Marvel Read-Through: Origins Part 2
As I continue my journey through the origins of Marvel’s biggest characters, I’m realizing how little I actually know about these characters’ early days. I knew Thor once had a secret identity and I knew Peter Parker was a total dork, but I knew nothing about how these things, among others, were portrayed at their beginnings. I’m learning a lot about the history of my favorite characters and I’m loving it. In fact, I can’t believe how simple the storytelling was in this era. Not to put it down in any way, it is effective due to its simplicity. Retcons upon retcons from the decades of comics have led to convoluted histories and lots of details, but most of that is missing in the original telling of these origins.
I started this post’s reading with Spider-Man’s first three appearances. Unfortunately, I was a little let down with the beginning of Spider-Man. I found that these issues never hit their stride like much of the other titles’ early issues. I plan to read more early Spider-Man comics at a later time so I’m really hoping to catch Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s iconic creation in all its glory then. Of course, despite the stories themselves being somewhat of a letdown, Ditko’s art was beautiful and it was a nice change from Kirby who drew (I think) all the issues from my last post. As I mentioned before, I was surprised with how dorky Peter is in his early appearances. I was expecting some of his friends to show up, but at this point he really has no friends other than his science teacher, and a lot of Lee’s descriptors for him are quite harsh in how they portray his status of the high school loser. I’m looking forward to diving into Spidey’s expanded origins later on in my journey, because I know this character and his books can be way better than the first issues.
After the wall-crawler’s creation I headed over to Journey into Mystery to see the birth of everyone’s favorite Norse God superhero, Thor. My biggest takeaway from Thor’s origin is that his main idenity wasn’t Thor when he was first created. He isn’t Thor from Asgard just yet, he’s disabled Dr. Donald Blake who stumbles upon a magic hammer that turns him into the powerhouse Thor so he can save the world from evil. I had to do some research to learn that his true origin of being banished from Asgard by his father isn’t revealed until the late 1960s, a fact which shocked me. I always believed that Thor used Donald Blake as a human identity, not that Dr. Blake had the superhero identity of Thor. I have to admit that Thor was never my favorite of the main Avengers characters, but I have enjoyed Jason Aaron’s run through the 2010s. I wasn’t particularly excited for his early appearances, but I had a lot of fun reading them. They were silly in the best way possible, and if I didn’t have such a long road ahead of me, I wouldn’t have minded reading more than just three issues. Stan Lee and Larry Lieber wrote some excellent stories and as always Kirby’s art is top notch. There’s not much more to say other than praising these issues as some of the best of early Marvel.
Finally, I checked out the origin of the last remaining founding Avenger, Iron Man. While I didn’t encounter any surprises like I did with Thor, I still enjoyed the early, somewhat innocent, days of Tony Stark’s superhero life. Comics were a lot more family-friendly in the 60s, which is very prominent in Tony’s lack of drinking and womanizing, but his billionaire playboy lifestyle coupled with his crime fighting ways still make for an interesting read. These issues do feel dated since Iron Man is all about technology and 60s tech is pretty basic, even if he’s supposed to be using completely fabricated and wildly advanced science. It comes off pretty cheesy as someone born in the 1990s who is familiar with modern tech, but I tried to look past this aspect and enjoy these comics through the lens of 1963. And enjoy it I did! Marvel really was on fire in this era, creating legendary characters and with overall incredible comic book writing.
I popped over to Fantastic Four to read a few issues just to get up to the point where I’ll be ready for their early Avengers crossovers, but I don’t have much to say that wasn’t said last time. I focused on some first appearances (Uatu the Watcher, Rama-Tut, and Sue’s force field power) as well as their first Annual issue to see some Namor action. The Annual was excellent and I was very happy to finally see Sue gain her full powers. As a modern comic book reader, I never really understood what it meant that the Fantastic Four was Marvel’s crown jewel for a long time since they’ve been put on the back-burner quite a bit as of late, but they really are Marvel’s crown jewel. Every issue I’ve read is, pardon my choice of words, fantastic. The Marvel universe is expanded on in this book, it’s more than just the Fantastic Four’s adventures, it’s the exploration of this fictional universe and it’s the real center of everything.
Next time: the birth of the Avengers!
Issues Read:
Note: I only read the Thor and Iron Man sections of Journey Into Mystery and Tales of Suspense
Amazing Fantasy #15
Amazing Spider-Man #1–2
Journey Into Mystery #83–85
Tales of Suspense #39–40, #45
Fantastic Four #13, Annual #1, #19, #22
Favorite issue: tough pick between Fantastic Four Annual #1 and Journey Into Mystery #85 but I’ll give it to Thor since the annual has the unfair advantage of being longer than a normal issue and including Namor.
