Xuthl’s Wilderness Comics and Collectibles Comic Reviews

Welcome to Xuthl’s weekly comic review. This is my first post, so I guess I will throw down with how this is going to work. Every week I plan to post reviews of comic books I am reading. I will do my best to post every Sunday. I will rate the books on a scale from 1 to 20, awarding 1-5 points for cover art, story, and art, and relevance. These are just my opinions, but hopefully you will find my reviews entertaining, and helpful when you are deciding what titles to add to your reading list. So let’s get down to it.

This week I will be offering just one read, Marvel Tales of Suspense from 1961. A strange book to start with I suppose, but it just happens to be what I read today.

Now I gotta tell you that Tales of Suspense is not a title I generally enjoy reading. The storylines are mediocre at best, and the art is pretty substandard. This particular issue kind of grabs your attention though. Don Heck provides a really nice cover with crisp art and great use of colors. If you were a comic buyer in 1961 I think you would have a tough time passing on this title as you were flipping through the carousel at your local drug store. The Red Barbarian is drawn as a really neanderthal looking fellow, but that seems to be the style of the 60’s. The bad guys look really evil and the good guys look really strong and heroic. I give the cover 5 out of 5.

The story, plotted by Stan the man Lee and written by R. Berns, is as good as any I have read in this title. Spoilers follow. The Red Barbarian is an espionage agent for the Red Army whose plans are continally thwarted by Iron Man. He is unsure how to steal the plans for Tony Stark’s latest inventions when he is approached by a superpowered villain named the Actor (yes the names of the bad guys were a little weak back in the early 60’s!) who is able to reshape his face to imitate anyone. Soon he travels to America and impersonates Tony Stark to gain access to his labs. He finds the plans for a disintegration ray, AND figures out that Tony Stark is Iron Man! Taking his newfound secrets he flees back to Russia with Iron Man in fast pursuit. Iron Man captures the Actor and confronts the Red Barbarian himself, telling him that he will share the plans with him in four hours. After that he lets the Actor loose. Of course the Red Barbarian will not believe that it was not the Actor who visited him earlier and promptly has him executed. This is my problem with all the Tales of Suspense stories I have been reading. The story wraps up a little too conveniently. Still I enjoyed this comic up until the ending and I will give it 4 out of 5.

The art throughout this book is really good. It certainly exceeded by expectations for this time in comics history. The frames are not filled up with background clutter, and the images are really well drawn. I give this issue 4 out of 5 for art work.

When it comes to significance I have to give this issue a big 1 out of 5. It is a good read, but to the best of my knowledge the Actor is killed in the last frames of the story and the Red Barbarian is never seen again in comics as far as I know. We see nothing new from Iron Man, and no new ongoing characters are introduced.

So I give this issue a score of 14 out of 20.  This is just a fun read which has absolutely no impact on the makeup of the Marvel Universe.

I hope you enjoyed my first blog. If you could take a moment to post a comment this would be really helpful for me.

See you all next week!

Xuthl