Issue(s): Giant-Size Avengers #1
Cover Date: Aug 74
Title: "Nuklo-- the invader that time forgot! / The child is father to the fiend! / What Hell hath joined together!"
Credits:
Roy Thomas - Writer
Rich Buckler - Penciler
Dan Adkins - Inker

Review/plot:
The Whizzer shows up at the Avengers' mansion. The Avengers have recently unearthed a large time-capsule type object. After pointlessly fighting the Avengers (and knocking out Jarvis!) and eventually collapsing due to age related heart problems...

...the Whizzer reveals that the container is actually holding his radioactive son Nuklo.

While the other Avengers head off to fight Nuklo...

...the Scarlet Witch talks with the Whizzer, who mentions that in his travels to find a cure for Nuklo, he wound up at the High Evolutionary's Wundergore mountain, where he and his wife Miss America had more kids.

The Scarlet Witch concludes that those two children must have been herself and Quicksilver. The logical and literary reasons for making these revelations seem remarkably weak, based on the fact that the Whizzer and Quicksilver have the same powers and that Miss Marvel and the Scarlet Witch sort of look alike.

Pure Roy Thomas. It was a bad move that resulted in some convoluted retconning. Nothing was ever really done with the Whizzer, he just kind of hung around, sometimes helping the super-hero team when his heart allowed him to, but never really doing anything resulting in dramatic payoff, such as using the Whizzer as a father figure to mend the rift between Wanda and Pietro over her love for the Vision, for example.

In the end, the Avengers can't stop Nuklo until the Scarlet Witch arrives to capture him with a hex.

Kind of thematically inconclusive. I was expecting Wanda to have to reach out and connect with her 'brother' in order to calm him down or something, but she just uses her powers to defeat him.

The art in this issue is a little weird looking, right? Plus i really can't get over the fact that Iron Man has a nose during this time period.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - false revelation that the Whizzer and Miss America were Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch's parents.

Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP places this between Avengers #126-127. Takes place before Steve Rogers quits being Cap in Captain America #176.

References:

• Iron Man quite understandably confuses this Whizzer with the one he fought as part of the Squadron Sinister. That Whizzer last appeared in Defenders #13-14 (which i actually have placed after this issue but the footnote doesn't imply placement). The footnote really should have been for Avengers #69-70, which is where Iron Man knows the Sinister Whizzer from. Note there is a third Whizzer as well, the Squadron Supreme version. He comes with sour cream and extra cheese.
  
• The Whizzer isn't sure if Captain America is the real deal, since he assumes the original is dead, and he had met the crazy 1950s replacement that appeared in Captain America #153-156.
  
• The All-Winners Squad appeared in All-Winners Comics #19 and All-Winners Comics #21.
  
• The original Human Torch disappeared from the team after he was buried by a crime syndicate, as shown in Young Men Comics #24.
  
• The story of Magneto rescuing the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver from an angry mob was shown most fully in Avengers #47.
  
• Rich Buckler inserts a scene from Uncanny X-Men #9 into the Scarlet Witch's flashback, even though neither she nor Magneto appeared in that issue. Roy Thomas leaves a note saying, "I dunno why Rich stuck this picture in here -- but it sure does take ya back, don't it?"

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

This book caused another continuity issue that didn't get resolved until What If? #4 in 1977. Specifically, who were the Captain America and Bucky that appeared in the All-Winners Squad? The first Cap and Bucky were taken out of action before V-E Day in 1945, and they clearly weren't the 1950s Cap and Bucky. The Marvel position at the time was that all 1945-49 Cap stories were untold tales from WWII, but elements in the two All-Winners Squad stories themselves disprove that, as 1960s Marvel readers saw for themselves when the stories were first reprinted in Marvel Super-Heroes.

Steve Englehart was obviously the regular Avengers writer, but Roy Thomas claimed this issue due to "editorial privilege" or something like that.

When I read this story for the first time a couple of years ago, and even though I knew of Buckler's reputation, I remember being absolutely amazed by the sheer number of Kirby swipes here. An example is the Whizzer-Miss America panel you show, it's "adapted" from a Sue and Reed shot from FF Annual #4 (a lot of the swipes in GSA #1 are from this Annual). And the picture of the High Evolutionary you posted is swiped from a Kirby-drawn Thor comic.

Thanks for pointing out those swipes. I added the image to Fantastic Four annual #4 and the Thor issue is Thor #134.

The High Evolutionary one is really blatant. The Reed/Sue image is a little less obvious.

Rich Buckler's art in this one leaves much to be desired. He was a lot better in the FF's Giant Size Super Stars, even though some of the panels in that issue were copied from previous older comics.

To me this story just doesn't feel like it belongs between Avengers #126 and 127. Steve Englehart seemed to intend for #126 to take place immediately before Captain America #176, when Steve Rogers resigns as Cap. I think a better place to fit GSA #1 would be between Avengers #119 and #120. Of course, in Fantastic Four #150 (which comes right after Avengers #127) we see the Whizzer is still recuperating in Avengers Mansion from the injuries he sustained in this story, which implies that event was relatively recent.

Of course, as fnord comments in the Chronological Placement Considerations of his Cap #176 entry, a few different stories apparently have to fit in between Cap #175 and #176 such as Marvel Two-In-One #4-5. So maybe GSA #1 really is in there after all. I guess we can say that Steve Rogers spent at least a couple of weeks debating whether or not to resign.

This story causes still further problems: first, it's a plot point that the Whizzer doesn't recognize the Steve Rogers version of Cap, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, the Whizzer will play a prominent role in the Invaders series working alongside Steve in the 1940s.

Cap failing to recognize the Whizzer can be written off as more of his memory problems, as clarified in Captain America #247. But that still doesn't explain the Whizzer's failure to recognize Cap. (it also doesn't explain why the Whizzer didn't realize the Cap and Bucky he worked with later weren't the guys he worked with during the war.)

Second, There's an extended setup for a "missing" All-Winnbers Squad story midway through this issue, mainly because Roy Thomas is bothered by the fact that the team skipped an issue and only appeared in issues #19 and #21 of All-Winners Comics in the late 1940s. But Roy never gets around tho filling the gap he points out here, so the "secret" second mission goes unresolved. (I'm sure one of the various Golden Age retro projects of recent years tackled this one, though.)

Really, this is just Thomas gearing up for the 1940s revivalism that will define his Bronze Ag comics career; it's hard not to notice the number of times the word "invader" is thrown around int his story, albeit never in reference to the team Roy will retcon into being a few years hence. (I don't count the one-off in Avengers #71; that's just Roy using Timely's "Big Three.")

Senility?

Or maybe he makes the mistake that a few characters make that he thinks Captain America died in the war (as he and the Invaders/All-Winners Squad were told) and assumes this new Captain America is another replacement like the ones he knew, so he doesn't acknowledge shared history because here he doesn't believe it IS the real Captain America.

He also has alcohol problems.

And is always having heart attacks.

And seemed a bit in denial when he found out Wanda and Pietro weren't his children.

And the "missing" All-Winners Squad story might be what Karl Kesel did in this? http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/All_Winners_Comics_70th_Anniversary_Special_Vol_1_1

Actually, it even says that in the entry "The Whizzer isn't sure if Captain America is the real deal, since he assumes the original is dead, and he had met the crazy 1950s replacement that appeared in Captain America #153-156."

So maybe Whizzer doesn't acknowledge their shared history because he still isn't convinced?

(Also, there's an untold tale there - when did Whizzer met the 50s Cap? At this point, we hadn't the What If #4 retcon that the one(s) Whizzer knew weren't the crazy 50s Cap.)

Well, yes, later on things like handbooks and wiki entries would have to resolve the issue. But Giant-Size Avengers #1 leans a lot on the idea that the Whizzer has never met the original Steve Rogers Cap:

Page 3, panels 2-3: "Your voice -- it's different, somehow -- even stronger -- ! No! You're not him -- you're not Captain America at all -- so you can go to the devil!"

Page 7, panel 5: "So -- Now I know the truth: the Captain America alongside whom I fought was not the true one -- but a replacement."

Remember, this was written years before Roy Thomas created the Invaders and Liberty Legion, and even there, the Whizzer didn't really start interacting with Cap until some of the very last issues of the title, when Don Glut had taken over the scripting. Based on the text piece in this comic, Roy saw this as a way to use the 50s Cap retcon to explain -- and bring in -- the postwar All-Winners stories. By What If? #4, of course, he'd come up with a better plan, not east because the Invaders series had started by then. In that story, everyone acts like the stand-in Captain America thing is well-known, and the Whizzer is even there to see the Patriot replacing the Spirit of '76.

One thing that is good, however, is that the Whizzer doesn't say anything that conflicts with the What If?v.1 #4 retcon adding two more Captain Americas. He refers to the original Cap's "stand-in," and it's the Steve Rogers Cap who makes the identification with his crazy 1950s counterpart.

The Kesel one-shot can't be the missing adventure, since it takes place after the adventure from All-Winners #21. Giant-Size Avengers #1 is very specific about the idea that there was another case in between All-Winners #@19, featuring the villainy of Isbisa, and All-Winners #21, where the team contended against Future Man and Madame Death.

The battle against FM and MD is recapped as the most recent All-Winners case at the beginning of the Kesel story.

Antoher one is in Avengers #155-156 when Namor meets Whizzer, Namor recognizes Whizzer as a member of the Liberty Legion but not as a member of the Invaders.

One instance I recall from this story was Thor examining the Whizzer and saying that his pulse "doth race like a stallion" and I believe Whizzer asked Thor if he was "some kind of doctor". Due to Thor's shared existence with Dr. Don Blake, it was cool to show that at least some of Blake's medical knowledge was portable with the transformation.

The secret 2nd mission actually was What If? #4.

Actually, there may have been a 2nd All-Winners story in the Golden Age that never got used for some reason. A recent issue of Alter Ego reprinted writer Otto Binder's account books, and one notation in there was a story for All-Winners Comics described only as "multi-chapter", with a title that didn't match up with either known All-Winners Squad story. Timely/Marvel wasn't doing multi-chapter stories with any other character at that point, and Binder did write the first All-Winners Squad story---so now I suspect he did write a 2nd AWS story that was accepted, but never illustrated(probably due to All-Winners being cancelled with #19).

Iron Man certainly has a lot of brass in him, to be calling the Sinister Whizzer a clown, when he's the one wearing the clown nose.

Reading yet another continuity-twisting Avengers story by Roy Thomas at this point in the 1973 sequence makes me appreciate Steve Englehart's writing a little bit more.