|
|
 |
This is a very interesting addition to the Marvel Masterworks catalogue. The Atlas Era is probably the least represented of all the different Marvel Ages since, let’s face it, there wasn’t much superheroing going on. They already collected the exploits of all of the big three heroes (Torch, Cap, and Namor) and besides them there isn’t much left save for the early horror/suspense tales. That’s where this volume comes in. The Atlas Age of comics saw a brief journey by Marvel into tales of medieval times and the Knights of the Roundtable and an even briefer journey into a Japanese Fu Manchu inspired villain. It’s interesting to note how each of these brief journeys resulted in lasting characters in the current day and age of Marvel. So, this collects Black Knight #’s 1-5, a title that ran bi-monthly from May 1955 until November 1955 for the first four issues, and the last issue was inexplicably released in April of 1956. Yellow Claw also followed a bi-monthly schedule from October of 1956 to April of 1957.
Roy Thomas pens the introduction and again does a very thorough job of trying to pinpoint the origins of each title. Black Knight probably came from EC but was more likely from movies. Yellow Claw was inspired by the Fu Manchu stories from around that time. Roy also talks about the guys who worked on these books. Stan Lee is credited with writing the Black Knight stories, although credits weren’t always given. Joe Maneely handles most of the artistic chores in this collection. He worked on Black Knight #’s 1-3, as well as most of Yellow Claw #1. Fred Kilda penciled the Black Knight portion of BK #4 while John Romita handled the Crusader tale. BK #5 closes with Syd Shores and Christopher Rule combining pencils and ink. Yellow Claw #1 featured art by Werner Roth (the one story where Maneely didn’t pencil). George Roussos (#3) and Manny Stallman (#4). The rest is Jack “King” Kirby. Roy writes how Jack came back to Atlas and took over on Yellow Claw and that his work definitely needed more room to be told in these short stories. Roz Kirby helped with inking on #’s 2 and 3 while John Severin helped with inks on #4.
Spoilers Ahead
-Black Knight #1- We start Black Knight #1 with a very simple origin. Percy of Scandia arrives (he’s the cousin of Mordred, the brother of King Arthur) and he’s a weak, cowardly guy. This is all a ruse by him and Merlin so that Percy can be the Black Knight when danger falls. Of course, he’s needed right away and he is there to help Arthur from his evil brother. Of course, it’s an ongoing plot that Arthur isn’t aware of his brother’s evil. It was a simple origin to set things on track. As usual with pre-Silver Age books we have a prose tale included. This was about Excalibur and just recounts how Arthur picked up the fabled sword. The Crusader is our next hero featured in these pages and his origin is simple. It’s a white man in mongrel territory thinking he was mongrel, too. He meets his brother (who’s immediately killed) and he tells him to find King Richard. See, the Crusader never liked the mongrel side of the Holy Wars and now he will take his mystic sword of protection to help the side of good. We end with another Black Knight tale and here Black Knight rescues a captured King Arthur after Mordred had his men kidnap him. This was a cool first issue and Maneely’s art was pretty exceptional here. He’s not like the usual super-hero artist and it was refreshing to see.
-Black Knight #2- BK #2 saw a little change in the format of the book. Now instead of two Black Knight stories we’d have three as well as the Crusader story and the written story. Our first BK story here finds BK warding off Viking who kidnapped Lady Rosamund. It’s only 6-pages so it wasn’t much. The second BK story features BK stopping Modred during a duel and then running back to his room so that Modred’s men wouldn’t find his room empty and thus giving away his identity. The written story was a simple one showing how Arthur received the actual round table as dowry for marrying a young woman. The Crusader finds Prince Richard and aids him in stopping Mongol hordes. Crusader is knighted by Richard and he’s ready to fight beside Richard. Finally Black Knight is attacked by hordes of enemies brought along by Modred but he’s able to fight back and ward them off. The shorter stories take away from a lot of the story building element but these were fun stories to read.
-Black Knight #3- The first story was an interesting one. Black Knight is stabbed in the arm so Modred can figure out his secret identity. He thinks it could be the weakling Percy but Merlin saves him by dressing up as Black Knight to throw suspicion away from them. We continue with Modred trying to ambush Arthur with lions but Merlin and Black Knight are on the ball and they’re able to stop any harm from befalling Arthur. The Plotters is the name of the written story and it features another Modred trying to steal the crown from his brother tale and this time Launcelot is there to save the day. The Crusader is ambushed and put on a slave boat but he comes back and gets his sword back and defeats the one who tried to get rid of him. We end with Black Knight going armorless to defend Rosamund from peasants but the peasants and Knight combine forces to stop someone from kidnapping Rosamund.
-Black Knight #4- Sir Guy Wanderall was bested by Knight in a joust and Guy was upset. So much so that he actually impersonates Knight so he can sully his good name. Knight is able to clear his name by exposing Guy for what he is. The second story finds Black Knight going armorless again to help stave off an invasion set in motion by Modred. We written story focuses on the Crusader now and it sees Richard meeting with a prisoner who was actually a double spy. They discuss what the Mongol’s will do and how they will counteract that. This was an interesting written story. The Crusader tale finds the Crusader going back to the Mongol’s to retrieve a captured Richard and he does it with no problem. Finally, Percy and his buddies are captured by Norsemen and so Percy escapes so he can don the Black Knight armor and rescue his friends. This was the standard BK stories, but without the art of Joe Maneely. The art seemed a lot plainer compared to Maneely’s style.
-Black Knight #5- BK stops a suitor to Rosamund who brought a dragon to win her heart. BK reveals that the dragon was wooden and full of soldiers and prevents an invasion. The second story finds Percy engage in action against some Robin Hood knock-offs and learns that a local ruler has been stealing in the name of Arthur. So BK is there and he sets them straight. We have a story called the Invaders that features Vikings going to Arthur to work with him instead of fighting. See, their supplies are low and they don’t want to fight anymore. The Crusader again has to rescue Richard from being kidnapped, although this time it was his own men who kidnapped him and blamed it on the Moslem’s. We end with a Tartar chief (whose skin color is very yellow) who wrestles his way into Arthur’s good graces. However, he’s just there to bring in his buddies to try and overthrow the crown. That fails thanks to the BK. There are some ads in here for the March of Dimes and a Daisy Gunbook which was pretty cool.
-Yellow Claw #1- The first story introduces us to the Yellow Claw, his powers, and his main goal in the book (he will work for the Communists to take over the US but he will betray them and then take over the world), his allies (a Nazi and his niece Suwan) and his foe (Jimmy Woo). The next story finds the Yellow Claw in America with a scheme to break out a common thug to work for him. Woo gets captured (featuring an awesome panel with Woo getting attacked by Fritz in the shadows) but he is able to convince the criminal not to turn on America and the thug agrees, sacrificing his life to save Woo and America. We take a break from Claw and feature two agents, one in a written story and one in comic form but neither story were all that interesting (basically one agent steals from the one he sells to and ends up in jail while one fails to get information and ends up dead)> We return to Claw and we see Woo get captured again only to have Suwan save him. The Claw stories had a thread that brought all three tales together and that was something you didn’t really see at the time, most of the times the stories were unconnected to each other. I hope that the next three issues aren’t all the same formula of Woo getting captured and saved by someone. Maneely was on art here and he did a decent job, but it didn’t look as good to me as the Black Knight stuff.
-Yellow Claw #2- This had an all-time classic cover of Claw holding Woo and a captain in an orb. The first Woo story finds Yellow Claw hypnotizing some mentalists to create havoc, until Suwan clues Woo in and Woo saves them. The second story shows the Woo trailing Claw, Suwan and Fritz onto a cruise ship and preventing them from kidnapping noted scientists. Next is a very short story of Woo finding Claw by trailing Suwan but Claw is onto him and sends him away in a bubble of sorts. The lone non-Woo story was an uninspired story of G-men finding a spy thanks to steam revealing the secret message on his glasses. We end with a robotic giant that the Claw has built only to have Woo take him over (thanks to Suwan). The written story was a reprint from Sub-Mariner #41, but I didn’t check the dates so maybe the Sub-Mariner story copied this one. The Kirby art was solid here, looking a lot like what he would continue in the Silver Age with the FF and Rawhide Kid and everything, but the stories were way too short to be worth anything, sometimes being only 4-6 pages.
-Yellow Claw #3- We have a story of a microscopic army of the Claw that is bested by a microscopic Woo, head to an alien allying himself with Claw but bailing when he heard that humans can lie, Yellow Claw getting captured but Woo finding out he was just a bomb in disguise (highlighted by an awesome intro splash page) and snow that makes people sleep that Woo uncovers. The non-Woo story was just a typical trickery of Russian spies and the written story was a case of mistaken identity that wasn’t terribly interesting. Again, the stories were way too short to be worthwhile and only Kirby’s art makes this even readable.
-Yellow Claw #4- The Yellow Claw/Woo stories were the usual thing, first Claw finds Shadow People from another dimension and they free Suwan from Woo’s grasp before bringing Suwan (and Woo) along to Claw’s lair. We move to a story of screemie’s (think birds with human faces) that Claw uses to plunder US resources. Luckily Woo negotiates with these things to use Claw’s island for food instead. Claw next tries to use a hypnotist on TV to put people to sleep so that they can steal as they wish. Of course, the hypnotist was on Woo’s side the whole time. We end this with Yellow Claw using a thought master to create crazy images but Claw’s plan falls short, as usual. There’s a little story about a man with his secret lair in his house that he ends up getting locked in while his laser goes haywire and he ends up dead. The written story was one that repeated as well; this time from Sub-Mariner #38.
-The Bottom Line- The Black Knight stories got a little one-dimensional at times, though the art of Joe Maneely in the first three issues was really cool to experience. Usually the introductions have a bit of hyperbole when talking about the talent involved but in this case it was deserved. His style was different from other artists of the time and really added a lot to the atmosphere of the Arthurian age. The Yellow Claw stories could definitely be considered racist in terms of how the characters are presented (their skin tone is VERY yellow, going beyond the point of caricature) but that was stopped after the first issue. Woo was colored regularly while Claw remained very yellow. The stories really fell apart though once Kirby took over and the last three issues were really tough to get through. One of the best things about this collection is the great essay that Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, a noted Atlas-era historian who has penned intro’s for Masterworks before. His annotated biography of Maneely was great to read and this is a true highlight of the book. Simply put, the Black Knight stories and Maneely’s art was really fun to read and the first issue of Yellow Claw was decent. The last three issues weren’t that great but it is vintage Kirby and you can’t go wrong with that. This was a different type of Masterworks in terms of content offered and it’s definitely a recommended one.
|
|
|
|
|
Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
|
|
|
|