Captain America: The Great Gold Steal (1968)

Captain America: The Great Gold Steal (1968)
Ted White
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Introduction by Stan Lee. Second novel based on Marvel Comics characters ever published (following The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker). At the point when The Great Gold Steal first came out, the Marvel era--which began with the release of Fantastic Four #1 in August 1961 (cover dated November)--was only seven years old. To give those familiar with Marvel's publishing history an idea, STEAL has a July 1968 publishing date. According to Mike's Amazing World of DC website (the "Amazing World of Marvel" part of it), these are some of the comics that were coming out in July 1968: Amazing Spider-Man #68, Avengers #56, Captain America #106, Iron Man #6, Mighty Marvel Western #1, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #5, Silver Surfer #2, Tales of Asgard #1, Avengers Annual #2, Incredible Hulk Annual #1, and Fantastic Four #79.

As regarding novels based on comics characters in general, there were still very few of them at this point based on comic book characters. There had been a full length Superman novel for younger readers back in 1942 (just four years after he'd first shown up in Action Comics #1). Then, over twenty years later, the "Batmania" craze produced by the 1960s BATMAN television series led to a couple TV series tie-in novels (Winston Lyon's Batman Versus Three Villains of Doom and Batman Versus the Fearsome Foursome, both 1966). And that was pretty much it before the Avengers and Captain America novels I talk about here came out in 1967 and 1968. (For more info, see Wikipedia list page I put together on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_novels_based_on_comics .)

As for The Great Gold Steal, overall, I enjoyed it. I have to say right from the start that it is a *MUCH* better novel than The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker. In that one, the author, Otto Binder, tried to emulate the then current style of the Avengers comic books in both plot and the "hip" dialogue. The end product was a novel that was at times a bit painful to get through.

The Great Gold Steal, however, is written by science fiction author, Ted White. By the time Steal came out, White had already had published seven or eight other novels, so he was much more experienced than Binder (which wasn't really a novel writer; he came primarily out of the comic book writing field, I believe). White wrote Steal as a much more "adult" novel (for instance, people--police and bank security officers mostly, but also some of the crooks--actually get shot and killed in this one). The plot deals with Captain America uncovering a plot to steal billions of dollars' worth of gold from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. White starts the novel off with just enough of the main plot to get you hooked, then jumps back in time for a few short chapters to World War II to introduce new readers to Captain America's origins, before returning again to the gold stealing plot.

The Captain America we read about here is a *bit* different from the one in the comic books (the World War II experiment that gave him his powers in the novel also included steel reinforced bones and the ability to completely control his body's various processes, like slowing down his own heartbeat or channeling all of his energies into healing from wounds faster), but not so much as to be a distraction for those familiar with the comics, I don't think. There is still that "fish out of water" element here--1940s Captain America adjusting to his new life in the 1960s; the Avengers are discussed but are all away so we don't see them--prevalent in the Captain America comics of the time.

The first two thirds or so of the novel (getting us into the plot and seeing Cap's origins) is better than the last part. Once it is time for the novel's climax, it starts to be a bit more predictable what's going to happen next. Still, I found it to be a pretty enjoyable novel. Enough so that at some point I might try to hunt up some of White's science fiction novels..)

The Great Gold Steal would turn out to be the last Marvel based novel for ten years. It wouldn't be followed by another Marvel novel until 1978's The Amazing Spider-Man: Mayhem in Manhattan by Len Wein and Marv Wolfman (which was the start of an eleven book series of Marvel books--ten novels and one short story collection--published by Pocket Books from 1978 to 1979). (Finished reading 4/16/10)