Invaders Classic - Volume 4 by Roy Thomas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects the final seven Issues of the 1970s Invaders series (Issues 35-41) and the four Issue 1993 Invaders Series.

The 1970s entries have some strong points, particularly the Whizzer and Miss America being drawn into the action as they would later be part of the All Winners Squad. Roy Thomas has a fun time tweaking DC's Golden Age for making Wonder Woman Secretary of the Justice Society as Miss America finds herself secretary of the Liberty Region for a reason she can't understand and then sets off for action. While there's a bit of a bumpy ride through the 1970s series, the fact that it ends with a big battle with the Invaders joining with the Liberty Legion to battle the Super Axis made up of some of the toughest villains they'd faced in the series, it was a fitting finale, even though Thomas left for the final four issues and the series was closed out by Don Glut.

The 1990s mini-series has some good moments, including the return of the Golden Age vision as the Invaders and the Liberty Legion faced a team of fifth columnist Americans known as the Battle Axis. The plot does get a bit convoluted, the art shows all the hallmarks of bad art that were so popular in comics, and while I can understand while Marvel didn't use their predecessor company heroes to play the part of heroes gone bad, I have mixed feelings of altering public domain superheroes from defunct companies that dramatically. And really they didn't give the Battle Axis (except for Spider Queen) much of a motivation for turning evil.

Still, the book is solid read, helped by the reprinting of background material from Invaders #36 explaining Thomas' rationale behind the series along with some important character notes for the 1990s Invaders series.

Overall, this is an okay collection of comic stories that's a cut below prior Invaders collections.



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