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Marvel Masterworks #154
Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age Mystic Comics, Vol. 1
A gathering of tales from the Mystic Comics series volume 1.
- GenresComics
263 pages, Hardcover
First published March 30, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 21, 2024
The earliest years of Marvel Comics - known then as Timely Comics - were not produced with an eye on history. The features were assembled from various production shops and thrown out in four color glory to see what would capture the public's fancy. No mercy was shown, particularly in Mystic Comics, where features often promised another installment only to vanish forever.
I'll be honest: most of them are rubbish. But there were a few that I quite liked so I'll just mention those.
The most unusual feature was the Black Widow. No, this isn't Natasha Romanoff. Not even close (this Black Widow clearly got her makeup tips from Tammy Faye, which Natasha would never do). The Golden Age Black Widow is a clairvoyant who is murdered by a customer only to have Satan claim her soul and turn her into his emissary (to bring him more evil souls). Quite a heavy but interesting concept compared to the rest of the features.
Another feature I liked was Zara of the Jungle. Zara was raised by her parents in the jungle and stayed after their deaths as it is her home. She often interacts and rescues ranger Jeff Graves, which is a nice reverse twist on the Superman/Lois Lane dynamic. Zara is a bit unhinged ("I love danger!" she exclaims to Jeff Graves) which only increases the interest. The feature promised another chapter in the fourth issue of Mystic Comics, but it never materialized.
I also enjoyed The 3 Xs, a trio of adventurers (a sleuth, a strongman and a scientist). They were in the first issue and never seen again.
The last feature I thought was standout was Merzah the Magician. Merzah has the power of precognition, and together with his chauffeur Jose and assistant Diana he solves crimes. I liked the partnership among the trio; Diana knows her way around a gun and Jose is no wallflower either. I think this feature could have had legs given the dynamic between the trio.
I am sure some of these characters appeared again in Marvel Comics, but I'd rather not know. Modern creators tend to be less than respectful to what's come before, often taking something bright and making it very depressing and tainted. I like to think some of these characters had happily ever afters.
I'll be honest: most of them are rubbish. But there were a few that I quite liked so I'll just mention those.
The most unusual feature was the Black Widow. No, this isn't Natasha Romanoff. Not even close (this Black Widow clearly got her makeup tips from Tammy Faye, which Natasha would never do). The Golden Age Black Widow is a clairvoyant who is murdered by a customer only to have Satan claim her soul and turn her into his emissary (to bring him more evil souls). Quite a heavy but interesting concept compared to the rest of the features.
Another feature I liked was Zara of the Jungle. Zara was raised by her parents in the jungle and stayed after their deaths as it is her home. She often interacts and rescues ranger Jeff Graves, which is a nice reverse twist on the Superman/Lois Lane dynamic. Zara is a bit unhinged ("I love danger!" she exclaims to Jeff Graves) which only increases the interest. The feature promised another chapter in the fourth issue of Mystic Comics, but it never materialized.
I also enjoyed The 3 Xs, a trio of adventurers (a sleuth, a strongman and a scientist). They were in the first issue and never seen again.
The last feature I thought was standout was Merzah the Magician. Merzah has the power of precognition, and together with his chauffeur Jose and assistant Diana he solves crimes. I liked the partnership among the trio; Diana knows her way around a gun and Jose is no wallflower either. I think this feature could have had legs given the dynamic between the trio.
I am sure some of these characters appeared again in Marvel Comics, but I'd rather not know. Modern creators tend to be less than respectful to what's come before, often taking something bright and making it very depressing and tainted. I like to think some of these characters had happily ever afters.
January 2, 2019
I really enjoy going back to the start of Marvel and seeing some of the first stories they created and how different the comics industry was back then. Very nice collection of the Golden Age of Marvel (before it was even named Marvel). Recommended
December 29, 2015
A few interesting characters but not as fascinating and full of adventures as Mystery Comics.
September 4, 2014
While DC's Archive Editions of the golden age of comics have chosen to focus on popular characters rather than collecting complete 64-page anthologies, Marvel has opted to let us see the gamut of their run, both the good and the bad. This is more historically interesting, and does not disappoint the reader the way DC does by not reprinting stories of Zatara (from Action Comics), Slam Bradley (from Detective Comics) or even the Atom (from Flash Comics) and the Hour-Man (from Adventure Comics).
The third Marvel Comics Comics series ever has a string of unremembered characters: Flexo the Rubber Man, The Blue Blaze, Zephyr Jones, The 3 X's, Dave Dean, Dakor the Magician, The Dynamic Man, The Mastermind Excello, Space Rangers, Taxi Taylor and His Wonder Car, The Invisible Man known as Dr. Gade, Zara of the Jungle, Hercules (David), Thin Man, The Black Widow (Claire Voyant), and Merzah "The Mystic." These characters disappeared after 1940, so not even Roy Thomas, who started reading comics in the late 1940s, used them in The Invaders, although the Mastermind Excello, the Dynamic Man, and the Black Widow (along with Electro from Marvel Mystery Comics and a host of characters from Daring Mystery Comics) in The Twelve. There is nothing terribly impressive here. The unknown art in Taxi Taylor is especially skillful, but it is so badly written that Taylor defeats all adversity in the space of two panels, thus having no pathos or humor. He's audacious enough to simply cut the line of an enemy diver and let him drown, though.
The Blue Blaze is probably the most conceptually interesting character (Spencer Keen is presumed dead when a tornado wrecks the university where he attends and his father works, but the blue blaze created by his father causes him to climb out of his grave ad fight crime 88 years later), but after the stylish and oversized art of the first issue, he loses any horror theme and starts looking like the Phantom in a blue costume instead of a purple one. He disappears into a swamp at the end of the final story, but that makes it sound more interesting than it is. It was not intended to be the end--we are told that he is to fight a vampire in the next issue, but if such a story was ever written or drawn, it was never published.
Another interesting character is the Black Widow, which, too is quite strange. Satan forces medium Claire Voyant to put a curse on the Wagler family, killing James Wagler's sister, Patricia, and their old mother. James stalks and kills Claire, who is broguht to Hell and turned into the Black Widow, and her first mission is to kill James Wagler and send his soul to Hell. Most of the script for this story is reprinted in the back, believed to be the earliest surviving Marvel script. The story, originally called Madame Death was censored form script to printed page, in which is was made clear that the Black Widow was claiming only evildoers at the behest of Satan.
Hercules is not about the Greek demigod (later god) that Marvel would later feature. In it, Dr. David takes his son to the arctic and raises him in a loin cloth to be the perfect mental and physical specimen. Not concerned with any issues of child abuse, Dr. David dies in his son's young adulthood, and he is subsequently found by a circus that advertises him as Hercules, and a Lois Lane-type newspaper reporter helps him leave the circus in order to use his abilities to help people.
The Mastermind Excello is a fiery jingoist with superhuman strength and mental powers. He can lift and throw an entire turbine with his bare hands.
Dynamic Man, later revived without Marvel, is another android indistinguishable for a human being, who manages to get into the FBI just through testing. His creator, Professor Goettler, has a heart attack as "Curt Cowan: comes to life, and unlike the Human Torch, the dynamic Man his spared the blame. His appearance changes a bit from story to story. He goes barefoot when in costume in the first story, then has a broad-faced tough guy fave in the second. By issues 3 and 4, he looks like Quicksilver with darker hair.
Dakor is a dull Mandrake rip-off, who, like DC's Doctor Fate in the Golden Age, uses his fists too much. Merzah the Mystic is similar, but slightly better, and his female sidekick, Diane, makes one think of Dian Belmont with the Sandman at DC, although she was a year or so away. While Dakor has his valet, Williams, Merzah has both Diane and a helpful chauffeur named Juan. In spite of the conceptual similarity of Dakor and Merzah, Merzah is not a replacement--both characters have stories in issue #4. Unfortunately, this is Merzah's only appearance until 2011.
The Space Rangers, Bob Raleigh and Nibss, are kind of dull, although the dragon is appealingly wonky in its appearance.
The Invisible Man Known as Dr. Gade has the unthinkable--a superhero gets revenge on the person who caused the accident that gave him his superpowers--by killing him. His pwers are particularly ridiculous--a lackey of a Mr. Sporvan shoves him into his furnace while he's working with some chemicals. That makes Barry Allen's origin as the Flash look plausible. The crazy thing is that he has to keep going back to his furnace (which then looks different) in order to recharge his power, like Green Lantern.
I loved Bill Everett's wild and fantastic artwork for "Devil-God," but killing a surviving dinosaur for sport doesn't make a good story to 2014 eyes.
Zara of the Jungle--Sheena knock-off. I was not impressed.
Eddie Heron's "Murderer's Mistake" is a well-crafted short story.
Flexo, being constantly under the command of his creators, Joel and Joshua Williams, and always getting them out of scrapes, is more comedic but less interesting than Electro over in Marvel Mystery.
Thin Man (Bruce Dickson) was given his powers by the Kalahians in the Himalayas. All the Kalahians have his powers, but Dickson chooses to uses his powers to help humanity, along with Olalla, daughter of the chief of Elders. She presumably has this power, but she doesn't really use this as his assistant. Thin Man is the only character in this volume to appear in The Invaders, and his costume presumably was used as inspiration for the gay superhero Flatman of the parody group Great Lakes Avengers/GLX, a team that also includes Squirrel Girl, who was created by Will Murray, who wrote the lengthy introduction to this volume and supplied a number of bits of factual information mentioned in this review, such as the fact that both Flexo and Thin Man preceded Plastic Man. I recently read the What If story (vol. 2, #11) in which all the members of the Fantastic Four get the same powers. Although women can clearly make themselves thin, Olalla's refraining from doing so reminded me of Sue's disgust at her own stretching powers, which is played for laughs in a story that lasts only four pages.
When I first saw the Mystic Comics hardcover in the store, I was disappointed that it was not the supernatural comic implied by the title, but my curiosity got the better of me, so I requested it through interlibrary loan I wouldn't call it the bottom of the barrel, but it's fascinating to look at comic characters who never became successful, who of course once inhabited the same world we know as the Marvel Universe.
To date, volume 2 has not been released, and it was Terror and the Blazing Skull, who don't appear until issue #5 (of 10) that inspired me to request Mystic to begin with. Murray promises us that the best is yet to come in the next volume, including these characters, along with Black Marvel, the Challenger, and Stan Lee's first character, The Destroyer. Let's hope sales of this volume, which probably will be one of the least interesting to today's audiences, justify the release of volume 2.
The third Marvel Comics Comics series ever has a string of unremembered characters: Flexo the Rubber Man, The Blue Blaze, Zephyr Jones, The 3 X's, Dave Dean, Dakor the Magician, The Dynamic Man, The Mastermind Excello, Space Rangers, Taxi Taylor and His Wonder Car, The Invisible Man known as Dr. Gade, Zara of the Jungle, Hercules (David), Thin Man, The Black Widow (Claire Voyant), and Merzah "The Mystic." These characters disappeared after 1940, so not even Roy Thomas, who started reading comics in the late 1940s, used them in The Invaders, although the Mastermind Excello, the Dynamic Man, and the Black Widow (along with Electro from Marvel Mystery Comics and a host of characters from Daring Mystery Comics) in The Twelve. There is nothing terribly impressive here. The unknown art in Taxi Taylor is especially skillful, but it is so badly written that Taylor defeats all adversity in the space of two panels, thus having no pathos or humor. He's audacious enough to simply cut the line of an enemy diver and let him drown, though.
The Blue Blaze is probably the most conceptually interesting character (Spencer Keen is presumed dead when a tornado wrecks the university where he attends and his father works, but the blue blaze created by his father causes him to climb out of his grave ad fight crime 88 years later), but after the stylish and oversized art of the first issue, he loses any horror theme and starts looking like the Phantom in a blue costume instead of a purple one. He disappears into a swamp at the end of the final story, but that makes it sound more interesting than it is. It was not intended to be the end--we are told that he is to fight a vampire in the next issue, but if such a story was ever written or drawn, it was never published.
Another interesting character is the Black Widow, which, too is quite strange. Satan forces medium Claire Voyant to put a curse on the Wagler family, killing James Wagler's sister, Patricia, and their old mother. James stalks and kills Claire, who is broguht to Hell and turned into the Black Widow, and her first mission is to kill James Wagler and send his soul to Hell. Most of the script for this story is reprinted in the back, believed to be the earliest surviving Marvel script. The story, originally called Madame Death was censored form script to printed page, in which is was made clear that the Black Widow was claiming only evildoers at the behest of Satan.
Hercules is not about the Greek demigod (later god) that Marvel would later feature. In it, Dr. David takes his son to the arctic and raises him in a loin cloth to be the perfect mental and physical specimen. Not concerned with any issues of child abuse, Dr. David dies in his son's young adulthood, and he is subsequently found by a circus that advertises him as Hercules, and a Lois Lane-type newspaper reporter helps him leave the circus in order to use his abilities to help people.
The Mastermind Excello is a fiery jingoist with superhuman strength and mental powers. He can lift and throw an entire turbine with his bare hands.
Dynamic Man, later revived without Marvel, is another android indistinguishable for a human being, who manages to get into the FBI just through testing. His creator, Professor Goettler, has a heart attack as "Curt Cowan: comes to life, and unlike the Human Torch, the dynamic Man his spared the blame. His appearance changes a bit from story to story. He goes barefoot when in costume in the first story, then has a broad-faced tough guy fave in the second. By issues 3 and 4, he looks like Quicksilver with darker hair.
Dakor is a dull Mandrake rip-off, who, like DC's Doctor Fate in the Golden Age, uses his fists too much. Merzah the Mystic is similar, but slightly better, and his female sidekick, Diane, makes one think of Dian Belmont with the Sandman at DC, although she was a year or so away. While Dakor has his valet, Williams, Merzah has both Diane and a helpful chauffeur named Juan. In spite of the conceptual similarity of Dakor and Merzah, Merzah is not a replacement--both characters have stories in issue #4. Unfortunately, this is Merzah's only appearance until 2011.
The Space Rangers, Bob Raleigh and Nibss, are kind of dull, although the dragon is appealingly wonky in its appearance.
The Invisible Man Known as Dr. Gade has the unthinkable--a superhero gets revenge on the person who caused the accident that gave him his superpowers--by killing him. His pwers are particularly ridiculous--a lackey of a Mr. Sporvan shoves him into his furnace while he's working with some chemicals. That makes Barry Allen's origin as the Flash look plausible. The crazy thing is that he has to keep going back to his furnace (which then looks different) in order to recharge his power, like Green Lantern.
I loved Bill Everett's wild and fantastic artwork for "Devil-God," but killing a surviving dinosaur for sport doesn't make a good story to 2014 eyes.
Zara of the Jungle--Sheena knock-off. I was not impressed.
Eddie Heron's "Murderer's Mistake" is a well-crafted short story.
Flexo, being constantly under the command of his creators, Joel and Joshua Williams, and always getting them out of scrapes, is more comedic but less interesting than Electro over in Marvel Mystery.
Thin Man (Bruce Dickson) was given his powers by the Kalahians in the Himalayas. All the Kalahians have his powers, but Dickson chooses to uses his powers to help humanity, along with Olalla, daughter of the chief of Elders. She presumably has this power, but she doesn't really use this as his assistant. Thin Man is the only character in this volume to appear in The Invaders, and his costume presumably was used as inspiration for the gay superhero Flatman of the parody group Great Lakes Avengers/GLX, a team that also includes Squirrel Girl, who was created by Will Murray, who wrote the lengthy introduction to this volume and supplied a number of bits of factual information mentioned in this review, such as the fact that both Flexo and Thin Man preceded Plastic Man. I recently read the What If story (vol. 2, #11) in which all the members of the Fantastic Four get the same powers. Although women can clearly make themselves thin, Olalla's refraining from doing so reminded me of Sue's disgust at her own stretching powers, which is played for laughs in a story that lasts only four pages.
When I first saw the Mystic Comics hardcover in the store, I was disappointed that it was not the supernatural comic implied by the title, but my curiosity got the better of me, so I requested it through interlibrary loan I wouldn't call it the bottom of the barrel, but it's fascinating to look at comic characters who never became successful, who of course once inhabited the same world we know as the Marvel Universe.
To date, volume 2 has not been released, and it was Terror and the Blazing Skull, who don't appear until issue #5 (of 10) that inspired me to request Mystic to begin with. Murray promises us that the best is yet to come in the next volume, including these characters, along with Black Marvel, the Challenger, and Stan Lee's first character, The Destroyer. Let's hope sales of this volume, which probably will be one of the least interesting to today's audiences, justify the release of volume 2.
July 9, 2021
The Forties may have been "the golden age of comics", but not every one was golden. "Mystic Comics" is a complete mess - poor artwork, incredibly weak scripts and nondescript "heroes" like The Blue Blaze, Flexo the Super-Robot, Dakor the Magician and others you'll never have heard of. You have to be really a collector to bother with this nonsense.
August 14, 2018
Harrypott
November 2, 2020
wasn't that good
March 8, 2024
I have read a pretty fair amount of Golden Age comic books, thanks to wonderful collected editions like this one. The novelty of something being old, and of reading something solely for historical value, is enough to draw me into buying these books. Having said that, this book falls short on entertainment value in the first two issues. They were filled with excess inventory strips from various sweatshop comic packaging companies, and were a chore to get through. Issue 1 especially sucked. By issue 3, things were picking up, and by issue 4, I was in. The Black Widow? Dynamic Man? The Thin Man? I am a sucker for this type of cheesy goodness.
I am also a sucker for the politically incorrect, excessively violent nature of these old-tyme comic books. Heroes killed villains at every turn, and you cheered them on for it. I can't cheer on the X-Men doing that because it goes against the foundations of the characters, but for these post-Pulp heroes, it's kosher.
If you have read The Twelve and are curious about the origins of Dynamic Man and the Black Widow, then this is book is a must read. Dynamic Man's origin is incredibly stupid, even by Golden Age standards. He was a synthetic man created for a better tomorrow. So rather than just going out and bashing in the heads of the bad guys, he gets a job with the FBI. Wouldn't the FBI have had rigorous background checks in place, even back in those days? Its as nonsensical as the Golden Age Human Torch, who starts out as an android, becomes a cop, and is never referred to as an android again until the '60s.
The Black Widow is great. I love the whole servant of Satan angle, as it must have been super cutting edge at the time. The Spectre was going on during this time over at National Periodicals (DC), and I am curious what other macabre heroes existed during this era. Can anyone point me in the right direction? The Thin Man pre-dates Plastic Man, and contorts his body in many of the same ways as ol' Plas. Influence or happy coincidence? Who can really say, since these cats are mostly dead and gone.
Production values: Superb color and linework restoration faithful to the original issues, godlike paper, and sewn binding, all of which make my heart flutter.
I am also a sucker for the politically incorrect, excessively violent nature of these old-tyme comic books. Heroes killed villains at every turn, and you cheered them on for it. I can't cheer on the X-Men doing that because it goes against the foundations of the characters, but for these post-Pulp heroes, it's kosher.
If you have read The Twelve and are curious about the origins of Dynamic Man and the Black Widow, then this is book is a must read. Dynamic Man's origin is incredibly stupid, even by Golden Age standards. He was a synthetic man created for a better tomorrow. So rather than just going out and bashing in the heads of the bad guys, he gets a job with the FBI. Wouldn't the FBI have had rigorous background checks in place, even back in those days? Its as nonsensical as the Golden Age Human Torch, who starts out as an android, becomes a cop, and is never referred to as an android again until the '60s.
The Black Widow is great. I love the whole servant of Satan angle, as it must have been super cutting edge at the time. The Spectre was going on during this time over at National Periodicals (DC), and I am curious what other macabre heroes existed during this era. Can anyone point me in the right direction? The Thin Man pre-dates Plastic Man, and contorts his body in many of the same ways as ol' Plas. Influence or happy coincidence? Who can really say, since these cats are mostly dead and gone.
Production values: Superb color and linework restoration faithful to the original issues, godlike paper, and sewn binding, all of which make my heart flutter.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews