"In centuries agone, they had called him a myth, a creature formed of stone and clay and the blood of a people's oppression - a moving monolith who rose before the voice of tyranny - shattered it in his monumental fists - then vanished into the sands of time - there to be almost forgotten - until today! Now, once more, he rises - summoned from his eons-long sleep to protect those he loves. Now for the first time in untold decades - there walks the Golem!"

--From the splash page of the Golem stories

That was an impressive start to the first story of Marvel Comics' The Golem. Unfortunately, the series was never really able to live up to that little bit of hype. In fact, the book got off to such a rocky start, and with such a lack of cohesiveness in its vision, that its creators just abandoned it for other projects. Which is why The Golem appeared in a mere three issues of the newly revived Strange Tales (sandwiched in between great runs of Brother Voodoo and Adam Warlock) and the story was finally concluded almost a year later in the pages of Marvel Two-in-One.

The main problem was not an uncommon one in the comic field: A deadline was missed. The first Golem story, in Strange Tales #174 came in on time, but the next issue was made up entirely of reprinted stories, and the tale of the Golem did not continue until #176. And with a completely different creative team from the first story; Roy Thomas was still the editor, but everyone else was new to the story.

So with the next issue, which sported a great Frank Brunner cover, the letters page announced that Adam Warlock would be the new continuing featuring in Strange Tales. "Thus, even with an open-ended plotline and too much left unexplained, we've decided to call things to a halt. We goofed. It's not the first time, It won't be the last. (But it may be the only time we're gonna be so shamefacedly candid about it, so savor these words, pilgrim!)." At least they were honest in their appraisal of things and of what was happening. It just seems strange that it would happen this way, though I do remember this as being a time of a lot of activity at Marvel - there were a lot of new books and all those Giant-Size comics in the works. At least they were able to resolve most of the storyline in a team-up with the Fantastic Four’s The Thing in the pages of Marvel Two-In-One later the next year. Heck, Bill Mantlo even made the jump from colorist to scripter for that story!

I believe this was Marvel Comics' first serious attempt to adapt the classic Jewish myth of the Golem into comic books (though a Golem did battle the Incredible Hulk once, and another may have appeared back in the hey days of monster comics in the fifties), and definitely its first blatant attempt to make a Jewish hero (of sorts, anyway) ... they even touted that fact on the first story's letter's page.

The basic legend of the Golem in the Marvel Universe was that a Rabbi in the city of Prague created the giant statue and breathed life into it to relieve the oppression of the people. The Golem achieved justice for the Rabbi's people, and then it went off to other lands and fought tyranny, until it finally strode out into the desert, never to be seen again.

The series begins deep in the Sahara desert, where Abraham Adamson was searching for the Golem. He was the descendant of Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezalel, the man who created the Golem to protect and avenge his persecuted people. Abraham was there with his young nephew Jason, his niece Rebecca and Wayne Logan, an excavator. Abraham had studied the ancient parchments of the legend carefully and had brought them to a spot in the desert where they indeed were able to unearth the Golem statue.

Fairly close to their dig, a dispute between warring military factions was occurring. Later that day, a number of Middle Eastern soldiers showed up at the site, led by Colonel Omar. After giving them a bit of hospitality, the soldiers began looting the site during the night, and Omar revealed that they were all actually deserters. One of the soldiers got jumpy and shot Abraham. Omar took the others with him when he left as hostages to hopefully avoid any international entanglements, leaving Abraham alone to die with the Golem.

Abraham found the ancient parchments and intoned the Mystic Alphabets of the 221 Gates to try to bring the statue to life to protect his friends. When nothing seemed to happen, Abraham began to weep, and one of his tears landed on the foot of the giant statue. There was a searing flash of light and Abraham Adamson died ... but the light began to shine in the eyes of the Golem!

The Golem ripped through the canvass of the tent as Omar and his men were about to leave the camp. The Golem waded through Omar's men, their weapons useless against the giant. The Golem stopped when only Omar was left, and the deserter threatened to kill Rebecca if the monster came any closer. The Golem lashed out and crushed the gun in Omar's hand and then killed him. The Golem studied Wayne, Rebecca and Jason, and Rebecca suddenly began to scream as she recognized the familiar twinkle of her Uncle's eyes in the corners of the glowing eyes of the Golem!

Three days later, as the group made their preparations to return to America, they were stopped by government authorities, just as the Golem was being loaded onto a boat. The armed soldiers did not want anymore of their land's valuables stolen, even though Abraham had been given permission to take his findings home for study. The Golem came back to life and attacked the soldiers, but Rebecca was able to persuade the giant to not kill the men. The soldiers gratefully allowed the trio and the Golem to leave.

High above that scene, a pair of sea gulls transformed themselves into demonic beings and flew back to the home of their master, Kaballa the Unclean. The evil being, an Overlord of the Demon-Ruin, was very happy that the Golem had finally reappeared, since he planned to add the Golem’s power to his own and become master of everything. Kaballa sent a trio of air demons to attack the Golem and his companions while they were out at sea, thinking that the Earth elemental’s powers would be at their weakest then. The Golem still managed to defeat them, and also saved the others when the boat sank beneath the waves. Even the Golem itself was seemingly amazed at his strength during this naval encounter.

Wayne and Rebecca brought the Golem to San Pedro University (in St. Petersburg, Florida) to be examined by Professor Yeates and his assistant Saudia Yamal. Saudia believed their claim that the creature was the Golem of legend, and that it was alive, but Prof. Yeates was not so swayed, especially since he wanted the department chair that was vacated by Abraham’s death, as well as fearing for the ruin of his own reputation if Abraham’s claims were validated. After the others left, Prof. Yeates planned to destroy the Golem with a torch. Unfortunately, Kaballa used this event to loose a pair of fire demons to take over the Golem himself. Fire demons should have had a great advantage over an Earth elemental like the Golem, but he was able to stop them fairly easily, saving his friends (and Prof. Yeates) in the process. Kaballa then realized what the Golem did not: The Golem drew his strength from the emotional affinity he shares with Wayne, Rebecca and Jason. He decided to undercut the creature’s power by destroying his friends, and he decided to begin with Jason.

Unfortunately, there the story stood for nearly a year until The Golem met up with The Thing (of the Fantastic Four) in Marvel Two-In-One. Benjamin J. Grimm and his girlfriend Alicia Masters were heading south by train to Florida to take a vacation at DisneyWorld. Meanwhile, Wayne, Jason, Rebecca, Prof. Yeates and Saudia where discussing the Golem, and while they had to admit they saw the creature move, they could postulate no rational explanation for it. Jason wanted to decipher an old text to corroborate his theory, which was that the Golem came to life because Abraham’s spirit had a need for vengeance.

Kaballa was seeing the conversation via his sorcery and soon hatched a plan to gain control of the Golem. A radio broadcast announced that tidal wall of water arose that cut off San Pedro University from the mainland. Ben Grimm heard the report and disembarked from the train with Alicia, heading for the University. Along the way, he also heard reports of a monster running amok in St. Petersburg, as Kaballa took control of the Golem (the tidal wall separated the creature from his three friends). The Thing met up with the Golem and the requisite battle broke out. However, the spirit of the Golem was not totally suborned by Kaballa, as he was able to project “images of truth” into the Thing’s mind, prompting the rocky-skinned hero to erect an impromptu bridge between St. Petersburg and San Pedro University. This allowed Wayne, Rebecca and Jason to get close to the Golem and Kaballa lost control of the elemental. The Overlord himself appeared an attempted to kill Rebecca, but The Thing intercepted his eldritch energy. The Golem then attacked Kaballa, who was forced to flee, unable to face the blazing word “Emeth” (Hebrew for “truth”) on the Golem’s forehead. The Golem then when silent and immobile, though there seems to be a flicker of life left in the creature’s eyes.

And that’s pretty much where things stand today for The Golem. I personally thought the series, short-lived though it may have been, was a very interesting take on the legend. Besides the behind-the-scenes problems that the character endured, the main thing about the Golem that he was a very bland-looking monster … basically he was a statue of a bald guy wearing shorts. I mean, even the Hulk had hair back when he was wearing shorts. The artistic talents of John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga did however do a great job of making the Golem an imposing and powerful creature.

DC Comics got into the Golem act in the mid-nineties, creating its own version of the legend that was linked to a revised Ragman. That Golem had a bit longer of a career than Marvel’s did, as he eventually joined up with the Leymen in the pages of Primal Force. He also had a personality … the one thing that circumstances didn’t let Marvel Comics’ Golem gain during his brief stint as a headliner.

Strange Tales #174

June 1974
"There Walks the Golem"
Script: Len Wein
Pencils: John Buscema
Inks: Jim Mooney
Colors: Glynis Wein
Lettering: Dave Hunt
Editor: Roy Thomas
Cover: Marie Severin (?)

Reprint: "Foolproof" by Stan Lee

Strange Tales #176

October 1974
"The Black Crossing"
Script: Mike Friedrich
Pencils: Tony DeZuniga
Inks: Tony DeZuniga
Colors: Linda Lessman
Lettering: Marck
Editor: Roy Thomas
Cover: John Romita (?)

Reprint: "The Man Who Couldn't Be Killed' from Adventures into Mystery #8

Strange Tales #177

December 1974

Reprint: "The Girl Behind the Glass"

Marvel Two-In-One #11

September 1975
"The Thing Goes South"
Plot: Roy Thomas
Script: Bill Mantlo
Pencils: Bob Brown
Inks: Jack Abel
Colors: Janice Cohen
Lettering: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Len Wein
Cover by Gil Kane