Giant-Size Invaders #1

History

The Invaders concept grew from a brief 1969 flashback Roy Thomas scripted in Avengers #71 — drawn by Sal Buscema — where WWII-era Captain America, Namor, and the Human Torch appeared together without yet bearing a team name. Thomas, who had succeeded Stan Lee as Marvel's editor-in-chief and was a devoted student of Golden Age comics, developed the concept into a full series. Marvel initially planned for the Invaders to launch as a giant-sized anthology that would be half new material and half Golden Age reprints, but after this single oversized tryout the format was dropped in favor of a regular-sized ongoing that debuted in August 1975. Thomas served as both writer and editor on the issue, with Frank Robbins on pencils, Vince Colletta on inks, Petra Goldberg on colors, and John Costanza on letters; the cover was penciled by Robbins and inked by John Romita Sr., with lettering by Danny Crespi (confirmed by Todd Klein's archival research). Thomas also included a personal editorial essay explaining the series' approach to continuity — a characteristically 'fannish' but important touch that gave readers a direct window into how the new canon would interface with Timely's actual 1940s output.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance and origin of the Invaders as a named team: Captain America (Steve Rogers), Bucky (James Buchanan Barnes), the Human Torch (Jim Hammond), Toro (Thomas Raymond), and Namor the Sub-Mariner are dubbed 'the Invaders' by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill after they foil a Nazi assassination attempt on his life.
• First appearance and origin of Master Man (Wilhelm Lohmer) — a physically frail American Nazi sympathizer subjected to the Reich's imperfect derivative of the Super-Soldier Serum, granting him powers exceeding Captain America's but proving temporarily unstable; created by Roy Thomas and Frank Robbins.
• Captain America's origin is retold and expanded in a flashback set in 1940, merging earlier versions; crucially, 'Dr. Reinstein' is revealed to be a code name for Dr. Abraham Erskine, and the supporting characters General Phillips and General Simms are named for the first time in Marvel continuity.
• The main story is set on December 22, 1941 — just two weeks after Pearl Harbor — with the cover homaging All-Winners Comics #4, a deliberate signal that these heroes had in fact been operating as a unit all along.
• The issue reprints the lead story from Sub-Mariner Comics #1 (1941, art and script by Bill Everett), with Thomas adding new captions and a retroactive footnote establishing that Emperor Tha-Korr did not die as originally written but fell into suspended animation.
• Roy Thomas included a two-page personal editorial explaining the series' continuity policy: Golden Age stories would be considered canon only if the Invaders series itself verified them, giving the creative team flexibility while remaining respectful of Marvel's publishing history.
• The issue was the only entry in the Giant-Size Invaders series before the format was converted to a regular-sized ongoing (The Invaders, August 1975), which ran 41 issues through 1979.
• The main story has been reprinted multiple times, including in Marvel Visionaries: Roy Thomas (2006 and 2019), Marvel Firsts: The 1970s Vol. 2 (2012), Invaders Classic: The Complete Collection #1 (2014, recolored), and the Invaders Omnibus (2022).

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