Issue(s): Invaders #35, Invaders #36, Invaders #37, Invaders #38, Invaders #39, Invaders #40, Invaders #41, Invaders #1, Invaders #2, Invaders #3, Invaders #4
Cover Date: Jun 78 - Sep 79, May-Aug 93
Title: "Havoc on the homefront"/ "Crushed by Iron Cross" / "The Liberty Legion busts loose" / "U-Man comes to town" / "Back from the grave" / "V...- is for Vampire!" / "Beware the Super-Axis!" / "The Invaders return!" / "Havoc in Hollywood" / "Your young men shall see visions" / "...And a hero shall die!"
Credits:
Roy Thomas / Don Glut - Writer
Alan Kupperberg & Don Heck / Alan Kupperberg / Alan Kupperberg & Rick Hoberg / Dave Hoover - Penciler
Rick Hoberg / Chic Stone / Brian Garvey / Brian Garvey & Ian Akin - Inker
Roy Thomas / Mike Rockwitz - Editor
Jim Shooter / Tom DeFalco - EiC

Review/plot:
Roy Thomas wrote issues #35-36. The rest of the first series was by Don Glut. Kupperberg had help from Heck and Hoberg and then Heck again on issues #35 and #37 and #38 respectively. The first issue of this trade, #35, marks the first issue that Frank Springer doesn't ink. He's replaced by Hoberg on that issue and then Chic Stone inks the rest. The 1993 series is all Thomas/Hoover/Garvey, with Ian Akin helping on issue #3.

Issue #34 ended with the Torch, Namor, and Captain America having been urgently summoned home. Issue #35 begins with the big three Invaders stomping through Times Square. There's a cameo with Nick Fury and some Commandos gawking at them, which is a bit incongruous since by the Invaders' own chronology Captain America must have already met them in Sgt. Fury #13, but i guess their dialogue doesn't directly contradict anything.

Then the Whizzer shows up. He's got an emergency to tell the Invaders about, but his recap (which the narrations says he tells "concisely and cogently") doesn't mind getting into aaaall the details about the Liberty Legion's last meeting, including Miss America's complaints about note taking...

...and a recap of all the Legion's origins and their last encounter with the Invaders.

The gist of it is that the Legion have been spying on German-Americans, looking for fifth columnists, and they found some, including a guy in a power-armor suit that would give the Titanium Man a run for his money.

OK, i kind of gave the Blue Bullet a pass in an earlier issue of the Invaders, but this guy is too much. Simply designing a suit as big as that with whatever hydraulics or whatever are necessary to simply move it around, let alone fight in, is probably beyond even today's technology, let alone anything that existed pre-Iron Man.

Add to that the fact that it's apparently made of some special material that makes it "lighter weight than you might imagine" and yet heavy enough to protect him from cannonballs...

...and lets him fly like a rocket with decent maneuverability (granted Miss America can outfly him, but let's face it, that's all she can do, so she better be good at it)...

...plus an array of other gadgets, like knockout gas...

...electric blasts...

...and even the ability to fight underwater (which implies protective eye slits, an oxygen supply, the ability to withstand pressure, and waterproofed electrical gear).

It's too much! It makes Iron Man look like a backwards loser until some time circa 1975 or so. Real transistors, let alone Stan Lee's magical super-science versions, haven't even been invented yet.

I think the suit must also slow the aging process, because here's a flashback with him and the old scientist that built the suit back when they were friends as kids and then in the center on the right when they got older.

The Iron Cross also denies the fact that he's a Nazi about every third panel, which could have been somewhat interesting - a German conflicted between his patriotism and revulsion of the Nazis. But we don't really get into any of that, and in the end he's basically working for the Nazis and we are defined by what we do not what we say, right?

Anyway, even with the combined might of the Invaders and the Liberty Legion, it takes about three issues to beat this guy (although the Legion spend most of the later two issues stuck in a sinking ship waiting to be rescued by the Invaders).

The Torch eventually melts all his "mechanisms" and lets him drown.

Cap and the Patriot are sidelined for much of the fight, since it takes place over water. These issues were published after What If? #4, hence the nod to Patriot and Cap's similarities.

Before i move on, i also wanted to mention the Whizzer's hat.

We don't often get a closeup of it, so when we did here, i was like WTF? Why is there a chicken on that man's head? The Whizzer's motif is a bit confused. He's got radioactive mongoose blood, an awful all-yellow costume, hat wings like Mercury/Hurricane, and an Easter Peep stuck on his forehead. Unless the wings are also part of the bird. Did the Whizzer hollow out a chicken and stick it on his head? Why would a super-speedster wear a chicken on his head anyway?

It certainly doesn't provide the confidence he needs to make it with the ladies.

The Iron Cross story ends with U-Man showing up in the same waters where the Iron Cross fight occurred, but he's summoned by the mysterious Lady Lotus before he can go running off after the heroes.

Miss America and the Whizzer temporarily join the Invaders while they are stateside (to backfill the gap left by Spitfire and Union Jack). The Whizzer suggests that they are all winners, but i don't see any of the real Invaders agreeing with him.

Meanwhile, Lady Lotus sends U-Man after the Kid Commando called Golden Girl.

She wants to recruit Golden Girl on the grounds that they're both Japanese and so they should unite against their oppressors.

Considering that her own teammates freely use the word "nip" around her, you'd think she'd be somewhat receptive.

Lady Lotus' powers seem to include telepathy...

...precognition...

...mind control...

...and homoeroticism.

Golden Girl manages to fight off U-Man and Lotus' goons...

...long enough for the Invaders show up, causing Lotus and U-Man to flee. Bucky embarrasses everyone by dropping the "nip" bomb again and showing too much affection.

I do like Lotus' anger over the concentration camps, but i'd prefer a more ambiguous character; Lotus is too straight-up villainous to work as a protest character.

She does have a lot of pots cooking, though. At the same time she's seducing Golden Girl, she has agents reviving Baron Blood.

Don Glut uses what i consider to be a Thomas-ism, which is having a character say something out of character and justifying it by having them throw in a "As ___ say". The worst example was Hitler's Geronimo bit from Invaders #21, but you see a lot of "As you Brits say" and "As you Americans say" in this series, and here Glut has Union Jack affecting a Cockney expression for the hell of it. It's one of those things that just takes you out of the story.

Anyway, Jack and Spitfire fail to stop Blood's revival.

He's about to finish them off when he is interrupted by a mental message from Lady Lotus. I don't know why she wouldn't just wait until he killed them, but i guess she's impatient. She summons the vampire to her hideout in New York. The Baron also mentions that he was sired by Dracula himself - which i like because Baron Blood has a lot of powers you don't see other MU vampires having, like that ability to control the weather. It makes more sense if he is directly related to the most powerful vampire in the marvel universe.

Baron Blood joins the Atlantean warrior U-Man, and then, after being sufficiently domesticated by Lady Lotus...

...is sent on a mission to facilitate the arrival of two German super soldiers: the Master Man and the whip wielding Warrior Woman.

The Invaders try to stop Baron Blood but get their butts kicked.

Blood is rewarded with being allowed to take a nap.

In the next issue the Human Torch gets seduced by Lady Lotus...

...and the rest of the Invaders fight the Super Axis twice - first at a train depot and then at an amusement park.

Miss America is utterly useless. She can fly and has increased 'vitality'...

...but she's up against some very strong people. The Whizzer mainly uses his powers to run away and catch people who are falling. Even at the end of the series here, Cap doesn't really exhibit any leadership or strategic prowess. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the Sub-Mariner, but the Invaders manage to win the fight due to the fact that the bad guys don't seem to have any real plans other than "smash the amusement park", and after the Human Torch is brought to his senses by Cap, he hunts down Lady Lotus and breaks up her operation. She escapes, but the rest of the Super Axis is led away in a police paddy wagon, which i'm assuming they break out of the minute the Invaders leave the area.

The Human Torch keeps referring to Japanese people as "Nips" as well. I almost think it's deliberate, trying to show some of the WWII era racism that was going around. At the same time, however, Lady Lotus is a complete stereotype of a "slinky", seductive, manipulative asian woman.

At the end of the story she runs into the Yellow Claw (accompanied by his niece Suwan), who tells Lotus that she struck pre-maturely and that over the next decade he'll be bringing down America. It's a nice touch, i guess, considering his activity in the 50s. But at least she was defeated by people with super-powers. The Yellow Claw will be defeated, over and over again, by Jimmy Woo of the FBI.

The Invaders series was cancelled at issue 40 (May 79 cover) due to low sales, but they released the double-sized 41 a few months later (Sep 79) to allow the storyline to be concluded. The letter pages contains the end of an ongoing debate about how important the Golden Age stories should be to the Invaders' continuity. The final word is by Kurt Busiek, who argues that since the GA stories didn't have any continuity amongst themselves, the Invaders should not be held to anything that occurs there. He also complains about Namor using his 'electric eel' powers in a recent issue of the Defenders.

Obviously Kurt loved these Invaders stories, but i think too much mucking about in the Golden Age continuity did the Marvel Universe a disservice. These stories are far from great and in my opinion it makes Captain America's involvement with the Avengers a lot less special. It turns out he's always been on a team full of super powered individuals.

Anyway, this final two-parter of the original series, by Don Glut, was ok. The fights between the super teams are pretty good even if there's a lot of bizarre pieces to it - like the Master Man being controlled by Lady Lotus to do... exactly what he would have done even if he wasn't under her control. The art is classic action-packed 70s stuff - not great but not terrible.

The Glut/Kupperberg era of Invaders is more middle of the road. Serviceable adventure stories. Generally better in a basic competencies sense - less wordy, less frantic, less cluttered, cleaner art. And yet it's missing the enthusiasm of the period where Thomas was directly writing the series (he's still involved as editor); no continuity clean-ups or tie-ins with real golden age characters. Glut is playing with Thomas' toys but not really innovating, unless you count Lady Lotus.

And that's it for the 1970s Invaders series. Unlike the 60s (Sgt. Fury) and the 70s (Invaders), the 1980s were a quiet period for Golden Age continuity inserts. We did have a little follow-up to this series in a few issues of the Stern/Byrne Captain America series, but nothing set directly in the Golden Age period. As much as i don't love the amount of mucking about that was retroactively done to the Golden Age, it might have been interesting to see Stern or Byrne or even Gruenwald providing their take at it.

In any event, the Invaders series was revived as a four issue mini in 1993, not long after Roy Thomas returned to Marvel after some time away. And oh my god was it the 90s.

Say what you will about Frank Robbins, he was a Golden Age artist, so even though i didn't like his style and even though he had evolved over time, you could always look at the art as being somewhat authentic. Not saying that's a requirement; i like the contemporary takes on the Golden Age in books like Marvel Universe or the Marvels Project. But the overly exaggerated 90s style feels especially out of place in World War II era stories. It's especially disappointing knowing that Dave Hoover worked in cartoon animation (He-Man, Super Friends) before going into comics, so he could have produced something in a more classic style if not for the demands of the time period.

The people posing in that shot above, the Battle-Axis, are all actually based on non-Timely/Marvel Golden Age characters whose copyrights had expired. All were heroes in their original books but they've all been made bad guys in this mini (no disrespect intended, according to the end notes, which is where i'm getting most of my info on these people). I thought it would be cool to post original pictures of all the characters below. To avoid linkrot, i've brought copies to my server, but clicking the images will take you to the pages i stole them from.

The most interesting to us is Dr. Nemesis, who will much later be brought in as a member of the X-Men's science team. Thomas ties him in to the Human Torch's origin in this mini, making him a partner of Professor Horton who quits due to Horton's decision to go to the press with the Torch. As we'll see, he's an unrepentant Nazi in these issues, making his later inclusion in the X-Men a bit odd, although his revised personality in the X-Titles is much more interesting. His Golden Age name was Dr. Nemesis, but Thomas changes it to Dr. Death for this series to avoid confusion with another Dr. Nemesis that was a foe of Henry Pym. I'm sticking with the Nemesis name since that's what he's known as in the X-books. Nemesis appeared in Lightning and Super Mystery Comics from 1941-1944.

The naked guy wearing the green cape is Human Meteor, who was in Champ / Champion Comics from 1940-1942. His motivation is that he's Irish-American, so he hates the British and therefore joined the Nazis. Hrmm.

The guy in the red is Volton, who appeared in a 1942 comic called Catman and was originally drawn by Joe Kubert. He says that "for a live wire like me, becoming a Nazi was a natural!", which is a bit unclear, but that may be deliberate; more on him below.

The constipated guy is Strongman. His story here is that he was a rich kid who got bullied a lot, so he bought experimental drugs to make him strong (and "some folks claim it slowed my brain down a little"), and joined the Nazis because he "saw how they mopped up the British and Russians". " He originally appeared in Crash Comics in 1940.

The lady in need of a visit to the chiropractor is the Spider Queen, who had three appearances in a comic called The Eagle. Her motivation is that her husband was killed by Communist agents and so she's not pleased with the US' alliance with the USSR.

I guess her skirt really is that short, and it's therefore not Hoover's fault that there's several panty-shots of her in this series, but i'm going to blame him anyway.

And i bet she never posed like this in the The Eagle.

The Invaders are trounced by the Battle-Axis in their first encounter...

...and they have to go crawling to the Liberty Legion for help.

Thomas' style here is a bit less wordy than his 70s work. The dialogue still doesn't feel natural, but, well, at least there's less of it? That's cattier than i meant it. Speaking of catty, check out Namor's comment here.

Throughout the 70s books, there was progressively less and less inter-team squabbling, so that felt like a bit of a regression to me.

It turns out most of the Liberty Legion is unavailable. Miss America and the Whizzer are around, but they have also been beaten by the Axis.

The cast clearly isn't large enough for this four issue mini yet, so Roy Thomas also brings back the Golem as an unwilling ally for Dr. Nemesis.

He's also got the Golden Age Vision working for him, under the threat that he'll destroy his dimension if he doesn't.

And Thomas adds to the hero's side as well, with the addition of the Blazing Skull...

...and a truly awful armored version of the Silver Scorpion.

Dr. Nemesis' plan is straight out of Superman: The Movie: triggering an earthquake that will drop California into the ocean.

His motivations are a bit circular. He's doing it for the recognition that he never got as Dr. James Bradley. "Of course, in this particular venture, I must remain anonymous. Still, in the long run, I suspect the world will come to know the name of Doctor Death." Hrmm.

Based on his thought bubble here, he sure seems like a Nazi true-believer to me.

It also turns out that Volton is actually a prototype android that Bradley took with him when he broke his partnership with Professor Horton. So Volton is actually the Human Torch's older brother. Volton doesn't take the news well.

That revelation distracts him enough to give the Invaders an edge, and the tides turn when the Golem and the Vision switch sides as well. Everything culminates in a big fight.

And then the Vision shuts down Nemesis' doohickey.

The device that Nemesis uses to keep the Vision in thrall is called a Dimension Smasher, which was also the name of the device used in the Vision's first appearance to summon him.

The Golem's brother, the former Blue Bullet, is killed by Nemesis during the final fight.

Ugh, the art.

Even when it's not objectively bad (ok, i guess art can never be objectively bad), it's still not my thing.

Not long after this, the remarkably different Busiek/Ross Marvels series would be published, with a first issue that had a much more... reverential tone than these issues.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 4 - first Lady Lotus. Dr. Nemesis first appearance (as a Marvel character).

Chronological Placement Considerations: The beginning of this trade takes place with the Invaders having responded to the request to immediately return to the United States. For simplicities' sake, and since i didn't notice any obvious reason why it should be otherwise, i'm leaving the 1993 series directly after the 70s series, just as it was published in the trade reprint. There may be details that slipped my notice; i'm not a World War II expert. But World War II is still clearly going strong with Hitler still in charge of Germany, so i'm assuming we're not yet into the later years of the war. New York city was under enforced blackouts at the beginning of the 1993 mini, so that may be a clue for someone.

References:

• The Liberty Legion was formed in Invaders #6.
  
• Baron Blood's revelation that he was sired by Dracula was hinted at in Invaders #9.
  
• The Torch, not allowed to donate any more blood, references the origin of Spitfire in Invaders #11.
  
• Miss America and the Whizzer fought the Liberty Legion fought Master Man in Marvel Two-In-One annual #1 and Marvel Two-In-One #20.
  
• Dr. Goldstein, the Blue Bullet, moved to UCLA after the Invaders "rescued" his brother, the Golem, in Invaders #11-13 (says the footnote; in fact they left him in Warsaw at his request, but i guess that was enough for his brother).
  
• The Human Torch's origin was first shown in Marvel Comics #1.
  
• A number of other references are included in the end notes of the 1993 series and were helpfully included in the trade. There's a lot, but i'll touch on a few of the most relevant ones (and i also listed the comics that the previously non-Marvel characters appeared in above).
  • Miss America first appeared in Marvel Mystery Comics #49, which was published in Nov 1943, but Thomas has decided that it took place earlier so she could appear in the Invaders and Liberty Legion.
    
  • The Whizzer's origin from USA Comics #1 is shown again here.
    
  • The Thin Man first appeared in Mystic Comics #4.
    
  • The Blazing Skull's origin was new to me. He appeared in Mystic Comics #5-9, and his origin involves a trip to the eastern utopia of the Skull Men.
    

  • The Silver Scorpion appeared in Daring Mystery #7-8 and Comedy Comics #9. The crazy 90s style armor is a new thing, though. Thomas confirms that her non-armored appearances should take place before her appearance here.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? Y

My Reprint: N/A

i thought there was something fishy about those "Japanese" handmaidens!

Roy Thomas intended early Invaders villains to be analogues of DC superheros. Master Man=Superman, Baron Blood=Batman, Warrior Woman=Wonder Woman, U-Man=Aquaman. The stereotype Lady Lotus represents did exist in the 1940s, most notably the Dragon Lady in Milton Caniff's "Terry and the Pirates".

One major clue as to the chronology of the limited series is that Cap remarks that he's been a superhero for "over a year now". He wouldn't use that phrasing if he'd been a hero for two years or three years. Also Spider-Queen remarks that her husband's death took place "last June 20th"- two days before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. So this probably takes place in June-July of 1942.

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that the Iron Cross armor would have slowed his ageing from that picture, but looking this guy up, the suit apparantly substains him into the modern age. He does somewhat back up his anti-nazi stance by taking part in the modern V-Battalion (a secret group who spent much of their time hunting down war criminals) up until his actual non-drowny death... But whose to say loyalty to his country wouldn't win out if it were to happen again?

Does anybody know the fate of the guy who created the armor? Because I'm thinking, maybe it went the way of the original super soldier forumla and he was the only one who could produce it. Maybe he was ahead of his time, a Great War era Tony Stark even. Heck, the material alone sounds like it could have been something that wasn't standard issue...

I was just making a lame joke regarding the anti-aging, based on what looks to me like two kids who are about the same age growing up to be what looks like two adults at least a decade apart. But the discrepancy actually occurs before Helmut Grule finds Franz Schneider's armor... It's odd that the armor actually will provide Grule with an abnormally long life; i wasn't aware of that when i wrote that line. Thanks for your comments here.

A big chunk of the Liberty Legion/Iron Cross fight was intended as a Liberty Legion solo for Marvel Premiere; it got salvaged and shoehorned in here.

Miss America had super-strength in the 1940s; not sure why Roy dumped it.

Don Glut tends to put plenty of naked ladies in his homemade movies, so Lady Lotus' homoeroticism is very likely intentional.

I don't think Roy knew that Spider Queen's real name, Sharon Kane, was also the name of a prominent(albeit blonde) long-time porno actress.

The Silver Scorpion's Golden Age costume wasn't anything to cheer about either.

Dragon woman and potential lesbian antics aside, it would have been interesting to see more regarding the concept of the hypocritism that the Allies had in being the bringers of freedom and yet pull things like the internment camps for the Japanese. (sorry, just saw "Bad Day at Black Rock" the other day and considering what we pulled due to WWII, we weren't really saints even with the best of intentions)

And skewing of super-powers aside, I think what Jimmy Woo pulled in the 50s was impressive regardless, facing off against someone like the Yellow Claw and keeping him at bay during the weird post-war, pre-FF1 period. Heck, the Claw probably was lucky that the heroes were mostly dormant during the period and that merely a Chinese-American agent did him in. (at least he wasn't controlling some of the monsters that came in the late 50s...)

Just FYI, but upskirt shots (knickers in view) were pretty common in the Spider-queen's golden age stories.

http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Special:NewFiles

sorry here

http://images.wikia.com/pdsh/images/2/2d/Spider_queen_title.jpg

Rick Hoberg's first Marvel art was in FOOM#6.

Interesting that someone must come on a comic blog and point out the difference between internment (analogous to being in prison) and concentration (meaning that a group was gathered together or concentrated). The U.S. internment of Japanese-Americans did not result in the wholesale slaughter of said Americans. This is antithetical to the concentration camps run in the Nazi Empire in Europe. There, six million people in the camps were systematically murdered. So, what are we to conclude from the information I have given? Only that if one thinks of the Allies as "hypocritical" for putting the Nazis on trial for their crimes while some of the prosecutors (namely the U.S.) interned their own citizens in camps only to return them safely to their homes, one is a complete and utter simpleton.

Is it the exact same? No.
Is it morally reprehensible? Yes.
First of all, it IS incarcerating citizens for committing no crimes. That's wrong in any context.
Also, your facts are lacking. It was not a genocide campaign, you are correct.
Did any incarcerated Japanese-Americans die due to the conditions? Yes, they did. Disease and squalor were a severe problem in the camps. So, no, not everyone got released with a happy ending.
Did everyone return home? Nope. Many lost their property or had their homes taken. A reason why many state/local politicians went along with the incarceration (especially many Republicans, who differed quite a bit with FDR's policies) was that wealthy benefactors in the area were interested in acquiring some lucrative properties. Allowing the citizens to be taken away freed up some choice land that was under "occupation" by Japanese people.
You have to figure it may be hard to work and make money while in a prison camp, and quite a few Japanese-American citizens rounded up owned businesses.
Reparations were never given to those incarcerated for no crimes by the US government.

If you want to point out fallacies, the big one was the reason for the war. World War II was not declared to stop the Nazi genocides. It was declared due to Germany's aggressive expansionist policies.
And, one could argue that element didn't even figure in to America's entering the war, as Hitler actually declared war on the United States.
I'm not saying that some soldiers did not fight the war because of the anti-Jewish policies of Nazi Germany, but that was never the reason war was declared.

Aw, that George Takei guy overblows the persecution of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Everyone in a round up camp should have been grateful it wasn't like Nazi concentration camps and zip it.
(Sarcasm ends here)

Anyway my introduction to Baron Blood was with the Stern/Byrne run of Captain America so seeing him in the 70s he looks kind of silly. Certainly looks scarier with a thinner frame too, kind of why I prefer smaller Spider-Man over heroic build.

Chris- the average death rate in the camps was roughly the same as the death rate outside the camps. Some people were shot by the guards or whatever, though.

It's the official policy of this website that imprisoning people based on their ethnicity is wrong. We don't need to compare death rates or ask if the people were later "returned safely to their homes". Captain America's motto was never "If you're not exactly as bad as the Nazis, you're OK in my book."

If someone wants to have a nuanced discussion about this, please take it somewhere else.

Sorry, I'll let it go.

Anyway, can't wait for this site to hit the 90s. Maximum Carnage, Clone Saga, Onslaught, Heroes Reborn, so many wonderful works!
Okay I admit I haven't read the last two but I dislike Marvels 90s period very much.

"Glut has Union Jack affecting a Cockney expression for the hell of it."

Just to make it a little worse, 'blooming' isn't even a Cockney expression, or certainly I've never heard it used as one. It's a stereotypically Northern English phrase. Ah well, let's be charitable to Glut and chalk it up to Union Jack being from an aristocratic background and maybe a little out of touch.

IIRC, they did much more than hint in #9 that Dracula "sired" Baron Blood; I don't have it handy, but in my mind's eye, I can clearly see a Frank Robbins flashback of John Falsworth setting out to control the Count and ending up being the victim instead.

Don Glut confirmed in Alter Ego #143 that Lady Lotus was bisexual.

The bit about Miss America's being the Liberty Legion's secretary is a homage to the Golden Age adventures of the JSA, in which Wonder Woman played that role.

The Spider Queen's Golden Age origin in THE EAGLE #2 (Fox, 1941) was the same, but the original version only describes her husband's killers as "enemies of his country", so they might be Nazis.

I suspect Thomas put the Silver Scorpion into battle-armour to finally justify her name.

Marvel Wikia has synopses of the Blazing Skull's Golden Age adventures. They don't mention the origin, so I think it's entirely Thomas's concoction.

In his origin panel the Blazing Skull says he originally wore a "fiery skull-mask". I think it wasn't literally fiery. In the splash panel from his debut story it has what looks like a glow effect around it. The effect around his simulacrum's head in AVENGERS #97 might also be a glow. In the other panels I've seen from his Golden Age stories it's just a red mask, so I can't be sure it ever even glowed outside that splash panel.