1963 the forgotten highlight of Image Comics first few years part 01 Mystery Incorporated

 

In April of 1993 the above cover ,Pencils by Rick Veitch and inks by Dave Gibbons,caught my eye at my local comic shop. I was scanning the huge wall of new releases and the guy dead center of the cover with the big green cratered planet head grabbed hold of my imagination.

I pulled a copy down and on the bottom of the first page I saw the creator credits.

Quickly glancing back at the front cover and giving it a much closer look I realized what 1963 was. It was Image giving some of the best talent of the era a chance to pay tribute to the Silver Age of Marvel Comics. Let's look at the talent working on this issue. First up you have Alan Moore,who at the time I knew from Swamp Thing and Watchmen. Moore in 93 and even now many years later is one of my favorite writers. Like on the cover handling the pencils on the interiors is the legendary Rick Veitch. Veitch I knew back then from not only his art and writing work on Swamp Thing,he was one of the pencilers when Alan Moore was writing Swamp Thing,but also I had read and loved the recent Brat Pack mini series Veitch wrote and drew. Slinging the ink around is the amazing Dave Gibbons,another guy who had worked with Alan Moore before. Most notably on Watchmen where Gibbons was the penciler. Don Simpson as far as I know hadn't worked with Alan Moore before this project. While Simpson is the letterer on this issue I knew him for being the artist and writer on Megaton Man and Border Worlds. Marvin Kilroy,the colorist,I had never heard of.

By spring of 1993 it had been a long time since Alan Moore had wrote any superhero comics. And it had been a long time since Moore wrote something that wasn't a bit dark. With 1963 Moore and all the other members of the  creative team got a chance to create a love letter to the spirit and creators of all those great comics coming out from Marvel. Back in 1963 Marvel started a shared superhero universe with Fantastic Four #1. It is fitting that the first issue of the 1963 comic series is Alan Moore's homage to the Fantastic Four.

The Planet is this universe's version of The Thing.With the only real major difference is The Planet can change back into his human form at will. Something The Thing couldn't do. The comic starts off with the Planet trying to enter and test out Mystery Incorporated's Headquarters,the Mystery Mile. As the Planet is making his way further into the HQ he runs into the other members of the team.

Crystal Man is the first to try and stop The Planet. Crystal Man is the Mr Fantastic clone. Instead of being about to stretch his body is made of crystals and he can shapeshift.

You can see how Crystal Man's best efforts barely slow The Planet down much. Up next is Kid Dynamo.

Kid is the Human Torch bootleg. But instead of bursting into flame,flying and throwing fireballs Kid Dynamo changes into electricity,flies and throws thunderbolts.

Like the Human Torch,Kid Dynamo can be subdued with water. Which The Planet quickly does. Guess it's time for the 4th and final member of the team to take a shot.

The final member is Neon Queen. She is the Invisible Woman variant. But instead of just becoming invisible Neon Queen can turn into many different types of gases. She uses this to finally stop The Planet.

Look how in just 5 pages Moore manages to introduce the entire team and show us their powers and a bit of the family dynamics this team has. 

Then on the next page there is a small thing. But while it is small it is just the perfect way make this comic an even bigger tribute to just how much Marvel changed the way superhero comics were with those early issues of Fantastic Four.

See how in the bottom right hand corner of the panel we get told what issue of Mystery Incorported the incidnet Crystal Man mentions happened. That is something Marvel invented and it helped make the fans realize that all the Marvel titles were tied into each other. 

After we get a quick recapping of the teams origin. Which is very similar to the Fantastic Four's origin the story skips ahead a bit. Neon Queen notices someone strange on a security camera.

She tries the gas trick that worked on the Planet a few pages earlier. But oddly the strange man with a bow appears to get better after walking backwards through the cloud. Then he just disappears in a bright flash. Neon Queen summons the rest of the team.

Crystal Man figures out that the strange intruder had entered the Maybe Machine,I'm guessing this is a combonation of the FF's time machine and their portal to the Negative Zone. The team splits up to see if this shifty bowman did any damage to the HQ. And the next page... the next page is one of the greatest things in this issue.

Like Stan's Soapbox in the old Marvel comics this page of text tells us what other projects the creative team is working on. Plus Moore manages to throw in some subtle digs at how Marvel treated their employees back in the Silver Age. This page is really the only one in the issue that breaks the illusion that what we are reading is an old Silver Age issue.

The team is going through their HQ trying to see what all the mysterious man did and the security system that The Planet was testing out earlier starts attacking them. Kid Dynamo splits off from the team heads to the computer room and runs into the Arrow man. This man uses the same water trick used by the Planet earlier to cause Kid to go back into his human form then...

Notice how once Kid is inside the mini tv looking device he is surrounded by 1s and 0s.I'm guessing the Kid is now trapped in binary form inside some kind of data storage device. The bowman goes back through the Maybe Machine. And the rest of Mystery Incorporated travel into the Maybe Machine to hopefully rescue their teammate.

And so ends the story of issue 1 of 1963. But the issue isn't over yet. One way Marvel built up the huge following they had in the Silver Age was using their letter pages each issue. Fans could write in and talk about previous issues of the comics. And since their addresses were printed other fans would sometimes reach out to them. Being a homage to Silver Age Marvel of course 1963 #1 has 2 pages of letters. All of them made up. But still worth reading.

After the letters we get the pinups I posted earlier in this article. Followed by two great ads. The first is on the inside back cover.

Back before the speculator comic boom of the mid 90s busted Moondogs was one of the major comic chains in the US. They were mostly based in the Chicago area. AFAIK they went under in the late 90s. This ad is great. 1963 though saved the best ad for the back cover.

What a great comic. And every one of the 6 issues that got published is as good if not better. That is why it sucks that not only was this story never finished. But the odds of this series getting a trade or hardcover collection are slim.

The plan was after the 6 issues came out the underlining storyline,which involved the masked bowman we saw in issue 1,would be resolved. For various reasons this annual was delayed again and again. One of the delays coming when Jim Lee decided ,for what turned out to be one of many times in his career,to just stop doing work. After he got paid for the work he just didn't do it.

The other issue with the annual and why we will not likey see a trade or hardcover collection of what got published is the rights holders don't get along. Alan Moore owns the rights to some of the characters and Steve Bissette owns the rights to others. Something happened in the late 90s and now Moore refuses to work with Bissette ever again. Sucks that this great series will more than likely never get a conculsion. But thankfully this series came out when Image was overpublishing every thing they put out. So it isn't hard to track down all 6 issues for about a buck each. Which is cheaper than the cover prices.