Issue(s): Invaders #10, Invaders #11, Invaders #12, Invaders #13, Invaders #14, Invaders #15, Invaders annual #1, Invaders #16, Invaders #17, Invaders #18, Invaders #19, Invaders #20, Invaders #21
Cover Date: Nov 76 - Oct 77
Title: "The wrath of the Reaper!" / "Night of the Blue Bullet!"/ "To the Warsaw ghetto!" / "The Golem walks again!" / "Calling... the Crusaders!" / "God save the King!" / "Okay, Axis-- here we come / The Human Torch / Captain America / Sub-Mariner / Endgame, part II" / "The short, happy life of Major Victory" / "The making of Warrior Woman, 1942" / "Enter: The mighty Destroyer" / "War comes to the Wilhelmstrasse" / "The Battle of Berlin pt. 1" / "The Battle of Berlin pt. 2"
Credits:
Roy Thomas - Writer
Frank Robbins / Lee Elias, Don Rico, Frank Robbins, & Alex Schomburg / Jim Mooney - Penciler
Frank Springer / Don Rico, Alex Schomburg, & Frank Springer - Inker
Roy Thomas - Editor

Review/plot:
Jim Mooney draws issue #16 only. The rest of the regular issues in this run are Robbins, and all are inked by Springer. Ed Summer gets a plotting assist thanks for issue #13. The annual was a jam issue; more on that below.

The story here continues directly from the last set of issues. The Invaders are rushing Union Jack and Jacqueline Falsworth to the hospital after the battle with Baron Blood. However, in typical 70s style, issue #10 is a fill-in with most of the issue being a reprint of "Captain America battles the Reaper! The man the law couldn't touch!" from Captain America Comics #22 (Jan 43, drawn by Al Avison & Al Gabriele)(this means that despite the break in trade reprints for me, the Invaders have involved in uninterrupted action since issue #7).

The reprint is embedded into the main story. Union Jack's legs have been crushed by a boulder, and Jacqueline has been drained of all her blood. This puts Cap in the mind of death, and he therefore thinks back to the last time he fought the Reaper, albeit more literally. Ok, i guess that makes sense... except that Reaper barely counted as a death-themed villain.

Despite the scythe...

...he doesn't have any death-themed powers. If he has any powers at all, it's mind control. At Hitler's behest, he enters the United States and stirs ups some major trouble.

Since he's apparently in the country legally, Cap can't touch him.

The FBI actually does have proof that the Reaper is a Nazi, but it's moot because the guy defeats himself with the always handy third rail.

It's what you'd expect from a Golden Age comic. Can't really criticize it. I do enjoy how the morale of the lesson isn't "view the voices of those in authority with skepticism" but "trust our leader".

But mainly it's just funny how Roy Thomas attempts to force a connection back to the ongoing plot in the Invaders.

It's also worth noting that despite the publication date, which would have put the Reaper story after the US's entry to the war, it's said that Cap fought the Reaper "months ago" ("By sheer coincidence, a basically accurate account of [this story] is going to be published state-side, any day now!", thinks Cap).

I often complain that Thomas writes interchangeable dialogue (it's not an uncommon problem for comic writers) but here's a very obvious example of it thanks to a repeated scene at the end for Invaders #10 and beginning of #11.

I don't think either the Torch or Namor should be saying "Mate". I'm also not convinced the man whose legs were crushed by a boulder should be talking at all, but i guess we'll go with British stoicism and all that.

When they finally make it inside the hospital, it turns out that a strange foreign element in Jacqueline's bloodstream makes it impossible to give a transfusion... except from the Human Torch whose android blood makes him a "truly universal donor".

Meanwhile, scientists working in the same hospital cause a blackout. When the heroes go to investigate, they find the scientist working on a really clunky set of powered armor.

One of the scientists gets a call from his secret Nazi master with an order to destroy the American heroes. Wearing his Blue Bullet armor, he attacks.

During the fight, Jacqueline wakes up and discovers that her transfusion has given her super speed powers, making her "as fast as a British Spitfire" (i'm really not a fan of Frank Robbin's sloppy looking art).

Nonetheless it is the Sub-Mariner, pretty much all by himself, who defeats the Blue Bullet.

The scientist gripes that he would have completed his mission if he were fighting men instead of super-powered "freaks". Politely, no one points out that defeating super-powered freaks was his mission.

The sub-theme of the issue is that the Human Torch is in love with Jacqueline and even donates all his blood to her, but she has eyes only for Cap. It's heavy handed, but not terrible. At the end of the issue, he storms off, stating that now that she has super powers he's no longer needed on the team. The fact that she has completely different super powers doesn't seem to register (You could make a better argument about Toro).

A more geeky concern is that i'm somewhat against the existence of a powered exo-skeleton like the Blue Bullet's at this time. I appreciate that it's clearly a bulky and awkward suit and is brought down basically just by Namor in a single issue, but it still looks to me to be more sophisticated than the earliest golden version of Iron Man's suit (accepting that the grey suit was put together in a prison). But we'll talk more about this when we get to the Iron Cross; at least, as i said, the Bullet is arguably a clunky prototype.

Anyway, it turns out the scientist who created the Bullet, Professor John Gold, is really Professor Goldstein, and he went on his rampage because his brother Jacob is still in a Polish ghetto in Warsaw, and the Nazis have threatened to kill Jacob if John doesn't go along with them. He says that if the Invaders rescue Jacob, he'll gladly go back to helping the Allies.

This gets the Human Torch ready to rejoin the Invaders, and Jacqueline is ready to replace her now-crippled father on the team as well, in a new costume.

She has to overcome a little overprotective reluctance on the part of her teammates first. And it's worth noting that she's not just super-fast. She's so fast that "the very air catches fire behind her". Hence, Spitfire.

The Invaders make it to Poland and briefly get captured by a scarred Nazi called Face...

... but they are rescued by Jacob, who has transformed himself into the Golem of Jewish legend...

Jabob refuses to leave his people and the Invaders return home without him. Or without liberating Warsaw, for that matter. Once you start acknowledging the realities of World War II, especially matters related to the Holocaust, it's a little incongruous to be have super-heroes, especially at Namor and this Human Torch's power levels, running around. Making the heroes aware of the Warsaw ghettos isn't as bad as making them aware of death-camps, however, and Thomas does address this:

The Invaders are not prophets. They've no way of knowing that untold thousands will perish, when the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto rise in revolt, in April of 1943. And what if they did know? Could they change the inscrutable workings of destiny? Not a whit. So you see... in the end, they are only human beings after all.

I'll buy the first part. I'm less sure on the second. If we're saying that the existence of super-heroes in World War II changed the outcome "not a whit", then what's the point? I find the explanation that there were heroes/villains on both sides that balanced each other out plausible enough but it works better if the super-folk are mostly at "super-soldier" level or below. The more characters that can destroy a Panzer tank in one punch are retconned in, the more strained the situation gets.

And speaking of more super-powered characters, the Invaders immediately return home from Warsaw to find another group of super-heroes. They call themselves the Crusaders. Most of them are disposable.

Thunderfist:

Ghost Girl (way to give away the secret of your powers in your expository dialogue!):

Captain Wings:

Tommy Lightning:

They all turn out to be dupes of a Nazi agent, with their powers - except for the two i call out specifically below - temporarily provided by the Nazi as well.

But two have some longer-term significance. The first is the only American of the group, the awkwardly named and costumed Spirit of '76.

He's completely non-powered, with only a bulletproof cape to aid him on the battlefield. But he'll (briefly) be a replacement for Captain America during the years that Steve Rogers is on ice.

The second is the fabulous Dyna-Mite.

Not only does he have the most ridiculous name ever, but there's some further developments for him ahead. Before we get to that, though, we take a detour through the Invaders annual, which is largely a continuity clean-up issue.

In Avengers #71, Dec 1969 by publication date, the Avengers were involved in a story involving Kang and the Grandmaster that had Black Panther, Yellow Jacket, and the Vision travel back in time and fight Golden Age era Captain America, Human Torch, and Namor. They weren't called the Invaders - there was no such concept yet - but it's easily their prototypical appearance - they even shout "OK Axis, here we come!".

With the introduction of the Invaders series, however, there were a few problems with that appearance. Captain America had his triangle shield, which he only used in his first Golden Age appearance and had definitely stopped using by the time he'd joined the Invaders. It was also said at the time (by the Black Panther) that it was 1941, which would have been pretty difficult considering the Invaders formed some time after the attack on Pearl Harbor (Dec 7th, 1941).

This little stunt proves that Roy Thomas was a Master of Continuity, because not only did he think to tie in with a story he wrote eight years ago, and not only did he consider and find a way to address all of the inconsistencies listed above, but he even found a way to explain why the Sub-Mariner was wearing a different pair of shorts at the time. Granted the explanations are pretty damn contrived, but still. Respect where respect is due.

Continuity's Little Helpers in this case are themselves examples of Roy Thomas' continuity knowledge and in one case fixes another problem merely by appearing here. The three villains are the Hyena, the Shark, and Agent Axis. Hyena and Shark fought the Human Torch and Namor respectively, but Agent Axis only appeared once as a hallucination of Cap's in Tales of Suspense #82. As Mark Drummond notes in the comments for that issue, the appearance there was apparently a mistake; Kirby had drawn an Agent Axis for DC, not Timely/Marvel so Cap shouldn't have been having a hallucination about him. So Roy Thomas inserts him here and that covers for the hallucination problem.

Even as of Axis' appearance here, Cap is supposed to have history with him, however. Cap says "I polished off Agent Axis so fast, the comic books didn't get the story". Namor and the Torch dispatched their villains with similar ease the first time, but the Invaders are told that they've now been powered up.

The Invaders are given their mission at the top of Big Ben, which is their new headquarters, run by a pair of liaisons from Allied Command.

When they send the Invaders on their mission, they ask that Bucky and Toro remain behind, again helping to conform with the details of the Avengers crossover (Spitfire, her father, and Dyna-Mite are already out of the picture in furtherance of the plot that will continue in issue #16).

The bad guys aren't working for, or otherwise aware of, the Grandmaster or anything; it's meant to be a complete coincidence that they're helping put everything back to the way it was in the Avengers issue.

The Human Torch's foe is the Hyena, and he's still hijacking trucks, although now he's doing it for the Nazis. He traps the Torch with an apparently magnetic tub of water.

No changes to the Torch. We're lucky Sal Buscema didn't draw him with a visible face like the modern Torch in the Avengers issue or the Hyena might have stuck an asbestos beaglepuss on him or something. The Torch fades away while the Hyena's got him held captive after having already taken a sample of his super-hero producing blood.

As mentioned earlier, Captain America faces off against Agent Axis. This is his first actual appearance, so i'll describe his powers, which are akin to 3-D Man. Three Axis agents, one German, one Japanese, and one Italian, were struck by lightning and merged into a single person. So in addition to having the strength of three men, he also has the power to shout cliched exclamations in three languages.

I'll also note he seems to have the power of hypnosis, but whether that's an ingrained power or he just pulled out a watch on a chain, i can't say for sure.

He's been charged with capturing Captain America's shield which Cap tells him is made of a "special substance you'll never know about!". Axis has already stolen Cap's original shield, and they swap shields right before Cap also fades away.

Namor goes after the smuggler called the Shark, who's been upgraded with some powerful trick torpedos.

Namor is also captured, and here's where things get weird. The Shark steals his pants.

He kindly provides Subby with a different set of shorts to wear...

...but mark this day as the day Namor got pantsed by a two-bit smuggler with an overbite.

Honestly, i know Roy Thomas is into the bonus rounds with this one, but i think most of us would have let the slight difference in swimwear slide. The Nazis are said to be after the pants because they are "of such water-proof and pressure-resisting materials". I imagine U-Man could just as easily have provided them with such materials, but i know we shouldn't be looking at this too hard.

So we have our time-travel tie-in (even making sure to correct the year reference)...

...and then the Invaders return to their time period to stop their foes from making off with their stuff.

Namor is not in the mood for jokes while he's getting his pants back.

The annual ends with Captain America assuring us that this whole plot was far too bizarre for him to remember it after he wakes up in modern times.

The nice thing about the annual is that it's a jam issue drawn by a number of Golden Age artists. A text piece, even included in the trade reprint, explains that while Bill Everett had unfortunately passed away at this point, and Jack Kirby, Carl Burgess, and Carl Pleuffer were unavailable, Thomas was able to recruit Alex Schomburg, Don Rico, and Lee Elias, to draw the Human Torch, Captain America, and Sub-Mariner sections of the annual, respectively.

After the annual, we learn the secret of Dyna-Mite. It turns out that he's a friend of (and he will much later be revealed to be the lover of) Brian Falsworth. Brian and Dyna-Mite (merely Roger Aubrey at the time), naively went to Germany to try to solidify peace between the UK and Germany after Chamberlain's "peace in our time" pact. They both wound up captured.

The Nazis shrunk and brainwashed Aubrey, converting him into Dyna-Mite for their Crusaders team. With Aubrey resurfacing, Lord Falsworth and Spitfire have traveled with him back to Germany to try to help him regain his lost memories.

The main Invaders get involved through the kidnapping of a PFC Biljo White. White drew a comic called Major Victory, and his character's origin was similar enough to Captain Americas that the Nazis felt he might have additional info about the super-serum formula.

I should note that in real life a Biljo White was an active member of the early comics fan community, and even drew a character for Roy Thomas' Alter Ego fanzine that looks pretty similar to Major Victory.

Anyway, the Invaders are attacked by Master Man on their way into Germany...

...and they're captured and presented to Adolf Hitler.

And it turns out that Biljo White knew Dr. Anderson, the assistant to Erskine that was kidnapped by the Nazis in Giant-Size Invaders #1 and forced to give up the information that created Master Man. With White's additional knowledge, the Nazis create another super soldier, this one a female scientist who takes the name Kriegerfrau, or Warrior Woman.

The Invaders temporarily escape their captivity in what is essentially a power demonstration scene for the Warrior Woman...

...and after that battle Cap is thrown off a cliff while the rest of the Invaders are recaptured.

Cap is rescued by the Destroyer.

You can tell there's a little bit of a continuity clean-up when the Destroyer recounts his origin. When Cap says he thought the Destroyer was an American, the Destroyer responds "Doubtless you refer to the theory that I was an American correspondent, thrown into a dungeon in Hamburg...". He disavows the name Ken Marlow, but confirms that he received a super-serum potion from a Professor Eric Schmitt. And he turns out to be Brian Falsworth. Falsworth's transformation to the Destroyer is said to a occur "only a few days later" than Falsworth and Aubrey's capture in Germany, which would mean that the Destroyer was made active before Captain America, and his serum couldn't have been one that was derived from Cap's (this random tidbit of information provided to you for comparison with the Marvels Project).

Everything culminates in a big battle in Berlin wherein Spitfire resurfaces...

...Cap swings around on a Nazi flag while making sure via the dialogue that no one takes it out of context...

...Dyna-Mite secretes himself all over Spitfire's cloak...

...and the Destroyer is seemingly killed...

...but comes back as a new Union Jack.

Also, Toro is badly injured...

...and Master Man and Warrior Woman are unwillingly (especially on WW's side) married by Hitler...

...who then jumps out of a plane and shouts "Geronimo!" except he didn't, according to the footnote, so WTF Roy Thomas?

And that's about where things end for this trade (both issues #20 and #21 are shortened and the difference is made up with Sub-Mariner reprints which are not included in the trade).

My complaints here are the same as in the previous trade - Frank Robbins has a cartoony and messy style that is aggravated by Roy Thomas' over-scripting, and vice versa.

There's no character development and nothing in the way of justification for this series, like exploring how the addition of all these super-powered characters during World War II would have affected the war, how Cap or Namor's experience here might have informed their characters when they were revived in the Silver Age, etc. On the other hand there's no doubt that these characters and concepts have had longevity so it's interesting from a historical perspective to see how it was all originally laid out. And Thomas' enthusiasm for the Golden Age stuff rubs off on me, making me want to hunt down the issues that he's playing off of. So it's obviously working on some level, but at the same time it's hard to get through.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 5 - First Spitfire, Spirit of '76, Agent Axis, & Warrior Woman. Revamped origin for Destroyer, first appearance of the second Union Jack. First Dyna-Mite who will later become the second Destroyer.

Chronological Placement Considerations: Early WWII; i would estimate this is all 1942. The Invaders are operating out of Britain. The pacing of these issues are so frantic and compressed that there's very little time between the end of the previous trade and the beginning of the next one (they're rushing home to get Lord Falsworth and Jacqueline to the hospital between trades), and the same is true with the end of this trade (which has the Invaders floating in the English Channel) and the beginning of the next (wherein they are picked up by a British ship).

References:

• The Human Torch makes references to Toro being a fire-eater in the carnival and his own beginnings as "Professor Horton's Prize Android Exhibit" in Human Torch #2 and Marvel Comics #1 respectively.
  
• The Hyena previously appeared in Human Torch Comics #30.
  
• Captain America only used his triangle shield in Captain America Comics #1.
  
• Namor fought the Shark in Sub-Mariner Comics #23. The footnote says that "due to wartime priorities" the story was not chronicled until its publication date in 1947. Presumably the same rationale can be used on the Human Torch Hyena story.
  
• The proto-Invaders appeared in Avengers #71.
  
• The Destroyer first appeared in Mystic Comics #1.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? Y

My Reprint: Invaders Classic #2 TPB

Dyna-Mite is not a more ridiculous name than the Whizzer.
I'm not sure that the Marvel heroes would have made that much of a difference in World War II. Namor and the Torch are powerful but they have their limits. Now the DC heroes should have been able to win World War II in about five seconds, which is why Roy came up with the Spear of Destiny explanation, and a lot of people felt even that didn't work.
Roger Aubrey, especially under Fabian Nicieza, is an example of a archetype that's been showing up relatively recently- the scheming homosexual who is willing to sacrifice others in the name of what he sees as the greater good. Other examples include Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter and Cyrus from Scandal. I'm not sure what the origins of this stereotype are and if it should be considered homophobic or not.

You know, i agree with just about everything you say. This is the trade where i really got turned off on the invaders. The artwork went from quaint to sloppy, the stories started to get too silly (the way the heroes fly in and out of germany seems a joke).

I dislike the blue bullet too. Iron man was the first fully armoured hero (dr doom beat him by a year). Its annoying to have these retro characters which make iron man look like just another armour guy (the worst is when Roy puts silly armour on the silver scorpion)

I understand the need to add a british element to the invaders but union jack and spitfire are stupid and the crusaders were so boring it hurts. Ill admit master man and warrior woman made good villains.

the only redeeming feature s the absoulutely fun annual. this is what the whole series should have been like (if we had to have the concept of invaders at all). the style was a great throwback to the all winners squad. heroes going on solo missions, encountering non-powered baddies, and the art on the human torch was a dozen times better than frank robbins sloppy stuff.

Of course the biggest sin was placing out Golem in Warsaw. The Golem is from PRAGUE!

I actually like both the concepts of Union Jack and Spitfire, but dislike their backstories/origins intensely. The entire appeaser/Destroyer angle complicates something that doesn't need to be, Union Jack needs something to distinguish him from Cap, and a blood transfusion should not have given Spitfire her powers. It just seems incredibly lazy.

I also agree that armored villains in WWII annoys me as well. Nazi steampunk, weird Vril technology, or something other would work fine.

And Roy Thomas was dumb to never include esoteric Nazism's belief that the original Aryan race was related to Atlantis. That linkage could have been used to a lot of cool use.

The blood-transfusion-grants-speedster-powers origin for Spitfire is presumably Roy's nod to the equally ridiculous mongoose-blood transfusion that empowered the Whizzer. (I wish Roy had just given Jaqueline some of the Whizzer's blood instead -- that would have made more comic-book sense at least.)

Whoops--you already covered the Whizzer homage in an earlier entry. Sorry for not looking before I posted.

"Willi Lohmer" is most likely paraphrased from "Death of a Salesman".

The Crusaders story was the Marvel half of a Marvel/DC crossover that nobody figured out until years later. Roy and DC writer Bob Rozakis decided to simultaneously introduce a "Crusaders" team in their books(Bob's being "Freedom Fighters") that mimicked the other company's WWII-era team. So: Captain Wings=Black Condor, Ghost Girl=Phantom Lady, Tommy Lightning=The Ray, Thunderfist=Human Bomb, Spirit of '76=Uncle Sam(and Spirit of '76's costume was mostly lifted from the 1940s Standard Comics superhero Fighting Yank), and Dyna-Mite=Doll Man.

I've probably mentioned this before, but Roy designed the Invaders villains to be parodies of DC characters. Master Man=Superman, Warrior Woman=Wonder Woman, Baron Blood=Batman, and U-Man=Aquaman.

The 1940s DC Agent Axis can be seen in the "Boy Commandos" hardcover from a few years back, and definitely proves that this one was the result of Kirby's faulty memory.

Carl Burgos wouldn't have drawn the Torch chapter even if asked; he was still angry over his failed legal action against Marvel in the mid-1960s over the Torch, and was still working for schlockmeister Myron Fass.

The Prague Golem did show up before in Strange Tales and Marvel Two-In-One.

Let's hope removing Namor's pants was all the Shark did with him while he was out. No way of knowing how long the Shark had been out at sea with no cabin boys(and according to the Golden Age Handbook, there was more than one Shark).

OH: and another hallucinatory Agent Axis appeared in Captain America #162.

I wanted to like the Invaders back when these issues came out, but I couldn't get past Frank Robbins' horrible art. The goofy intense faces, awkwardly twisted poses, and overall sloppyness was too hard on the eyes. Even when he took over Cap's title for a few issues - yuck! I know, I shouldn't expect every Marvel artist to be as awesome as Romita/Buscema/Adams, but where did they get some of these guys, and how did they stick around?

Regarding Lord Falsworth's "British stoicism" in #10, I believe there's a reference to his having been given some painkillers, which may have done the trick, or enough for him to be able to speak.

Mark, first of all, ongoing thanks for your many informative comments, which I have often quoted on our Marvel University blog. Second, if we're willing to accept Roy's word (from his "Nostalgic Note" in the annual), Burgos "was even willing to take on the assignment, he assured me over the transAtlantic phone. Unfortunately, at the last moment, he was unable to do so..." Make of that what you will.

A few years ago, shortly before my mom had her accident, l looked up Carl Pleuffer's name in a database and learned that he was apparently still alive and living in lllinois, aged 107.

One of the unfortunate side effect of all the WWII retcons (and character revivals) is that comic shave loads of Nazi war criminals, many of them sight super-powers, running around in the present day. I mean, int he Marvel Universe, the Allies didn't actually stop Hitler, didn't capture the Red Skull, and evidently didn't even get ahold of folks like Arnim Zola, U-Man, Warrior Woman, and Brain Drain.

"Nazi villains" are a classic staple of comics and pulpy fiction before them, but in a shared universe where old characters never really go away, the net effect is that the super-powered version of World War II never really ended.

@Omar: Probably not fair to blame Roy Thomas for this. Lee & Kirby had already brought the Red Skull into the modern era and revived Hitler as the Hate-Monger. Steranko had revealed Baron Strucker to be the Supreme Hydra.

As far as I can tell, Thomas only ever intended for the various Nazi villains introduced in The Invaders to be used in stories set during World War II. I can't recall him ever using any of them in his own stories set in the present day. It was other writers who brought them all into the modern era.

Roger Stern & John Byrne are the first ones to have used Baron Blood in a story set in the present day, but at least they had the good sense to destroy him almost immediately after (too bad others had to subsequently revive him). It was Byrne again who brought back Master Man & Warrior Woman, and revealed that there was a whole secret society of modern-day neo-Nazis based in Germany who had been awaiting their return. Michael Higgins was the one to inexplicably use U-Man as one of the leaders of the Atlantean army in Avengers Annual #18, and a year later Fabian Nicieza once again used him in in the same capacity in the monthly Avengers book. And then of course Nicieza decided to reveal the pretty much every single hero & villain from The Invaders series who by that point had not yet already been revived were all part of the V-Battalion.

In light of the fact that almost every other villain in the Invaders is based on some Golden Age hero, I think it's safe to assume the Blue Bullet was inspired by the old Fawcett hero, Bulletman.

That footnote with Roy Thomas saying "you didn't expect me to resist the temptation, did you?" sums up every single thing that prohibits me from ever, ever, ever enjoying his stories or being able to get lost in them. There might be something to Jim Shooter's belief that a writer shouldn't edit himself and this is a great example of it. That's a really bizarre thing to do that really ruined the flow of an already forced story.

Also, Cap adding "what a LINE, that! I must have read it in a COMIC BOOK!" also seems really forced and ruins what could have been a simple, enjoyable scene. I cringe when I suspect that line probably WAS in a Golden Age story at some other time, and Thomas just couldn't resist... Ugh.

The names of at least some the Crusaders were also Golden Age homages.
-Captain Wings was an aviator hero from WINGS COMICS.
-Thunderfist was a Canadian superhero from the Bell Features title ACTIVE COMICS.
-Spirit of '76 was a patriotic superhero who appeared in comics from Harvey. But the costume of the Crusaders version was modelled after Fighting Yank's, as Mark said.
-Dyna-Mite may have be named for Dan the Dyna-Mite, the sidekick of TNT, a DC superhero.
-My best guess is "Tommy Lightning" is a play on "Johnny Thunder" via the name of golfer Tommy Bolt.

Tommy Lightning's costume was modelled after that of Standard's Pyroman, who also had electrical powers.

Half-Face resembles Col. Von Tundra/Half-Man, an early enemy of Sky Wolf from AIR FIGHTERS COMICS. The net tells me "eisen"=iron.

A superhero called Major Victory appeared in comics from Chelser/Dynamic. The INVADERS version's costume was modelled after the Chesler character's.

The Nazis never wanted Namor's trunks. The Shark was just hired to ferry the other two baddied around. The trunks were a "ahem" personal interest of his.

Dyna-Mite also has some similarity to Doll Man, the Will Eisner creation who first appeared in 1939 from Quality Comics and who years later was revived by DC as a member of the Freedom Fighters.

Was the Invaders #1 ANNUAL actually Schomberg’s last cover?