Issue(s): Tales Of Suspense #72,Tales Of Suspense #73,Tales Of Suspense #74 (Captain America stories only)
Cover Date: Dec 65-Feb 66
Title: "The Sleeper shall awake!" / "Where walks the Sleeper!" / "The final sleep"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Jack Kirby - Penciler
Wally Wood, George Tuska, and Carl Hubbell / George Tuska - Inker

Review/plot:
See the comment from Luke regarding the inker credits on issue #72.

It turns out that the last few issues of Tales of Supense (#69-71) were actually Cap rambling on about old war stories to the Avengers.

This issue starts with him wrapping up and answering some questions, like "How come you didn't get in trouble for deserting?" (A: Because people higher up in the army echelon knew his secret). After the rest of the Avengers can't humor him any more, Cap goes off to his bedroom to remember more war stories, including the time the Red Skull told him that there were three Sleeper robots hidden throughout Germany, programmed to awaken in "twenty years" (we put temporal references in quotes due to Marvel's sliding time scale). Cap suddenly remembers this exactly 20 years later (what i want to know is, who from the military debriefed Captain America when he was defrosted? How'd they let this one slip by?).

Cap goes to Germany and finds that the first Sleeper has already been awoken.

You have to love the goofy, bulky nature of this robot.

The second Sleeper is just a pair of wings.

It merges with the first (while Cap is stuck on it, only able to flash warning signs with his shield).

The third Sleeper was a giant floating Red Skull head. Together they form... well, Voltron hadn't even been invented yet, but whatever it is, it's pretty cool.

I'm surprised they never made a toy of it, actually. It would have been a cool Build-A-Figure for the Hasbro line.

Its mission is to mess with the North Pole, destroying the planet. Cap takes it out with a flame thrower, and the arc ends with him parachuting into the arctic waters.

This story gets extra credit for the giant floating Red Skull head. And just for fun, here's Cap being awesome on a motorcycle:

This annual also has a comedy story about how the "Revengers" found "Charlie America!" and it's very, very bad.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - first Sleeper robots, which will continue to appear every so often even though originally there were only supposed to be the three of them.

Chronological Placement Considerations: Better, but not necessarily required, if it takes place before Avengers #26 when the Wasp and Goliath rejoin the Avengers.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Captain America annual #2

The comedy story first appeared in Not Brand Ecch.

The first episode of the Sleeper story in Tales of Suspense 72 was inked by Wally Wood, uncredited for some reason, not by George Tuska.

Paul, do you have a source for the Wally Wood credit? As you can see in the splash panel, the credits list Tuska, and that's what the Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators and the Grand Comics Database list too. And i'm not very good at telling who the inker is by looking.

Looking over some Captain America stuff, I find it weird that after the first few issues of Cap reawakening, joining the Avengers and starting to fight again, that his own issues essentially end up becoming a ten-issue flashback with all his actual action of the time only being depicted in the Avengers. Were Lee/Kirby having a hard time after bringing Steve back figuring out how to use him other than "the Avengers leader"? (considering one of his first solo stories is fighting a sumo wrestler in Vietnam)

But hey, at least when they do finally make solo stories, they start with the coolness of the Sleeper. That really is just a cool usage of Nazi tech with the giant Red Skull as the head.

Apparently inker credits could be wrong because the pages were lettered before they were inked and the office could forget to correct them.

The GCD credits Nick Caputo with the view that Wood inked pp.1-4, Tuska 5-7, and Carl Hubbell, perhaps, 8-10. He discusses the issue at http://nick-caputo.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/the-unknown-art-of-carl-hubbell.html , but only really talks about Hubbell.

Thanks Luke. I've updated the credits. Looking at the link on Nick Caputo's site, it looks like it applies to issue #72 only.

You have to love the goofy, bulky nature of this robot.

I really do. Oldskool robots were the coolest.

I'm surprised they never made a toy of it, actually. It would have been a cool Build-A-Figure for the Hasbro line.

Build-A-Nazi-Robot probably had limited sales potential.

According to Ralph Reese in Comics Journal #197, Wally Wood was assisted by Larry Ivie, who did backgrounds and the Captain America costumes(most likely for the Wood-inked Avengers as well).

Almost simultaneously with Larry Ivie's and Wally Wood's work on this story, Larry Ivie also collaborated with Wally Wood and Len Brown on THUNDER Agents #1, published by Tower Comics with a cover date of November 1965. That series continued until 1969.

Previously, Ivie and Wood both had art published in the sci-fi anthology digest, Galaxy Science Fiction.

Brown and Wood worked together in 1962 on the Topps trading card series Mars Attacks!, which later inspired the 1996 movie of the same name. Mars Attacks! was originally inspired by Wood's cover art for Weird Science #16, published by EC Comics in the 50s, prior to the Wertham scourge.

DC later spoofed all the Lee/Kirby Captain America stories with General Glory in the JLA. They even did a story called The Last Giant Nazi Robot story with the Uberbot satirizing this storyline. There is also a similar Nazi robot in Amalgam's Super Soldier: Man of War. I also had a coloring book in the mid 60's that had panels from the Sleeper story to color in it.

The title of the first part was presumably drawn from H.G. Wells's novel WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES/THE SLEEPER AWAKES. It involves a Victorian man who awakens after two hundred years, which recalls Captain America's revival.

I think Jack and Stan were probably H G Wells fans

Nazis are good planners! Twenty years are almost my entire life!

How did the Nazis get the technology to build giant robots in the 40's, and if they had them then, why didn't they use them then? The Captain America 65th Anniversary Special by Ed Brubaker has a sixth(?)/first(?) Sleeper that turns out to have been created by an alternate future Doctor Doom who travelled back in time to the Middle Ages and created the Sleeper for some as-yet-unexplained reason. So the Red Skull could have gotten the technology from studying that. As for why the Sleepers sleep, my theory is it takes a long, long time for their batteries to charge...

Andrew, I think the time that Kang spent in the past as Victor Timely, as detailed in Citizen Kang, is meant to explain where all the advanced technology that showed up in the 40s is meant to come from.

There have been multiple explanations for the advanced technology of the Nazis. First, we could simply say Baron Zemo did it (or one of his disciples). He's already established as a genius inventor. Second, we could say Dr. Doom did it, since we know he went back in time to work with Dr. Olsen on at least one amazing device. Third, we could say it was a result of alien technology from the Gnobians (which has been retconned away I believe, but given Marvel it's only a matter to time before future retcons get rid of that). Fourth, we could use Michael's suggestion of a time travelling Kang. You could use one or any combination of them. Personally, I have no problem just saying, "Zemo did it."

Plus there're the aliens that Brain Drain stole tech from in the first Invaders storyline, Maelstrom and Phaeder giving Kree-and Deviant-derived genetics secrets to Arnim Zola, Mister Sinister using his Apocalypse/Celestials-derived tech in one of the concentration camps as shown in Frank Tieri's Weapon X series, and then there's the ancient order of the SHIELD.

The nice thing about the first three Sleepers is that they aren't played as some ridiculously hi=tech thingus. Tuska gives them an effectively clunky-looking design, each one has a single, simple function, and Cap manages to destroy them using a blowtorch. It's really the Fourth Sleeper that creates problems, since that thing basically has the Vision 's powers even though it's supposed to be buried Nazi technology.