The Incredible Hulk: What Savage Beast by Peter David

The Incredible Hulk: What Savage Beast
by Peter David
1995, Putnam

This novel takes place in a time period where the psyches of Hulk and Banner have swapped - the Hulk retains his intelligence while big and green, but when he gets angry enough he turns into a raging 120 pound nerd.

He's hounded by a new Hulkbuster squad as he and Betty try to live a normal life, Banner teleworking in IT and Betty working at a daycare. Betty becomes pregnant and gives birth to conjoined twins, one seemingly normal, the other a grey hulk. Doctor Strange assists with the separation, upon which the Maestro (a future evil Hulk) dimension warps in and snatches up the child.

With the assistance of Strange, Hulk goes to the future to face Maestro, who is building an army of alternative universe Hulks with the help of their now grown son.

I've enjoyed David's comics more than his prose. For me there were some pacing issues - a lot of domestic business and pregnancy drama, not much on the Hulk smashing stuff. It also felt very recycled, as if this was based on unused drafts of other scripts. We get Glenn Talbot's nephew as the obsessed military leader of the Hulkbusters acting much like his dead Uncle. The complicated pregnancy angle was done better with the birth of Franklin Richards (and a year later with the Parkers), and this version of the Maestro didn't differ much from the one "killed" a couple years before. 

Available from Amazon, audiobook currently on Hoopla, check your library.

Captain America: Dark Designs by Stefan Petrucha

Captain America: Dark Designs
by Stefan Petrucha
2016 Marvel

Cap and Iron Man fight a Sleeper, a robot left over by the Nazis after WWII. This sleeper is just a series of geometric shapes, one of which is somehow powered by an Infinity Gem shard. Meanwhile, Cap is found to have a dormant virus that he caught while frozen in ice, as does the Red Skull who at this time lives in a copy of Rogers' body.

Other than a quick fight with the Red Skull, it's mostly SHIELD flying Cap around avoiding and fighting floating shapes. There's a subplot of a CDC scientist who wants to eradicate the threat of the virus while Cap heroically threatens the human race since there are no other superheroes on Earth.

For some reason the story is set in 2005, but other than a couple scenes with PDAs instead of phones it could have been at any time. It might have been set in the past since Sam Wilson was Captain America at the time, but usually Marvel avoids time references and says things like "set before the events of..." Had a mid-90s feel to me.

Hawkeye is ambidextrous and Rogers only has one scar, which he got trying to save Bucky. And we find out that Captain America solving the trolley problem is as insufferable as you think it would be - "I would simply save everybody", "You can't", "I'd try harder", etc.

Kindle ebook, Audible audiobook, and paperback from Amazon

Marvel 1965: Thor

Partway through the year Thor has an extended adventure involving the Absorbing Man and the Destroyer, and he neglects his Blake identity enough that he almost gets evicted.

Thor's hammer: can detect evil across continents, tingles when nearby a supernatural menace, can help him locate whatever he wants, transmute elements. He also has the power to remove memories somehow

That's now Thor, Giant Man, Doctor Strange, and Mister Fantastic who can mind wipe whenever they want.

We're still pretending he can't fly on his own or change directions mid-air

Asgardians consider Dr. Blake to be Thor

In Avengers 14, Thor has Blake's medical skills and refers to a secret identity, as opposed to Blake being a distinct being.

Absorbing Man can just be near, though all examples show him touching, also absorb power of people he's near.

Thor's hammer get's broken, but he's able to fix it in a Pittsburgh steel mill.

Oh, and Thor kills a guy. He's probably killed thousands of sentient beings over the millennia, and Cap and others have a body count from their past in various wars, but I think this is the first time it was explicitly on page.

From Journey into Mystery 112-123, available in Thor Epic Collection: When Titans Clash from Amazon

Marvel 1965: Captain America

 Stan still doesn't know what to do with poor Steve Rogers, other than have him be the leader of the Avengers.  His solo outings in Tales of Suspense consist of brief setups to fight scenes, and are World War II stories until the end of the year.

There is next to no character development. We don't even know where he lives until the end of the year (a room in the Stark mansion).

We thankfully see little of the "Rick Jones as Bucky" stuff they were teasing, as Steve has moved on to wishing her worked for SHIELD.  He gets called up, 

but if he actually joins it isn't this year.

Steve ditches the gadgets in his shield

and we end the year with Kang using future science to grow the shield to massive size - we'll see if they remember to shrink it back down next year. 

Tales of Suspense 61-72, collected in Captain America Masterworks Vol. 1 available from Amazon.

Marvel 1965: Daredevil

 DD switches to his red costume by issue 7, along with his cane cable.

He's also using gear to amplify his sensory abilities

By issue 11 he's left his partnership with Foggy - I don't remember this happening quite this fast or what happens next. Stay tuned, true believers!

Collected in Daredevil Epic Collection: The Man Without Fear, available in ebook and paperback from Amazon.

Marvel 1964 Overview

Firsts

First Captain America vs Iron Man fight

We get our first face turn with Crimson Dynamo, and they start telegraphing Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch's face turn next year.

Our first faked death with Tony Stark, and our first scheduling snafu as this death is announced in Avengers a month before it happens in Tales of Suspense.

Copied plotlines

Both Mr. Fantastic and Spider-Man get sick within a month of each other - not part of a plot, just a regular flu, used only for dramatic purposes

In the same month, Cobra & Mr. Hyde and Dr. Strange use a technique to follow an image and trace it back to a location.

In the same month Mr Fantastic and Giant Man planned to propose & chicken out - Foggy does the same later in the year.

Giant-Man/Wasp and Spider-Man are both lured into a fake movie like the Fantastic Four was.

Secret Identities 

Asgardians in general know about Thor's alter ego as Don Blake.

Giant-Man's identity is discovered, but not for long thanks to Hank Pym's ethically questionable ability to mind wipe.

Bruce Banner is called "Bob" by mistake in FF 25, which eventually led to a string of multiple middle names

Limbo

Loki uses it to hold prisoners, and Immortus travels in and out of it, but there is no unified field theory on it yet

Misc

I always thought the emphasis on Namor being a mutant was a 90s phenomena, but he and Thor both refer to Namor as a mutie.

The X-Man have a working relationship, to the point they can call each other.

We get two Beverly Hillbillies references (Aunt May and Ben Grimm).

How Old is Captain America?

Steve Rogers was born in 1920. His body was frozen in the Atlantic Ocean in 1943 and thawed out originally in 1963 (I think with him being thawed out a time or two in the middle, it's a bit of a mess). Marvel uses an inconsistent rolling timeline with only occasional, conflicting references to age. I remember Peter Parker being 35, but I can't find that reference. The most recent time anchor I've seen (via Silk) is that Peter Parker was bitten 13 years ago.

This would make Rogers' body around 100 years old, conscious for 36 of them. It always annoyed me that he was treated as some kind of elder statesman when he was only 7 or 8 years older than Spider-Man.

This was roughly the case until the late 90s. I say roughly because he travelled backwards and forwards through time multiple times, usually returning at the point he left.  These trips were only a few days or weeks or the most.

In 1999, Captain America follows Korvak into the future around year 3000 - the scene opens with 3007, but we don't know how long he's been there. Korvak rules the universe with an iron fist, opposed by resistance efforts led by Captain America. Instead of killing Cap, Korvak reboots time, intent on crushing his spirit.

For the first 72 times, Cap doesn't remember prior timelines, and arguably these were just 72 time divergent Captain Americas. For following reboots Korvak allows him to keep his memories to rub his failure in his face. Not sure the mechanism for this, but I'm thinking he sent Cap's consciousness back in time at the beginning of each divergent path, each having more cumlative memories.

We're shown five of these futures, adding up to at least 78 years, but Cap later mentions it happened hundreds of times - he's either wrong, or we were only shown a select number of reboots.

Presumably he only kept the body from the last reboot, which adds at least 10 years to his body's age, but his mind is at least 78 years older, possibly thousands. While I always questioned him being the world's greatest tactician out of three years in World War II, I don't believe they ever reference his centuries of organizing an intergalactic rebellion.

When talking about the age of his body we need to address the number of times he's died, or at least had his body destroyed and recreated. Between the super soldier serum, the Beyonder, and proximity to the Cosmic Cube, his body has a complicated track record, growing old at least twice.

Then there's his "death", where he gets unstuck in time. I don't know what happened to his body or how he got it back and I can't be made to endure an Ed Brubaker storyline again.

Before one of these elderly periods he spent around 11 years in Armin Zola's Dimension Z, where time move slower.  And in Avengers Millennium, Cap is frozen between the prehistoric past and and unspecified point in the future. Hawkeye says 13 centuries but he got educated at the carnival, more like 130, or 13,000 years.

This brings us up to 2015, and since then the multiverse has been rascaled by Beyonders and he came out as a Nazi sleeper agent and who knows what else has been retconned since then.

Marvel 1964: Time Travel

 It took this long for time travel to get complicated

Kang is introduced and almost instantly revealed to be the same as Rama Tut. Immortus is introduced but gets folded into that mess later.

Doom and Rama Tut meet, deciding they may be the same person because they both have time machines.

Kang gets a lot more convoluted than this in the future.

Doom also posits that if his future self dies in the same time period as himself, then present-time Doom can't live in the present, so they decide against teaming up. 

Over with the Avengers we see our first use of time travel to change the course of recent history, done not by Immortus but by the Enchantress, who rewinds time to have a do-over so the Masters of Evil don't attack Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

In most instances in the Marvel Universe, going back in time to change the present is a futile effort, as it creates an alternate timeline and the original timeline you wanted to change remains. Usually. This case is unusual in that the Enchantress doesn't travel to the past - she rewinds time itself, presumably for all creation.

OR

She never mentions time travel, Zemo does. Her spell may have kept Marvel 616 on the same timeline, wiped everyone's mind, and recreated the world to be like it was in the past, all the while staying in the present.

Either way, this is far and away the most powerful thing the Enchantress has ever done, and it's done when a teleportation spell would have had the same result.

OR

She transported the Masters of Evil to an alternate Earth a few days ago, replacing the Masters of Evil there, possibly transporting them to this timeline where they are captured by the Avengers. This means that the Avengers of this issue (and presumably all previous issues) are a different timeline version than those in future issues

OR

By travelling to the past she created the alternate timeline, so there were one version of Avengers up to the beginning of this issue, with a split happening then, so that the Avengers prior to and after this issue are the same, but the ones in most of this issue are in a different timeline.

Marvel has had a lot of versions of time travel in their comics over the decades, and managed a brand new one in Endgame. Just don't ask me to explain Avengers Forever.

Marvel 1964: Captain America

Cap joins us properly through the pages of the Avengers. The amazing coincidence of the Avengers finding his frozen body is compounded by the timing.

The Avengers fight Namor and Hulk in Gibraltar.  Afterwards, Namor swims to the north sea, finds Cap frozen and worshipped by Eskimoes, throws his body in the ocean, where it floats directly into the path of the returning Avengers.

His mental state is inconsistent. His says the last thing he remembers is hitting the water, and he barely remembers Submariner, but he knows that twenty years have passed and the world thought him lost.

It was a weird choice for him to be frozen for twenty years. Presumably it has nothing to do with age, seeing how many WWII vets there are.

Rick Jones is instantly inserted into the situation, with Cap getting a little funny over his similarity to Bucky.

This doesn't go far. Jones is set up to be some kind of emotional heart of the Marvel Universe, or a universal reader surrogate, but they never really commit to it.

Cap has a room, not quite established at the Avenger's mansion yet.  He gets magnets to his shield to explain how it comes back, but these get ditched next year. The shield has not yet been established as unbreakable.

He gets his own half-title, sharing Tales of Suspense with Iron Man, but so far these are just quick set ups to extended one-on-many fights with little character development.

Tales of Suspense 58-60

Collected in Captain America Epic Collection: Captain America Lives Again available from Amazon

Marvel 1964: X-Men

Issue 4 is one year of the class, and issue 7 is graduation. By issue 10 we have our first example of anti-mutant hysteria.

This year sees the beginning of Professor X's habit of dramatically leaving before dramatically returning. Lucifer is set up to be the next big bad (which fizzles out pretty quick next year).

Iceman's change from snow to ice is gradual and without explanation. He stopped wearing boots by issue 5 and was totally ice by issue 10.

Beast is established as a nerd, and joins the surprisingly high ranks of Marvel Superheroes moonlighting as pro wrestlers

On the villain side, Magneto has psychic powers, which I don't believe last long

Collected in X-Men Epic Collection: Children Of The Atom, available from Amazon

Marvel 1964: Daredevil

Daredevil is introduced to us as very much in the Spider-Man mold - a street level hero with snappy patter.

Murdock graduates one day, opens his law office with Foggy the very next day, that night comes up with the idea of being a masked crimefighter, sews his own costume, and creates his billy club. Not much room for more Year One material shoe-horned in there, I'll have to read that mini-series again.

DD is sporting his yellow and red costume. He adds a hood/backpack in issue 3 to store his street clothes

and stops using it in issue 4, following the Mighty Marvel tradition of workshopping character design in real time.

Daredevil 1-5

Collected in Daredevil Epic Collection: The Man Without Fear from Amazon

Marvel 1964: Romance

We get the first sense that Hank is interested in Janet, hard to tell if they're really quite dating yet.

Banner has some competetion for Betty in the form of Glenn Talbot.

Everyone digs Jean, but the tragic doomed romance is established with Scott early on.  Xavier's secret longings are quickly forgotten.

Peter starts a surprisingly mature and complex flirtation with Betty Brandt, which ultimately goes nowhere, as happens in life.

 

Pepper is crazy over Tony, who at first can't be bothered but later whines that being Iron Man interferes with his workplace harassment, and I don't think they hook up for decades.

Thor is still getting c-blocked by Odin. Both Blake and Thor are in love with Jane, to the degree they may or not be different consciousnesses.

Matt Murdock begins his slide into self-pity - maybe he should start with a gal not on the payroll.

Ben and Alicia have a pity-off

Johnny Storm has a completely healthy relationship with Dorrie

I guess Reed and Sue are still dating, not much romance, although things are heating up with Namor

Marvel 1964: Iron Man

Iron Man gets another makeover, slicking down his pointy eyebrows and giving him more face rivets

He loses the center column of rivets before the end of the year. Ol' Shellhead has largely stopped tinkering with transistors in the middle of fights as his gadgets are internalized.  Iron Man officially becomes Tony Stark's bodyguard, and is in charge of the factory when Stark is "away".

We also see more of Tony the playboy

I'd argue that the real reason Tony goes through women is less to do with the shrapnel in his heart and more that he's an a-hole and rich enough to get away with it. This still being a child friendly comic, the womanizing consists of him sitting at tables in fancy places.  We see his first and, to date, only drink.

I forgot to keep track of this last year, but Stark Enterprises always seemed like the number one source of supervillains, with most of his rogues gallery consisting of disgruntled employees.  This year his business practices inspired Wonder Man's brief stint as a villain, and his mere existence inspired Hawkeye and the Scarecrow.

The Watcher starts hosting the monster B story until he's joined by Cap in issue 59.

Tales of Suspense 49-60

Available from Amazon collected in Iron Man Epic Collection: The Golden Avenger

Marvel 1964: Hulk

We're still not at "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry", but starting with Tales to Astonish 59 excitement will cause Banner to change into Hulk, and strangely, more excitement changes Hulk to Banner.  Narratively speaking this is a bit of a mess, as presumably a big boss battle would be constantly exciting.  We'll see if this gets actively changed or just forgotten about.  

Still no exact measure on his strength, but stronger than the Thing, and he gets stronger the angrier he gets.

At one point he absorbs the entire blast of a gamma bomb, which was enough to kill him as the Maestro decades later.

Tales to Astonish 59-62

Available from Amazon collected in Incredible Hulk Epic Collection: The Hulk Must Die

Marvel 1964: Spider-Man

Not much changing with Spidey this year.  He's established as being a high school senior and loses his glasses at the beginning of the year.  By the end of the year it seems clearer that Pete and Flash were in the same friend group, rather than him being an outsider.

Don't know how strong he is, but he's stronger than Iron Man and Giant-Man, though not as much as Thor, Hulk, or Thing, a ranking that I dispute.

Amazing Spider-Man 8-19

Available from Amazon collected in Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection: Great Power

Marvel 1964: Thor

Odin gets pissed at Thor for not giving up his love for Jane Foster, so he cuts his power in half. His strength is halved, though we didn't know how strong he was in the first place.  He loses his ability to control the weather and to travel to Asgard, which he does anyway a few months later.

New things his hammer can do: hypnotize people, emit melting alpha rays, create a space warp that teleports enemies randomly through space, and can freeze time.  Other hammer facts: as a child Thor could lift the hammer a little bit at a time as he became worthy; while others can't lift the hammer, they can lift the handle and pivot the head, and Don Blake turns to Thor if someone else hits his cane on the floor.

We get another sense that Thor and Blake have different consciousnesses - Thor does some basic electronics based on what he's learned from Iron Man, while we know that Don Blake is proficient enough to make his own robot, though I'm sure Stan Lee already forgot about that.  Going the other direction, Thor considered changing back to Blake to use his medical skills.

Still don't know if Thor is bulletproof, but he probably is as landmines only stun him.  Oh, and Thor helped spawn the human race.

Journey into Mystery 100-111

Available from Amazon collected in Thor Epic Collection: The God Of Thunder

Marvel 1964: Ant-Man and the Wasp

 Pym starts to show some feelings, with them more or less being a couple by the end of the year.  Pym becomes Giant-Man, and is able to control his and Janet's height with cybernetic power, and communicate telepathically through their helmets (which I suspect gets forgotten).

Pym gets his secret identity discovered by a hood, but nothing a little mind wipe won't cure.

Never date a bio-chemist

Janet starts narrating a monster story in a framing device for the second story and gets a Wasp solo story before that slot is given to the Hulk.

Tales to Astonish 51-62 

Available from Amazon collected in Ant-Man/Giant Man Epic Collection: The Man in the Ant-Hill

Marvel 1964: Fantastic Four

 The series starts to settle into a regular rogues gallery.  Sue gains the ability to use forcefields and turn other things/people invisible.  Strange Tales shifts to a Human Torch/Thing duo, where Ben finally gives us his patented catchphrase.

Instead of being the family they're later know as, Reed Richards is the explicit leader of the group, and he's not afraid to say it, to the point of faking being a villain so he can show up Johnny and Ben.  

Reed is kind of a dick.

Fantastic Four 22-33; Strange Tales 116-127

Available from Amazon in Fantastic Four Epic Collection: The Master Plan Of Doctor Doom and The Human Torch & The Thing: Strange Tales - The Complete Collection

Marvel Year Two Overview

Lee and company have found a groove, mostly fitting a story within a single issue, and even have a couple two-parters.

A little time travel: Iron man goes back to flirt with Cleopatra, and we're introduced to Rama Tut, who later is also Kang and Immortus and several others.  No instances of anyone trying to change the past or future or issues with paradoxes or alternate universes.

The hollow earth gets more Shaverish.  We get abandoned advanced technology with Tyrannus and a whole underground society with Kala, Queen of the Underworld.  Lava Man are joining the gang as well.

Secret identities are in full force.  The X-Men know each other, but the Avengers don't (with the exception of Giant-Man and the Wasp).  Both Thor and Iron Man get found out, Iron Man twice, but the nosy parties are killed or banished to Limbo so all is well.

We have the first instance of Limbo, later to be merged with the Limbos of ROM and Magik

Repeated Plots:

Thor had a "trick shape changing aliens into becoming things of low intelligence" story, tricking the Xartans into becoming trees like Reed Richards hypnotized the Skrulls into becoming cows.

The Awesome Android, the Super Skrull, and Doctor Zaxton's duplicating machine give us villains who copy our heroes' powers, to be followed by Super Adaptoid and many, many others.

We can add the Actor, Space Phantom, Loki, and Mr. Hyde to the Chameleon and Skrulls for "villain impersonating hero" plot.  Thor gets impersonated at least three times this year.

Keeping track: Reed hasn't use hypnosis, Thor didn't use time travel and hasn't been hit by bullets.

Marvel Year Two: Atlantis

Growing up, when I thought of Atlantis I thought of it as an existing, living hidden civilization, either under an air dome or populated by mer-people.  This is the pop culture take, whereas a great deal of literature and pseudo-history take it as an extinct lost city, populated only in ancient times.

Before it sank into the sea, Atlantis is described as an advanced civilization - sometimes meaning advanced for it's time, sometimes meaning more advanced than modern technology.

In the Golden Age, Atlantis is first mentioned in 1949 in Sub-Mariner Comics 31.  This is reportedly the only mention of Atlantis in the Silver Age, and I'm not reading them all to confirm.

Atlantis is mentioned as the ancestors of Namor's people.  Atlantis was a surface city with technology more advanced than modern day.  Scientists invent a magnet that can attract anything, but the ruler thinks it's a bad idea and throws it into a lake.  The magnet goes deeper into the earth, and for centuries Atlanteans dig down after it, until the dig so deep it upsets the foundations of Atlantis, which sinks into the sea.

Some Atlanteans developed the ability to breath water after several generations, though I would think they'd need to be quicker than that.

These people are the ancestors of the current mer-people Atlanteans, and the magnet became the source of Earth's gravity, which is not only wrong but stupid.  The city/continent of Atlantis itself is described as lost.

Namor says this is just a story, and a wrong one at that, but there are similarities to later Atlantis depictions.

In the Silver Age, there is a quick mention of Atlantis by Namor referring to a sunken artifact, here Atlantis being a lost city.  It comes up again full force in Fantastic Four Annual 1, 1963, where Namor is reunited with his people after unknown years of living on skid row.

There's some backstory given to Atlantis and the evolution of merpeople - here merpeople evolved along a parallel track to humanity, and aren't evolved from the original Atlanteans.  In fact, Atlantis is depicted as originating under the sea.  I believe this is filled out later, with merpeople settling in the ruins of post-cataclysm Atlantis.

The bit about Namor trying to locate Atlantis confused me (wouldn't he know where it was?), until there was a reference to New Atlantis.  So, presumably, the Atlanteans call wherever they live "Atlantis".  Atlantis is located in Antarctica in 1920 (which makes Namor in his early 40s here).  As of FF Ann 1 it's in the Atlantic Ocean, but the Atlanteans pack up and abandon Namor at the end, so we'll have to wait and see where the settle next.

The first description of pre-cataclysm Atlantis is in an Iron Man comic, Tales of Suspense 43.  Atlantis is an advanced, terrestrial civilization threatened by tidal waves and earthquakes.  Atlantis is covered by a dome, which protects it as it sinks under the waves, through the earth, and eventually settling in the Earth's core like the magnet in Namor's stupid folktale.

It seems clear that Kala is talking about all of Atlantis, which is city size.  This is later retconned/corrected to being a city within the continent of Atlantis, with other parts presumably settling under water.

Atlantis is later involved in a great deal of Marvel pre-history, which, like the hollow earth stuff, will get a lot more convoluted as we go on.