You're Nobody At Marvel If You Haven't Projected Your Image!

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Aug 12, 2019

In their latest look at recurring plot points, CSBG spotlights how common hologram projectors seem to be in the early Marvel Universe!

In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just not one of the five examples that I chose.

Today, we look at the prolific usage of holographic image projectors in the early days of the Marvel Universe! Note that I only mean technologically projected images, so no magical projections (a la Doctor Strange) or telepathic projections (a la Professor X and, somehow, Magneto). No, I just mean actual hologram projectors. They were surprisingly common in the early days of the Marvel Universe, as Jack Kirby and Stan Lee must have been fans of the idea.

NAMOR

The first holographic projector of note was in Fantastic Four #14 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Dick Ayers), where the Puppet Master successfully takes control of Namor and uses the undersea monarch to attack the Fantastic Four.

Namor convinces Invisible Girl to come to see him and then he visits the Baxter Building to taunt the rest of the Fantastic Four (so they will come into his trap) via an undersea hologram projector...

IRON MAN

In a really clever bit (which I just wrote about in another article about the first meeting between the Avengers and the X-Men), Jack and Stan had Iron Man use an image projector in Avengers #3 (inks by Paul Reinman) in an attempt to find the Hulk (who had quit the previous issue). This was a way for Jack and Stan to show the breadth of the new Marvel Universe and to sort of advertise for the other Marvel titles...

I love how it ends with Iron Man just noting that, yeah, he was just pretty much happy that he got to use his new toy. And then Rick Jones finds the Hulk all by himself!

KANG

This one is a bit of a cheat, but in Avengers #11 (by Stan Lee, Don Heck and Chic Stone), Kang decides that he will infiltrate the Avengers through the use of a Spider-Man robot. First, before he can build the robot, he needs to know Spider-Man's exact measurements, so he uses an image projector to project Spider-Man's "proto-image" in front of him for him to study...

It's kind of crazy how many villainous plans of the era were "let's infiltrate the Avengers."

WASP

The Avengers weren't always the nicest people to each other, and so when Hank Pym insisted in Avengers #12 (by Don Heck, Stan Lee and Dick Ayers) that his ants were telling him of an impending crisis, the other Avengers mocked him. Well, he was right, which the Avengers found out when Wasp used the image projector to go underneath the ground to see what was going on...

MANDARIN

Speaking of infiltrating the Avengers, the Mandarin used an image projector to pretend to be Iron Man so that the Avengers would add Swordsman to the team in Avengers #20 (by Don Heck, Stan Lee and Wallace Wood)...

Later, the Mandarin projected his own image to visit Swordsman, which was super creepy since Swordsman was in his bedroom and almost completely undressed...