Sword & Sorcery has kept me away from that part of his body of work.

I lifted that hawk on "Monark Moonstalker" and painted it on my skateboard when I was a teenager.

Sorry. Monark Starstalker. Moonstalker might be better but they both sound derivative of "Skywalker".

That's funny, because when I say down to type this - I kept typing Monark Moonstalker.

I guess it just sounds better to the collective subconscious.

I could be wrong, but I think that Monark Starstalker came out in the summer of '76, BEFORE Luke Skywalker hit the big screen.

I just bought the Monark issue today and it's labeled as October '76.

OK. Which means it came out on the stands around July of '76 and was probably started as a concept sometime in '75 or before. I think we can assume that there was no Skywalker influence on the naming of the character.