Tie-ins kept on rollin’ this month. In addition to the other ones, a 3-issue Thor tie-in began, featuring Thor and Beta Ray Bill vs. a Skrull invasion of Asgard and written by Matt Fraction. Matt had been doing these great Thor side gigs around Straczynski’s main series, and he had me and others wishing he would get the main series. He did eventually, but it took a long time. This month’s New Avengers cover spotlights one of the most interesting bits of Marvel lore to me. From the 50s through the early 60s, Marvel’s bread & butter was generic monster and scifi comics. The FF debuted in 1961, but it was a slow roll out for their return to superheroes, so the FF, then Hulk and Spider-Man and Thor and so on, were being published alongside the generic monster and scifi comics (And even in their series, in the case of Spidey and Thor). So in 1962, 8 months before Spider-Man’s debut, there was a scifi short story about a scientist who shrunk down and got trapped in an anthill. And by 1963, someone remembered him and decided to make him Ant-Man. Hank Pym wasn’t really part of the Marvel U in his first appearance in Tales to Astonish 27, and I think that’s kinda fun. Andy Lanning assists Danny Miki on inks, but this is otherwise the team that did the Sentry and Elektra issues. And that means it’s time for weird, weird Khoi Pham faces.
Hankskrull wants to tell the Queen their invasion is going to fail, that the human race is smarter and more resilient than they’ve given it credit for. Dum Dum Skrull says this is Hank Pym talking, not the Skrull pretending to be him, but Hank Skrull insists their current best bet is a “violent stalemate,” noting rumor has it Thor is alive again, that Nick Fury is still at large, and that no one knows where Scarlet Witch is. Also there are some truly baffling faces along the way. Dum Dum escorts Hank outside, then they blow up the diner. Then Hank tries to go AWOL.
The Skrulls keep after him, some of them reverting to their normal forms to use their shapeshifting power against him to Dum Dum’s consternation, and eventually they trap him.
This confuses me because the Hank they killed was identified as Criti Noll. Is that not his name? Is that a title or something? The idea that Hank Pym’s unstable psyche is making the Skrulls who become him betray the cause repeatedly is a pretty complex and fun concept.
Slowly but surely catching up to the present. But that Thor book I mentioned wasn’t the only tie-in to spin up this month, and our next 3 posts are going to be about another one.