Steve Does Comics

Inspired by the Phoenix’s futuristic suit powered by atomic transistors, I’ve made myself a set of dungarees powered by nuclear valves. Granted, it doesn’t give me the power to defeat my enemies but at least I can fix my vertical hold by repeatedly hitting myself on top of the head.

That’s right. With the kind of logic that’s made this blog what it is, I’m reviewing issue #3 of The Phoenix after issue #4. That’s how anarchic (not to mention unfocused) I am.

The truth is, having abandoned my attempt to review issue #2, due to apathy, I wasn’t going to review this at all. But seeing Andrew Wahl’s piece about it on Comics Bronze Age reminded me just how loopy it is and also that it has a vaguely interesting back-up strip. And so, brace yourself because, nuclear valves at the ready, I’m going in there.

Death by friction. It’s not a suicide method you see every day. But then Ed Tyler’s not the sort of man you see every day. He’s the Phoenix and, unlike most Atlas Comics heroes, he actually had everything he needed to be a success.

What he didn’t have was two firm hands on the editorial steering wheel. And so, by issue #4, he was Phoenix no longer.

He was…

…The Protector!

He wasn’t the only one to have an abrupt transformation. Larry Lieber’s last page editorial’s full of chirruping about how great it is that changes are happening across the board at Atlas and how the company’s going to power on from strength-to-strength.

It’s a strange editorial. It has all the bluff and bluster he learned from his brother Stan Lee, when it comes to promoting a company, while at the same time implicitly conceding that maybe the comics haven’t been any good so far and no one’s actually liked them. When he wrote it he must have known the end was coming but was still determined to keep talking things up. Reading it, I do feel quite sorry for him.

As for the Phoenix. To my eyes, all they really had to do was dump the, “He’s like Jesus,” stuff, stop having him fight the same bunch of aliens every issue and give him a proper variety of super-villains.

Well, not only does Larry Lieber not see it that way but Phoenix doesn’t either. At the tale’s start, he’s decided to set fire to himself for having messed up every time he’s tried to be a hero.

You do wonder about his sanity. One, he’s actually succeeded every time he’s tried to play the hero, and two, if he thinks he’s failed as a super-hero, why doesn’t he just quit being a super-hero? Suicide is so attention-seeking.

You also have to question his marbles when it comes to methodology. He decides to do it by flying so fast he burns up in the atmosphere. I suppose, given that he’s an astronaut used to the idea of the heat of re-entry and he’s called the Phoenix, it has an aptness but would anyone really try to kill themselves by friction? Wouldn’t he just choose to fly straight into a rock instead?

Either way, it doesn’t matter because, before he can die, our hero’s taken aboard an alien spaceship where he’s told he’s got to protect the Earth.

Who does he have to protect if from?

Why, the aliens who rescued him. They’re called the Protectors and it seems that, like the Deiei before them - who they employed - they’re not impressed with Earth or its people and if Tyler doesn’t come up with the goods as a hero, they’ll destroy it. So basically, they’ve employed him to protect the Earth from themselves. Clearly aliens have a different sense of logic from the rest of us.

Despite the fact they’ve provided no tuition in how to use the new gadgets they’ve given him, Tyler passes his advanced super-hero test by killing a monster for them and is duly appointed the Earth’s protector.

It has to be said the thing’s not helped by Ric Estrada’s artwork. It’s OK without ever being impressive but he seems to have learned everything he knows about drawing aliens and spaceships from watching old 1920s and 1930s Saturday morning serials. His strangest and most dated foible is to dress what seem to be Ed Tyler’s nurses in old-style bikinis and bathing caps.

On the strength of this issue, the reinvention was always going to fail because Tyler’s now working for the sort of aliens he spent the first three issues trying to stop. It makes Tyler a puppet, and one willing to go along with what’re basically homicidal maniacs. His costume’s fine, although not as distinctive as his old one. His powers are nothing original but should do the job. But would future stories really have worked?

There’s one potential clue in the box that advertises the next issue that never happened. It says, “The Protectors are watching as the new Protector..” Argh! No! We don’t want to see the Protectors ever again! Not just because they look stupid but because their presence would inevitably belittle the book’s protagonist. We want them to clear off and leave the Protector to get on with fighting super-villains.

So, how should the comic have gone? Well, in both incarnations there are parallels to both Warlock and Marvel’s Captain Marvel, a hero working against aliens who're out to destroy the Earth, Jesus Complexes, periodic reinvention, wristbands, existential angst. So, maybe all Atlas really needed was to stop trying to make him work as a conventional super-hero, and get Cosmic with it.

Sadly, however, you get the feeling “Cosmic” was something Atlas were never going to have the creative ambition for.

If those who learn nothing from the failures of history are doomed to repeat them, it seems those who learn nothing from its triumphs are likewise doomed.

All of which brings us back to Atlas Comics and, here, to the Phoenix who's the opposite of the company that spawned him, having started off effectively dead before coming back to life with great power, as opposed to Atlas Comics who started with great power and then promptly dropped dead.

If the long-standing allegation's true and Atlas' heroes were all knock-offs of previous characters then I suppose the Phoenix is Iron Man with a dash of Captain Marvel thrown in. Astronaut Ed Tyler crashes in the Arctic Circle where he's rescued by a bunch of aliens who want to kill him and then destroy the Earth, which sort of makes you wonder why they bothered to rescue him.

Needless to say our hero won't stand for that, steals one of their suits - that fits him like a glove despite being designed for creatures two foot taller than him - steals some of their atomic transistors, to give him super-powers and, in the process of saving a weirdly Americanised Reykjavik from them, destroys both them and their base in a humongous nuclear explosion the likes of which the world has never seen before.

Sadly, being destroyed in a humongous nuclear explosion the likes of which the world has never seen before seems to have done neither the aliens nor their base any harm at all and, only two pages later, they're plotting their next round of attacks on our hero before their planned destruction of Earth.

Why they don't just destroy the Earth and cut out the, "Getting revenge on the Phoenix," bit is anyone's guess but one can only assume that having superior intellect doesn't actually equate to being all that bright.

You can't get away from the fact that writer Jeff Rovin seems to be making his dialogue and captions up as he goes along, as the motives and personalities of the aliens change from panel to panel and page to page. One moment they're there only to observe, the next they're there to destroy the Earth. One moment, they're concerned about Ed Tyler's welfare and whether they have the right to leave an intelligent being to die, the next they're declaring that human beings are mere animals to be wiped out at will. One moment an alien's threatening to kill Tyler if he doesn't do what he's told. The next Tyler's thanking him for all he's done for him. One moment an alien's called Daelin, the next he's called Nerei.

Despite all this, I have a soft spot for the Phoenix. I mean, it was never actually any good and, with issue#4, went completely down the toilet as Atlas tried to turn him into a more conventional hero but, as he was when first created, he had some sort of potential.

If you want to understand the genius of Stan Lee it's laid stark here for all to see because 1960s' Marvel would've seen him destroy the aliens, or have them flee saying, "With protectors like this, there is no way we can ever conquer this world. We must leave and never return," leaving Phoenix to get on with the task of returning to New York to develop a supporting cast and fight quirky super-villains in need of a punch up the bracket.

Instead, we got a series of stories based around his battles with the same alien race and a total lack of supporting cast, meaning he could never develop as a character rather than just being a man in a funny suit.

In this issue, Tyler has a wife - who we see - but decides he can't have anything to do with her in case the aliens use her against him. So, immediately, the twin concepts of novelty and a supporting cast are thrown out the window, meaning, despite setting out to replicate publisher Martin Goodman's success with Marvel, Atlas actually managed to do exactly the opposite of what Marvel had done in the Silver Age and fell flat on their face as a result.

PS. I have to love the idea of the super-advanced aliens' technology being powered by transistors. In this high-tech age, it now seems ludicrously quaint but, in my opinion, when it comes to comics, quaint is good.