Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "all-winners"

Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age All-Winners, Vol. 3 by Marvel Comics

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book collects Issues 9-14 of Timely's Quarterly comic All Winners, featuring stories with the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, and Captain America from Summer 1943-Winter 1944/1945. The book has some more stories, but if you're looking for the best Golden Age comic books this is a collection to skip. The draft had taken a toll on Timely's writers and also the magazine had a far less engaged editor than the drafted Stan Lee.

1) The Human Torch only appeared in five of the six issues, but I think his stories were probably the best. He kept mostly to battling typical war time foes, but this was done with the gusto. The best story in the book was Sky Demons over America which has the Torch battling the Hawk, who's a superb looking villain. There's a beautiful spread of a aircraft carrier early in the story.

2) The Submariner probably has the biggest artistic problems in the book. His head just seemed to grow more and more out of proportion as the war went on. Still, his stories aren't half bad. A very nice tale has Sub-mariner trying to convince the Germans he's got tired of fighting for the allies (You could almost believe it with him.) In Issue #11, the Sub-mariner began to use alliterative interjections at an alarming rate (all related to the sea.) These interjections included Sleeping Salamanders, Shriveling Shrimp, and Galloping Guppies. (All that on one page.) Overall, these aren't great Sub-mariner stories but again solid.

3) Captain America really has an uneven quality about him. The first three stories are ho hum. Whoever was writing Cap during the war had lost track of what made the character so appealing so when we were only getting a plain adventure strip. Things picked up a little bit with Issue #12's "Four Trials of Justice" in which the Red Skull returns to fight the Four Freedoms. Issue #13 comes closest to capturing the Simon/Kirby style with a real horror story. Issue 14 is a dumb story that's war propaganda that depends on people throwing away puzzles when it's found out they're made in Japan.

4) The Whizzer: These six-seven page stories were mostly filler. The best one of them was in Issue 13 where a mad scientist sets elaborate traps for Timely's speedster.

5) The Destroyer: Without Stan Lee, this character went downhill. The stories are dull and fairly hoe hum affairs, with a good moment or two thrown in. He was only in four issues and that was a mercy.

The book includes some fine cover art, a few public service announcements featuring Captain America, and some bland text stories. The book has as much politically incorrect material as any other book in the era.

Overall, this isn't bad but there are much better collections out there.



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