The Decline and Fall of Marvel Mystery Comics?
Marvel Mystery Comics #11 continues a slight decline that was seen in #10. I hope that we see some improvement soon and I am fascinated that they chose a cover with the Human Torch smashing Nazi tanks even though America had not yet entered the war at the time that this one was printed. I think that World War 2 will probably inject some fresh story telling ideas into the issue but this particular one was not very good barring the Submariner story and some promise for the next issue from the Ka-Zar story.
While Carl Burgos' artwork remains top notch, the latest installment of the Human Torch was very disappointing from a story perspective. "The Black Plague" is in New York but it seems to produce no symptoms until someone is almost dead then they rapidly drop within a few short seconds. Meanwhile a mob boss would rather not evacuate the area and burn the houses because he doesn't want it to infringe on the rent money he collects. Yet, this makes no sense since if people die in large numbers he won't be able to collect any rent anyway. The story ends with a mystery but I'm beginning to miss the more straightforward Torch/Submariner slugfest already. I can't help but feel that the aside from that same Human Torch/Submariner fight the Torch has been on the wrong path ever since he's been on the police force. His stories were a lot better when he was a misunderstood outcast.
The Submariner story is a bit more interesting. We see Namor bitter over his defeat at the hands of the Americans in the previous issue but he is also conflicted because he doesn't want to see a defeated enemy die. So we see a Namor willing to slaughter most of a crew but has pangs of conscience about killing some people he's actually met and knows a little. This Namor dichotomy is a lot of what I find interesting about these tales of his early days so I'm certainly interested to read more.
The Masked Raider story this time manages to be a little less insensitive and a little more interesting than usual. Its fairly easy for any reader to figure out who the mystery crook is from the early clues but the story is competently told and for a Masked Raider story it carries a little more dimension than the norm.
The Ka-Zar story didn't have a lot happen this time. There's the usual run of cultural sensitivity but uniquely for this one it involves an Indian although there are also Africans in the story. Ka-Zar and Zar. The interest comes in what happens in the story as Ka-Zar and Zar are now being sent out of the jungle. Also after some pretty poor artwork in some of the previous Ka-Zar segments this issue kind of picked things up again and was very well drawn. I'm really interested to see what happens next.
The Terry Vance story is truly painful. Terry handles mercury with his hands and talks about loving to play with mercury. I wonder if a generation gained mercury poisoning from reading this issue. Once again he solves crimes with only his wits and a trained monkey and runs circles around adults. I really hope that the Terry Vane segments are closed down fairly soon because I don't think that I'll be able to take them for long.
The Angel story is just plain weird but it does address a problem. He's called the Angel but he has no super powers. TO make matters worse, he wears a cape which is a real hindrance to someone whose means of fighting are about quick, agile movements. This story gives him the ability of flight but nothing else about it really makes sense nor is there a connection made between the monsters in this issue and the ghouls from the previous one. Also its never explained how these monsters are under the Blue Ridge Mountains but invaded Greece thousands of years ago. If that's true then their subterranean empire extends quite a range and the Angel did not defeat them as he thought. So once again although the Angel segments are well drawn I have to say that they're not very well written. I'm still hopeful that this will turn around in future segments though.
The Electro story is competent. I'm not particularly a fan of the art style of Steve Dahlman and I can't help but feel that the Electro stories could be a lot more. When a mob boss took over Electro in a previous story the idea of Electro being feared would have been interesting but he was easily cleared. The idea of a human consciousness being implanted in Electro would be interesting as well but so far they haven't gone that route. This story was just about Electro putting out forest fires. It wasn't particular bad but it wasn't really good or interesting either. I'd really like to see some development for Electro in future issues.
All-in-all this one was not awful but the mix tended to be on the low side. The Submariner story was as good as ever and the prose segment in this one was a bit better than normal even if it did end abruptly but I'm really hoping that next issue provides a little more excitement and some more interesting ideas.